Houston Blog
My blog from Houston, Texas. Updated most weeks, usually on Sundays.
I spent most of my time in the capital city, Havana, but I also managed to travel into the rural areas to the west, notably the karst limestone region of Viñales where tobacco and sugar are grown, and the small port town on Regla. I had a wonderfully invigorating time, walking for many miles each day to regain some fitness and soak up the stunning architecture, studying the rich remains of Cuba’s deeply fascinating history, and just standing for what seemed like ages on street corners simply to enjoy the magnificent sight (and sound) of the thousands of 1950s cars that still dominate Cuba’s roads.
However, rather than writing a travelogue, I want to focus on the bigger picture of travel to ‘forbidden’ places, which is what Cuba is for the majority of American passport-holders (though not, of course, for citizens of most other countries, as shown by the diverse range of planes from Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Spain, many parts of South America, and so on, at Havana’s International Airport this week).
I have a long held belief that establishing open communication with people and governments with disparate views is just as important as maintaining dialogue with those holding similar views, and perhaps even more so. If repressive regimes are going to change, then history shows us that it will be through the force of new ideas brought in by people from outside, not punitive measures that isolate people from the outside world. Repression tends to flourish when governments have total control over the flow of information and ideas.
Strange as it may seem, one of the great inspirations for my thinking on this matter was the former US President, Richard Nixon. This week marks the 40th anniversary of what I still think was one of the boldest examples of innovative diplomacy that has occurred during my lifetime, this being Nixon’s visit to China in early 1972. I was still a teenager when Nixon landed in Beijing (or Peking as we knew it back then), but I still remember that day, and his visit still shapes my thinking forty years later.
To American eyes in 1972, China was seen as ‘a brooding, chaotic, fanatical and alien realm, difficult to comprehend and impossible to sway’. They are strong words, and they are not the words of an extreme journalist, but the words of President Nixon’s chief foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissinger. It was into this ‘brooding, chaotic, fanatical and alien realm’ that Nixon reached out.
Although the Communists had ruled mainland China since 1949, the United States refused to recognize them diplomatically and maintained an official illusion that the Nationalists, who fled to Taiwan after losing China's civil war, legitimately controlled the mainland and would one day retake it. On top of that, the US was still deeply embroiled in a war on China’s southern border in Vietnam.
For Nixon to engage with such a country was undoubtedly a bold move. It shattered the myth of a monolithic communist world and deepened the divide between China and the Soviet Union by bringing China closer to the American sphere of influence. With the benefit of hindsight, some might even claim Nixon’s visit was the first step in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet empire. I wonder if a bold strategic move like Nixon’s visit could happen today, or whether lobbyists’ calls for embargoes or suspending discussions would carry the day.
During his week-long visit, the main topic of conversation was China’s wish that the US close its embassy in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, as a condition for the US and China to open embassies in each other’s countries. American and Chinese preconceptions and stereotypes of each other had to be overcome after so many years of diplomatic silence, and thus much of the President’s and his wife’s time was spent just breaking down these decades of misunderstanding by talking, and joking, and coming to realize that at the end of the day they were common members of humanity who shared the same aspirations – peace and prosperity for their children and for future generations.
The following year, in 1973, the US and China opened not embassies, but liaison offices in each others’ capitals. Then, in 1975 President Gerald Ford visited China, and four years after that, the two nations established full diplomatic links.
When Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971 to prepare the way for Nixon’s visit, Premier Zhou Enlai tried to tell him about the Cultural Revolution. ‘Don’t tell me’, said Kissinger. ‘We have no interest in your internal matters’. That changed of course after the 1989 incidents near Tian An Men Square, and it is impossible for an American President to say today ‘We don’t care what you do to your own people’. Concern about human rights in China has been a significant part of the American relationship with China for the past several decades. But one thing did change irreversibly after Nixon’s visit – the US has never gone back to pretending the People’s Republic of China does not exist.
Of course, my visit to Cuba last week fell well short of Nixon’s grand diplomatic gesture into China 40 years ago. I was there as a traveller to observe, explore, learn and understand, not to achieve a major diplomatic coup. But I hope my recollections of the profound impact of Nixon’s visit to China will help you to understand the significance it has had on my own thinking for the past forty years, and why I think it is so necessary that people make whatever effort is necessary to understand others and maintain open communication. Flowing from that, I hope it also explains why I think international schools like Awty have a centrally important role to play in shaping the future or our increasingly globalized world - what environment could be better for giving young people the opportunity to explore different viewpoints, discuss and analyze issues, build a deep appreciation of other cultures and belief systems, and to do so in an environment that actively promotes trust, tolerance and understanding.
Returning to the slightly more mundane matter of my visit to Cuba last week - if you are interested in seeing just a few of the photos I took during my visit, I have uploaded two galleries with about 80 images each. A gallery with images of Havana can be seen HERE or by clicking the left image below, and to view a gallery showing some of the wonderful old cars that still faithfully ply the roads in Cuba, click HERE or on the right-hand image below.
Following in the steps of Richard Nixon, but arriving in Havana
Sunday, 19 February 2012
This Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s visit to China. What does that have to do with how I spent the past week in Havana? Read on...