WLRN Miami, Florida 3 December 2019 Back To The U.S.-Cuba Future? New Animosities Raise Fears Relations May Be Severed Again By Tim Padgett Latin America Report Cuban government video purportedly showing dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer (left) being detained by police. YouTube Last month a big anniversary in the western hemisphere went largely unnoticed in the U.S. Havana – one of the oldest capitals in the Americas – celebrated its 500th birthday. Among the few Americans at the fiesta was former Key West city commissioner and Cuba native Tony Yaniz. “The final night, the old part of Havana there, they re-lit the Capitol and there was about three hours of music and poetry and dancing, and it was amazing,” said Yaniz, who came to the U.S. in 1960 after his journalist father was hounded out of Cuba by dictator Fidel Castro. Speaking from Key West, Yaniz – who today supports engagement with the communist island – said he’d hoped to bring hundreds of other Americans with him to Havana for the event. And three years ago that might have been easy. But since the Trump Administration began a new crackdown on U.S. travel to Cuba, "a lot of Americans feel as though either they can’t go or it’s just a hassle to go," Yaniz said. "And so [the Cubans] understood why there wasn’t many more of us, as they call us, North Americans.” One of those Cubans Yaniz says he talked to briefly at the Havana jubilee was President Miguel Díaz- Canel. He remembered that earlier this year Yaniz hosted Cuba’s ambassador to the U.S., José Cabañas, in Key West. And so the Cuban leader said next year he wants to visit Key West – which is only 90 miles from Havana. “That’s a goal that I’ve been looking at for more than 40 years," said Yaniz. But Yaniz knows he’ll likely be waiting longer still for a Cuban president to be allowed to visit Key West or any part of the U.S. outside the U.N. “I’m very, very pessimistic at this point," Yaniz conceded, "that it’s gonna shut down.” In recent weeks Washington and Havana have raised the animosity level in ways that lead many to wonder if the U.S. is set to cut ties with Cuba again. Im always for diplomatic relations, but its a two -way street. I question what Cuba has done to promote our relationship with them. –Irina Vilarino “I think we’re seeing a truly ugly cauldron moment," says John Kavulich, who heads the nonprofit U.S.- Cuba Trade and Economic Council in New York, which closey follows U.S.-Cuba relations. The cauldron Kavulich’s referring to is the dispute over Cuba’s treatment of a leading dissident named José Daniel Ferrer, who was thrown in prison three months ago. The U.S. – especially the chargé daffaires who currently heads the U.S. embassy in Havana, Mara Tekach – has been especially critical of Ferrer’s arrest. Cuba is accusing Tekach of attacking the country’s sovereignty – and the U.S. now accuses Cuba of harassing her. As a result, experts like Kavulich fear this potential scenario: “The U.S. recalls the charge d’affaires. So the Trump Administration says there’s no reason to have a Cuban ambassador in Washington. Ambassador Cabañas is instructed to leave. The U.S. says there seems to be no need to have embassies. And therefore we go back to interests sections.” TERRORISM LIST Interests sections were the diplomatic missions the U.S. and Cuba had in each other’s capitals when they did not have full diplomatic relations. Kavulich admits recalling Charge d’Affaires Tekach from Havana, and expelling Ambassador Cabañas from Washington, would be drastic, and that those moves dont necessarily mean dissolution of diplomatic relations. But he points out the Trump Administration has accelerated efforts to roll back normalized relations with Cuba. And so this – as well as eventually placing Cuba back on the State Departments list of regimes that sponsor terrorism – may be the endgame. “They believe all the stars have aligned and this is the moment," says Kavulich – especially since all of it’s on the wish list of conservative Cuban voters who support President Trump in Florida. One of them is Irina Vilariño, a Republican candidate for Congress from Floridas 26th Dist rict in Miami. "I believe that the [Trump] Administration is going in the right direction," says Vilariño, a restaurant owner (Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine) who fled Cuba for the U.S. in 1980 durng the Mariel boatlift. Vilariño too believes the Ferrer case – and Havanas supervision of the brutal security forces of the authoritarian regime in Venezuela – signal the Trump Administration should keep tightening the screws on Cuba. "You know, Im always for diplomatic relations, but its a two -way street," says Vilariño. "And what we got with the [U.S.-Cuba] negotiations form the Obama Administration was basically we were giving everything and the Cuban regime gave nothing in return. I question what has Cuba done to promote our relationship with them?" Vilariños question is a fair one. But the bigger question is whether isolating Cuba again will produce the kind of change Cubans like Vilariño want to see there – and pro-engagement pols like Yaniz in Key West argue it failed for more than half a century. The only thing thats fairly certain is that Cubas president wont be visiting Key West any time soon. Cubaencuentro Madrid, Spain 6 November 2019 Where do the next shots of the embargo come from? The "catapult shots" of the Trump Administration from outside the walls are not falling precisely in the Palace of the Revolution, but in civilian targets Cuba is preparing to resist an unprecedented tightening of the US embargo, at a time when the most anti- Castro sector of the United States concentrates its hopes of overthrowing the Communist Party government in the re-election of Donald Trump to the White House, reports the AFP . In the economic siege of almost 60 years against Havana, in recent months, measures that Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez defined as "unconventional" were added. "The electoral campaign in the United States could cause the confrontational course against our country and additional blocking measures to be accentuated," but Cuba is prepared "to face the onslaught" and "sure to win," he added. On Monday, Trump banned the federal government from financing educational and cultural exchanges with state officials and entities from Cuba, Russia, Syria and North Korea, three days before the General Assembly votes the resolution condemning the embargo. Here are some key sanctions to anticipate possible scenarios: Trump, the last chance "Trump handed the keys of the policy with Cuba to Marco Rubio, to this sector of exiled Cubans who are looking for a regime change at the cost that is necessary," says Cuban professor Arturo López-Levy of the Holy Names University in California . Its management is dismantling the agreements reached during the historic rapprochement with Havana of its predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump seeks the votes of Florida, a state considered decisive in the elections, as well as support for a possible political trial, says López-Levy. “It is no doubt that before the 2020 elections come more restrictions. They assume that, if Trump loses, his hopes of maintaining the wall of the embargo will vanish ”because“ in the Democratic Party they want to exchange with Cuba, ”he adds. They have done? Washington accuses Cuba of "repressing its own people" with a single-party government, without legal opposition and a state-controlled economy. Also to support the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, "through the Cuban military and its security services." Cuba rejects these accusations, but maintains ties with its ally. Recent sanctions include suspending direct flights to Cuba since December, except Havana. He previously suspended the cruises, banned the lease of aircraft to Cubana de Aviacion and applied visa restrictions. Cuba operates with less oil than it needs (30% in September; 60% in October) due to sanctions for oil tankers that take fuel to the Island. Huge ranks were assembled at service stations. He also limited the remittances that Cuban Americans can send to their families on the Island to $ 1,000 per quarter. And there is the Helms-Burton law: Trump activated in May a legislation of 1996 that allows, even to Cuban-Americans, to sue in foreign courts that manage in Cuba goods confiscated by the revolution. Among the defendants are American Airlines and Amazon. “The Trump administration expected more demands (so far about 20). However, more important than the number of lawsuits is who is demanding and who is being sued, ”explains the president of the Economic and Trade Council between Cuba and the United States, John Kavulich. International banks have become extremely careful. The majority refrain from operating in transactions with Cuba for fear of sanctions. Who is affected? Those catapult shots from outside the walls are not falling precisely in the Palace of the Revolution, but in civilian targets. According to the Cuban Foreign Ministry, since June 2017 Trump has issued 187 measures “that affect individuals, Cuban and Cuban-American companies.” “It is not the Communist Party that they are damaging, they are damaging people who may even think differently from the government, who may not be socialists. They make contact with the family difficult, they make it difficult for them to access goods and financial possibilities, ”former Cuban Foreign Minister Ricardo Alarcón tells AFP. “These measures seek to increase the pressure in the economic boiler so that the country explodes, and that nobody in their right mind can conceive that it will happen without damage to the population,” López-Levy explains.