Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [49]
I’d predicted, when I testified before Congress in favor of China entering the WTO back in 2000, that their trade with the U.S. could triple within the next twenty years. Well, it’s already started to happen. U.S. exports to China have continued to increase dramatically since they became part of the WTO. In fact, from 1999 to 2004, they went up nearly ten times faster than our exports to the rest of the world. And China has become one of the fastest-growing overseas markets for the American farmer—our agricultural exports to the Chinese topped more than $5 billion in 2003.
I only wish I could say that our government is as forward-thinking about another country that we’ve long been alienated from. And that one is only ninety miles off our shores.
Not long after we cross the U.S.-Mexico border, I shake my head and say to Terry: “Isn’t it crazy? No one even looked at our passports. But if we wanted to travel to Cuba, and got caught by our government, our passports would end up revoked! We might even get sent to jail. Remember when the Bush people stopped you from going along with me on the trade mission?”
That was a trip Terry had really wanted to make. “They’ve been trying to get rid of Castro, one way or another, for almost fifty years,” she says. “I wonder when they’ll just give it up.”
I grew up in fear of Fidel Castro. I was young in 1959 when his revolution in Cuba took place, so it wasn’t high on my radar screen. But I remember the propaganda. I vaguely recall hearing about the Bay of Pigs. It dominated the Walter Cronkite news at 5:30 when I’d be home from school. As a kid, the name fascinated me. Why would they name a place after pigs?
As an adult, when I started reading books trying to figure out what really happened to President Kennedy, Castro and Cuba of course loomed large. So did Oswald and his Fair Play for Cuba Committee, his attempt to get a visa to Cuba on a trip to Mexico. So Cuba has fascinated me for years, though I never dreamed I’d have a chance to actually go there, much less to spend an hour with Castro himself.
I must admit to having another fixation about Cuba. When Clinton was president and I attended my first National Governors Convention, I raised my hand and questioned him about why we continued to have an economic boycott against the Cubans. I had definite personal reasons. At the time, I was smoking cigars, and I said that I was sick and tired of having to feel like a criminal every time I wanted a Cuban cigar, because they’re some of the best in the world. At some point during Clinton’s presidency, Cuba had shot down an American plane that strayed over its air space. Clinton talked about that, and the allegations of human rights violations, as justifications for why the boycott had to continue. Which still didn’t fly much with me.
Jeb Bush was governor of Florida and, at the end of the meeting, he sent word over to me: “Stop bringing up Cuba. It causes me too many problems when you do that.” He also let it be known that he would get me all the Cuban cigars I wanted if I kept my mouth shut. At the time I was smoking Romeo Julietas. They come in these neat-looking silver tubes and I had an empty one. So, as I passed by the governor on my way out, I stuck it in the front of his coat pocket and said, “There’s my brand, Jeb, except I don’t think a box of cigars can buy me off.” And I kept on walking.
Amazingly, two weeks later at my governor’s residence, there arrived a box of Romeo Julieta Cubans! I can’t recall whether Jeb Bush personally sent it, or if it just came anonymously. But I laughed—you mean Jeb really thinks I’ll stay quiet about Cuba for a few cigars?
My last year in office, 2002, a Minnesota trade mission to Cuba came about after a few of the sanctions dealing with food and agricultural products had been lifted. This provided us an opening to seek deals with the Cuban government, for humanitarian