Thank you Mr. President

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Thank you Mr. President

Dear Mr. Barack Obama,

Your recent executive order to re-establish diplomatic relations with Cuba has left the Cuban exile community struggling with varying emotions and suspicious of the beneficiaries of the new changes. I did not leave Cuba by conscious choice but as a result of my parents’ will and as such I do not carry the usual pains associated with emigrating for political reasons. Unlike my parents and family, I do not see your move as a betrayal or a mistake, but rather as an act of reason and a bold international statement revealing the maverick and ambassador of compromise and dialogue that you are. Cuba is now under a microscope. Mr. Obama, you have put the ball in the Cuban government’s court.

If you succeed in lifting the embargo, the Cuban government will no longer have an excuse for economic failure. I was surprised that you were able to negotiate with a Socialist enough to achieve a double-play. Can you negotiate effectively with the Republicans to garner a political home-run? I believe that if you manage to convince Congress to lift the anachronistic and contradictory embargo, Mr. Obama, you will then leave an indelible legacy that justifies your 2009 Nobel Peace Prize far more than any other foreign policy decision under your name. Ending the embargo will set a new tone for the 21^st century, where democracy can meet Latin America through embrace and engagement.

Perhaps my mere 23 years of age is key to understanding my elation at your announcement. I returned to Cuba this year after twenty years of separation, a return born out of a deep-seeded desire to form my own opinion about what Cuba felt like and to reconnect with my roots. Somehow my past, present, and future feel Cuban even though I live in the U.S. It’s almost as if “la Patria” never left, even though I did. My return was also motivated by the narrative dissatisfaction of the political propaganda from the hardliners in exile in Miami and the leftist intellectuals from my Alma Mater Columbia. I was tired of learning about Cuba from others and felt I had to have my own experiences shape my beliefs. In fact, when I visited the island, I realized that no one had the story right. The Cuban reality proved too complex to capture in a paragraph or a sentence or an image. I couldn’t even tell you what Cuba is. It might be best for you to visit and see for yourself.

I knew in my travels while studying abroad throughout Europe that the Cuban exile community was very dispersed. Who would have thought there were Cubans in Croatia? Nonetheless, the Cuban story is sadly damaged by more than just the exodus of Cubans that has rendered Cuba a broken nation. It is damaged by the rehashed juxtaposition of imperialism vs. la Revolución; it is damaged by familial separation, by schizophrenic notions of history, and by exaggerated myths and outcries that speculate about the reasons for the island’s socio-economic conditions in an attempt to achieve an end to the regime or to achieve its perpetuation. One of the measures to healing this misinformation schism is to encourage traveling to Cuba and to allow Americans to exchange freely with the Cuban people. The most valuable export the U.S. can have for Cuba is Americans with an eagerness to talk. This is perhaps why I am most excited about the change in policy.

On one of my three trips to Cuba, I talked to some youth about the stock market, about how I was able to buy a car in the U.S., about credit and financial responsibility and they asked me all sorts of questions. Cuban youth have a profound hunger to understand American enterprise and the U.S. political system. What I discovered above all else in Cuba was an overwhelming fascination with American culture. I believe the Cuban admiration of the American dream needs to be channeled to empower the Cuban people to be independent and have entrepreneurial agency for themselves. This means that the U.S. should primarily act as a teacher and not a boss. It is important for Americans to travel to Cuba and invest in educating the Cuban people, not in exploiting their ignorance for economic gains. Moreover, I was glad to know that Columbia University recently accepted Laura Garcell, a high school student from Havana. Academic exchange programs could be a viable start in educating the younger generations and in building a community of Cuban citizens that can bring back ideas to generate projects of civic engagement that are lacking on the island.

Mr. President, only time will tell whether your decision will be a foreign policy success. And while this new shift in policy has deeply divided my already divided family, I cannot thank you enough for bringing Cuba to a crossroads and for the necessary spotlight of these long overdue debates. Now, the government of Cuba must act accordingly and also acknowledge its shortcomings. The publicity that your rapprochement has garnered will protect dissidents as the international community watches Cuba more closely. I hope that the U.S. Congress and other political leaders call upon the Cuban government to re-examine its political process and to make space for political opposition and the emergence of political parties in Cuba. Mr. Obama, as Rosa María Payá, daughter of the late Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá, mentioned in her open letter to you,  “your laws are not what is preventing the free market and access to information in Cuba; it is the Cuban government’s legislation and its constant censorship.”

Freedom of association is at the heart of any plural democracy. In Cuba, there is only one party, one think-tank, one press, one expression. The U.S. and the international community needs to urge the Castro regime to allow for Cubans within the island to exert their basic rights of freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and freedom of association, otherwise it would seem that these new changes while well-intentioned will only serve the powerful elite and the Castro dynasty. The international community can help with its solidarity to empower civil society on the island to seize this historic opportunity.

My perspective is one of hope, optimistic that a new symbiotic relationship between two neighbors will pioneer a lasting testament of what Cuban-American engagement, access to information, and entrepreneurial spirit can achieve when governments step aside and let different people talk and work together freely to mend a broken friendship. In the words of Cuban hero José Martí, “el hombre sincero tiene derecho al error,” the honest man has the right to err, yet I dare add  “pero error no tiene derecho al hombre”, error does not have a right to man. Hopefully, the only error of this new political approach is having waited so long to begin.

Thank you Mr. President for looking to a future united in dialogue. Happy holidays  to you and your loved ones and God bless both of our countries!

Ylena Zamora-Vargas