Past Event

A Foreign Policy and Latin America Initiative Event

Cuba 2008: Opportunities and Challenges

Event Summary

Fewer than 100 miles from the United States, Cuba is on the verge of a new era with challenges and opportunities for Cubans and Americans alike. Cuba after Fidel Castro may see a wide range of changes, including an end to international political and economic isolation. However, fundamental change within Cuba will depend on Cuba’s new leadership and whether it will afford the Cuban people individual freedoms and the needed economic reforms. Cuba’s ability to institute change, and the degree of the changes put in place, likely will determine how the United States will respond, if it even responds at all, with substantive policy engagement. U.S. policy-makers from both sides of the aisle and the American people have the power to influence and foster change during Cuba’s transition.

Event Information

When

Wednesday, February 06, 2008
8:30 AM to 5:15 PM

Where

1608 Rhode Island Ave., NW
University of California Washington Center
Washington, DC
Map

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

On February 6, the Brookings Institution hosted a conference to provide the insights critical to confronting the challenges and seizing opportunities as a new Cuba emerges. A distinguished panel of experts on Cuba and Latin American discussed whether Cuba’s leaders will be up to the challenge of managing the succession and beyond.

>> Read the uncorrected transcript:

Transcript

CARLOS PASCUAL: On both sides of this 90-mile dividing line, what we're starting to see is that there are opportunities for change, and part of that is demographic. One aspect of that demographic change is Fidel's age and his imminent death. But there have been real changes in politics and attitudes and lessons that have been learned.

Let me add another factor to this context. One of the things that we've learned from our experience in global transitions over the last 20 years is that political and economic transitions have to come from within to succeed, and democracy by its very definition is obviously a people exercising greater control over the future and so those people are now at the center of that political change and that they don't believe in it is kind of hard to understand how it's actually going to succeed. It implies that there has to be a local base to be able to work with, and without that base it raises the question well, if you're going to have a successful democracy, where does it emerge from and what can we do? Are you limited to training and engaging individuals? What we have seen is that you can't create it on the outside. And even on the economic side, we've learned that through the lessons of structural adjustments in the 1980s and the 1990s. . .that economic reform also has to be internally driven.

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Participants

8:30 – 9:00 A.M. Registration and Coffee

9:00 – 9:30 A.M. Welcome Remarks

Carlos Pascual

Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy

9:30 – 10:45 A.M. Panel One – Cuba and the World: Succession to Transition

Peter Hakim

President, Inter-American Dialogue (Moderator)

Vicki Huddleston

Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy

Jaime Suchlicki

Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami

Riordan Roett

School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

11:00 A.M. – 12:30 P.M. Panel Two – After Fidel: Political and Social Change

Julia Sweig

Director, Latin American Studies, Council on Foreign Relations (Moderator)

Marifeli Pérez–Stable

Vice President, Democratic Governance, Inter-American Dialogue

Andy S. Gomez

Assistant Provost, University of Miami

Phil Peters

Vice President, Lexington Institute

Raj M. Desai

Nonresident Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development, Wolfensohn Center for Development

12:30 – 1:45 P.M. – Lunch Break

1:45 – 3:15 P.M. Panel Three - It's the Economy: Contraints and Incentives to Reform

Carmelo Mesa-Lago

University of Pittsburgh (Moderator)

Carlos Saladrigas

Co-Chairman, Cuba Study Group

Robert Muse

Law Offices of Robert L. Muse

Daniel P. Erikson

Director, Caribbean Programs, Inter-American Dialogue

Kirby Jones

President, U.S. Cuba Trade Association

3:30 – 5:00 P.M. Panel Four – Why Cuba Matters to the U.S.

Ann Louise Bardach

Author/Journalist, Global Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara (Moderator)

Francisco J. (Pepe) Hernandez

President, Cuban American National Foundation

William LeoGrande

Dean, School of Public Affairs, American University

Jorge Pinon

Energy Fellow, University of Miami

John McAuliff

Executive Director, Fund for Reconciliation and Development

5:00 P.M. Closing Remarks