LETTERS – July 7, 201
Reconsidering the Ban on American Travel to Cuba
Mary Anastasia O’Grady is right ("Why Lift the Travel Ban to Cuba Now?," Americas, June 28) that some argue that American tourists will bring greater freedom to Cubans. I was the chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana from 2002 to 2005. I spent most of my foreign service career in Latin America and continue to keep abreast of Cuban developments.
If dictators like the Castros thought they could not control tourism, they wouldn’t allow tourists in. The tourists need visas, are screened against a huge state security database and are monitored and often video-taped while on the island. If they misbehave they are expelled or never allowed in again; or worse, as with Alan Gross who has been in the hands of Cuban political police since December 5, could be arbitrarily held in prison for a long time. Mr. Gross’s crime: giving a laptop computer to a Cuban.
The cases of South Africa and Burma are instructive. The tourist ban did play a key role in convincing the apartheid regime that its practices were held in world contempt. Today Burma’s opposition leader, under house arrest, asks the world not to travel as tourists to her country.
Tourism and trade have not brought down a totalitarian regime in history. In Eastern Europe, communism collapsed a decade after tourism peaked. No study of Eastern Europe or the USSR alleges that tourism, investment or trade had anything to do with the end of communism.
Critics argue Americans are different from other tourists. This implies that we have some magic democratic pixie dust that will rub off on foreigners and that our bathing-suited guests have some unusual burning desire to teach democracy while on vacation. If tourism were a catalyst for democracy it would be the polyglot Europeans who would have a better chance at engaging Cubans. There is no evidence of any liberalizing impact of their stays or imprint of their footprints on the regime’s behavior. Instead, their expenditures strengthen the security apparatus because the Cuban military owns the hotels they stay in and gets first crack at the cash flow.
Almost all tourists to Cuba stay in four- or five-star hotels. Sixty-seven percent of the 103 hotels catering to foreign tourists are located predominantly in isolated areas where ordinary Cubans are denied access.
Those who favor American tourism to the island are entitled to their views. But the policy debate should include a greater respect for the facts.
James Cason
Coral Gables, Fla.
Ambassador Cason is honorary president of the Center for a Free Cuba.
