Obama and Castro at historic baseball game. Photo courtesy of The White House.
Despite persistent local legends and the occasional Sarah Palin-esque tweaking of the tourists, you cannot see the night lights of Havana from Key West. Not even on a clear evening. Not even if you squint.
But Havana, a mere 90 miles from Key West, is closer to Duval Street than is Miami. In the days before international boundaries and political juggernauts, Key West and Cuba were simply two neighborly islands. Close enough to visit back and forth, to have families and connections on both.
Cuban political upheavals in the mid- and late 1800s pushed thousands 90 miles north to Key West. Thousands more arrived in the 1950s before Fidel Castro’s Cuban Revolution; more afterwards as exiles made their ways to what was once known as Cayo Hueso. Key West has been, for most of its history, simply a Cuban outpost. Not until Henry Flagler’s railroad and inter-connected bridges and roads made it possible to trek from the Florida mainland to the Southernmost Point did Key West begin to relinquish its robust Cuban history.
Key Westers trace their roots four and five generations to Cuba, to times when either was home, depending on the day. And those deep roots connecting across the Florida Straits mean Key West Cubans don’t always see eye-to-eye with Miami’s largely Cuban exile community. Key West’s Cubans were not, for the most part, exiles from the Castro Revolution; there was no “little Havana” in Key West; the island was Cuban. Instead, these were families fully integrated into and a leading component of Key West’s history.
There is, to be sure, occasional tension over the politics of exiles, immigration and history, but far more often are the memories of a 45-minute flight from Key West to Havana for a doctor’s visit, or a ferry ride for the day with family in Cuba.
When President Barrack Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, Miami Cubans protested. In Key West the response was subdued, more a “wait and see” than outright anticipation or anger. Wait and see. A good thing if it happens, a scary thing, but possibly good.
Possibly good. That’s what Obama’s visit to Havana this week may be. Possibly good. Reconnecting Cuba and the United States, Key West and Havana, is a tantalizing prospect, and one that is long overdue. It is also a frighteningly complicated one, if for no reason other than too many U.S. folks forget we are neither white knights nor are we the first foreigners to reclaim Cuba. Cuba has long been a vacation destination for Canadians to name but one.
But, we are the ones with the deepest pockets. We are frantically preparing ferries, airplanes, boats, hotels, industries and exchanges cultural, educational and sports, in a rush not to be left behind when Cuba hands out the contracts, licenses and business privileges. Possibly good and possibly too much like stuffing a starving man with dessert when a saner meal would have been the better first course.
It’s been almost six decades, almost a full generational turning, since Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the island and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in January 1959. A generation that virtually severed the shared lives of Havana and Key West. Reconnecting the two islands, the two countries, is, possibly, a very good thing. Done slowly, methodically and with care to preserve, good things can happen.
Done with what, unfortunately, can make us once again the quintessential “ugly Americans,” and we could destroy Cuba in our rush to “get there before it all changes.” Let’s do this right.
Linda Grist Cunningham is editor and proprietor of KeyWestWatch Media, a digital media solutions company for small businesses. She’s not been to Cuba, would love to go, eventually will, but really does worry about us once again treating Cuba as an American playground.
No one yelled “go back where you came from.” No one made political speeches. There were no hateful protests in the hot sun. No one even grumbled.
Instead, we slipped aside to make room for them for the three-hour trip back to Key West from the Dry Tortugas. Clean clothes, food, water, a promise of shelter and safety when we docked. Their three rickety rowboats, frighteningly small, seaworthy only in the most desperate imagination, passed slowly to our left. Bienvenida. Welcome to the United States.
For many of us aboard the Yankee Freedom II ferry that day, bienvenida tested the limits of our Spanish. We could smile. Smiles have no geo-political boundaries.
Two dozen Cuban men and women, 20- and 30-somethings all, made it 114 miles and went “dry feet” on the island sand at Fort Jefferson just steps from our picnic tables. They’d spend a few hours with the U.S. immigration folks once we docked in Key West, then disperse to a new life, perhaps with old friends and family. The only question asked: Dry feet?
There is a disconnect between our tolerant, y’all-come Cuban immigration policies and our inexplicable distaste for immigrant children from Central America.
The ferry captain and crew take these pickups in stride. “Happens pretty regularly,” he told me that day a couple years ago. “The tortugas are a lot closer than making it all the way to Key West or the mainland.” The rest of us on the ferry that day? We’ll admit to some “watching history happen” thinking, whispering about the heroism and, of course, smiling.
The United States, and particularly Florida, has welcomed Cuban refugees since the early 1960s. U.S. policy is straightforward: If you make it to dry land in a U.S. territory, you are recognized as a legal refugee and you’re on your way to citizenship. Between 8,000-10,000 undocumented Cuban refugees make their ways to the United States annually. That’s in addition to the 20,000 Cubans who enter the country legally each year as part of a Cuba-U.S. agreement brokered in 1994 between then-President Bill Clinton and Fidel Castro.
Welcome to the United States. Happy to open our arms — and our government funding — to Cubans.
I’ve thought a lot about that day in the Dry Tortugas as I’ve watched the pushback to the border crossings of almost 60,000 frightened children from Central America. Do we hate other people’s kids that much? Doubtful. This is political theater ginned up in back rooms to capitalize on a child’s misery to discredit Barack Obama’s presidency. We should be ashamed of using children as political pawns.
There are few differences between the “dry feet” Cubans and these children. They flee their homes in politically oppressed countries that offer little hope for futures of economic, social or governmental stability. They come to the United States with little more in their backpacks than hope and almost all come to join families already here. Once past the complex legal and governmental maze, these children, like their Cuban counterparts, are settled with families and friends. With such similarity, why should we not be welcoming these children?
The Arizona Republic in Phoenix has covered the children’s immigration extensively and dispassionately. The newspaper’s on-site reporting weaves together the plight of these children and the complexity of immigration policy, providing the context in which to begin to understand. Start here at AZCentral with a simple “everything you need to know about the immigrant pipeline.”
Then, keep reading. The ignorance of the pushback is staggering. Protestors, including elected legislators, conflate immigration policy battles with humanitarian aid and comfort. They screech “turn ‘em back at the border” without a nod to existing law prohibiting just such a thing. They fail to understand that since 1994, immigrant children from non-contiguous countries must go through the court system before being returned.
The litany is long; the politics bitterly divisive.
Let us first take care of the children. Grant them safekeeping. Do for them what we would want for our own children. Let us model for El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala a country in which children come before politics, where food, water, shelter and due process take precedence over ideological battles. Let us say “bienvenida.”
Let those battles be waged, if waged they must be, among adults when the children are out of the room.
So there stands the big guy. Smartly tailored suit, hair with just the right errant wisps. Emotive facial twitches and a stand-up guy winsomeness.
Could easily have been the former Illinois governor, Rod Blagojevich — now serving time for corruption — a couple years ago as he pleaded his case on the national stage. Surely such boyish charm and sincere conviction could win him the day. It didn’t.
This time it is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the really big guy, pouring on the charm and casually tossing aides under the bus.
Does one have to be a certified psychopath to make it to the national political stage? Yeah, probably. Only a politician (or corporate CEO for that matter) cloaked in the criteria that define a psychopath can withstand the 24-7 public and media scrutiny that passes for leadership analysis these days.
The political stage is not for the faint of heart or the thoughtful shrinking violet. You’ve got to start with an ego the size of Alaska and a righteousness of the saints.
The Atlantic published a fascinating analysis in mid-summer 2012 that compared politicians with psychopaths. Sound familiar?
Psychopathy is a psychological condition based on well-established diagnostic criteria, which include lack of remorse and empathy, a sense of grandiosity, superficial charm, conning and manipulative behavior, and refusal to take responsibility for one’s actions, among others.
Of course it does. Over my 40 years in the newspaper business and on editorial boards I listened to and wrote about hundreds of politicians — elected, appointed, self-anointed. Be they possessed of a strong moral compass or contemplating serial corruption, they shared a common characteristic: They could take the heat because they were absolutely certain of their righteousness.
The best — and ultimately most electable, successful ones — wrapped all that conviction in a fluff of charm and jettisoned anyone or anything that detracted from the message.
Heck, feel free to argue Roger Ailes, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney onto the list. I’d venture that some of the folks who worked for me wouldn’t hesitate a New York minute before penciling in my name on the potential psycho ledger.
It’s all just so depressing. We the people are drawn to the electricity of these charismatic, albeit potentially psychopathic, personalities. We delight in their apparent strength, take-no-prisoners leadership styles. We’re amused. We want to believe they’re not going to get out the Bate’s Motel knives and carve up the bloody shower curtain.
But…. The journey to a full blown psychopath badge is a continuum. Not every CEO or politician is born to become a Chris Christie or Rod Blagojevich. For that we can be grateful.
Now comes the President of the United States (hereafter known as POTUS) before the Key West Historic Architecture Review Commission (hereafter known as HARC).
“May it please the commission,” says POTUS, “Michele and I are eager to implement sustainable energy practices and we propose installing solar panels on the White House roof.”
“Will they be visible from the street,” asks an oh-so-earnest HARC member. Visibility of said offensive structure being HARC’s primary concern and to devil with sustainable energy.
“Well, probably, a little bit,” responds a flustered POTUS, who’d prepared his permit-request playbook thinking he’d explain the advantages of sustainable solar power.
“Page 28 Rule. Request denied. Next agenda item,” says same oh-so earnest HARC member after a 7-zip commission vote.
In mid-August President Barack Obama announced that he was re-installing the White House solar panels. Originally installed by President Jimmy Carter and removed by President Ronald Reagan, the solar panels are once again going back on the White House roof. President George W. Bush used solar energy to heat the White House pool and power maintenance facilities.
So, there you go. Roof top solar panels on the (very) historic White House. I’m pretty sure, though, that Key West HARC folks would make an easy time of denying a White House permission. Might be able to see them from the street, ya know?
The Page 28 Rule in HARC’s 96-page, architectural preservation “guidelines” is pretty clear:
“New solar collectors, scuttles and skylights should be flat mounted directly on the roof so that they do not destroy the roof line by protruding unduly on the surface of the roof and can only be placed in roof surfaces not visible from a public right of way.”
One would think sunny Key West and solar energy would be best buddies. In Key West, where roof lines and sight lines are usually one and the same, Page 28 Rule limits who gets to install solar panels on historic district houses. A roof top flyover of the Old Town and Meadows neighborhoods shows a only handful of solar-paneled houses.
Two reasons: the wickedly prohibitive Rule 28 and a generally lackadaisical attitude toward “green” things (well, except money). Key West, liberal, eco-friendly stereotypes to the contrary, simply isn’t all that committed to “green.” Case in point: Its recycling rate at less than 10 percent is one of the worst in the country.
Solar energy, which should be a major player in Key West, needs some love. It’ll take changing a community mindset and a lotta love from HARC. If POTUS and Company can put panels on the White House, surely Key West can handle the sight of a few rooftop collectors.
(Full disclosure: I have solar panels on my Meadows house. You can see them from the street if you stand up really tall on tiptoes on a ladder. Probably grandfathered in from heaven knows how many years ago. Hope they don’t die, because HARC would likely frown on replacements.)
Linda Grist Cunningham is a veteran journalist and owner of KeyWestWatch Media, a project management and small business consulting company in Key West, FL.
In August 2004, before his U.S. Senate election, Barack and Michelle Obama campaigned in Boone County, Illinois. Copyright Rockford Register Star.
Obama can “do the right thing” if he chooses.
I met Barack Obama shortly after his 2004 landslide election to Illinois’ U.S. Senate seat.
He was standing in the parking lot of the Rockford (IL) Register Star’s News Tower, alone. He’d just come down — likely to sneak a smoke — from his meeting with the newspaper’s Editorial Board. I was rushing back from some meeting, hoping to make at least the end of the board’s conversation with Obama.
Obama spent a lot of time with newspaper editorial boards back then, ours included. He’d met with our 10-member board half a dozen times in previous years and I’d missed each of them.
And, there he was. Clearly, I was too late for the editorial board, and embarrassed though I was, I began to introduce myself and offer an apology. He stopped me. “I know who you are, and no apologies are needed,” he said calling me by name and extending his hand.
A politician’s magical powers of connection. I get that. One doesn’t spend 40 years as a journalist without knowing first hand — and developing a certain immunity to — the blandishments second nature to successful public figures. Still.
We talked. About his assessment of the election bid he’d just won with 72 percent of the vote. About his hopes for his Senate roles. About Illinois. About his pragmatic, centrist approach. About being a leader of the next generation.
And about resisting the national and Beltway media as it roared into a full-on “let’s get hold of the new guy” seduction. You see, we’d watched Carol Mosley Braun self-destruct under the national spotlight as she was feted unceasingly as the first black woman senator. And while she brought her own baggage to the table, that attention ensured there was little opportunity for Braun to learn the complexities of the morass that is Washington power.
Obama was young, charismatic, destined even then for more than a Senate seat. He needed years outside the spotlight to learn without his failures making their ways to the lead headlines. “Don’t let them co-opt you,” I said. “Take the time, years, not months, to get it right, to make the connections.”
It didn’t happen that way. Four years later, Obama, the lanky, barely-not-a-kid in the Register Star visitor’s lot was president of the United States and I’d not be chatting him up alone in a parking lot again.
Four years wasn’t enough to learn, to fail, in private. He did it in a brilliant fishbowl, every move, thought, personal habit analyzed, like so many tea leaves. And four years after that — yesterday — he was re-elected to a second term.
Eight years now in the international arena. Eight years of success and failure in front page headlines, Facebook posts and trending tweets. Eight years grayer. When we said our good-byes that day in the parking lot, I left him with this: “Do the right thing. That’s all we can ever ask of our leaders. Do the right thing.”
Makes sense today, too.
Linda Grist Cunningham was executive editor of the Rockford (IL) Register Star from 1991-2011.
Key Westers trace their roots four and five generations to Cuba, to times when either was home, depending on the day. And those deep roots connecting across the Florida Straits mean Key West Cubans don’t always see eye-to-eye with Miami’s largely Cuban exile community. Key West’s Cubans were not, for the most part, exiles from the Castro Revolution; there was no “little Havana” in Key West; the island was Cuban. Instead, these were families fully integrated into and a leading component of Key West’s history.