By: KENNETH MAXWELL

Folha de São Paulo - Op-ed section - page A2   

If there was ever a policy that failed it is the four decades old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. U.S. Presidents and have come gone since 1959, the year in which Fidel took Havana; and now at the age of 81 and very sick he is still there; and has in effect orchestrated a smooth transition of power to his more pragmatic, less ideological, and decidedly less charismatic brother Raul.

But if the 700,000 anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami Dade County in Florida have been unable to promote "regime change" on the island, they did prove to a pivotal influence on "regime change" in the U.S. when their political power helped deliver the State of Florida to Mr. Bush in the highly contested presidential election of 2000, setting up the conditions for the consequent decision of the U.S. supreme court to confirm Mr. Bush and not Mr. Gore in office. The Bush family knows full well that it owes the Cuban Americans "big time".

It is not surprising, therefore, that as the Bush administration turns its attention belatedly to Latin America after seven years of neglect, as it did last week by proposing a major assistance program to Mexico in its war on drugs, and as it sought to rally support for its free trade deal with Colombia, Mr. Bush also convoked the diplomatic corps, the press, and a group of Cuban dissidents, to resurrect once again the old Ogre across the Florida straits. He proposed a "Freedom fund" to assist a post-Castro Cuban government and called the island a "Tropical Gulag". No one would deny that Cuba is not free. But the "Tropical Gulag" that now exists in Cuba is not of Mr. Castro's creation. It was put here by Mr. Bush and it's called Gitmo. It is the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, where Mr. Bush denies the Constitutional protections and the normal procedures of U.S. law to the Islamic prisoners held there indefinitely.

Not a good example of American Democracy for the Cubans.

KENNETH MAXWELL is a weekly op-ed columnist (every Thursday) for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil's leading newspaper.