Still Trading Punches

By Alexander Nixon

In a few days the Art of Mella show at the Center for Cuban Studies comes down. My favorite painting from the exhibition is the one by the famous painter El Estudiante (The Student) called US-Cuba that depicts a Cuban and an American boxer in caricatured forms in front of an anxious crowd.

It is a perfect metaphor for US-Cuba relations.

The Cuban Revolution began like a boxing match between the United States and Cuba. But even though the bell rang a long time ago, we are still trading punches.

It started after Fidel’s triumphant march into Havana with his army of guerillas in 1959 when the task of governing cast light on the inequities inherent to the system of land and property ownership in Cuba.

Fidel burst out of his corner by enacting land reform and seizing property owned by US sugar companies. POW!

Then the Eisenhower Administration retaliated by refusing to process crude oil in Cuba from the Soviet Union at refineries owned by the United States. WHAM!

But Castro responded with an uppercut and nationalized all U.S. properties. WHOOMP!

Then the United States pounded Cuba with an economic embargo. The crowd wonders, is it a TKO??? Nope. Not by a long shot. Even today, during the Obama Administration, we're trading punches with Cuba. USAID worker Alan Gross was recently arrested for bringing  electronic equipment to Cuba in violation of Cuban law.

He got caught, and now the US expects the Cuban government to release him. If they don't, the US will retaliate by not easing travel restrictions for Americans. At least, that appears to be the case as of this March, 2011.

Nearly two months after the announcement by the Obama Administration that travel restrictions were being eased, the Treasury Department still has not followed through. Meanwhile, we Cuba travelers are anxious for the fight to finish.

Of course, the tragedy of this boxing match caricature is that, with the Cold War over and everything, Cuba and the United States don’t have anything to fight about. The generation that lost all their stuff is gone and the new generation is ready to let bygones be bygones.

Hang up your gloves fellas. The fight is over! Fellas? POW! WHOOMP!

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Alexander Nixon is the Organizational Development Coordinator of the Center for Cuban Studies/The Cuban Art Space in New York City.