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Julia E. Sweig
The announcement by Cardinal Jaime Ortega, archbishop of Havana, that the Cuban government has agreed to the release of fifty-two political prisoners follows a pattern of imprisonment and release of regime opponents for the last fifty years and is the first of this scale since 1998. Why the move and what is its significance?
For Havana, the political prisoners have become an albatross for Raúl Castro's government. Since taking office in
But the issue of political prisoners and human rights more broadly, dramatized by hunger striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo's death in February, inflamed international public opinion, in Spain especially, and threatened to stall, if not kill, recent EU efforts to end the common position and normalize EU-Cuba relations.
In the United States, where the consensus for the embargo has likewise eroded in the American public and among Cuban-Americans -- President Obama last year described the policy as "failed" -- the Obama administration and some congressional opponents of the Cuban regime have cast political prisoners' release as a major obstacle to improvements in diplomatic ties and loosening of economic restrictions. A major catalyst for removing this obstacle has been the
Yet despite the recent spotlight, within Cuba, dissidents and political prisoners are not at the center of the quite substantial debate taking place today over numerous state, social, institutional, educational, and economic reforms currently on the table. The release of prisoners helps create space at home and abroad for this debate, and the implementation of reforms under discussion, to move forward.
The release coincides with a potential turning point in U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin
America Studies at the
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