HAVANA TIMES – The IV Nation and Emigration Conference came to an end in Havana on November 19, 2023. The event was another missed opportunity for the Cuban Government to really reconcile and draw closer to most of the Cuban diaspora community.
Since 1994, when the first of these “summits” was held, the Cuban Government has made it one of its objectives to split up the Cuban community, most of whom have disagreed with the way the regime has decided the fate of the island. It has been a great failure of “divide and conquer” policy, which has been applied in specific moments of crisis of the Cuban economy: 1994, 1995, 2004 and 2023.
They have tried to reduce this “Cuban community” to one voice, a fifth column, against the US embargo on Cuba and in favor of other policies that are in line with their own interests, but not the interests of the almost three million Cubans who live outside the country. How can they interpret the opinion of 371 participants as the overwhelming sentiment of millions of people? It’s simply impossible.
Statements by Ernesto Soberon, director of the Cubans Living Abroad Assistance Board at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and by Miguel Diaz-Canel when they say “relations between Cubans living abroad and the Cuban Government are at their peak”, can’t be further from the truth. Even more so, when millions of Cubans are planning to leave their home country because of the social chaos caused by 60 years of failed economic decisions.
It’s not as what academic and government circles are saying on the island that Cuban migration is mainly economic. Cuban migration has a prevailing ideological tone becaus
