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fln Athenian Traveler Behind Enemy Lines
1959 a revolution led by Fidel Castro overthrew
Cuba's right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Batista, the autocratic leader of Cuba from the
1930s and 40s, again had taken power in 1952 through a pre
emptive military coup during a losing bid to be democratically
elected president. While dictator, he revoked most political
liberties and aligned himself with United States interests that
had been engaged in exploiting Cuba's resources since the
Spanish American War ended in 1898. These interests included
domination of Cuba's commerce and agriculture by U.S. corpo
rations and the American mafia's control of gambling, prostitu
tion and illicit drug dealing in Cuba's capital, Havana. Under
Batista, the rich and connected got richer, and the poor stayed
poor or became poorer.
When Fidel took over, he steered Cuba toward
a central-planning, socialist economic model,
ultimately suspended most political liberties,
eliminated private ownership of real estate,
nationalized Cuba's businesses and agricultural
production, got rid of organized crime and shut
down gambling casinos, prostitution and drug
trafficking. Under Fidel's communista regime,
the rich became dramatically poorer, and the
poor, while they mostly remained poor, were
given universal health care and nominal job
security.
The United States government, through 11
different presidents, has been in a fit of pique
over the actions of its small island neighbor
ever since.
In 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower
imposed restrictions on trade with Cuba, then
directed the Central Intelligence Agency to
develop a secret plan to get rid of the Castro
regime. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy
authorized the CIA to proceed with the plan to
invade Cuba, using hastily trained Cuban exiles
bent on Castro's overthrow. This poorly executed
fiasco at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's southern
shore was easily thwarted by Fidel's forces armed with advance
knowledge of details of the invasion.
Fidel then responded by cozying up more with a ready and
willing Soviet Union. In early 1962, Kennedy broadened the
trade restrictions into a complete embargo (after having his
staff acquire 1,200 of his favorite brand of Cuban cigars) and
instituted a ban on travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens. Later that
year, Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev faced
off over atomic bomb-tipped missiles the Soviets installed in
Cuba. Nuclear holocaust was avoided when Khrushchev agreed
to remove the missiles. Kennedy secretly promised never to
invade Cuba and to remove U.S. nuclear-tipped missiles facing
the Soviet Union in Turkey. Kennedy was assassinated just over
a year later. Although there was never any proof that Cuba or
the Soviet Union had anything to do with Kennedy's death, for
years afterward the CIA pursued multiple unsuccessful plots
to assassinate Fidel, even once resorting to a failed exploding
cigar scheme.
In 1980, President Jimmy Carter lifted the travel ban.
Within a year, 100,000 Cubans had fled to America with
Castro's blessings, Fidel having emptied Cuba's jails and mental
asylums of some 20,000 persons, most of whom ended up in
south Florida. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan re-imposed
the travel ban and ordered a more severe U.S. trade embargo.
During the 1990s, President Bill Clinton signed the Helms-
Burton Act, which codified the U.S. trade embargo and sought
to enforce it against other nations. Clinton wisely suspended
portions of the Act that had succeeded only in pissing off most
of the rest of the world that traded with Cuba. In 2003 and
2004, President George W. Bush, seemingly with an eye on
Electoral College politics???Republican-leaning Cuban expatri
ates had by then achieved a strong political voice in South
Florida)???rebuffed bipartisan initiatives in Congress to lift the
embargo and travel restrictions, thereby becoming the modern
era's most zealous enforcer of the embargo.
Today, the Cold War is mostly a fading memory. Old foes
such as China and Russia, and even hot war antagonist
Vietnam, are important trading partners of the U.S. They may
not necessarily be allies, but they no longer are considered
enemies. Twenty-five years after the Soviets withdrew their
military presence and economic subsidies, Cuba now seems the
least likely of perceived foes in a radically different world. Yet
the U.S. government continues to act irrationally and stub
bornly hostile toward its small, insular, close-by neighbor.
After surviving U.S.-initiated assassination attempts, a
60-year-long trade embargo and political isolation, Fidel, old
and ill, retired to his farm outside Havana in 2008. But his
brother Raul and the Cuban Communist Party still rule, hav
ing outlasted 11 U.S. administrations, including President
Barack Obama's first term. This is not to say that the Cuban
people have fared so well. Communism's economic model usu
ally assures everyone except the ruling bureaucracy will be
relatively poor. However, it could be argued that the ordinary
citizenry of Cuba are much better off than under Batista.
Cuba's free universal health care grades better in several cat
egories than U.S. health care, according to the World Health
Organization. While not necessarily a tangible measure of
success, the Cuban people take pride in
their perseverance in the face of persis
tent bullying by their giant neighbor 90
miles to the north.
America's failed Cuba embargo still
includes a general prohibition of travel
by U.S. citizens to the island. Travel
restrictions to Cuba have been loosened
or tightened over the years, depend
ing on political winds and whims. The
Obama Administration recently loos
ened the embargo policy by allowing
Americans of Cuban decent to go to Cuba
to visit relatives. But most Americans
who want to go to Cuba remain
restricted to traveling with a State
Department-licensed group for specified
cultural or religious purposes. Visiting
Cuba merely as a tourist is still deemed
by our government to be a violation of
the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917.
Cuba is the only nation against which
this World War I vintage legislation is
now directed. Constraints under the act
aimed at bellicose North Korea were
lifted in 2008. But in 2011 Obama, perhaps with a view toward
Electoral College politics himself, issued an executive order
extending the Act's application to Cuba for two more years.
Cuba enjoys normal diplomatic and trade relations with
virtually every nation on Earth except the United States. But
America can't get over its inability to control Cuba's destiny.
Our government keeping a travel leash on it own citizens is
no less a totalitarian act than similar Cuban restraints on
travel imposed on its citizens that the U.S. self-righteously
denounces. As the world overwhelmingly has voted annually
at the United Nations for more than 20 years, the U.S. needs,
for its own sake, to rid itself of the failed embargo that has
become a shameful embarrassment to our nation in the eyes of
the world. It's time for us to stop being Cuba's bad neighbor.
Cuba 5i! Yanqi 5i!
This is where three retired senior citizens???Ken, a former
UGA professor; Bill, an Alabama district judge; and me, a secu
rities lawyer reveling in no longer having to
toil as one???step into this story. Having wished
for years to experience Cuba's famed fishing
(Ernest Hemingway wrote Otd Man and the Sea
in Havana) and to SCUBA dive on Cuba's almost
virgin coral reefs, we found our hopes didn't fit
into any of the restrictive itineraries of the few
cultural or religious groups allowed by the U.S.
State Department to conduct visits to Cuba.
Being too old and ornery to put up with such
injustice, we decided to create our own itiner
ary, as unfettered tourists. After engaging the
help of a Canadian travel agency, we found the
effort was not as hard as we thought it might
be, and we had an adventure of a lifetime.
Our journey begins in early December on a
Cubana Airlines flight from Cancun, Mexico to
Havana's Jose Marti Airport. After three colorful
and easy days in Havana, we conclude our visit,
somewhat ironically, at a spartan but pleasant
Soviet-era beach resort flying the American stars
and stripes in our honor???on the Bay of Pigs.
Since Cuba is deemed by the United States
government to be an "enemy" requiring eco
nomic sanctions under the Trading with the
Enemy Act of 1917, no American airline is
allowed to provide regularly scheduled flights to our small
neighbor lying just off the tip of Florida.
From sheer economic necessity, if for no other reason,
Cuba's communist government has encouraged tourism for
more than a decade. Tourists from all corners of the globe
except the United States enjoy Cuba. Americans who are not
of Cuban descent with family in Cuba are not allowed???not by
Cuba, but by our own federal government???to visit Cuba as
tourists. Presumably, independent travel to Cuba by Americans
just for the fun of it continues to be viewed by our politicians
as a serious threat to their political security.
A friendly and responsive Canadian travel agency handled
all the details. Our only responsibilities were to arrange our
The author with a Cuban friend.
The trade embargo means most cars in Cuba are more than 50 years old.
8 FLAGP0LE.C0M ??? JANUARY 23, 2013