Obama trip to Cuba shows move away from focus on dissidents

Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, both sons of Cuban emigres, say the crackdown on demonstrations in Cuba shows that President Raul Castro has no intention of responding to Obama's outreach with greater freedom for the Cuban people.

"The fact of the matter is we don't have any expectation that Cuba is going to transform its political system in the near term," said deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, one of the architects of Obama's Cuba policy.

[...] things are worse than they were before this opening.

In the year and a half since Obama and Castro announced that they would normalize the U.S.-Cuba relationship, Obama has authorized direct flights between the U.S. and Cuba, drastically loosened restrictions on travel to the island, allowed trade with Cuban state business, and permitted U.S. business to sell a wide variety of products to Cuba on credit, which had been barred.

Cuba has opened dozens of public Wi-Fi spots that have dramatically increased Cubans' access to the Internet and welcomed cultural events, such as a concert last week by electronic music DJ Diplo and another later this month by the Rolling Stones,

The group has been split by internal rivalries in recent years and is viewed with skepticism by many ordinary Cubans, not least because it uses funds from foreign donors — many anti-Castro emigres in the U.S. pay demonstrators $30 each a month, more than the average Cuban salary.

The dissidents have the challenge of going beyond denunciation to making proposals and getting closer to understanding and offering solutions to people's basic daily problems, especially now that there's more space and a new environment, said Ted Henken, a Baruch College scholar who closely follows Cuban civil society movements and supports Obama's policy.

A small group of dissidents announced this week that it was launching a new effort to persuade Cuba to open its electoral system by petitioning authorities rather than engaging in civil disobedience.

Members of the association of long-standing dissident groups and lesser-known lawyers and professionals said they had sent a letter to Cuba's government-controlled parliament demanding changes ranging from permitting independent civil society organizations to legalizing political parties other than the ruling Communists.