Miguel Díaz Canel and Beniamino Stella (ADALBERTO ROQUE/AFP via Getty Images)
Editor's note:
Jorge G. Castañeda is a contributor to CNN.
He was Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Relations from 2000 to 2003. He is currently a professor at New York University and his most recent book, “America Through Foreign Eyes,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. The views expressed in this commentary They are solely the author's.
You can find more opinion pieces at CNNe.com/opinion.
(CNN Spanish) --
In recent days, expectations have grown that the Cuban government will consider the possibility of releasing the more than 700 political prisoners imprisoned after the protests of July 11, 2021. Several factors contribute to this speculation. That, for now, it has not been possible to confirm or deny.
The first – without a doubt the most important – part of the recent visit to Havana by Cardinal Beniamino Stella, special envoy of Pope Francis.
The prelate stayed in Cuba for two weeks, touring the island, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the visit of another pope, John Paul II, in 1998. He was received by the Cuban president and dictator, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and gave a conference in the University of Havana.
There he was approached by journalists, to whose questions about the prisoners he replied that: "It is important that young people, who at one point expressed their thoughts in the way we know them, can return to their homes."
He added that this was what the pontiff thought: “The Church wants, seeks, has manifested this purpose… the pope very much wants there to be a positive response, whatever it is called, amnesty, clemency,
Foreign correspondents based in Cuba, such as the one from the Spanish newspaper El País, recalled that both Fidel and Raúl Castro used to release a good number of prisoners on the occasion of visits by Francisco himself, in 2015;
of Benedict XVI, in 2011;
John Paul II, in 1998, and other guests of similar stature over the past 50 years.
Stella is not pope, but he is an envoy of Francisco who was also nuncio in Cuba during Wojtyla's visit.
The hopes were maintained the following days;
Nothing has happened so far, but the suspense remains.
A second reason for optimism lies in recent events in Nicaragua.
A week ago, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo released more than 200 prisoners
politicians, who were immediately exiled to the United States, with the exception of the Bishop of Matagalpa.
The latter declined to go into exile and received a sentence of more than 26 years.
Many of the victims had spent months or years in prison, in deplorable conditions.
The release of this group of men and women, young and old, may or may not have been a wink from the regime to Washington, at a time when the Nicaraguan economy is shrinking, foreign resources are depleting, migration is increasing, and without United States there is little chance of a recovery.
The authorities deny any quid pro quo with Washington, but admit that the vice president and wife of Ortega negotiated the release of the prisoners from Nicaragua with the US embassy.
For his part,
advertising
Although Managua and Havana do not maintain the same close relationship as in the 1980s, the link continues to be intense.
An example of this is how the Nicaraguan dictatorship has allowed hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles or migrants to transit through its territory, without asking for a visa, for more than a year.
It is the only country in Latin America that offers these facilities.
For all these reasons, it can be thought that Ortega's gesture may not only have been approved or even sponsored by Cuba, but may also become a premonitory sign.
Wishful
thinking
?
Perhaps, but it would not be the first example of coordination between the two dictatorships, partly due to the constant complications in the subsidy that the third dictatorship grants each: that of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela.
Which brings us to the third reason for speculation about the case of political prisoners in Cuba.
There is suspicion in some circles of the Democratic Party in the United States, and perhaps in certain sectors of the Mexican government, that President Joe Biden could change his position towards the island.
It is common knowledge that the economic and social situation of the island is going through the worst moment in its history, even more serious than the so-called "special period" of the 1990s. More than 260,000 Cubans left for the United States in 2022, and with the so-called Grandchildren Law, thousands are expected to obtain Spanish citizenship.
There is a shortage of food, medicine, electricity, gasoline, practically everything.
The sugar harvest, a good indicator of what Cuba produces to sell abroad and buy everything it consumes, was 420,000 tons in 2021-22,
the worst of all, according to what the historian Carmelo Mesa Lago told El País.
The value of all the country's exports reached barely two thirds of the 1989 level!
The only way out is in the United States.
There are reasons to think that President Biden has already resigned himself to the fact that his party – and he himself, if he runs for re-election – will not win Florida any time soon.
Therefore, it makes no sense to continue to subordinate the position towards Cuba to the wishes and prejudices of the Cuban-American community in Miami, or even to the veto of powerful Democratic senators like Bob Menéndez.
Hence, as Andrés Oppenheimer suggests, Washington is contemplating a new rapprochement with Havana, perhaps like Mexico's on immigration.
All the sanctions reimposed by Donald Trump would be softened, progress would be made in removing those left intact by Barack Obama, and only the embargo would remain in force – it can only be repealed by Congress – but with a lax application.
For all this to happen, Díaz-Canel and Raúl Castro know that they cannot keep the more than 700 protesters of July 11 in jail, with sentences of up to 30 years.
Cubans, from the beginning of the revolution, have had hives exchanging prisoners for economic measures, and they refuse to negotiate their political or legal system, but the water is reaching their necks.
In the end, like Ortega in Nicaragua, they can use political prisoners as a bargaining chip, handing them over to Pope Francis, but waiting for a reaction from Biden.
It would not be the first time that something of this nature has happened in the long and stormy history of relations between Cuba and the United States.