Editor's Note:
Carlos Alberto Montaner is a writer, journalist, and CNN contributor.
His columns are published in dozens of newspapers in Spain, the United States and Latin America.
Montaner is also vice president of the Liberal International.
The opinions expressed here are solely his.
(CNN Spanish) -
As I am going to talk about Cuba, I remind readers that I have been a Cuban exile for 60 years and I oppose all kinds of dictatorships, be they left or right.
Done the "full disclousure", I continue.
US President Joe Biden tries to reverse many of his predecessor Donald Trump's decrees, but not all of them were wrong.
For example, moving the headquarters of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, as the US Congress had requested since 1995 by drafting a law that had bipartisan support, appears to be the right move.
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Where it does not seem so clear is in the Cuban issue.
It is already known that diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana were reestablished in December 2014.
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But one of the last things then-President Barack Obama did was go to Cuba in March 2016, meet with dissidents, and not with Fidel Castro, although with his brother Raúl, and give a very clear public talk about support for political freedoms and the market economy.
The government of Raúl Castro and later, Miguel Díaz-Canel, through their spokesmen, immediately accused him of trying to change the regime by other means.
Biden inherits that minefield from the Trump administration.
At the beginning of February of this year there was an open letter, addressed to Biden and signed by artists and academics, in which they asked him to lift the sanctions and the embargo on Cuba.
In these days the logical reaction took place: a "counter-letter", published in Politico, also addressed to Biden, from the "Assembly of the Resistance", a coalition led by Professor Orlando Gutiérrez, in which they ask the president to keep Cuba on the list of nations that sponsor terrorism.
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And he gives some reasons: the murder of four American Brothers to the Rescue pilots over international waters in 1996;
the conspiracy to send arms to North Korea in violation of United Nations agreements;
the assistance provided by the Cuban intelligence services to the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela;
and the acoustic attacks on American and Canadian diplomats.
Fortunately, President Biden does not have an urgent decision to make.
You can wait and do nothing, since the Cuban government is the one that is desperate because of the critical economic and political situation in which it finds itself, and not the United States government.
As a prominent Democrat very close to Biden told me, "Cuba is the 25th priority for the new administration."
This seems to be the case from the White House, given that they have been in power for 62 years.
Joe biden
