US – Cuba Relations
5-10 Important points in articles:
·
News from today, October 3rd: the US
reduced its staff at the US Embassy in Cuba by 60% following reports of a “sonic
attack”.
o
The FBI has not been able to determine who is
responsible, but is not blaming Cuba.
o
There have been 22 reports of attacks over the
last year
o
The US has expelled 15 of Cuba’s diplomats from
their embassy in the US
·
Full diplomatic relations between the US and
Cuba were only just restored in July 2015 between Obama and Castro
o
The embassies were reopened, and travel and
commerce restrictions were eased
o
During the 5th US-Cuba Bilateral
Commission meeting on December 7, 2016 the US and Cuba signed “11 non-binding agreements on health, the
environment, counter-narcotics, and other areas of cooperation.”
·
Florida Senator Marco Rubio doesn’t like
Cuba/Cubans
·
In
September the first US-Cuba Bilateral Commission was held
o
It was not
as positive as the meeting previous and was held against the backdrop of recent
backwards steps between US-Cuba relations taken by Donald Trump
§
“On June 16,
Trump announced a new Cuba policy that will make it more difficult for
Americans to travel to the island and limit U.S. commercial dealings with Cuba.”
·
There is political uncertainty across the entire
world right now
·
While Obama eased the embargo, it was not
entirely lifted. It seems Donald Trump will try to enforce stricter sanctions,
as if we were in the Cold War again
·
Around 1959 Nixon and the CIA were working with
the mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro, in the last few years hard evidence of
this plot has surfaced
·
The CIA and military generals tried to force JFK
into a war with Cuba following the Bay of Pigs. Between advisors, and JFK and
Nikita Khrushchev writing smuggled letters to one another, they “averted a nuclear war
that was destined to happen by their generals”.
5-10 questions provoked:
·
Americans are warned not to travel to Cuba – how
might this impact us in the Spring?
o
Will relations be better by then? What if they
are worse?
·
How can we show that Americans and Cubans are
united in our humanity?
Works Cited
Lee, Matthew, and Josh Lederman. “Ties threatened: US orders
15 Cuban diplomats
to leave”. ABC News, 3 October 2017, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/ties-threatened-us-cuba-cut-diplomats-50246107
Rice, Jeri. Interviewed by Amy Goodman and Jose Pertierra.
“Meet the Filmmaker
Behind ‘Embargo,’
a New Documentary About U.S.-Cuba Relations”. Part 2.
The War and
Peace Report. Democracy Now!, 29
September 2017,
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/9/29/embargo
Whitefield, Mimi. “U.S.-Cuba commission meets for first time
during Trump
administration”.
Miami Herald, 19 September 2017,
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-
world/world/americas/cuba/article174249471.html
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