Today, the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations will address the Castro regime’s stranglehold on Cuban civil society and how best to tackle the nation’s continued political repression. Congress deserves praise for highlighting this matter and drawing some much-needed attention to the need to reinvigorate U.S. commitment to the Cuban people …
On Saturday night, blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng arrived in Newark, N.J., after escaping seven years of persecution in China. With the sweet land of liberty under his feet, Chen breathed the free air and remarked, “We should link our arms to continue in the fight for the goodness in …
Cuban Solidarity Day should make us renew efforts to extend a little more freedom to the Cuban population, which is still effectively imprisoned under their creaky Communist autocracy. May 20 marks the 110th year of Cuba’s independence, of which 53 long years have been spent under the Castro brothers’ dictatorship. …
The U.S. State Department has decided to grant a visa to Mariela Castro Espin, daughter of Raul Castro, the country’s President and Premier, neice of notorious Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, despite laws precluding such visas from officials of the Cuban dictatorship. Castro Espin, who is the director of Cuba’s state-funded …
On April 13–15, President Obama participated in what will likely be the last Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia. It showed that contemporary gatherings such as this latest Summit—absent strong U.S. leadership and lacking a genuinely constructive agenda—can easily be derailed. The showy gathering of heads of state was …
The society that Pope Benedict XVI will find when he lands in Cuba next week will be a destitute one, prostrate in every way. The once proud and comparatively wealthy Cubans are now among the poorest in the hemisphere, definitely the least informed and, consequently, the least free. For outsiders, …
Anyone hoping to see serious changes to Cuba’s ruling system was again disappointed on January 28 when Raul Castro spoke. In a speech marking a critical conference, the Cuban leader promised change, term limits, economic reform, and a willingness to move younger party members to a more elevated status. Yet, …
Friends of improved relations with Cuba argue that citizen contact, people-to-people interaction, and lifting current impediments to travel and trade will pave the way for an improved U.S.–Cuba relationship and greater mutual understanding. Yet if the climate for change is as favorable as they suggest, in a moment of heightened …
