The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and LA Times all have lead reports on the top story from the Americas this morning: an announcement by the Obama administration on U.S. Cuba policy. During an afternoon press briefing, the administration announced an end to restrictions on the ability of Cuban Americans to visit and send money to relatives on the island—what the NYT calls “the most significant shift in United States policy toward Cuba in decades.” However, the NYT emphasizes that the changes only opened the door a crack toward greater engagement with Cuba, writing that “the steps he (Obama) took were modest, reflecting the complicated domestic politics around Cuba and the unpredictability of the Cuban response.” According to Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute, the move “doesn’t at all get at the issue of broader contact between American society and Cuban society, and it leaves us in kind of an odd situation where one ethnic group has an unlimited right to travel to Cuba and the rest of us are under these cold war regulations.” Meanwhile, the WaPo report on yesterday’s announcement highlights President Obama’s belief that easing travel and gift restrictions will propel democratic change on the island. In yesterday’s press briefing, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said “All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects the basic human, political and economic rights of all of its citizens. President Obama believes the measure he has taken today will help make that goal a reality.” But others, like Carlos Pascual, a Cuban born director of the foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, believe the move did not go far enough. “In and of itself, it’s not going to produce a radical change in Cuba,” Pascual told the WaPo. As an AP report from Havana on the news notes, many in Cuba, including Fidel Castro himself, also believe the U.S. should go further. On the Granma website last night, Castro wrote “not a word was said about the blockade, which is the cruelest of measures.”
The LAT and the WSJ underscore a less reported-on aspect of Monday’s changes: an easing of telecommunications company access to Cuba. According to the WSJ, “the Obama administration is eliminating a traffic-routing restriction, which will make it easier for telecom companies to offer service directly to the island.” But, as the LAT notes, the Cuban government must consent to this change and issue licenses.
And, in the Miami Herald, besides Cuba coverage, the paper leads with an important story on Haiti and Tuesday donor’s conference in Washington, D.C. According to the MH, the cash-strapped, poverty-stricken Caribbean nation is seeking $125 million to plug a budget shortfall and $2 billion toward a three-year poverty-reduction plan that includes new roads and schools, renovations of existing hospitals and revitalization of the country's agriculture, which suffered devastating losses following last summer's back-to-back hurricanes and tropical storms. Initially, the conference was supposed to deal with improving international coordination between the Haitian government and the hundreds of private, nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, but with last year’s storms and food riots, the meeting has become a fundraising effort, writes the MH. It is expected that U.S. officials will give at least $50 million.
In other news, a few more opinions and reports from Cuba, both related and unrelated to Monday’s breaking news announcement. A MH editorial is consistent with the NYT coverage of Monday’s changes, among others, writing that “Mr. Obama is making a marginal change in U.S. policy to signal that he is open to fundamental revision,” but adds that such revision will come “only if the Cuban government reciprocates -- and that has always been the real stumbling block.” On the other hand, Eugene Robinson, columnist at the WaPo, argues that the U.S. should lift travel restrictions for everyone and put an end to the 1962 trade embargo, but adds “we should take these steps with our eyes open, seeing Cuba as it is, not as we might want it to be.” Robinson focuses on the issues of racism that still exist in Castro’s Cuba and is very critical of a group of Congressional Black Caucus members who traveled to the island last week and failed to acknowledge that Cuba “is hardly the paradise of racial harmony and equality it pretends to be.” Also, an AP report in the WaPo writes that the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom was forced to call off a three-day fact-finding visit to Cuba Monday due to a lack of visas. The group said the visas had been applied for weeks earlier but had received no explanation from the Cuban government for why they were not granted. And, the satirical and observant Dana Milbank of the WaPo writes of Monday’s Cuba announcement: “The White House deftly limited the visibility of the announcement by leaving the president in the Oval Office…and having a mid-level official from the National Security Council make the announcement in the briefing room -- in Spanish….‘Has another language, other than English, ever been spoken from this podium as far as you know?’ asked Laura Meckler of the Wall Street Journal. My sense is ‘no,’ Gibbs replied.”
An editorial in the NYT on Peru and the Fujimori verdict from last week maintains that the trial was so important because “the court…found that it was Mr. Fujimori who failed to distinguish between authoritarian excess and the rule of law.” And the NYT also reports on a brewing personal scandal in Paraguay where President Fernando Lugo admitted to fathering a child while still a Catholic priest. His child will be two-years-old in May.
Finally, a last opinion and report from the MH. Conservative columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner argues provocatively ahead of this weekend’s summit that Latin America should “stop vying for favors” from the United States. Montaner writes that “in the 1960s, the United States…launched the Alliance for Progress, and in a decade the country wasted $20 billion. Easy to say, but that figure is almost double the aid given to Europe through the Marshall Plan -- and nothing happened in Latin America.” And, from Mexico, the AP reports that Mexico's Congress opened a three-day debate Monday on the merits of legalizing marijuana for personal use. The story notes that such a policy is backed by the three former Latin American presidents who recently issued the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy report.
Photo: Tomas Van Houtryve, New York Times.
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