MIAMIHERALD: “Ping Pong Diplomacy: Will Cuba Catch Up?”, por Christopher Sabatini

(…) the now-famous ping-pong diplomacy launched by President Richard Nixon with China started with a table tennis match. Those early efforts undermined the communist governments’ efforts to isolate their citizens and were instrumental in building trust between citizens — and effectively weakened control of governments over their citizens.
Yet, as Andres Schipani reveals in Americas Quarterly, over the five-decade course of U.S. relations with Cuba after the revolution, similar sports-related exchanges were few and far between. Between 1998 and 2000, the U.S. State Department issued a mere 600 visas a year on average for people-to-people exchanges. By 2008 those had dropped to just over 200. Only recently have U.S. licenses increased, reaching over 700 last year.

The contrast between policy toward the United States’ former communist enemies (…) and its uncreative, timid policy toward Cuba is as illogical as it is unfortunate.