I sure do…talk about Fighting Ignorance, on both sides! I just received an e-mail to the effect that the U.S. Treasury Department has just announced they plan to eliminate the category of approved travel to Cuba for the purpose of person-to-person cultural exchange. The original source of this e-mail is a friend of a friend, who is American but works as a university professor in Cuba, so she is well-placed to know about such things. (The remaining categories, IIRC, would be people with close family members in Cuba, journalists, and academics with Cuba-specific expertise. Also IIRC, all other U.S. citizens are only allowed to go as guests of the Cuban government, or risk fines and imprisonment.)
According to the writer of the e-mail (admittedly I haven’t checked this out), the elimination of this category is in spite of the wishes of “75% of the American people as a whole and half of the Cuban-American community in Miami,” who “are opposed to any travel restrictions to Cuba.”
As a past participant in three academic exchange programs - one to three Union Republics of what was then the Soviet Union, and one to Russia after the breakup (yes, I’m one of the few Americans ever to go to Siberia voluntarily!) - I think they are a wonderful way to break down prejudices and stereotypes, on BOTH sides. I think it’s extremely hypocritical that the U.S. Department of Education even gave me a grant to participate in the second Russia program, and provides large amounts of financial support to the organization that sponsors the programs (they do one to Vietnam, too, BTW, among many other places), but won’t let individual Americans travel to Cuba on their own dime. Freedom of movement, indeed!
So what do y’all think about the Cuban travel embargo, and why?
Eva, I don’t think this is true. At least I haven’t heard about it, and these guys haven’t either.
On to your other question, I think the restrictions on travel to Cuba are largely outdated and should probably be removed. At the same time I don’t think we ought to kid ourselves about what impact removing the travel restrictions will have on the lives of average Cubans, very little. I think restrictions ought to be removed because they will offer some small benefit to those Cubans who come in contact with the US tourists, and give them access to hard currencly which is an absolute necessity for life in the island. Most of the money brought in by tourists will continue to go to the government, but that’s true today anyway.
But those tourists who go to Cuba ought not to be thinking that they’re making any changes in the island, unless they want to ascribe some special characteristics to US tourists that Canadians, Britts, Spanish, Mexican, and Italians don’t have. Go for the sun, the surf, and the Cuban people, who, IMO, are the best in the world. As illustrated in
recent wave of arrests ]recent wave of crackdowns ]this story Cuba’s government is as repressive as ever.
WAG, but I suspect this is a State Department-ordered tit-for-tat retaliation for Castro’s recent heavycrackdown on (depending on who’s counting, 78 or 80) political dissidents – a roundup (with indefinite detentions and Castro publicly seeking life terms for the dissidents) that critics charge is his worst crackdown on dissidents, ever.