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THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND THE EMIGRATION POLICY If there was something really new in 1994, may be it was the responsibility assigned to the Foreign Ministry to coordinate, under the direction of the Party and the Government, the efforts of several Cuban institutions with the fundamental objective of normalizing the relationships with the emigration. As a practical result of such a decision the Division of Cuban Residents Abroad Issues (DACRE) was created and subordinated first to the Minister's Office and later to the First Vice minister Jorge Bolaños Suárez office. In March of 1998, as part of a qualitative change in their work, DACRE became Division of Consular Affairs and Cuban Residents Abroad Issues (DACCRE). From then on, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was part of, and benefited from the intellectual background accumulated by Cuban institutions of an academic, economic, migratory, legislative, political and security nature, among others. The purpose of deriving the normalization policy with that sociological phenomenon named “Cuban emigration” from a scientific and cross-disciplinary analysis, existed and still exist. In practical terms, these two words have to do with the lives of around a million four hundred thousand people who have left Cuba consciously, or were taken abroad by their parents when they were still under age, or those who were simply born of Cuban progenitors in another country and, if they were not Cuban citizens from the juridical angle , they are Cubans, without the slightest doubt, in terms of nationality. The Cuban Foreign Ministry, which always had divided its functions between the multilateral and the bilateral diplomacy, from 1994 undertook a new type of relations conceived to be applied outside the country, but not precisely with foreigners. On arrival to its fortieth anniversary, the Foreign Ministry has 118 offices to implement the consular work, divided in general consulates, consulates, consular sections and attached offices. We also have four honorary consuls, although this is a figure almost in disuse in our service. Cuba has a worldwide consular presence in accordance with the services that it should offer to its nationals and foreigners, as well as with the task of looking after the interests of the country. The case of Cuban consular office in the United States, where only one consular section is in charge of assisting a very large mass of Cuban emigrants, the biggest in the entire world, constitutes a great paradox. In the moment that Washington broke up the relations with Havana (January, 1961), our country had 28 consular offices in several states of the Union, eight of them were honorary. DACCRE emerged aware of the fact that an efficient consular work is key for advancing the policy of normalization of relationships with the emigration. How can we summon a Cuban who has not been properly documented or registering, someone who has not duly registered his or her children, one whose legal applications have not been put in order, to whom we have not been able even to give a personal advice? But the consular spectrum is much broader. If the amount of Cubans traveling to the Island has increased in more than 100,000 in five years, the tourist industry in Cuba has come growing annually to a pace of 15 or 20%. Until December, 1999, more than 1,7 million visitors had entered the country in twelve months. It had not been possible, partly, if the appropriate migratory documents are not given before to that same amount of people and the information required to arrive to the country is not directly or indirectly offered to them. The country’s effort is sometimes much more extensive if those same tourists travel through the national airline. This dialogue is possible today above all because Cuba resisted, its economy grows and we have found the means of surviving in a totally hostile world, where the word friendship is more and more in disuse. Thanks to our fight inside the Island and the support of many people, Cuban nationality has survived. Otherwise, our officials would not be representing Cuba abroad and Cuban-Americans would not be but permanent residents or nationalized Americans of Cuban origin.
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