Skip to main content

The Handshake

By


Some are calling it a Mandela-like gesture, others are calling it nauseating, but whatever your opinion it is more than just a handshake, which apparently is the way the White House is spinning it.

In the run up to last year's election, Obama was making overtures to Cuba, which suggested a thaw in relations that were greeted warmly by most of the Cuban-American community in Florida.  From a pragmatic point of view, it probably helped him carry the state in the election, but Obama seems to be looking beyond the polls and didn't miss the opportunity to make contact with Raul Castro on the way to the podium to make a speech commemorating Nelson Mandela.

Back in 1990 when Mandela visited the United States, many Republican and a few Democratic lawmakers insisted that he renounce his support of Cuba, among other pariah nations.  Mandela politely refused.  This earned him the enmity of Jesse Helms, who turned his back on Mandela when he addressed a joint session of Congress.

Cuba has long been seen as a thorn in US relations with Latin America.  American presidents have accused Castro of spreading communism throughout the region and have doggedly insisted on sanctions that for the most part have failed.  Just about everyone else in the world trades freely with Cuba, including Canada.

There have been moments when reconciliation seemed on the event horizon, most notably in 2000 when Clinton eased restrictions on Cuban travel and remittances.  This was the result of Pope John Paul II's historic visit to Havana.  Unfortunately, the election of George W. Bush ended any potential thaw, and saw most of the restrictions put firmly back in place.

One of the most frustrating things about the Obama administration is that it hasn't done more to improve relations with Latin America.  Of course, his foreign policy has been dominated by the wars George Bush bequeathed him, but Obama has pretty much left Latin America on the back burner, much to the chagrin of Central and South Americans.   Maybe this handshake will rekindle trade talks and open the door to a new era in Cuban-American relations.

Comments

  1. TripplerDecember 13, 2013 at 7:31 AM

    ''nauseating''


    Republicans said no such thing when Nixon shook hands with his older brother.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonDecember 13, 2013 at 8:38 AM

    Kind of like this political cartoon,

    https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRqpF6R11d3S5ThIPZakS_qMXgyCyxOB1AryR8Dg2ZiMAqbSuJg

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
230 comments
Read more

The People Debate the Constitution

By
As Pauline Maier describes in Ratification , there was no easy road in getting the Constitution ratified.  After 10 years of living together as a loosely knit confederation, a few forward thinking men decided that the Articles of Confederation no longer worked and it was time to forge a Constitution.  Washington would not go until he could be assured something would come of the convention and that there would be an august body of gentlemen to carry the changes through.  But, ultimately Maier describes it was the people who would determine the fate of the new Constitution. This is a reading group for Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787-1788 .  The book has been well received by fellow historians like Jack Rakove , among others.  Maier has drawn from a wealth of research piecing together a story that tells the arduous battle in getting the Constitution ratified.  A battle no less significant than that Americans fought for independence.
166 comments
Read more