Ban on travel to Cuba creates ‘enforcement and public relations dilemma’

What if travel to Cuba is banned, but people exercise their rights and go there anyway? “An enforcement and public relations dilemma” is created!

So says a report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, “GAO-08-80 Cuba Embargo,” released in November 2007. Buried on page 56 of the 91-page document, the U.S. agencies responsible for enforcing the tightened travel restrictions on U.S. residents admit they are failing. Their cruel measures have turned into their opposite and the solidarity movement is winning!

A section titled “Divided U.S. Public Opinion Presents Enforcement Challenges” reports that, “Lack of public support for the embargo, coupled with the controversial nature of recent rule changes, has contributed to widespread, small-scale violations.”

Cuban-Americans in particular are outraged by new rules that further divide families, allowing visits to Cuba only once every three years, defining and limiting who is considered a family member and restricting financial remittances and baggage weight when travel is allowed.

Academics, whose educational programs and research with their counterparts in Cuba are now blocked; religious organizations like the National Council of Churches, whose license to travel was canceled; and the persistent annual travel challenges that are publicly traveling to and from Cuba contribute to that “enforcement and public relations dilemma.”

U.S. representatives Barbara Lee and Charles Rangel asked the GAO to study government rule changes from 2001 to 2005 and the impact on exports, travel, cash transfers and gifts to Cuba; U.S. agencies’ activities and workloads related to the enforcement; and factors affecting the enforcement of the blockade of Cuba.

The report documents the history of the U.S. blockade from 1960 to 2007. It proves the sanctions and restrictions on Cuba are unprecedented and are applied only to Cuba and not to any other country.

Significantly, the report shows that as the sanctions tightened, international support for Cuba grew. In 1992, 59 countries voted in the United Nations against the U.S. blockade, but by 2007 that number had increased to 184. Throughout all those years no more than three other countries voted with the U.S., the only consistent U.S. ally against Cuba being Israel.

Although mentioning the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the 1978 bombing of the Cuban Mission to the U.N. in New York and the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., the report is otherwise silent on the U.S.-backed and funded war of terror against the socialist government of Cuba and the Cuban people. This has included hotel bombings, assassination attempts, biological warfare and the first midair bombing of a civilian aircraft, Cubana 455, killing 73 innocent civilians in 1976.

The U.S. government refused to stop these violations of international law organized from bases in Florida, necessitating five dedicated Cuban men to observe and give early warning of attacks planned in Florida against their homeland. These men, known as the Cuban Five, are unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. while the CIA agent who planned the bombing of Cubana 455, Luis Posada Carriles, walks free in Miami today.

The enforcement and public relations dilemma faced by the U.S. Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and other U.S. government agencies is a victory for Cuba and all the world’s peoples in a battle of ideas between a socialist economic system that provides doctors to the world, and a capitalist one that sends occupation armies and bombs around the world and turns every human need and want into a commodity for sale and profit.

This victory is being won by the brigadistas and caravanistas who travel every year to Cuba, carrying computers or medical supplies across the border from Texas into Mexico and returning past U.S. government agents at the Mexican and Canadian borders, openly declaring their travel to Cuba. It is won by every person who received a letter from OFAC and did not negotiate a settlement, but requested a public hearing instead.

The local demonstrations, meetings, film showings, resolutions, letters to the editor and efforts to free the Cuban Five and expose the double standard that protects Posada Carriles—every step that breaks not only the travel ban but the media blockade with facts about Cuba helps to expand that “dilemma.”

The 2008 travel challenges will return from Cuba on July 14. Go to www.pastorsforpeace.org for more information on the caravans. For the Venceremos Brigade, e-mail [email protected] or call 212-560-4360. For the Labor Exchange, e-mail [email protected].