Congressman Jeff Flake speaks at the press conference.

In late May, seven Cuba travel victims came to the nation’s capital to tell their stories to any and all who would listen— Congress, the press, the public. And listen they did. These stories put a human face on the sometimes abstract Cuba travel regulations and the administration’s crackdown on Cuba travel. The Latin America Working Group Education Fund and the Center for International Policy organized the delegation of travel victims with a grant from the Arca Foundation. The victims are real people affected in real ways. Or, as Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ) put it, pointing to the group at a press conference, “This is the enemy? This is who we are sanctioning!”

One of the key events in which the seven victims participated was a joint House-Senate press conference where members of Congress announced new Cuba legislation. Their new measures would make the entire embargo subject to yearly renewal by Congress, a la Burma. Congressmen Butch Otter (R-ID), Bill Delahunt (D-MA), and Jeff Flake (R-AZ) combined forces with Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) at the press conference to announce the legislation. The seven Cuba travel victims stood behind the members of Congress for the announcement. (right)

Congressman Bill Delahunt at the press conference.

Later the victims took their message to the Hill and the media. Each of them had a different take on the impact of the regulations.

Moderate Cuban American from Miami, Silvia Wilhelm, said: “On May 5 Cuba policy was ‘dumb’; on May 6 [when the recommendations of the President’s ‘Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba’ were announced], they became cruel.” Ms. Wilhelm is the founder and executive director of Puentes Cubanos, an organization dedicated to bridging the distance between Cuban Americans and Cubans. She focused her thoughts on the devastating effect that the Bush administration’s new regulations will have on families separated by the straights of Florida (and politics). “I will no longer be able to travel to visit my family in Cuba,” she said. “Because they are cousins, they are no longer considered part of my family, according to these new regulations. That is just plain cruel.”

Josh Sharpe with a member of the press.

Wheelchair athlete and Persian Gulf War veteran, Josh Sharpe of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, had a different experience with Cuba travel (right in interview with member of press). He was planning to go to Cuba last November to distribute athletic wheelchair parts and give clinics on disabled sports. “We wanted to share with disabled Cubans some of the richness of life that wheelchair athletics have given us here in the United States.” But 12 hours before his licensed program was scheduled to depart for Havana, Josh was told that the State Department had revoked their license. Evidently, their activities were no longer considered humanitarian aid. “I was extremely frustrated,” said Mr. Sharpe. “We had no ulterior motives other than to give the gift of athletics to disabled Cubans.”

Another facet of the Bush administration’s crackdown on Cuba travel has been the end of academic exchanges of two kinds.

Congressman Butch Otter meets Dr. Stuart Youngner

Professional academics are no longer allowed to travel to Cuba to do professional research at conferences or symposia. A case in point was Dr. Stuart Youngner of Case Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland, Ohio, who was scheduled to attend an international conference on coma and death in Havana this spring (at right with Rep. Butch Otter).
“I had gone to this prestigious conference— probably the best of its type in the world—three times before,” he said. “This time the U.S. government decided that our work at the conference did not qualify as professional research.” Dr. Youngner visited several of his members of Congress and underscored the point that this is not only an infringement on travel but also on academic freedom.

Jerry Guidera of the Center for Cross-Cultural Studies of Amherst, Massachusetts, talked about the other sort of academic exchanges that are now being prohibited. His organization sends college students for short-term and semester-long study exchanges in Cuba. Conducting semester-long programs, he explained, is increasing difficult. More distressingly, if a professor wants to take its students to Cuba now for a short period of study, the program has to “support the foreign policy positions of the United States government”. (In the case of Cuba, regime change.) Mr. Guidera thinks that the effect will be almost no educational programs to Cuba from the United States after the new regulations take effect.

Another side of the administration’s stance is increased enforcement of the ban on illegal travel to Cuba through third countries. For instance, Andrea and Michael McCarthy of Port Huron, Michigan, traveled to Cuba in 2001 to distribute medicine through a Catholic Church program. They traveled through Canada believing that the travel restrictions were not enforced against Americans who traveled through third countries. When they returned from Cuba, the McCarthys chose not to lie to the border patrol agents and are facing a $15,000 fine. Their case is now awaiting trial before an administrative law judge. “We can’t believe that you can be fined for distributing medicines to people in need,” said Michael McCarthy during a press briefing.

Congressman Bill Delahunt with Dr. Youngner and Bob Guild.

The new policies will have a chilling effect on travel service providers, who had been sending more than 140,000 people per year to Cuba legally. Marazul Charters, based in Florida and New Jersey, sent 35,000 of those people last year. “We expect that number to be cut by 50 to 66 percent in the next year,” said Bob Guild, program director for Marazul.
“These policies make no sense—they only hurt the Cuban and American people.”

With stories as poignant as these, it is little wonder that Congress is trying to take apart the Cuba travel restrictions every year. Yet each year they run into the political equations of national political figures, who see placating the Miami Cuban-American community as more important than the desires of the rest of the nation. For their part, these seven Cuba travel victims helped to move the debate. Congress and the press listened to their stories and came to the same conclusions as the majority of Americans: Cuba travel restrictions are pointless and just plain wrong.