What’s Happened on Travel to Cuba?

W.T. Whitney Jr., February 2004  

The Bush administration has gone out of its way to make visiting Cuba almost impossible.  Last May, the Treasury Department announced that it was scrapping the people-to people travel program put in place under the Clinton administration.  And on October 10th Bush announced a further tightening of the screws.

Under the now defunct people to people program, colleges, religious organization, and certain travel agencies, could obtain a two-year license to send almost anyone to the island to learn about Cuban society and culture. According to Merri Ansara, director of a Massachusetts organization specializing in travel to Cuba, the people to people program was the only way for many Americans to visit Cuba who could not qualify as journalists or researchers, the two most commonly used legal categories. Bob Guild, program director for travel service provider Marazul Charters in New Jersey predicts that the number of legal trips to Cuba could be cut in half in 2004.

A February 9 Treasury Department announcement outlined other changes. Department of Homeland Security officers have joined customs inspectors and border patrol officers to investigate all passengers leaving for Cuba from New York, Los Angeles, and Miami – 44,000 so far, 275 of whom were kept from boarding their charter flights. 50,915 passengers have been screened on returning from Cuba, with 376 of them having had goods from their baggage seized, mostly Cuban cigars and alcohol. Since October 10 the Office for Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department has opened up 264 cases for possible prosecution for alleged travel violations.

The leader of a group returning from Cuba told a Dallas Morning News reporter that his clients are now afraid of legal repercussions, even though the trips he leads are clearly legal. A charter air company executive is quoted: “Homeland Security is in charge of the anti-terrorism initiative, but in the case of Cuba, I feel that it is really an anti-tourism effort.” A physician recently returned from Cuba told journalist Karen Wald about the U.S. Customs agents that greeted his flight. Ten of them were on hand to search 60 passengers. They photographed Cuban art-work, and an agent told him that the “U.S. is trying to determine whether secret messages are encoded in the art.” He went on to say that the goal was to waste passengers’ time.  

OFAC has also begun to process 2000 or so cases of presumed travel violations from the pre October period when no administrative law judges were in place to hear appeals. The Treasury Department has now appointed three such judges, who will be working on a backlog of 111appeals.  Fines for these civil offenses have been stepped up from $55,000 to $65.000.  

And according to its announcement, OFAC is not stopping there.  It now provides on-site training on travel restrictions for 500 Homeland Security inspectors, some of whom will be posted to Bermuda, Nassau and Aruba and Canada. OFAC promises to expedite its prosecution of new cases and will notify newly identified violators within 60 days. It reminded citizens that any contacts with ten specified travel companies owned by the Government of Cuba are illegal and announced that assets of those companies in the United States will be seized. It has also stepped up actions against banks and companies accused of dealing with Cuban agencies, informing almost 60 of them that they face penalties. OFAC is working with the State Department to forbid returnees from Cuba from bringing back the $100 worth of purchases they are now allowed.  

Reuters reported on February 5 that the U.S. State Department had denied a visa to Ibrahim Ferrer of the Buena Vista Social Club, denying him the chance to pick up a Grammy award at ceremonies in Los Angeles. According to a February 5 Associated Press report, the State Department has also denied a visa to the Rev. Raul Suarez, the beloved director of the Martin Luther King Memorial Center in Havana and preacher at the Center’s Ebenezer Baptist Church. He was supposed to have delivered a speech February 10 at the University of Rhode Island and attended Black History Month events in Boston and Mobile, Ala. Since 1980,  Suarez has visited in the United States approximately 20 times to speak before church groups and at universities.

But contradictions regarding the travel restrictions are readily apparent. U.S. law permits U.S. citizens who are Cuban – American to visit the island with ease, an estimated 140,000 to 180,000 making the trip every year. They send millions of dollars to family members and are rarely prosecuted for sending amounts that far exceed the ample legal limits.

Congressional Republicans and democrats alike favor lifting of the restrictions, as shown by legislation that both Houses passed overwhelmingly last fall to cut out funding for the restrictions. (The change had been attached as an amendment to an appropriations bill, and behind closed doors, in the middle of the night, a conference committee stripped out the amendment.)

Public opinion polls show strong sentiment in favor of easing both the travel restrictions and the embargo. According to Andres Gomez, a Miami based Cuban American leader working in solidarity with Cuba, polls show that even in southern Florida most Cuban Americans want an end to the travel ban.

U.S. agricultural interests have long been agitating to sell food to Cuba and theirs is one of the loudest voices calling for getting rid of the trade and travel restrictions. Legislation three years ago did give them the OK to make cash only food sales to Cuba. Cuba now has entered into purchase agreements with U.S. firms amounting to more than 700 million dollars. Senator Larry Craig and Congressman Butch Otter of Idaho are good examples of this farm – based opposition to the Cuba policies of the Bush administration.

The two Republicans recently returned from a four-day trade mission to Cuba, where they signed agreements that would allow Cuba's food import company to buy 10 million dollars worth of Idaho agricultural products. At a Capitol Hill news conference on February 11, Senator Craig reported telling Cuban officials that the opportunity would come next year for far- reaching legislative changes regarding Cuba. He predicted that in 2005, after the November election, the United States would drop its ban on North Americans traveling to the island.

The Bush regime wants ultimately to do in the Cuban revolution, but right now it must placate its right wing Florida rascals. The Bushites may figure that hammering on the travel ban will cost them very little, maybe some disappointment on the part of tourists in search of warm beaches and scorn from left wing cranks, but little more. The point, however, is that the right to travel is a basic human right, and that the whole blockade, of which the travel ban is a big part, is cruel and illegal.