Mitch Perry
In recent years, a number of Tampa elected officials have made the hour-long plane flight to Cuba — Mary Mulhern, Yolie Capin, Harry Cohen and Charlie Miranda — though none representing Hillsborough County.
But as high-level officials with the White House and the Raul Castro-led Cuban government have now commenced formal discussions for the first since in over five decades, Pinellas County government officials are getting into the game, as County Commissioners Janet Long and John Morroni visited the communist island last week.
“I wanted it to be a Pinellas County-centric trip,” said Long on Tuesday night. “You often read about the trips from going down there from Hillsborough County, and while I am very visionary in terms of thinking about Pinellas County and Hillsborough County and our region, I do think Pinellas County has an identify of its own, and that it’s important in this particular arena to ensure that our county is represented as well when we talk about all the potential opportunities.”
Long worked closely with Al Fox, head of the nonprofit Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy Foundation, on organizing the trip (she said the two “worked hand in glove”). She believes because of the geographic proximity of the Tampa Bay area, along with assets like Port Tampa and Tampa International Airport, that the region is primed to take advantage of whatever opportunities come from the result the diplomatic breakthrough.
“There are enormous opportunities and with that said, there are enormous challenges,” she added, specifically related to the infrastructure needs of the nation.
Bill Carlson with the Tampa communications group Tucker/Hall was also on the trip, his seventh to Cuba since 1999. He says it’s critical for Pinellas County officials to visit now, “because there are so many businesses in Pinellas that could potentially do business in Cuba, and it’s important at this early stage for people to understand the country and the changes it’s going through right now.”
He says that tourism is obviously a huge economic driver for Pinellas County, and there can be a host of tie-ins once Tampa International becomes a larger hub for Cubans to travel to the Bay area.
Two weeks after the announcement that communications would begin between the two countries, a group of political activists were arrested by the Cuban authorities outside a jail in Havana. That led critics of the rapprochement to say the Cuban government is incapable of change. But Long says you can’t expect that government to transform their ways immediately.
“It’s been 50-plus years since we’ve been communicating with the Cubans,” Long says. “Now we are talking and we’re at the table. In my opinion, it’s going to take time, a building of trust and a building of relationships. You can’t expect to turn a switch and everything is normal like it is everyday here.”
But she said that lots of work needs to be done. While speaking with a diplomat from the Cuban government, Long said she asked about the possibility of Cuba improving their human rights record. Now she says that’s the “wrong messaging.”
“From their perspective, he would like to know why the U.S. thinks it’s OK to dictate to them how to run — are you ready for this? democracy? I mean, they think they have a democracy. We don’t happen to agree with them. But the fact of the matter is, we don’t agree with the Saudis. We don’t agree with the Chinese. We did breakthrough with Japan and Germany and Vietnam, where horrible atrocities have happened in the past. So you have to kind of weigh how we’re negotiating.”
County Commission John Morroni wasn’t available to speak with today. But at Tuesday’s Board of County Commission meeting, he called it “an unbelievable trip.”
“They have a lot of work to do down there,” he said about the conditions in Cuba currently. “They’re far behind the eight-ball,” though he praised the 1950s automobiles that dominate the landscape. He added that there won’t be any progress between the two nations until the Cuban government moderates its policies.
Tampa area U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor announced last month that she will host a community forum in Tampa sometime this spring with the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce and Tampa International Airport. The goal will be to educate Tampa Bay families and businesses on the evolving landscape in terms of U.S.-Cuba relations.
Meanwhile, Cuban President Raul Castro today urged President Obama to use executive powers to ease the decades-long embargo, and said he would not accept any pressures on Cuba’s internal affairs in talks with the United States. Castro said Obama could extend measures to soften the embargo like those announced for telecoms to the rest of the Cuban economy, telling a summit in Costa Rica he was aware that ending the embargo “will be a long and hard road.”
