After some 41 years of the embargo's measurable failure to topple Castro, the Bush administration appears to favor the concept of throwing good money after bad. "Just because the policy hasn't yet brought results, I don't think it's an argument for doing away with it," State Department Deputy Director of Cuban Affairs Kevin Whitaker told a Palm Beach public affairs forum in mid-March, according to the Palm Beach Post. "I think we've taken enough grief for the Cuba policy over the years that we ought to get something for it."
The State Department's nominee for head of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Cuban-American Otto Reich, was backed strongly by the powerful anti-Castro Cuban American National Foundation. He was bitterly opposed by Democrats leery of Reich's track record during the 1980s, when he headed up the State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and was charged by the U.S. comptroller-general with conducting "prohibited, covert propaganda activities" at the height of the Oliver North era. Bush avoided a confirmation ruckus by making Reich a recess appointment in January. The Associated Press quoted Bush's new Latin America chief in late March as saying that the best method for stimulating change in Cuba was "not throwing a lifeline to a failed, corrupt, dictatorial, murderous regime."
Other recent developments have more ominous implications for freedom in North America itself. In mid-March, James Sabzali became the first Canadian citizen to be tried in a U.S. court for doing business in Cuba. Sabzali and his business partners, Americans Stefan and Donald Brodie, have been charged with more than 70 counts of trading with the enemy between 1992 and 2000, when their Pennsylvania-based chemical company Bro-Tech Corp. allegedly sold more than $2 million in water-purifying resins to Cuban companies. If convicted, the defendants face maximum sentences of life in prison.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Spokesman Reynald Doiron has called the case "objectionable and unacceptable," while a U.S. State Department official shrugged it off: "We understand that there are other countries out there that don't see eye to eye with us on [Cuba], and we do think that's unfortunate."
But it's the new crackdown on simple travel that has affected the most Americans, and attracted the most attention. In order for U.S. citizens to visit Cuba legally, they must be granted a special waiver from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The license, which was designed for journalists, researchers, students, and business organizations, takes several months to obtain, and OFAC is not at all impressed with personal deadlines. Given the hassle factor, and given that Cuban customs authorities don't stamp Americans' passports, many have found it easier to take their chances and fly to Havana from either Mexico or Canada.
OFAC says it handed out 140,000 licenses in 2001, and estimated another 60,000 Americans traveled to Cuba illegally. The latter figure is probably much too low -- of the hundreds of Americans I've met who have traveled to Cuba, only a small percentage received official clearance. Whatever the number of illegal travelers, they are facing increased scrutiny upon their return. Senate hearings in February revealed that a full seven of OFAC's 129 employees have been deployed to hunt down illegal travelers.
Lawbreakers like me are sent letters demanding the names and addresses of every place they slept, and a full accounting of any money spent, upon penalty of prosecution. (In my case, I gave OFAC a very partial list and said that my non-American wife paid for all our expenses. After that, I never heard anything back.)
"We are trying to minimize the flow of hard currency to Cuba," OFAC Director R. Richard Newcomb testified to the Senate. "Obviously, travel to tourism centers would contribute to hard currency."
The travel crackdown is being prosecuted against the wishes of the House of Representatives, which voted 240 to 186 last July to forbid the Treasury Department from spending money to enforce the ban. The measure was stalled in the Senate, but 34 members of Congress have recently created a new bipartisan Cuba Working Group to challenge the embargo. They're beginning with restrictions on travel.
"This is an issue of freedom," said Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, a leader of the new bloc, at its kickoff press conference in late March. "Every citizen ought to have the right to see firsthand what a mess [Castro] has made of that island."
Rep. William Delahunt (D-Mass.), another leader of the working group, pointed out that the policy is riddled with inconsistencies. "Americans today can travel to Iran, can travel to North Korea," he said. "By my calculations, that's two-thirds of the Axis of Evil."
"I don't think travel restrictions do anything to impede Fidel Castro," Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) argued at the February Senate hearings. "It only impedes U.S. citizens."
And, of course, Cubans such as Nieto.
Havana is famously seething with Cubans trying to pump dollars from tourists. Walk through the central city as a blond man in a white T-shirt, and you'll spend your days hearing the hissing "kss-kss!" sound of people trying to grab your attention. It isn't all about money scams, cheap cigars, and prostitutes. Just as often -- maybe more often -- the approaching strangers and instant friends just want to talk, to practice their foreign languages, to pepper you with questions about the outside world.
Who really killed Tupac? What are the lyrics to that Rage Against the Machine song, and what do they mean? How are the people doing in Budapest and Prague now? Do American girls like Cuban men? What do the people think about Bill Clinton? Why does your country keep insisting on the bloqueo? How famous is Gloria Estefan? Why isn't Luis Tiant in the Hall of Fame? These are all questions I heard during my month there.
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