2011

The steps up to the conference room were plastered with faces. Faces of the missing fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, mothers and wives. They looked out at us, some faded, torn photographs, others as real as if they could be ready to pick up their child, eat dinner with their family, head off to work, today.  Gathered in this hotel conference room in Bogotá were the women and men who had lost a part of themselves when their loved one was taken away in “the perfect crime”: forced disappearance.

As of April 21, 2011, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control released new travel guidelines for travel to Cuba that mirror the intentions of President Obama’s directive aimed at liberalizing the regulations. Under these guidelines, many groups that have been previously denied access to Cuba can now travel under either general or specific licenses.

To travel to Cuba, you must be eligible under regulations published by the U.S. Treasury Department. There are two kinds of licenses: a General License, which requires no permission or advance notification to U.S. officials; and a Specific License, an actual piece of paper for which one needs to apply to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) which oversees the travel restrictions within the U.S. Treasury Department.

To learn how YOU can travel to Cuba, we invite you to take a look at the on-line brochures that LAWGEF has compiled. These brochures are intended to be a guide. If you have further questions regarding travel to Cuba, you should consult the full OFAC guidelines here, or consult with a licensed travel service provider or an attorney. Let the travel begin! 

 *Please feel free to print these documents as we will not be distributing them via regular mail* 

• Organizations Sponsoring People-to-People Travel  (Just Updated!)
• Educational Travel
• Religious Travel
• People-to-People Travel
• Family Travel
• List of Licensed Travel Service Providers 
• List of Licensed Charter Service Providers 
• Schedule of 2013 Planned Trips to Cuba (Just Updated!)
  * This list is not comprehensive, rather a compliation of some organizations that are organizing group trips to Cuba.
• Become an Advocate for Policy Change
• Share YOUR Travel Story
  

 Background:

The United States maintains travel restrictions on no other country in the world except Cuba. Restrictions on travel to Cuba have existed since 1961, except under President Jimmy Carter beginning in 1977. Restrictions were re-imposed in 1982 during the Reagan Administration, codified (written into law) under the Helms-Burton Act of 1996, and were tightened further by the Bush Administration in 2004. Since being codified, only Congress can end the travel ban (and the embargo) through legislative action (passing a law). The President has limited powers to loosen—or tighten—regulations that govern 12 categories of travel.

The restrictions apply to all citizens and residents of the United States—no matter whether you travel to Cuba through a third country, or even if you hold citizenship from another country. Up to 2009, travel was severely limited for all Americans until President Obama eased restrictions for Cuban Americans visiting family. On January 14, 2011, President Obama directed that travel regulations be eased for certain categories of citizens, and many more people are now able to travel to Cuba without breaking the law (a law which we consider to be a violation of our fundamental rights as citizens of the United States). 

Yesterday, June 23, 2011, the Latin America Working Group (LAWG), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), and more than 400 other organizations, academics, and individuals from both the United States and Colombia, sent a letter to the U.S. Congress asking representatives to vote no on the pending U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Human rights violations in Colombia–abuses against labor activists, Afro-Colombians, human rights activists and others–continue to take place at alarmingly high levels. In this climate, it would be a mistake to approve the FTA.