End the Travel Ban on Cuba

On Tuesday, June 21st, Cuban contemporary artist Sandra Ramos spoke about her work at the Smithsonian’s National Gallery of Art. Her art represents deeply personal accounts of the connection between herself, society and Cuba. Sandra breaks through censorship issues to present an honest view of Cuba by discussing issues such as migration, political education and cultural contradictions.  The paintings and exhibits that she creates make audiences take an introspective look at the effects of various influences in their lives and how those aspects affect them.

Studying abroad in Cuba was an experience that is impossible to forget. People’s eyes bulge whenever I mention that I lived in Cuba for five months. A torpedo of questions always follow; “Did you feel safe? How did you survive? Isn’t Cuba communist?” While I love to discuss my time spent in Cuba, it’s questions like these that make my mind race and my blood boil.

We’ve all been chomping at the bit waiting for the final piece of the new travel regulations puzzle: the Treasury Department guidelines. The guidelines were issued on Thursday, April 21. Now we have the full picture; let the travel begin.

On February 26, 2007, the New York Philharmonic performed in Pyongyang, North Korea. This was the first time a U.S. cultural organization had stepped foot on North Korean soil; and not only were the musicians  welcomed into the insulated country, but they were given a five minute round of applause during their final bows.

The Philharmonic’s performance, dubbed “Symphonic Diplomacy” by the New York Times,  didn’t create instant harmony (even though there is harmony in dissonance, so I’m told by my friend, Emily) between Washington and Pyongyang. But the performance did make an impact.

Yesterday, in a speech given at the Centro Cultural Palacio Moneda in Santiago, Chile, President Obama gave his first Latin America speech since the 2008 Summit of the Americas. While he spoke of many important issues regarding the region – and LAWG will be reviewing the speech in detail, so keep checking our blog and website for that – the Cuba team wanted to share the substantial Cuba portion of the speech with you today.

When you think of Cuba, the first things that come to your mind may be the “three C’s”: Caribbean climate, the Castro brothers, and Cohiba cigars; but that is by far not all that Cuba has to offer. Because of the United States’ foreign policy aimed at isolating Cuba (and therefore isolating us from Cuba), broad knowledge about the island and its people is limited. Many rely on exotic and stereotypical images of beautiful women on pristine beaches, Fidel Castro giving long-winded, animated speeches in front of the masses, and fine cigars to describe Cuba’s identity.

They say "a journey begins with one step." Well, we feel like the President's decision to ease travel-to-Cuba regulations on January 14 marks the start of our 2011-and-beyond journey to end the travel ban. Does it seem like we've been here before?! 

We've built-up a lot of momentum in the past few years-and tremendous support from advocates like you and from members of Congress. While we didn't get the full results that you or we wanted, we together did manage to elevate the Cuba issue to center stage, both in Congress and in the media. To review: In 2009, President Obama opened travel for Cuban Americans, and we applauded but pushed for more. In 2010, we pushed hard to pass bills in the House and Senate which would have ended the travel ban for ALL U.S. citizens; the calendar and scant political will stymied our efforts. In 2011, President Obama has opened travel for religious groups, academics and student groups earning college credit ("general licenses"; no permission prior to travel needed), and others (licensed people-to-people travel). Again, we applaud him, but we want more. We need more. We even deserve more. Don't you agree?

Help us produce more by donating to our work now, and please read on. 

With Cuba making significant changes in their economy and society that open new opportunities for Cubans, it is important that our government recognize Cuba's openness to change. Today's Cuba is evolving in a way that is "Cuban-determined"; today's Cuba is different from yesterday's, and tomorrow's Cuba may be even more exciting and forward-looking than today's. Our elected officials need to know that they can ditch their "cold war lenses," especially when it comes to Cuba. To make that message heard loud and clear, we need your support.  We need to regroup, renew, recommit, and develop a new strategy that circumvents a Congress that is less than friendly to our position on Cuba. We have already taken some significant steps toward creating a new approach designed for a new reality. With your enthusiastic help (about 16,000 of you!), we petitioned President Obama through Change.org to use his executive authority to broaden the regulations for licensed travel. Your participation was part of a broad and effective strategy to "get to" the President, and it worked! So, let's use that momentum, those new tools, that energy to our advantage. Let's use this current moment to get back to basics, building a bigger, broader, and even more effective network that can push the administration today, let the new and Tea Party-ish (read: libertarian) Congress know that we have not gone away, and be ready to again mobilize around the opportunity of the 2012 elections to emphasize our position on Cuba. What do you think? Are you willing to pitch-in? 

Please pitch-in by supporting our work and by continuing to commit your energies to change this damaging policy. 

We need to encourage more travel to Cuba at every opportunity by all kinds of new constituencies, find ways to make visits there ourselves (we'll have a new and innovative idea to share with you in a future e-update), and educate new activists/advocates of ending the travel ban. We need to produce materials that advise our supporters just HOW to travel to Cuba under the new regulations; we are in the process of doing just that. We need to reach out to new groups that can help us continue raising Cuba as an issue in both domestic and foreign policy. After all, that's what activism is all about, right?!

Please donate here so that we can continue building momentum, working for change, demonstrating our support for a fair and just policy to Cuba that is based on mutual respect between sovereign neighbors.  

For those of you who'd like some details about how your donation will be used-our goal is to raise $5,000 in the next two weeks to help us carry out these projects that will get us to more:

•   $50 will print new brochures explaining the new Obama travel regulations and walking new travelers through the process of people-to-people licensing-so more U.S. citizens will travel to Cuba;
•   $100 will contribute toward organizing our action to demand more travel that will take place simultaneously in Cuba and around the United States (plans just developing; stay tuned);
•   $250 will enable Facebook ads and Change.org petitions to add more energized activists to our on-line Cuba network;
•   $1,000 will make your friends on the LAWG Cuba team more ecstatic than you can imagine! 

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On Friday, January 25th the Obama Administration’s new travel regulations were published in the Federal Registry, effective immediately and apparently with no comment period. Guidelines are still being drafted by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and that is where the details of the new regulations will become clear. OFAC says that the guidelines will be released “soon.”

Many of you responded to our email update 10 days ago on the Presidential action easing some of the regulations on travel to Cuba. You wanted to know how to respond. Clearly there is more work to be done to change U.S. policy toward Cuba, but we think a “thank you” to the President and encouragement to do more is appropriate. By clicking here, you can send an email to the White House with a message of thanks and a request for more.