Who knows what share of America’s growing conservatism was spurred by Carter’s instinct to throw open the gates and welcome that flood of dissidents? Who knows what fears were struck in American hearts when Castro called the fleeing masses “scum,” “criminals,” “gusanos” (worms)? But one thing we do know: Cuba has always had a firm grip on the American imagination. More than Mexico, which quietly sent nearly a million and a half Mexicans north between 1970 and 1980; more than Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic or all the Spanish-speaking world, for that matter, whose kin now make up nearly one-fifth of this country’s residents, it is Cuba that obsesses Washington politicians, stirs liberal hearts, shapes hemispheric policy and looms large in presidents’ minds. As Wayne Smith, a former Foreign Service officer who served in Havana, once said, “Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.” And yet, for all the romance of Cuba’s history, for all its pluck and poetry, it is a nation the size of Pennsylvania, with a population roughly equivalent to Ohio’s.

Source: New York Times May 26, 2020 09:00 UTC