The travel debate: Cuban voices

The debate over the travel ban is getting rolling with the introduction of legislation to end it in the House and Senate. A House press conference will showcase the legislation today, with 121 cosponsors.

The state-of-the-art argument in favor of the travel ban is stated by the Heritage Foundation’s Ray Walser, who sort of loosely characterizes the views of those of us who favor unrestricted travel. If there’s anyone who believes that the “absence of change” in Cuba is “the fault of the U.S.,” then I’m with Ray on that point – Cuban communism’s longevity is due to internal factors.

An end to travel restrictions will not change Cuba’s political order any more than the sanctions-on-steroids policies of President Bush. But an unregulated flow of American citizens and private institutions will increase American influence in a place where it’s scant today.

Ray’s more interesting point is that “the voiceless Cuban people” deserve to be heard. True that, as they say.

We don’t have polls on this. So one could begin by asking if the Cuban people are introverts by nature and want to be isolated from foreign visitors. Or if any people living under communism has ever wanted that. I don’t think so, on either score.

But we can cite some “voiceless” Cubans, too.

There’s dissident economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, one of the 75 imprisoned in 2003:

“Democratic countries that wish to help the Cuban people should recognize the existence of a new situation that calls for new thinking. The policy of isolating Cuba and favoring confrontation, practiced for decades by U.S. authorities, should be replaced by mechanisms of contacts, fundamentally with [Cuban] society, without excluding eventual meetings with the Cuban government, as done by the Nixon and Reagan Administrations with the Soviet Union, the countries of Eastern Europe, China, and Vietnam, and now attempted with North Korea. The goal would be to contribute to creating a less tense atmosphere, where it would be difficult for the hardliners to obtain alibis to cultivate false nationalism and to block changes…Immediate steps could be taken such as permitting Cuban Americans to visit the island and help their family and friends economically without restriction…[this step] would make people who receive assistance more independent of the totalitarian state…It would also be very valuable to promote exchanges between the American and Cuban people in all spheres, including cultural, academic, scientific, and sports.”

There’s blogger Yoani Sanchez:

“Change will come not through government agencies but through the citizens and the spread of information and exchange with the outside world.”

Hector Palacios, another of the 75, was quoted as follows by AFP last May:

“Without dialogue, there is no peaceful change,” he opined, before pointing out “a series of points that have to disappear from the embargo,” in his opinion. “First, that Cubans [Cuban Americans] may travel to their country any time they wish, that they may send their family what they want to send, and also that U.S. citizens may visit us…”

Or there’s human rights activists Elizardo Sanchez and Vladimiro Roca, in a May 2003 statement to the Center for International Policy:

“Just as we insist on the right of Cubans to travel, to leave and return to our country freely, a right now denied us, so too do we support the right of Americans to travel freely, including travel to Cuba.”

Or Cardinal Jaime Ortega, in a March 2005 meeting with Congressional visitors:

“Tourism is one of the only things that has brought change to Cuba in recent years, and it has even forced the government to change some of its ways of doing business. It has allowed some people to work with a measure of freedom, such as people who rent rooms to tourists in their homes, and artists who sell to tourists. Artisans have developed a great deal. And the presence of tourists has allowed people to feel that they are not so isolated.”

Or Oswaldo Paya, leader of the Varela Project, interviewed by Germany’s Der Spiegel in April 2003:

“We call on all foreigners who visit our country to show solidarity, hold demonstrations, speak out for an opening in Cuba. We do not want pressures from the United States, much less an intervention…We don’t believe in the effects of the economic embargo, nor have we asked for it.”

While we’re at it, it’s worth looking at the views of Freedom House, which notes, “The United States does not impose similarly restrictive travel sanctions on Americans to other regimes that receive Freedom House’s lowest freedom ratings, including Burma, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan.”

And there’s this from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

My own views are here, prompted by Secretary of State Rice’s spokesman, who in 2007 criticized Cuba’s travel restrictions on its own citizens without a trace of irony. (The only update is to the CIA’s economic growth estimate for Cuba: it’s now 5.3 percent for 2008.)