The Castro regime is busy trying to tamp down sky-high expectations among Cubans eager for a closer relationship with the U.S., Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., told reporters after a trip to the communist-run Caribbean island.
The Democratic senator was among the first lawmakers to visit Cuba after U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced in December that the two countries would move to normalize relations.
“I think most Cubans really did feel like it was a turning of a page,” McCaskill said Monday in a conference call with reporters. “They see this opening as a way they can build on positive reforms.”
That reaction apparently has made the Cuban government a little nervous, the senator said.
“We heard some concerns by some that there were some in the Cuban government working against this in spite of the fact that Raúl Castro had made this announcement, that there were some doubters,” McCaskill said.
She said she asked Cuba’s foreign minister “point blank” over lunch: “Are there people in the government who are working against this?”
He reassured her, saying, “There is no important government official that I am aware of that is opposed to us going down this path.”
Only time will tell, McCaskill said.
“The Cuban government has used our lack of relationship with them and the embargo as an excuse for a lack of prosperity and progress in Cuba,” McCaskill said. “It’s a phony excuse, but it’s an excuse that has been fed to the Cuban people decade after decade.”
That’s why the Cuban people are so excited, she said.
“I think the government is worried,” McCaskill said, “because they know they’ve used this embargo as their excuse and once its gone, they have no more excuses.”
It’s clear the 50-year-old embargo on trade with Cuba needs to end, McCaskill said. She said she’ll support the Freedom to Export to Cuba Act, a bill that would lift the embargo that was introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. Klobuchar and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., traveled with McCaskill to Cuba.
The bill has a few Republican co-sponsors but faces a battle in Congress, where impassioned opponents include Cuban American Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as well as Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Díaz-Balart.
McCaskill said lobbying from agriculture and business interests will be key if the bill is to have a chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress.
“I won’t say all the agriculture interests in my state are Republican, but I think the majority of them are,” McCaskill said. “Certainly the farm bureau is a Republican organization. I think the sooner the agriculture interests put pressure on some of the Republican members of the House, the quicker they will be able to get this passed.”
The senator’s visit was arranged by the Center for Democracy in the Americas, a nonprofit group that advocates for lifting the embargo and previously has paid for members of Congress to travel to Cuba. McCaskill and her developer husband, Joseph Shepard, who accompanied her on the trip, paid their own way.
McCaskill said the trip was a way for her to assess how farmers and other businesses in her state might benefit from opening Cuban markets to U.S. agricultural products.
Before traveling, she met with trade groups representing Missouri producers of rice, pork, soybeans, corn and poultry. She also met with Cuba’s top representative in the U.S., José Ramón Cabañas Rodríguez, the chief of mission at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.
In Cuba, McCaskill, Klobuchar and Warner met with Cuban government officials and diplomats from Europe and Asia, as well as ordinary small business owners, farmers, artists and religious leaders.
“The warmth and affection from the Cuban people was palpable,” McCaskill said.
McCaskill said she was able to speak to some Cuban citizens without any Cuban government officials present, including hip hop artists who told her they had produced songs about racism and other problems in Cuba.
“People were very forthright about their frustrations with the Cuban government and their dreams and hopes for the future for their families,” she said.
McCaskill did not meet with any members of Cuba’s dissident movement, but she stressed that her support for lifting the embargo doesn’t mean she’s selling out Cuba’s dissidents in return for potential trade opportunities.
“There is nothing about me wanting a market for Missouri agriculture in Cuba that means I don’t oppose human rights violations by the Cuban government,” she said.
There’s precedent for the U.S. to cultivate relationships and deals with countries “that don’t live up to our standards” in terms of human rights, she added, citing China as an example.
The senator posted photos to her Instagram account showing classic American cars on the streets of Cuba and documenting her stops at an individually owned farm, a church where she attended Mass and a Jewish synagogue in Havana. The synagogue had an arch that made her miss St. Louis, McCaskill said.
And yes, McCaskill and her husband did buy some Cuban cigars, at about $10 a pop.