Our Woman in Havana Read online

  OUR WOMAN IN HAVANA

  VICKI HUDDLESTON

  18 COLOR AND 5 B&W PHOTOGRAPHS

  Our Woman in Havana chronicles the past several decades of US-Cuba relations from the bird’s-eye view of State Department veteran and longtime Cuba hand Vicki Huddleston, our top diplomat in Havana under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

  After the US embassy in Havana was shuttered in 1961, diplomatic relations between the two countries broke off. A thaw came in 1977, with the opening of a de facto embassy in Havana, the US Interests Section, where Huddleston would later serve. In her compelling memoir of a diplomat at work, she tells gripping stories of face-to-face encounters with Fidel Castro and initiatives she undertook, like the transistor radios she furnished to ordinary Cubans. With inside accounts of many dramatic episodes, like the tumultuous Elián González custody battle, Huddleston also evokes the charm of the island country, and her warm affection for the Cuban people.

  Uniquely qualified to explain the inner workings of US-Cuba relations, Huddleston examines the Obama administration’s diplomatic opening of 2014, the mysterious “sonic” brain injuries suffered by US and Canadian diplomats in Havana, and the rescinding of the diplomatic opening under the Trump administration.

  Huddleston recounts missed opportunities for détente, and the myths, misconceptions, and lies that have long pervaded US-Cuba relations. With Raúl Castro scheduled to step down in 2018, she also peers into the future, when for the first time in more than six decades no one named Castro will be Cuba’s leader.

  Our Woman in Havana is essential reading for anyone interested in Cuba, including the thousands of Americans visiting the island every year, observers who study the stormy relationship with our near neighbor, and policymakers navigating the nuances and challenges of the US-Cuba relationship.

  To the Cuban People

  Copyright

  This edition first published in hardcover in the United States in 2018 by

  The Overlook Press, Peter Mayer Publishers, Inc.

  141 Wooster Street

  New York, NY 10012

  www.overlookpress.com

  For bulk and special sales, please contact [email protected] or write to us at the above address.

  Copyright © 2018 by Vicki Huddleston

  Foreword © 2018 by Carlos Gutierrez

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the United States government.

  ISBN: 978-1-4683-1580-6

  CONTENTS

  DEDICATION

  COPYRIGHT

  FOREWORD

  PROLOGUE

  PART I 1989–1993:

  Cuban Affairs, US State Department;

  Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton

  1 I Am the Director of Cuban Affairs

  2 The Legacy of Terror for Cubans and Americans

  PART II 1999–2000:

  US Interests Section, Havana; President Bill Clinton

  3 Our Woman in Havana

  4 A Provocation

  5 Fidel Is Cuba

  6 The Last Battle

  7 Fidel’s Last Hurrah

  PART III 2001–2002:

  US Interests Section; President George W. Bush

  8 Regime Change: Ours

  9 From Fidel with Love

  10 Havana, My Afghan Hound

  11 The Best of Enemies: Guantanamo Naval Base

  12 Fidel’s Charm Offensive

  13 My Little Radios

  14 The President and the Dissident

  15 Mr. W. versus Mr. Castro

  PART IV 2002 and Beyond

  16 Myths, Contradictions, and Lies: Bush, Obama, and Trump

  17 The Future Is Havana, Not Miami

  EPILOGUE

  NOTES

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FOREWORD

  I WAS BORN IN HAVANA IN 1953. SEVEN YEARS LATER, MY FAMILY LEFT Cuba for the United States, one of many families who fled Cuba’s communist revolution. In 2006, when I first met Ambassador Vicki Huddleston, I was serving as US Secretary of Commerce, charged with implementing President George W. Bush’s Cuba policy. Vicki and her colleagues at The Brookings Institution, who were developing a blueprint for restoring relations with Cuba, were convinced that as long as the US threatened Cuba there was no hope for positive change in the relationship. By the time Vicki and I next saw each other at the Meridian International Cultural Diplomacy Forum on Cuba in 2016, I had joined other Cuban Americans in supporting President Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba. I felt strongly, after having visited Cuba for the opening of our embassy in Havana on August 14, 2015, that a policy of engagement was in the best interests of the American and the Cuban people.

  In thirty years of doing business around the globe, I have found that a vibrant private sector often has an uplifting effect on communities and whole societies. Since Cuba was opening its own private sector when President Obama pursued normalization, it seemed that for once in almost sixty years the stars were aligning. When I visited Cuba again during President Obama’s historic visit to the island in March 2016, it was clear to me that the time had come for a new relationship between the two countries. As Vicki reveals in this engaging book, policy towards Cuba is often not a product of the foreign policy process but of domestic politics. In 1991, with the Soviet Union imploding, many Cuban Americans were convinced that Cuba would collapse without the five billion dollar annual subsidy from the recently defunct Soviet Union. Yet it did not collapse. Both President George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, candidates for President in 1992, endorsed legislation that expanded and extended the embargo. When Bill Clinton defeated the incumbent Bush, gaining more votes among Cuban American voters than any recent Democratic candidate before him, the Cuban diaspora imagined he would carry out policies that were largely acceptable to them. He did so until the final years of his second term, when his administration returned Elián González—the five-year-old boy found floating on an inner tube in the Florida Straits—to his father in Cuba. This international imbroglio—described from Vicki’s perspective from her experience on the ground in Cuba at the time, with valuable firsthand knowledge—contributed to Al Gore’s pivotal loss of Florida in the 2000 presidential election.

  When President Obama initiated his outreach to Cuba I hoped it would be the beginning of a long process of reconciliation among Cubans—those on the island and those abroad. But, powerful conservative Cuban-Americans have found in President Trump an ally; once again domestic politics have trumped US interests. The tightening of travel policies has had a devastating impact on new Cuban entrepreneurs. Furthermore, a health incident, caused by the strange and still unconfirmed term “sonic attacks” endured by US diplomats, has pushed the relationship back to almost Cold-War depths. In the meantime, China has stepped up trade and investment in Cuba, while Russia has moved to replace Venezuela as one of Cuba’s strategic partners.

  In Ambassador Huddleston’s revealing memoir, which shows a resourceful diplomat at work, Vicki illustrates with stories and an insider’s knowledge the myths, misunderstandings, and false statements that have characterized our relations with Cuba. For more than forty years, the US and Cuba have had diplomatic relations. It is a myth that diplomatic relations
started with President Obama’s push for normalization; the reader discovers that they actually began under President Carter. Although prohibited from flying the Stars and Stripes, the American diplomatic mission in Havana—known as the United States Interests Section—had long been influential.

  Vicki is a realist and not naïve about the complexities of this relationship. In fact, she describes, in fascinating detail, her often-tense relationship with Fidel Castro. The Cuban leader denounced her and the US government, threatening to close the US Interests section, and then to underline his intent he organized a protest rally of 20,000 that she dared to attend. During her three years as the Chief of our diplomatic mission in Havana, Fidel seemed to have a competitive relationship with her. She describes how he seemed to be interested in her every move, from the dog show career of her prize-winning Afghan hound “Havana,” to her collection of exile art that she displayed in the beautiful residence of our former ambassadors to Cuba. Their relationship, albeit complicated, had its benefits: after 9/11, Vicki persuaded the Cuban Government to decline to denounce the incarceration of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo base.

  I lament the fact that relatively few women diplomats have written their memoirs. Vicki’s approach to diplomacy is creative and courageous. She doesn’t sugarcoat her own mistakes and writes very candidly about the challenges of representing the United States in Cuba. In reading Vicki’s book, one can see that our relations with Cuba have too often been a story of what might have been.

  This is a book for anyone interested in Cuba. Americans will find a comprehensive guide to what has happened to prolong the unrelieved animosity. Cuban Americans will be fascinated by the details of the Elian Gonzalez case and model relations worked out after 9/11 between our two militaries. Academics will discover never-before revealed accounts of espionage, alliances, and betrayals. Our European, Latin American, and Canadian friends will come to better understand the influence of domestic politics on US Cuba policy.

  As CEO of the Kellogg Company and then US Secretary of Commerce, I saw firsthand that our private sector is truly the best ambassador for American values, especially the power of free enterprise to raise living standards. I hope American entrepreneurs and companies will again soon have the opportunity to bring their best to Cuba. This important and personable memoir gives everyone invested in Cuba’s success something to think about and aspire toward. It informs readers of much that they should know about US-Cuba relations, the unique beauty of Havana, and the graciousness and charm of the Cuban people, all through the eyes of a gifted diplomat.

  Secretary Carlos Gutierrez

  Washington, DC

  January2018

  PROLOGUE

  IN THE LATE 1980S JAMES MICHENER AND JOHN KINGS WROTE A wonderful book titled Six Days in Havana, in which Kings noted, “I may go back again one day, but it will never be with the same feelings of exhilaration and utter surprise that this first visit engendered.” I recall feeling this way during my first visit to Cuba’s capital, and I imagine this sentiment was experienced by the hundreds of thousands of Americans who visited during President Barack Obama’s short-lived opening to Cuba. That period began in December 2014 and ended in June 2017, when his successor, Donald Trump, announced that he had “canceled” Obama’s national security directive, which had initiated a process of normalization between the United States and Cuba. President Trump’s decision to reinstate a punitive policy advocated by a small group of Cuban Americans was nothing new. For over a half century, US policy toward Cuba has been dictated by Cuban Americans who were forced from their country by the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959. Since the failed CIA-organized Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, the premise of this policy has been to bring about regime change, initially through the use of force and then through a comprehensive, unilateral economic embargo. Yet despite the successive hardening of sanctions against Cuba, we have failed to oust Cuban leaders Fidel and Raúl Castro or alter the course of Cuban politics. Nor has our policy enabled its advocates to recover their forfeited property or recover to their country.

  The history of US-Cuba relations is filled with myths and contradictions that are principally designed to help Cuban Americans regain the country they lost. Latin America and much of the developing world watch, appalled that the most powerful nation on earth continues to isolate and castigate its small neighbor of eleven million people who live on an island that is smaller than the state of Florida. What they fail to understand is that our Cuba policy is actually domestic policy, not foreign policy. The Cuban American voting bloc in Florida has seduced Democrats and Republicans alike. In 2000, el voto castigo (the punishment vote) against Al Gore—in retaliation for President Bill Clinton returning a Cuban child to his father—pushed the Florida election as far the US Supreme Court, which then awarded the presidency to George W. Bush. Republicans have always bowed to the demands of the Cuban diaspora, but so too did Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, who aggressively courted Cuban American money and votes.

  With Obama’s opening of relations with Cuba it seemed that our country had finally given up this charade of a foreign policy and would bring Cuba back under our sphere of influence through a policy of active engagement. Over time, both countries would benefit from closer cooperation on terrorism, crime, and the environment, as well as from mutual trade and investment. As affinity started to grow, there was hope of reconciliation between Cubans in the United States and on the island. But with Trump’s recent policy reversal, normalization is once again impossible. By treating Cuba worse than some of our most dangerous enemies, we are pushing it into the arms of the Chinese and the Russians, whose economic and military influence is steadily increasing.

  I am writing this book because I believe we must put an end to this punitive policy and restart an opening that appeals to “the better angels of our nature.” It is well past time that we stop making Cuba a glaring exception to the way we engage with countries around the world whose political systems we oppose. Cuba is the only country against which we maintain a comprehensive unilateral economic embargo and the only country in which we occupy part of its territory against its wishes. By doing so we undermine both countries’ political and economic interests, deprive our country of a potential strategic ally, and create unnecessary division among our allies. Ironically, now is the best possible time to mend relations with Cuba. Fidel Castro is dead and his brother Raúl has announced that he intends to give up the presidency in February 2018. For the first time in fifty-nine years, a Castro will no longer rule Cuba.

  My relationship with Cuba began as the Soviet Union curtailed its financial and strategic alliance with the island. It was then that I first encountered Fidel Castro, who feared that he might not hold on to power. But he did, even as the Soviets withdrew five billion dollars in annual subsidies and the US tightened its embargo. During my first four years working on Cuba policy within the State Department (1989–93), first as the deputy and then as the director of Cuban affairs, I endeavored to keep US policy from becoming overly confrontational. The powerful Cuban American lobby, led by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), seized every opportunity to denigrate Cuba in the hope and expectation that it would lead to a confrontation with Fidel Castro. I mostly succeeded at maintaining an even keel, but when I failed, US policy and I came under attack.

  In 1999, I was delighted when President Clinton asked me to lead our diplomatic mission in Havana. (Despite the general perception that the United States and Cuba had no diplomatic relations, our two governments have in fact maintained diplomatic representation in each other’s capitals—housed in our former embassy buildings, but called by different names—since President Jimmy Carter reestablished relations in 1977.) Clinton hoped that I might assist in building upon his initial opening with the island, but it was soon overtaken by the fevered custody battle between Cuban exiles and Fidel Castro over little Elián González, a five-year-old Cuban child, who was found floating on an inner tub
e in the Florida Straits. In this case the culprit for destroying the possibility of improved relations was Fidel Castro, who could not resist the opportunity to taunt Cuban Americans and walk the world stage yet again.

  Surprisingly, for eighteen months (January 2001–May 2002) President George W. Bush continued the moderate policy of the Clinton administration, which permitted cooperation between our governments and “people-to-people” travel to Cuba for cultural, humanitarian, and religious purposes. At the US Interests Section my staff and I created an outreach program that supported Cuba’s civil society and dissident movements. The result was the blooming of the so-called Cuban Spring of 2002—the most open period in Cuba since the revolution. But a hard-right lobby that had broken away from CANF, the Cuban Liberty Council, which had supported Jeb Bush’s reelection campaign for governor of Florida, demanded that President Bush revert to a hostile policy. Bush did so after this lobby rejected his New Cuba Initiative, which he had laid out for them in a speech in Miami on May 20, 2002, the one hundredth anniversary of Cuba’s independence from Spain. I left Havana in September 2002. Only six months later, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, Castro arrested and imprisoned seventy-five dissidents. The Black Spring of 2003 descended on Cuba, along with the strictest sanctions ever imposed on the island.

  For three years, from September 1999 until my departure in September 2002, Fidel Castro and I competed for the hearts and minds of the Cuban people. Cubans loved our active policy of outreach and engagement, including the little AM/FM/shortwave radios that my staff and I distributed to the Cuban people, but Fidel did not, and he threatened to throw me out of the country. In diplomatic parlance, I would be asked to leave because I was no longer welcome, a persona non grata. At the same time, US-Cuba relations were improving: hundreds of thousands of Americans were visiting the island, Cuba was for the first time purchasing millions of dollars in US agricultural products, and it was even cooperating with us in the fight against terrorism. Not only did Castro refrain from denouncing the US incarceration of “unlawful enemy combatants” at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, but his military cooperated with ours to ensure the safety and security of the base.