Said because theres absolutely no opportunity here. And i thought everybody who is young with any sort of drive or initiative, if their dream is to get out of this country this is never going to change. And i thought, well, what are we doing to help remedy this . And thats when i realized the answer was absolutely nothing. Our policy is only aggravating the situation. Instead of being able to bring the International Community together to help reserve pressure toward the castro regime weve isolated ourselves toward the International Community. Theyve run the other way because they dont want to be seen as maligned with this overreaching policy. Its done nothing to help Civil Society on the island, tomorrow power to empower them in any way. Its given us no leverage with the cubans to push for changes. They dont respond to basically anything we say on this side. And it hasnt overall it hasnt achieved its objectives. It hasnt ushered in a democratic transition. So when you grow up your entire life seeing that this is the approach and its not doing anything, yet you see also that when we engage with cubans on the island, youre sharing ideas when you open up the flow of resources to them. They take every opportunity to try to get ahead on their own right. Then you see that there is an opportunity there to build something new that can render the old system irrelevant and i think that thats why folks my age seem to be a lot more open to a different policy. Lets, again go back tot the rationale rationale, then, for president obamas policy change. He believes that while this new policy wont make or democratize cuba overnight, he believes i think, that it will position the United States more effectively to take advantage for change should it come when the castros disappear from the scene. If thats the rationale for the policy change mayor cason you however, made a point to me a few weeks ago and just a couple days ago, i thinkr dont even think that normalization is really going to have a chance to occur under this process. Yes. I dont think it will. I think the cubans have said very clearly, read my lips recently, that were not going to allow anything you do to change our view of the political what we want to do with the political system. Theyve been very clear. We want to take the money that youre going to give to the military, which runs all the economy there, and were going to use it to continue to perfect communism and the system that we have. There is a big difference between diplomatic relations, which, if you look up the definition, it means you have diplomats in each others countries. As mr. Calzon said weve had that since 1977. We have an embassy, except we dont have a name on the door and we cant use an american flag. I dont think diplomatic relations gains us much. What we really need is normalization, and there has to be at least 15 things we need to do that ive come up with. We talk toed to the cubans over the three years i was there. They need to allow the diplomats to pursue what diplomats do, and part of what we do is normally defending our values, and the cubans just a couple days ago made it clear that we dont want what your diplomats do. They restricted us to 151 employees, and they restricted what we have to be effective. They dont let us travel outside havana. They refuse to have postal service. They dont allow internet to reach the average cuban person, they harass our diplomats. They wont let if youre a canadian and you invite an american diplomata cz to your diplomatic residence the cubans refuse to go. Nor will the cubans allow us to speak with anybody other than the head of the north American Affairs who is an administrator of interior official disguised as a diplomat. The point is, unless we think theyre dumb listen to what the president says. He says, were going to do this because were going to empower the cuban people. Cuba says were not going to allow them to benb empowered. So the view that somehow they are so dumb as to not be they know they can control it. Theyve controlled everybody elses efforts to do this, to change their system, and theyre not going to do it and theyre not going to allow normalization because that would mean that our diplomats can travel around, we can bring in the materials we want as they do in washington. So normalization, i predict, will not happen. I hope it will. Maybe someday when the castros are gone i think there is a chance. But until they begin the cuban government, to create institutions that allow the only they can empower the cuban people, not our Foreign Policy. Mr. Calzon im sorry did you have no. Mr. Calzon i know you wanted to makeokrys a rebuttal to the point he made, this simply cant work because we gave too much away to the cubans at the outset. We made too many concessions without asking for enough in return. If you could explain that point. When you look at what the president has done and what the president talks about doing is basically what the cuban government has been asking for for a long time. When you hear some folks talking about cuba policy, you have to put that on a blackboard and say, this is what the cuban government wants. The cuban government wants the embargo lifted. The cuban government wants to be removed from the list of countries that support international terrorism, despite the fact that in cuba the american terrorists who kill American Police officers who went to prison escaped to cuba. If gu toyou go to the fbi page, youll see one of those terrorists that murdered an american is one of the ten most wanted on the fbi list. Cuba is the only country in the list of countries that support terrorismq z who has publicly acknowledged that there is a murder of an American Police officer who is welcome there. I think that has to be taken into account. The other thing that i just wanted to say something, which, again, when you hear the cuban government talk, the cuban government says, for example, American Foreign policy on cuba is if the cuban americans have not earned the right to have a point of view. In case some of you dont know, im sure all of you know cuban americans have been here for some 50some years. Cuban americans pay taxes, they serve in the armed forces they become president s of universities, they have a point of view. And if you want to go to the vietnam wall i could show you where you could put your hand on the names of cuban americans who have n died serving the american flag. I think that cuban americans have the same right as the jewish community, black nr community, the Gay Community anybody else to haves7 a point of view. What controls american policy toward cuba is not the cuban americannr committee. What controls the cuban policy about cuba are the actions of the castro dictatorship. It is not the cuban americans who send a large Police Contingent to venezuela to beat up dissidents and to train the Venezuelan Police forces. It is not the cuban exiles who would like to go back to the cold war. The president wants to forget about the cold war, fidel castro wants to go back to the cold war. He wants to open up a spy station that has been closed back in cuba while the american diplomats in cuba, a soviet spy ship showed up in havana. Castro has in cubas National Bank look it up in your newspaper. There has been a lot of fraud with medicaid and medicare. At least in one case, and there are many others, 300 million were stolen from medicaid and medicare. That money is now in cubas National Bank. Is that a savings account . Shouldnt the administration say to mr. Castro, give us the money right now before we talk about anything else . Its yourco money. Its taxpayers money. And the path of theiahp Hc Administration is not interested in getting your money back. Mr. Calzon if i could ask mr. Duran to follow up on that point. If i could just ask mr. Duran really quickly to follow up on that point which is a centralone, i think, that cuban policy for too long in the United States has been based in the eyes of many on cuban exile anger lpwhich albeit, it very justified, obviously, but is not the basis for sound Foreign Policy perhaps. I was wondering if you could afdress that aspect. Thats been precisely the point and that is why it is so important what president obama has done. Up until now, u. S. Foreign policy towards cuba did nott exist. It was u. S. Policy for the elections, to get electoral votes in new jersey and in florida, and to get political contributions from wealthy cubans in new jersey and in florida. That is what has determined u. S. Foreign policy towards cuba until now. For the first time, there is a Foreign Policy towards cuba. And that is what obama is doing. He is taking the best interest of the United States into account and not electoral policy nor political contributions. The fact of the matter is that were going to have to dean3 with cuba because changes are coming. Like i said before theres only two or three that still walk around and they all have more than 85, 87, 89 years old. They cannot last much longer, and you have a new generation that is taking over, and if you take a look at the Central Committee of the communist party in cuba, almost 90 are under 55 years of age. Those people were not in the sierra with castro those people do not have the same geological need to be historical figures. Those people want changes, and theyre going to do their own form of government and the United States should be already trying to make contact, talk to them and make changes. Because you know whats going to happen when castro disappears . Miami, florida and havana and cuba are going to be china and hong kong. I dont know yet who is going to be china and who is going to be hong kong, but thats whats going to happen. Youll have a tremendous zun of business going back and forth, and you better start looking forward to that event that is coming sooner rather than later. Mr. Duran, is a better way to put this that this policy is a new bet replacing an old bet in the sense that we are betting with this new policy that when the castros are gone we will see a sort of gorbachevlike presence emerge in cuba that we will be better situated to take advantage of. Is that essentially it . I just dont understand that somebody can think that something that hasnt worked in 55 years is going to work in the next 55 years. It just doesnt work. The policy has not worked because it has nothing to do with u. S. Foreign policy. It has to do with political policy and political contributions. You can govern u. S. Policy towards cuba by just contributing money to two or three chairmans of subcommittees that have to do with latin america, the caribbean and cuba. Most of those chairmen are from states that dont even know where cuba is. So its very easy to form cuban policy. If you could follow up on that point and id like to ask another one as well. Just to respond to mr. Calzon, the year that castro shutq brothers to the rescue planes 1996 it was a president ial Election Year. Clinton was up for reelection. There was a bill making the rounds in congress that really8 was not seen as having a shot of getting passed because it had a constitutionally suspicious suspect extraterritorial provisions, and it just didnt seem like it had much traction. The bill was holmes burton, it controlled all the sanctions and puts them in the hands of congress and lifts all of them, lifting all sanctions on a series of conditions that the cuban government must meet and it must meet all of them before we can even lift one of these right . The bill wasnt expected to go anywhere, but the cubans shut down the brothers tow3 the rescue planes, it was n an Election Year clinton signed the bill. He recognized in his own biography that signing that bill was good Election Year politics in florida but that it tied his hands to be able to lift the embargo in the future and exchange through negotiations for positive changes in the island. So it is very much about south Florida Politics. Now, as far as what the bet is what the bet is you cant micromanage a transition in cuba from coral gables. Right . Or from washington. A change in cuba has to come from wi its got to come from the people. Its got to be 9homegrown democracy. They have to want it and the best way that we can help facilitate that is by opening up the flow of contacts resources, capital information to the human people so that they can be in a better position to make greater demands from that government. So thats the bet of this policy that were empowering Civil Society were empowering all sectors of the cuban people so theyre in a better position they can put food on the table better provide for their basic needs and then will be in a better position to make greater demands from that government. But what about this argument that mr. Carzon brings upop that in so doing were giving up a lot to get to that point . Were not giving6z anything away because there are no concessions. It created this idea that somehow removing sanctions that havent brought any sort of solution whatsoever, having produced their intended outcomes for stuff that we want the cubans to take but theyre not inclined to take are somehow tradeable commodityiescommodities. Theyre not. Were replacing a bad policy with a promising policy. Were doing what is in theco best interest of the United States and what we think will be in the best interests of the cuban people. Were not giving anything away. The value of a failed policy is zero for everybody except for those who have benefited from the status quo that that policy creates. So its not a concession. Again, its just a reform of a policy trying to do something that finally achieves its objectives. Mayor cason, when i first visited cuba in 1990 the soviet union had just collapsed, and the special period, as they called it, which is one of the worst economic periodsnr in cuban history, the economy was in freefall the suffering was terrible, and every day i would wake up and walk around and see empty shelves and empty tables and houses, et cetera, and i would say to myself, there is no way they can survive this. Somehow they did. Weve come to a point where slava is about to fall, their newest help, they always seem to find a way to survive it. I think one of the reasons is because unilateral embargoes dont seem to work. I think one of the reasons we were able to successfully encounter apartheid in south africa, for example, that was a Multilateral International effort and those do work whereas unilateral efforts historically dont. But back to this moment in history, then. Because venezuela is so weak right now id like to go back to that point of your argument and mr. Calzons argument that this was not the right time to do this because this was the time we could have put the squeeze on cuba. Well look cuba survived in part because, one, its an l6 island. Two, its got very good Security Forces forces. They have been getting live preservers from venezuela oil. They always seem to get a life support when things get tough. They live off microenterprises. They did it when i was there. As soon as money comes in from wherever it is they cut back on the number of licenses. They only licensed 157 little occupations like filling cigarette lighters. They have pawned this off on restaurants, but some are actually individuals doing it, but a lot are just relatives of the military who now have a way to invest money theyve gotten from corruption on the island in enterprises. What they tend to do, in bad times they open up a little bit, and when the money comes in, they tighten up again. I think thatzv yeah it was a very difficult time fotn them. Its unlikely that iran and russia will be continuing to supply all that money. One of the reasons that they were able to survive is that the europeans have invested billions survive is the europeans have invested billions and billions on the island and they dont ever pay them back. What they really want the embargo, not so much american tourist, american loans guaranteed because they have never paid back the loans given by other countries and theyre not about to pay us. Thats what they really want from the embargo and want to pay for these food costuffs which when they do come in can buy all the food anything organic from the uss and been able to do it for 10 years and bought billions of dollars in food. Even the newspaper for grandma comments from the United States telephone policy. They they we dont allow loans to a government that wont pay them back. What happens we have thrown them a lifetime to give them zfa aj renewed life for the regime because all that money that comes from american tourists tourists, the few that can find loans in havana because most are full. And the tobacco ahhn cigars and rum and Hotel Industry are in the hotels. Why do we keep throwing lifelines. My view when people say it hasnt worked back to what i said originally, nobodys policy has worked. You name it and i will support it. The United States has been engaging for 50 years. What about that argument, . ; raul castro never would have agreed to normalization in the first place if he hadnt been so desperate and that desperation is the argument why we shouldnt pursue an engagement right now and continue to what were doing. Castro has not agreed to normalization. As a matter of fact, hei] just said in honduras the onlyko ways he would normalize with cuba is if they paid for the damages that goes into the billions of dollars. Used a trillion dollar figure at one point. They dont want normalization. Thats what people dont get in their mind. Cuba does not want normalization with the United States. It goes against their best interests. They want the things as they are. The most terrible thing happening in cuba right now, everybody wants to leave b. Cuba. I have notok heard in the past 10 years any cuban that feels love for cuba. They all want to leave and they want to leave to the United States. Thats