Over the past decade since the United States and Cuba restored ties US diplomats on the Caribbean island have walked a diplomatic tightrope.
Their every move is scrutinized by Havana for signs of support for critics of communist rule.
Cubans who meet with the representative of the island’s arch-foe, which has toughened its six-decade trade blockade since President Donald Trump returned to power, also risk the ire of the authorities.
Yet the new US chief of mission in Cuba, Mike Hammer, seems unfazed as he crisscrosses the country of 9.7 million, meeting with dissidents and splashing pictures of the encounters on social media since taking the post in November.
It’s a sharp contrast to his more discreet predecessors.
Cuba, which restored ties with the United States in 2015 after half a century of hostility, has accused Hammer of an “activist” approach to his mission.
“I travel around Cuba because, as a diplomat with over 35 years’ experience, I know… that it is very important to understand a country and its people,” Hammer said recently in a Spanish-language video posted on the embassy’s X account.
In the message he also invited Cubans to contact him to request a meeting and to suggest places he should visit.
Church activism
A former ambassador to Chile and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hammer arrived in Cuba in the dying days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
In the past six months, he has met dozens of dissidents, human rights activists, independent journalists, church leaders and families of jailed anti-government demonstrators, most of whom are under close surveillance.
At every turn, the affable diplomat presses for the release of political prisoners, quoting Cuban nationalist hero Jose Marti on the need for a republic “that opens its arms to all.”
In February, he travelled to the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to meet opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, who had just been released from prison under an eleventh-hour deal with Biden.
Cuba agreed to free over 500 prisoners in return for Washington removing the island from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
On his first day back in office Trump tore up the deal by putting Cuba back on the terrorism list.
Havana released the prisoners nonetheless but last month sent Ferrer and fellow longtime opposition leader Felix Navarro, whom Hammer also met, back to prison, for allegedly violating their parole conditions.
Hammer has also shown solidarity with Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White rights group, who has been repeatedly arrested for trying to attend mass dressed in white, which the government considers a dissident act.
On April 13, Hammer accompanied her to a Palm Sunday church service in Havana.
Soler, 61, was briefly detained afterwards, triggering condemnation from Washington of Cuba’s “brutish treatment” of its people and its attempt to “intimidate US diplomats.”
Avoiding more sanctions
Michael Shifter, senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, said Hammer’s style signaled a change in tack under Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who is fiercely critical of the island’s leadership.
“Ambassador Hammer has instructions to make visits with greater frequency and visibility,” Shifter said.
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio last month lashed out at Hammer, accusing him of “being an activist that encourages Cubans to act against their country.”
Another senior foreign ministry official accused Hammer of flouting the historic rapprochement deal struck by his former boss, ex-president Barack Obama with his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro.
For Cuban political scientist Arturo Lopez-Levy, professor of international relations at the University of Denver, the problem facing Cuba is how to “keep the embassy open without it becoming a platform for subversive activities.”
Shifter said he expected Cuba to show restraint.
The island is struggling with its worst economic crisis in 30 years, marked by shortages of food and fuel, recurring blackouts and a critical shortage of hard currency.
As a result, Havana has “an interest in avoiding even tougher sanctions,” Shifter said.
