Why the Castros do not want to return Cuba to the OAS

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

Thanks to lobbying by Jose Miguel Insulza, Hugo Chavez's antidemocratic blackmail and the current leftist trend of several Latin American governments, the OAS General Assembly decided, in San Pedro Sula -Honduras- to lift the sanctions that this multilateral organization imposed in 1962 on the obstinate Cuban dictatorship.

A decision that could be interpreted as a victory for the Latin American left, since in this way Cuba would require less mediation by Chavez and the Castros would be able to advocate for their dictatorial government before this international body, applying directly on OAS members their characteristic diplomatic style of sabotages, intimidations and threats.

With Cuba within the OAS, the ultra-leftist group of governments linked to Hugo Chavez would acquire another vote in its favor, and in the OAS votes really count. Furthermore, from a media point of view, this fact could be presented as a victory for the radical left in Latin America, who will use the event as an additional resource in its anti-US propaganda.

However, the hypothetical return of Cuba to the OAS would have the enormous limitation of being constantly hanging by a thread, because it is unlikely that in the future there is always a block of Latin American countries run by socialist radicals like now, and because nobody knows what might come when Insulza leaves office in 2010.

But the Castro brothers are also aware that the reinsertion of Cuba in the OAS could produce unwanted side effects for the Socialists in the island.

In this sense, perhaps the greatest danger for Cuba, if effectively it returns to the OAS, would be the international influence that this country would receive from the organization. As it has been studied that international norms and multilateral agencies tend to eventually lead to democratic changes even in the worst dictatorships (Ropp, 1999) and more when it comes to poor countries -such as Cuba- that could get international assistance if they behave more civilly.

Therefore it is no coincidence that the world's democratic countries tend to enroll themselves in a large number of multilateral agencies. As well as, conversely, countries with authoritarian governments prefer to have few, and weak, links with multinational organizations.

So with this action, the Latin American leftists, wanting to help the Castro regime, might have activated a new democratic hope entirely unfavorable to the Cuban autocratic socialism.

Bibliography:

- Ropp, Steve C. The power of human rights: International norms and domestic change, Cambridge: 1999, Cambridge University Press.

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