THE unanimous decision of the Organisation of American States (OAS) to reverse the expulsion of Cuba from the grouping is viewed as a diplomatic setback for the Barack Obama administration. It was at the insistence of the United States that Cuba was expelled from the organisation in 1962. Unable to stomach the success of the Cuban revolution, Washington browbeat other Latin Americans to cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba. The lone exception at the time was Mexico. Cubas expulsion came in the wake of the defeat of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion.
For the past five decades, successive U.S. administrations have insisted that Cuba should be readmitted to the OAS only if the socialist regime introduced U.S.-prescribed democratic reforms in the nation. But as the American influence in the region started to wane dramatically in the 1990s, Cuba was no longer isolated. Today, barring the U.S., Cuba has full-fledged diplomatic relations with all the countries in the region. El Salvador, the last holdout, elected a left-wing government recently. The two countries have since established diplomatic relations.
At the 39th OAS General Assembly, held in San Pedro Sula in Honduras in the first week of June, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried her best to impose the same old conditions for the readmission of Cuba. But the changed political realities in Latin America and the Caribbean made the U.S. eat humble pie. The other member-states insisted on readmitting Cuba without preconditions.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the abrogation of the resolution suspending Cuba showed that Latin American countries were not U.S. colonies. He went on to add that the OAS decision signalled the beginning of a new age. Chavez, in fact, threatened to pull out of the OAS if the U.S. tried to thwart the move to re-induct Cuba.
Venezuela, along with Nicaragua and Honduras, played an important role in the passing of the resolution calling for the readmission of Cuba. All three are members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), a progressive regional grouping.
The Nicaraguan draft proposal at the OAS meet demanded that the U.S. apologise for the 1962 expulsion of Cuba. Ultimately, it was a compromise draft by Honduras advocating reconciliation between Havana and Washington that was adopted unanimously.
But the Cuban government is not too keen on returning to the OAS despite being one of its founding members. The OAS was established in 1948 when Cuba was under an American-backed dictatorship. In 1962, the OAS expelled Cuba on the grounds that Marxism-Leninism is incompatible with the inter-American system and the alignment of such a government with the communist bloc breaks the unity and the solidarity of the hemisphere.
The Cuban government, while declaring the decision of the OAS as a major victory for all of Latin America, said that it had no desire to return to an organisation that had been used as a tool by the U.S. since the 1960s to destabilise Cuban and other progressive governments in the region.
Fidel Castro, in an article written in the first week of June, said that the OAS was complicit in the crimes committed against Cuba and the rest of Latin America. He described the OAS vote to readmit Cuba as a defeat for United States diplomacy.
Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cubas Foreign Minister, stated recently that as long as the OAS remained merely an instrument of American foreign policy, there was no question of his country becoming a member of the group once again. Sixty per cent of the OAS funding comes from the U.S. Rodriguez described the OAS as an anachronistic grouping that did not serve the cause of the political integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cuba obviously prefers to join an organisation that is specifically concerned with the problems of Latin America. It is already a member of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and its South American Defence Council. Significantly, the U.S. has not been invited to join UNASUR.
John CherianCOMMents
COMMents
SHARE