美國應與古巴關係正常化
For a long time I kept my views on US policy towards Cuba a secret from my family.
My parents were both born on the island, and I grew up hearing tales of how their families had escaped the newly entrenched regime of Fidel Castro in 1959.
我父母均出生於古巴，我從小就聽父母講述他們的家人是如何逃離了菲德爾•卡斯特羅(Fidel Castro)在1959年建立的新政權。Throughout my childhood — I was born in Florida two decades after Mr Castro assumed power — I especially loved the stories of the underground network run by my maternal grandfather to help his capitalist friends flee to the US in the early 1960s — stories occasionally told to me directly by those same friends. On my father’s side two uncles were Operación Pedro Pan kids, sent to the US on flights with other orphaned children, later to be reunited with their parents and elder siblings.
我於卡斯特羅上臺20年後出生於美國佛羅里達。我小時候最愛聽的，就是上世紀60年代初我外公組織地下網絡、幫助他的資本主義朋友逃到美國的故事——這些故事有時是由親歷者本人講給我聽的。在我父親那邊，有兩個叔叔是“彼得潘行動”(Operación Pedro Pan)兒童，他們和其他與父母失散的小孩一道搭乘飛機被送往美國，後來再與自己的父母和哥哥姐姐團聚。
I am not unusual. The first generation of Cuban-Americans born in the US to that particular class of Cuban émigrés spent its youth inundated with such stories — many true, some doubtless inflated by time and myth. With them also came our anti-Castro indoctrination, which started earlier than we could speak.
我的經歷並不特殊。具有這種特定類型的古巴移民家庭背景、且在美國出生的第一代古巴裔美國人，小時候都聽過無數這樣的故事——許多故事是真實的，也有一些因爲時間和杜撰的關係無疑被摻入了水分。伴隨這些故事的，還有反卡斯特羅思想的灌輸，這些早在我們會說話之前就開始了。When I reached late adolescence, and started shedding my parents’ and grandparents’ beliefs to develop some of my own, I had a hunch that I would find their views all wrong.
到我接近成年，開始擺脫父母和祖輩的觀念影響、形成我自己觀點的時候，我產生了一種預感：我可能會發現他們的觀點全都是錯的。But my hunch was wrong because their views were half right. That the Castro regime deserves unqualified condemnation is not a belief that must be exclusively rooted in the emotional trauma of the exile experience. Objective facts point to the same conclusion.
但我的預感錯了，因爲他們的觀點有一半是對的。卡斯特羅政權應該受到無條件譴責，並非只有流亡經歷帶來的情感創傷纔會產生這樣的觀念。客觀事實也指向同樣的結論。What the facts show is that Cuba, more than 50 years after La Revolución, has an appalling human rights record, pays its citizens the equivalent of barely more than $20 a month, rations food, restricts property rights severely and threatens political dissidents with jail.
事實顯示，在距離古巴革命(La Revolución)已有50多年的今天，古巴的人權記錄令人髮指，付給民衆的月薪僅略高於20美元，食品實行配給，房屋產權受到嚴格限制，政治異見者面臨監禁威脅。Unabashed leftwing apologists for the Cuban statist model are harder to find now than in the decades immediately following Mr Castro’s assent, though they still exist, most reliably in Hollywood. For example, in 2008 the actor, Sean Penn, interviewed Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother and successor as president, for The Nation magazine – and mixed ignorance with obsequiousness into a pungent stewpot of journalistic incompetence.
如今，比起卡斯特羅剛剛上臺時，公然爲古巴的中央集權模式辯護的左翼人士更難找了。不過，這樣的人依然存在，最保準存在的地方就是好萊塢。比如說，在2008年，演員西恩•潘(Sean Penn)爲《國家》雜誌(The Nation)採訪了菲德爾的弟弟、接替他擔任總統的勞爾•卡斯特羅(Raúl Castro)。採訪者無知又大拍馬屁，不遺餘力地表現自己在新聞方面的無能。Pundits and politicians are subtler but often still misguided. Acknowledging Cuba’s poverty, they nonetheless point to its gains in healthcare while failing to note the chronic medicinal shortages or defecting doctors. Or they talk about the country’s high literacy rate, ignoring the repression of a free media and the censorship of internet usage and controversial books. They blame the US embargo and travel restrictions for cutting off Cubans from the world and thus preventing contact with democratic ideas, forgetting the millions of Canadians and Europeans that visit the island each year.
專家和政客比較委婉，但他們的觀點往往仍然受到了誤導。在承認古巴貧困的同時，他們又指出古巴在醫療保障方面的進步，卻未能看到古巴長期面臨醫療資源不足以及醫生大量叛逃至國外的問題。或者他們會談論古巴的高識字率，卻無視古巴對媒體自由的壓制、對互聯網和爭議性圖書的審查。他們指責美國的禁運和旅行限制導致古巴與世界脫節、無從接觸到民主思想，卻忘了每年都有數百萬加拿大人和歐洲人到訪古巴。And that is just the left in America — don’t ask me about the dopey hordes wearing Che Guevara T-shirts in the capitals of Europe.
而這還只是美國左翼——別問我怎麼看歐洲各國首都那些穿着切•格瓦拉(Che Guevara) T恤衫的傻帽們。But at least the left, despite its infuriating instinct to romanticise a tragedy, displays a usefully cosmopolitan bent and ultimately arrives at the correct solution for how the US should deal with Cuba: allow travel and trade, hope for the best but expect nothing and move on. After all, relative to Cuba, how much attention does the US give to the domestic politics of, say, the Dominican Republic?
儘管老是讓人惱火地想把悲劇浪漫化，但左翼至少展現出了一種有益的世界主義傾向，並最終在美國應如何與古巴打交道的問題上得出了正確的解決辦法，即：應允許民衆赴古巴旅行、與古巴進行貿易往來，懷着最美好的願望、但不抱任何期望，保持向前看。畢竟，跟古巴相比，美國對比如多米尼加共和國的國內政治又投入了多少關注呢？The right has the reverse problem: accurately depicting a hateful regime but stubbornly clinging to a policy whose inefficacy — either in weakening the same regime or improving the average Cuban’s lot — is beyond doubt.
右翼有相反的問題：他們對這個令人憎惡的政權的描述是準確的，但他們固執堅持一項政策，而無論對削弱卡斯特羅政權，還是改善古巴老百姓命運，這項政策的無效都毋庸置疑。Where I part ways with the right and with my family’s earlier generations — hey, I said they were only half right — is in my opposition to the embargo and the general isolation of Cuba. I have less to say about the right’s obstinacy than about the left’s inanities, but only because a more obvious rebuttal needs fewer words.
我與右翼人士和我家老一輩人（嘿，我說過他們只有一半是對的）觀點分歧之處在於，我反對禁運和對古巴的整體孤立。相對於左翼人士的愚蠢，我對右翼人士的固執更沒有什麼可說的，但這只是因爲更顯而易見的反駁需要的話語更少。If surveys are right, many Cuban-Americans of my generation find themselves in the same position as me: no love for the Castros or the leftwing view that romanticises them; no love for isolationist policy and the rightwing view that embraces it; but lots of love for a colourful family that I never wanted to upset at the dinner table by revealing my anti-embargo apostasy.
如果調查結果可信的話，我這一代的許多古巴裔美國人都跟我立場一致：既不喜歡卡斯特羅和浪漫化卡斯特羅政權的左翼人士，也不喜歡美國對古巴的孤立政策和擁護這一政策的右翼人士，但我們深愛我們豐富多彩的家庭，我永遠都不希望在飯桌上告訴他們，我倒向了反對禁運政策的陣營，那會讓他們難過。For all my immense familial pride, I simply find it strange that Cuba remains a focal point of American foreign policy. During a week in which the Russian rouble collapsed and North Korean hackers stared down the American film industry, the dominant headlines were about US dealings with an impoverished, non-threatening country of 11m people.
儘管我對自己的家庭深感自豪，但我就是覺得這一點很奇怪：古巴怎麼會依然是美國外交政策的一個焦點？在盧布暴跌、朝鮮黑客把美國電影業嚇得魂飛魄散的一週裏，佔據媒體頭條的卻是美國將如何對待貧窮、毫無威脅力、僅有1100萬人口的古巴。A good enough reason to normalise diplomacy is that the issue should cease to matter. And selfishly I would like one less topic to awkwardly avoid when I visit family in the holidays.
古巴問題應該不再成爲問題了，這一點已經爲美國促成與古巴關係正常化提供了足夠充分的理由。我還有一點私心，那就是，我希望在與家人團聚、歡度節日的時候，能夠少一個需要我尷尬逃避的話題。The writer is US editor of the FT’s Alphaville blog
本文作者是英國《金融時報》Alphaville博客的美國編輯。
