New Cuba policy: "PARA EXTENDER LA MANO AL PUEBLO CUBANO."

[Harold Schiffman]

"PARA EXTENDER LA MANO AL PUEBLO CUBANO."

Yesterday, the president announced a new series of policies towards
Cuba easing some of the travel and trade restrictions with the
country, incuding free travel for Cuban family members, unrestricted
remittances, and the ability of telecommunications firms to apply for
licesnes to business in the country. Each bullet point is in and of
itself a good move, but is certainly not enough -- there's no reason
our policy in Cuba to be any different than our policy in China, for
instance, where trade and travel are taken for granted.

But the way this policy was announced by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
and Dan Restrepo, the National Security Council's Senior Director for
Western Hemisphere Affairs, is especially interesting. Restrepo was
present at the daily press briefing to help announce the policy and
explain its details, but perhaps more importantly, to do it in
Spanish. By announcing the policy in change in Spanish, and being able
to field questions from two Spanish language news outlets, the
administration offered much more direct outreach not only to the Cuban
people and the rest of Latin America, but also to the Spanish-speaking
community in the United States. While it would probably be
logistically challenging to have a policy expert who speaks the
appropriate language on hand every time there is an announcement
concerning a foreign country, the U.S. should make a better effort to
do so when discussing major issues. I'd love to see an Arabic speaker
at Iraq-related press briefings. Because so many people around the
world speak English, we often forget that jumping the language barrier
is an important part of reaching out to foreign citizens. If the
government has the human resources to get fluent speakers publicly
explaining U.S. policies in a broad venue, that can only be a good
thing.

-- Tim Fernholz

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=04&year=2009&base_name=para_extender_la_mano_al_puebl



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