ALFREDO PRIETO, [in Havana] prietogo at cubarte.cult.cu
Prieto is writer and editor at Ediciones Unión and a member of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). He is former editor of Caminos journal at Havana’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center. He has been a researcher and a professor with various teaching institutions in Cuba and abroad, including Hampshire College, Johns Hopkins University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, and Tulane University.
AVIVA CHOMSKY, achomsky at salemstate.edu
Available for a limited number of interviews, Chomsky is a historian, activist and author of eight books, including The Cuba Reader and A History of the Cuban Revolution. She teaches at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies program.
She said today: “The news that Cuba and the United States will move forward on opening embassies in each other’s countries is certainly a welcome, though not unexpected, step in the gradual restoration of relations. Unfortunately, President Obama continues to couch every announcement in terms of the longstanding U.S. policy of unwarranted intervention in Cuba’s internal affairs. Our unremitting hostility towards Cuba’s independence over the past 50 years wasn’t wrong, the president suggests, it just ‘isn’t working.’ With more open relations, the United States will be able to ‘increase our contacts with the Cuban people’ including ‘civil society and ordinary Cubans who are reaching for a better life.’ Through greater engagement we can ‘advance our interests and support for democracy and human rights.’
“This is precisely the approach that President Bill Clinton took in the 1990s when he announced his ‘Track Two’ policy of attempting to foster anti-government activity in Cuba. This means creating, funding, infiltrating, and guiding anti-government organizations on the island. Over the past year several of these USAID projects have been exposed, ranging from creating the ZunZuneo social media platform to sponsoring a covertly anti-government AIDS conference. If the United States really wanted to allow the right of the Cuban people to choose their own future, it would renounce its so-called ‘democracy promotion’ projects on the island and accompany today’s renewed diplomatic relations with a respect for Cuban sovereignty.”