Illness, the passage of time and a broken hip did last week what numerous assassination attempts, an amphibious assault, a five-decade-long smear campaign, and an economic embargo could not - force Fidel Castro to resign.
Looking back, the United States' relationship with Cuba has been at the very least, tepid. Remember the time Cuba installed a missile battery capable of attacking the United States with nuclear weapons, or when Castro seized American-owned businesses 43 years ago?
The United States can't feign innocence, either. The United States trained Cuban nationals to overthrow Castro and even hatched some schemes to kill Castro, or at least make his beard fall out. I think these past events should be water under the bridge. After all, if we refused to extend diplomacy to all the counties who, at some point, have tried to destroy us, we would be quite lonely.
Now that Fidel Castro has resigned, his baby brother - 76-year-old Raul - will take the reins. In the last half century Cuba has been an incredibly closed society.
This is in part due to Fidel's guidance, but the United States has also made its contribution.
For the last 43 years the United States has had an economic embargo on Cuba. This has been the reason why Americans can't travel to, or directly invest in Cuba, or why your friends have to pay so damn much"" for Cuban cigars. Let's look at the embargo and see how it came to be, why it is antithetical to our stated mission in Cuba and around the world and why it is downright hypocritical.
The economic embargo went into effect after Cuba expropriated some American-owned businesses in 1962 - most notably United Fruit.
According to Castro, the companies were abusing the Cuban tax code by vastly underreporting their worth in order to skirt paying taxes to the Cuban government. In response, Castro seized the businesses and paid the companies the value which they had reported on their tax filings. In this way, Castro ""bought"" the companies far below their actual values, but at their listed values.
It is hard to justify Castro's actions, but his actions were simultaneously similar to domain proceedings here in the United States. Soon after the economic embargo, travel restrictions were placed on Cuba, but not before
President John F. Kennedy could send an aide to Cuba to bring back 1,200 cigars.
In theory, the policy should have ended Castro's reign. Instead, the policy has provided Castro with an excuse for failed economic policies. It has allowed him to continue repressive policies toward political dissenters who push for democracy.
Instead of opening up discussion between Americans and Cubans, the policy has all but guaranteed that the cultures will have very limited interaction.
Forty-three years later, this policy has done nothing but solidify dictatorial power in Cuba.
Hopefully, the United States will begin to regulate economic relations with Cuba by dropping the embargo.
Why haven't we? This policy is a holdover from the Cold War, which makes even less sense in a modern globalized society. Critics will say that we should not normalize relations with Cuba because they are a communist country or because they have numerous human rights violations.
Why then did we normalize relations with Vietnam in 1994 - a communist country where 58,000 American soldiers died in the 1960s and '70s? China anyone? China is a communist country with a long list of human rights violations and political prisoners. Even so, the United States has amassed a trade deficit to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.
We have normalized relations with these countries because, according to stated logic, introducing these countries to the global community should lead to integration and eventually raise the standard of living.
So why is it that we simultaneously swear by the opposite logic in the case of Cuba? Perhaps it is time to change our policies that have not worked for the last four-plus decades - let us drop the embargo and open up avenues of discussion, economics and tourism. And, at the very least, we can once again get some quality cigars.
Matt Jividen is a senior majoring in history. We welcome your feedback. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
