Tear Down This Wall

What can people without money buy in a free-trade zone? Everything they already buy, but cheaper. Ordinary people spend their tiny salaries on overpriced goods in state stores—effectively subsidizing their oppressors. Cuba buys cooking oil abroad for 80 cents a liter and sells it in state-run "dollar stores" at $2.20 a liter. Much of that money comes from abroad, anyway: President Obama has already loosened currency restrictions on Cuban-Americans, who send $1 billion home to the island annually. But the Castro government takes 20 percent of every dollar in commissions, so any increase in spending power for Cubans merely translates into deeper pockets for the regime. A total lifting of the embargo would have the same effect: as long as the state stores hold a monopoly, all trade deals only keep the decrepit Communist Party system running.

Washington does approve one form of trade with Cuba: farm products. In the name of humanitarianism, agribusiness giants are allowed to ship Kansas wheat, Louisiana rice and frozen Arkansas chicken to Cuba. In one Havana store, guarded by a man with a club, I saw pork sausage from North Carolina and turkeys from Virginia—all at hard-currency prices no Cuban could afford without money from abroad. This invisible U.S.-Cuban trade is worth some $800 million a year, and one third of all calories in Cuba now come from the U.S.

Why is this outreach entrusted only to large exporters with big lobbying arms? Why not let America's most devoted apostles of free trade and small business, the Miami Cubans, have a go? If anyone knows how to start from nothing—which is the condition Cuba is in now—it is the island's children abroad. Let the exiles return, if only to sell bluejeans and roof tiles out of Guantánamo.

It may be tempting to cut the knot with one blow, ending all trade and travel restrictions. But don't lift the embargo just to let big U.S. exporters deal directly with the island's jailers. Lift the embargo at Guantánamo Bay, and on our terms: direct trade with ordinary Cubans. Of course this is unrealistic. But it was unrealistic of Ronald Reagan to demand in 1987 that the Soviets tear down the Berlin Wall. He laid bare the tyranny that maintained the wall, and the people tore it down.

If the United States does try to pull down the fence, or open its one gate, Havana will be forced to admit that the border is really sealed (by checkpoints) on the regime's side. Legal objections, like the 1903 treaty restricting Guantánamo Bay to "no other purpose" than refueling ships, are meaningless. Fidel Castro always denounced the treaty as invalid and without force. Let him complain when he starts cashing the rent checks that have been sent punctually by courier for the last 50 years.

Creating a free-trade zone by and for Cubans, opening businesses and erecting homes and perhaps even political institutions is a long-term project. But Raúl Castro has purged his rivals and consolidated power in the past two years, and there's no sign he's going away. Why not use the next few years to build something better at Guantánamo Bay? Like a new Cuba. Tearing down the wall would be a grand gesture, but not an empty one. The regime is vulnerable to a tightly orchestrated lifting of the embargo at Gitmo—that calm and beautiful destination in the Cuban sun.

Symmes is the author of “The Boys From Dolores: Fidel Castro’s Classmates From Revolution to Exile.”

© 2009