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Change Your Life! |
Traveling between U.S-Cuba soars |
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June 14, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) - The number of people who flew directly from the United States to Cuba soared by almost 50 percent last year as travelers took advantage of eased restrictions aimed at planting democratic seeds on the communist island.
The Clinton administration last year streamlined procedures for students, athletes, artists and other groups and individuals to visit Cuba. It also allowed a greater variety of direct flights,which previously operated only between Miami and Havana.
The measures were aimed at encouraging contacts between Cubans and Americans, helping Cubans in their first attempts to "form a civil society in Cuba that is genuine - nongovernmental organizations that are nongovernmental organizations," Charles Shapiro, head of the State Department's Cuban Affairs Office, said Monday. The number of people flying directly from the United States to Cuba increased by about 47 percent last year: About 82,000 people flew in 1999, compared with 55,900 in 1998, according to statistics recently compiled by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control. The office enforces the economic embargo that prohibits most Americans from spending money in Cuba - effectively barring them from visiting. The overall number of people who fly from the United States to Cuba is unknown. Many take flights, legally or illegally, through third countries, such as Canada or Mexico. Cuban officials have said that 160,000 U.S. citizens visited their country last year, almost double the number who took direct flights. No one doubts the number of Americans visiting Cuba is rising.Charter companies have added flights to meet the demand and are flying under the new rules from New York and Los Angeles, as well as from Miami. The biggest group of travelers are people visiting relatives in Cuba, U.S. officials say. They can visit once a year without a Treasury Department license.
The number of non-relatives who visit Cuba is growing rapidly, however. For Marazul Tours, which arranges travel to Cuba, the business has increased fourfold, said Bob Guild, program director for the Weehawken, New Jersey-based travel agency. "There's certainly always been an interest," Guild said. Red tape used to discourage travelers, he said. Researchers needed to apply for licenses, and university groups needed a license for each member. Under the new rules, many researchers no longer need to request licenses, and universities need only one license for a group - regardless of how many people travel. Shapiro, of the State Department, said there is no way to gauge the effectiveness of what the government calls "people-to-people contacts." But he said he takes "as an article of faith" that if Americans travel to Cuba for purposes other than tourism, and interact with Cubans, it will have an impact. "Given the contest between an open society and a closed society, the open society will win," he said. Activists against President Fidel Castro's government are more skeptical. Jose Cardenas, spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation, noted that the Cuban government still determines who will enter the country and often sets travelers' itineraries. Travelers may have more contact with Communist Party officials than with ordinary Cubans, he said. "Rather than people-to-people contact, what we're seeing is a lot of people-to-party contact," he said.
Rep. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who is strongly anti-Castro, said there's no indication that years of visits by Canadian, European and Latin American tourists have helped ordinary Cubans. With travel restrictions eased, American visits to Cuba are undermining the embargo and providing the Cuban government with much-needed dollars, Menendez said. "What Americans are unwittingly doing, is in going to the hotels and the beaches and spending their money in those places, they' re ultimately fueling the regime," he said.
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