Thanks for posting this. I just had .. not an epiphany, but a new wave of hatred for bureaucracy when I actually read the words "Americans are not allowed to travel [to Cuba]." I find something very disturbingly wrong with that.

Thanks for posting this. I just had .. not an epiphany, but a new wave of hatred for bureaucracy when I actually read the words "Americans are not allowed to travel [to Cuba]." I find something very disturbingly wrong with that.

I agree that it's disturbing that we aren't allowed to travel to Cuba, as well as stupid, but I understand the logic of it. This particular law isn't designed to punish us, although that's exactly what it does; it's supposed to punish Cuba by not allowing them access to American tourism which could make them millions of dollars in extra income a year.

It kind of makes one wonder how Michael Moore got to Cuba when he was filming Sicko. They showed him and the sick Americans he took with him on a boat where they attempted to gain access to Guantanomo Bay, but of course they didn't get access so they left, and I'm assuming left their boat in a Cuban port. Is it possible that Cuban officials could care less about keeping Americans out of Cuba?

So glad to hear from a fellow Cuban-American progressive and feminist! I agree that my/our generation seems to be more willing to look outside the issue of Cuba when making political decisions, and more progressive than those who are first-generation immigrants. I am actively awaiting the day I am legally allowed to travel to Cuba

@ gaelicgirl1983: Cuban officials actively welcome American tourists who manage to sneak in (which plenty do, by flying to Canada or Mexico first) and do not stamp U.S. passports so as to avoid triggering punishment for those who go there.

Some Americans go legally as well, by using humanitarian or educational loopholes that allow travel, which is probably what Michael Moore did. Bush tightened those down considerably, so it's nice to hear that's been opened up again.

I'm really glad to see a post on this here. Cuba is a really complicated issue, and one which very few people actually understand. So many stereotypes exist about Cuba and Cuban-Americans that the public is largely uninformed or misinformed about the situation. For instance, it shocks me that very few people realize that Raul Castro was actually more Marxist than Fidel was - and Cuba probably wouldn't have turned to the USSR for support had the US not pre-emptively cut off trade. (however, in spite of the irony and historical significance, knowledge of those facts does nothing to change the current reality. Cuba today is not Cuba of the 1960s.)

I'm both hopeful and a little worried about opening travel restrictions. I'm currently working on a degree in Latin American Studies, and I've done a bit of research on Cuba. I suspect that when further travel restrictions are lifted (to all US citizens, not just Cuban Americans) there will be a huge upswing in tourism to the island. It will likely be an inexpensive place to travel, increasing its appeal, as well as exotic, recently forbidden. Cuba's economy will probably boom for a while. This could be beneficial—or it could be hugely damaging, creating a very poor lower class and a very rich upper class of business and hotel owners. Even if it is largely beneficial for the majority of the Cuban population, a boom from tourism does not usually sustain itself for a long period of time. Eventually, the Cuban economy would swing back down, and given the political history of the island, it is very hard to predict what effect this would have—it could very easily lead to massive political instability.

Honestly, what I hope happens is that the trade embargo is lowered first, before the travel restrictions—and that private (read: US or European-owned) companies are either prevented from investing/developing or restricted for some time to allow Cubans to develop their own, independent place in the global economy. While I am very, very in favor of removing travel restrictions and the embargo altogether, I think that doing it all immediately would not help Cuba and Cubans, but exploit them.

Hi, Mollie -

Loved your note. A few short points
Correction: Raul is actually
five years younger than Fidel, though
both are old men, that´s for sure.

My father and his parents lived in
in Cuba for three years, waiting
for permission to enter the U.S.
They were Jewish refugees from
Hitler and there was no Jewish
Adjustment Act which would have
helped them enter the US as the
Cuban Adjustment Acts helps the
Cubans to enter the US today.

I just left Cuba after three months
there as part of directing CubaNews,
a free Yahoo news group with close
to 100,000 items available in its
free and open to the public data
base about Cuba.

Items covered include its people, its
culture, and its relations with
Cubans abroad and Cuba's relations
with the United States.

Discussion of the pros and cons of
Cuba are welcome, though I am very
supportive of Cuba and its right
to an social, political and cultural
course independent of the United
States. I say this despite knowing
that Wayne Smith, who who used to
by the main US diplomat in Cuba,
was right when he wrote a book about
Cuba and the US called ¨The Closest
of Enemies¨.

Again, thanks for your heart-felt
commentary.

Awww, I don't think I have any family still ON the island... :( wanna go...

There basically is no rational argument for keeping an embargo with Cuba. A few quick points:

1) the only alternative to government control is the private sector. If you destroy tourism, you send the only people who could have a seperate powerbase from communism straight back to communism. It's counterproductive. That's the reason our policy whose purpose was to create instability actually created the most stable government of the 20th century.

2) Cuba is not a military threat. Their Guarda Frontera doesn't even have boats except in some of the biggest cities. Every other place such as the border islands they need to be rowed in by local fisherman. On these islands themselves they only have a small radio and don't even have pencils to write down the name of the ships that pass by. Their radar antenna don't turn, because they don't work. Their police don't even carry guns in most places. Again, this isn't by any stretch any credible military threat after their economy collapsed in the 1990s.

3) The embargo is probably by any objective measure unconstitutional. By the US government by all practical measures preventing it's citizens for seeing a different country because that country has a different political belief is in fact censorship. It's limiting the information people have through direct interactions to other forms of government. Simply allowing "Press" to go there isn't sufficient, as the "Press" only report on sensational news now, not any sort of meaningful discourse.

4) It is simply painful to look at all of our long term allies having to publicly condemn us for causing material suffering and harm without any possible justification through a UN resolution condemning the embargo which has passed now for the last 16 years.. All of Europe including Britain, Australia, all of Latin America, countries that have stood by us for 100 years, many of which supported us even in the controversial war in Iraq, ALL now condemn this policy.

5) We actively engage with China, which drugs and economically enslaves any person who is critical of their government up to giving them most favored nations status. We freely trade with Indonesia, who places their political commentators into bridge embuttments. We trade with the vast majority of the middle east, even though women are considered in most of them slightly better than dogs. Cuba has better policy of human rights than any of them. Better womens rights, more women graduating as doctors and lawyers, better gay rights with some of the biggest queens you've ever seen walking around in more freedom than they could express in most communities in the United States where sodomy laws expressly forbid homosexuality.