Response to Washington Post Editorial, “Cuba’s Gesture”

After a July 7th, 2010 meeting that included President Raúl Castro, Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega, and Spanish Foreign Minister, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, a representative of the Catholic Church announced that the regime would release 52 “prisoners of conscience” over the next several months. The anti-Castro, island-based Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation also released its semi-annual report this month which listed a total of 167 prisoners of conscience who were being incarcerated by Havana. This figure is down 20% from its previous report and is the lowest number since the 1959 revolution. The nation’s entire politically-based detainee population could all but disappear as a result of a steady stream of releases ordered by Cuban authorities in the next several months, which could represent a huge and very welcome development.
The pledged releases should demonstrate that the pragmatism associated with Raúl Castro’s rise to power seems to be here to stay and appears to be aimed at small reforms as well as transcending ones. It may not be a small coincidence that the announcement of the release of detainees came on the heels of the U.S. House Agricultural Committee’s approval of lifting the ban on U.S. tourism to Cuba as well as increasing and simplifying U.S.-Cuban cash-only food sales (H.R. 4645) to the island.

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This analysis was prepared by COHA Director Larry Birns & COHA Research Associate Manasi Raveendran