USA and Cuba in 2023: towards a new thaw?

People in an improvised boat with the United States flag are captured by the Cuban Coast Guard, on December 12. Ramon Espinosa (AP)

Cuba and the US are walking discreetly towards a new rapprochement with an outcome that is still uncertain.

Without major changes or flashy announcements, after two years in the White House, the Biden Administration is beginning to lay the foundations for a more pragmatic and relaxed relationship with Havana, with high-level dialogues between both governments and the easing of security measures. more aggressive suffocation decreed by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Despite the fact that during this time Biden did not fulfill his electoral promise to return to Barack Obama's policy of "constructive engagement", a new moment of

thaw seems to have arrived , with timid steps along the lines of favoring a civilized and bilateral relationship. normalizing gestures that the Cuban government considers positive although insufficient.

William LeoGrande, the respected author of

, a book that traces the history of the secret negotiations carried out between the two countries since 1959, says that what we are seeing today "is a new moment in Biden's policy towards Cuba."

In his opinion, it was "the embarrassment of the partial boycott of the Summit of the Americas" that "broke the paralysis" of Biden's politics, "which had maintained Trump's sanctions for the first year."

Since then, he says, "Biden has taken several important steps to improve relations," including relaxing travel restrictions, resuming the issuance of immigrant visas, allowing Western Union to resume remittance services and reopening the bilateral dialogues on issues of mutual interest.

The last of these dialogues was held days ago in Havana and involved high-level officials from the US Department of Homeland Security, the Coast Guard and the FBI, and their Cuban counterparts, to explore areas of collaboration in the joint fight against “terrorism, drug trafficking, immigration fraud, and illicit human trafficking,” among other areas.

At the end of these talks —highly criticized by the most extremist sectors of exile and the lobby of Cuban-American congressmen and senators—, both delegations congratulated themselves on the “seriousness” and “professionalism” of the contacts, and announced that cooperation on these matters will continue. .

In recent months, high-level meetings on migration issues have also been held, with concrete results.

The US consulate in Havana, which Trump dismantled, has been reactivated and Washington will once again grant a minimum of 20,000 emigrant visas a year —as in the Obama era— while Cuba promised to receive repatriation flights for illegal immigrants from The United States, a measure that could change the rules of the game in the midst of a migration crisis that has broken all records: last year, almost 300,000 Cubans entered North American territory through the Mexican border, something that the United States does not want.

It is precisely the migratory pressure that has made Biden reformulate his policy towards the island, considers Eric Hershberg, a professor at the American University of Washington.

“It seems that the Administration has recognized that a policy aimed at economic suffocation causes misery and, as a result, migration.

Given the political costs within the US due to the dizzying increase in irregular migration, a reconsideration of the suffocation strategy has been forced, but the multiple layers of sanctions severely complicate the prospects for economic recovery in Cuba.

For this academic, in recent months "there has been a modest thaw, but it is still far from what was achieved in the last years of the Obama Administration", since "draconian sanctions" are still maintained.

According to LeoGrande, among the most important steps taken so far by the Biden Administration is "the measure to normalize migration, so that Cubans have a safe and legal path to enter the United States, instead of risking their lives at sea or pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers to take them to the southern border of the United States”;

second, “the reestablishment of remittance services, which will make it much easier for Cuban-Americans to support their families without having to pay extortionate

fees .”

However, he considers that other provisions, such as the relaxation of travel restrictions for Americans and the permission of group visits, "will not be important until Biden lifts the ban on staying in government-owned hotels, since large groups of Travelers need access to hotels.”

LeoGrande and Hershberg recently traveled to Havana and held contacts with senior officials of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the same has been done in recent months by various delegations of businessmen and US congressmen —some of whom were received by President Miguel Díaz-Canel. —, interested in taking advantage of the new scenario of opening up to the private sector on the island.

Most consider that there is also “a new moment” in Cuba, with the establishment in a year and a half of more than 6,000 SMEs, which can now close agreements with foreign businessmen, including Americans, which is viewed with interest in the US. , indicate the analysts,

“The defeat of the Democrats in Florida in 2022 shows that Biden has no chance of winning that state in the 2024 presidential election. Cuban-Americans have become the consolidated base of the Florida Republican Party: they are a lost cause for the Democrats .

This should allow Biden to decide his Cuba policy based on the foreign policy interests of the United States and not on domestic policy.

But old habits are hard to break, American politicians always think that they should get something in exchange for improving relations”, says LeoGrande.

After his recent trip to Havana, this prestigious academic from American University got the impression that "Cuba is willing to talk even about sensitive issues such as prisoners, but only if the objective is an agreement that introduces significant changes in sanctions." Americans, never as a prerequisite."

The issue of political prisoners after the massive demonstrations of 11-J 2021 - there are more than 700 sentenced to severe sentences - is a

addressed by various experts.

Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Washington-based Cuba Study Group, who also recently traveled to Havana and held high-level meetings, agrees with the impression that "a window has opened to achieve a new thaw between Cuba and the United States, although it is different from the time of Obama”.

Asked what the next steps could be, he stated: “With just two moves by each government, they would be able to redefine the bilateral relationship in a substantive way.

In Havana, the government should release political prisoners and guarantee foreign investment in the Cuban private sector.

On Biden's part, his Administration should remove Cuba from the list of terrorist countries and authorize direct investment in the Cuban private sector.

These measures would not solve all the problems between the two countries, but they would represent a victory for human rights, they would redefine the political moment, and they would manage to fit the economic relations between both countries.

Governments just need the political will to move as soon as possible, because the Cuban people cannot wait any longer."

Follow all the international information on