Texas farms see Cuba as market for their goods*** "We are not going to help Fidel Castro stay in power by opening up our markets to Cuba," said Cuban-born Otto Reich, whom Bush appointed as the State Department's top official for Latin American affairs over the objections of the U.S. Senate. A democratic transition in Cuba could be expedited, Reich said earlier this year, by "not throwing a lifeline to a failed, corrupt, dictatorial, murderous regime." Hillman, however, said he sees trade as a lifeline not for Castro but for struggling U.S. farmers and for starving Cubans, who wait in long lines for a rationed food supply with little variety.***
Crack in the door: Ex-President Carter aims to thaw relations in historic trip to Cuba*** Isolated in the Caribbean by his policies and by the U.S. embargo, the Cuban leader has been struggling to feed his people and keep his communist outpost going years after the fall of the Soviet Union plunged the island into economic chaos. And Castro has made no secret of the fact he would like to purchase food from U.S. farmers and entice more American tourists to his country's beach and diving resorts.
"Castro believes Cuba deserves to be recognized," said Sandra Levinson, executive director of the New York-based Center for Cuban Studies. The center has arranged Cuban study tours for Americans since the early 1970s. "What he will get out of this visit is the satisfaction of having one U.S. president willing to look at the situation for himself," she said. "After 40 years, you may not like the government, but you acknowledge it." ***