Dear Editor,

Commentary on any impact on Jamaica from the Cuba-USA detente has ignored several considerations. For example, it’s not entirely clear what we would now export to Cuba which we couldn’t have over the past 40 years. Rum? Tobacco? Music? Food? We’ve done such a poor job of feeding ourselves, not to mention Caricom, so it’s hard to see what opportunities have suddenly opened up in Cuba. Not even hot-air political speeches. Fidel has provided Cubans with enough to last a lifetime.

As for harming our tourism, that too is a non-starter. Canadians have flocked to Cuba for decades. That hasn’t stopped us getting a good share of Canadians fleeing brutal winters.

Unlike Jamaica, once off the pristine white sand (albeit much colder water) beaches, the offering centres largely on proudly touting La Revolucion. Americans can visit Moncada Barracks in Santiago to see the bullet holes from Fidel’s firefight with Batista. Then to Havana to visit Granma, the ship Fidel took on his return from Mexico. Bored with that and the endless salsa music? They can visit the Bay of Pigs, to see the rusting ship of the failed 1961 US-backed invasion. On the road to get there, they will see giant video screens featuring Fidel leading his troops in battle — the last ruling head of state to do so — delivering a well-placed kick to the American derriere.

How many Americans will want to be reminded of the spectacular military and foreign policy disaster that Cuba represents ? Otherwise, they would have long ago flocked to Vietnam where rapacious capitalism and rigid communism live happily cheek to cheek, a coexistence thousand of Americans died in vain to prove couldn’t happen. Remember Outameni? Not too many American tourists were thrilled to be reminded of slavery.

Finally, the timing of Obama’s overture has far more to do with protecting USA’s vital national security interests and checkmating Vladimir Putin than any forlorn hope of converting Cubans to the “freedoms” of western liberal democracy any time soon.

As Henry Kissinger pointed out, expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders was bound to elicit a swift, robust response from Putin. That’s what the Ukraine crisis is all about. To date: Annexation of Crimea to protect the Russian naval base there; re-establishing the Beijing-Moscow axis; a stop in Havana en route to the World Cup in Brazil to cancel the US$35-billion debt Cuba owed Russia. We don’t know what Putin may have got in return, other than the well publicised — in Canada anyway — rehabilitation of a Cold War spy station near Havana. The last thing USA needs now is the warming of relations between Cuba and Russia, a prospect which may wonderfully concentrate the minds of even those anti-Castro Republicans opposed to ending the embargo.

Errol W A Townshend

Ontario, Canada

ewat@rogers.com