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.