Latin America and the U.S Presidential Campaign
After months of almost hermetic exclusion from the U.S. presidential campaign, brief references to U.S.-Latin America
relations - particularly revolving around Cuba- are beginning to be heard on the campaign trail.
It would not be unfair to characterize Senator John McCain's position as fragmentary and entirely duplicative of
traditional hard line Republican attitudes toward Havana. This effectively features a policy of non-negotiation and
working for the economic asphyxiation of the Castro regime as the only option.
As for the Democrats, with the possible exception of Barack Obama and the earlier spirited position of former
presidential candidate Sen. Christopher Dodd (who has called for dialogue with Castro), there has been the barest of
differences between Republicans and Democrats.
Hillary Clinton, mindful (as was her husband) of Miami's fund-raising potential and the electoral college votes to be
harvested there, has said nothing that President Bush couldn't have scornfully uttered on the subject of Cuba,
emphasizing that no talks with the Castro brothers would be entered into until basic improvements are made in the
island's human rights situation. Obama, more than any of the other surviving candidates, has opened the way to talks
without pre-conditions and has ridiculed past White House policy of treating Cuba with the kind of harsh standards which
it applies no where else in the world, not even to Iran or North Korea.
COHA has been compiling a significant amount of material and recording a series of observations regarding U.S. policy
towards Cuba, within a Latin American and a global context, which we will gladly share with our readership.
ENDS