Cuba's Chance

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Posed in a different way, that question could serve as a starting point for a new U.S. approach toward Cuba. Letting Americans travel freely to Cuba--which the embargo bans except in increasingly restricted cases for Cuban Americans with family on the island--would probably cultivate that kind of free speech and weaken the hard-liners. Even Cuban Americans, a traditionally and fervently pro-embargo group, agree. According to a Florida International University survey conducted last year, more than 55% of Cuban Americans in Miami now favor unrestricted travel to Cuba. The softening of sentiment may empower the next U.S. President to ease up a little. Barack Obama argued in an Op-Ed in the Miami Herald last summer that while a "democratic opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our policy ... Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island." As a result, he wrote, if elected President, "I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island." (John McCain and Hillary Clinton, like President Bush, oppose easing travel restrictions.)

Tellingly, many anti-Castro activists in Cuba have come to view the embargo as unhelpful. Shortly after Raúl became interim President, the island's leading dissident, Oswaldo Payá, told TIME that while he thought ending the embargo was hardly the only solution, it could open the door to Cubans' winning "the right to trade, invest, travel, have a business." For the next U.S. President, that might be a gamble worth taking.