Carlos Alberto Montaner
The OAS should not have lifted the 1962
suspension of Cuba’s membership.
(CON TINUED ON PAGE 23)
This June, the Organization
of American States (OAS) revoked
a 1962 resolution that expelled the
Cuban government on the grounds
of its political and military links
to the former Soviet Union. Many
supporters of revocation argued the
decision was overdue: after all the
Soviet Union no longer exists, and
the OAS had long since outgrown
one of the key roles envisioned for
it in 1948 as an instrument of Washington’s Cold War strategy.
But this was not about fixing a
diplomatic anachronism. It came
about as a result of a battle waged by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
and his unsavory allies—Nicaragua’s
Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales
and Ecuador’s Rafael Correa—aimed
at awarding a moral and political
victory to the Cuban government
and a proportional defeat to “Yankee
imperialism.”
The Cuban leadership appeared
not to care about the debate, claiming that whatever the outcome, they
weren’t interested in returning to
that “rotten whorehouse or ministry of colonies” called the OAS. The
statement only underscored the fact
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FALL 2009 Americas Quarterly 21
