Cuba’s enemies are losing ground

New bipartisan bills in the U.S. Congress reject the “brutal restrictions” on travel to the island and are gaining more support
after 46 years of such laws

BY GABRIEL MOLINA

• CUBA’S enemies in the U.S. Congress are isolated, as even their former allies admit.

New winds are blowing through the Capitol, as a result of the scandals surrounding Tom LeLay and other Congress members, along with the war in Iraq and the effect of both situations on the November mid-term elections, and now in 2007, these events have propitiated the introduction of several bipartisan pieces of proposed legislation aimed at ending the restrictions on travel to Cuba in place for no less than 46 years.

The Cuba Working Group in the House of Representatives evidently could not forget how its colleagues used their dirty tricks to prevent the restoration of the right of the U.S. people to be able to travel to Cuba, a right that was approved three times, with bipartisan support and by a wide majority.

During the period of compromise between the Senate and House bills, Tom DeLay, then House Majority Leader, made it simply disappear at the urging of Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and brothers Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart. These Congress members belong to the group of followers of former Cuban dictator Fulgencia Batista, a troop that runs a section of the lobbying complex to bribe and corrupt officials in the U.S. legislative and executive branches. The case is like the tip of the iceberg of one of the system’s most serious problems.

William Delahunt and his colleague Jeff Flake presented a report to the House a few weeks ago demonstrating how the money allocated by the Bush Administration for overthrowing Fidel Castro’s government is merrily being squandered away under cover of “aid programs for diverse groups for facilitating a peaceful, democratic transition in Cuba.”

The report was drawn up by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of Congress, at the request of Delahunt, a Democrat who is the chair of the International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight Subcommittee, and Flake, who also sits on that committee. Both have stood out for advocating normalization of relations with Cuba as something that serves the real interests of the United States.

Flake and Delahunt said at the time that $74 million allocated for Cuban groups has flowed — according to the report — without any control or oversight, and has been spent on items like fur coats, for example.

Now, with the diminished influence of the corrupt group that bought so many anti-Cuba votes in the House, weakened first by DeLay’s forced resignation and then by the defeat of the warmongering extreme right in the recent elections, the new winds blowing are more propitious for righting this wrong, which is harmful both for Cuba and the United States.

On January 24, Congressmen Jeff Flake and Charles Rangel introduced one of the bills (H.R. 654) into the 110th Congress; William Delahunt and Ray Lahood presented H.R. 624, and Barbara Lee and James McGovern introduced the third (H.R. 177).

Introducing the bill on January 31, Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts and co-chair of the Cuba Working Group in the House, stated that it would allow his compatriots to not have to ask permission from their government to travel to Cuba and to take as much money as they want, and it would prevent the president from restricting those rights.

People from the United States have been impeded from visiting Cuba since former President Eisenhower tightened the net to strangle Cuba during the last moments of his mandate, in January 1961, declaring travel to the island invalid with the admitted purpose of affecting the island’s economy. There was a brief period of change during the last years of the Clinton Administration, when the president tried to influence the Cuban people by authorizing “people-to-people” contact.

Delahunt noted that Cuban-Americans were allowed to visit their families on the island until Bush prohibited that as well, in 2004, and reinvented the definition of what close family is, excluding aunts, uncles and cousins – “brutal restrictions,” the Congress member exclaimed.

He added that those restrictions are hurting family values, saying that “This bill is an effort to change an immoral policy. One that has caused incredible pain and suffering to our own citizens as well as Cubans. And tarnished our image in the world.”

Delahunt noted that Dan Fisk, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, who stated that if a Cuban-American’s father died within three years of his mother, he would have to choose which funeral he could attend, given he may only travel to Cuba once every three years: “It is stunning in its cruelty,” he said. He gave the example of Carlos Lazo, who won a Bronze Star medal in Iraq, but was not given U.S. permission to visit his sons in Cuba, despite that the fact that he had risked his life in Bush’s war. “That is heartless...,” he said, adding that his position was that people should be free to travel to Cuban whenever they wish.

Cuban-American Carlos Gutierrez, U.S. secretary of commerce, was quick to concretely oppose Delahunt’s proposed legislation and that of Republican LaHood, aimed primarily at lifting additional restrictions imposed in 2004 as a result of pressure from the group known in Cuba as the Miami mafia, to which Gutiérrez belongs. The gangsters demanded new anti-Cuba measures from Bush, and once they got them, they placed their entire mafioso election machinery at the disposal of the president and fellow Republicans, in an alliance with the corrupt House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who recently resigned from Congress after his tricks were uncovered.

The financial wing of the gang, the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, contributed $606,924 to the campaigns of some 100 mostly Republican candidates this past November, more than twice the number in 2004, but was not able to prevent their setback.

The proposed legislation H.R. 654 was signed by Flake and Rangel under the title “To Permit Travel between the United States and Cuba.” The former, an Arizona Republican, is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, to which the bill was sent. Rangel, a New York Democrat, is chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. In previous years, he drafted a number of proposed initiatives for lifting the blockade; however, this time, he said he is prioritizing bills that are closer to achieving his objectives, such as the one on travel. Similar bills were approved in previous sessions of Congress, but were unsuccessful.

Flake, who recently traveled to Havana with Delahunt and eight other Congress members, said “For nearly fifty years our current Cuba policy has done little to bring democracy to Cuba. A new approach is long overdue.” The congress member justified his position by saying that facilitating trade and travel with Cuba is the best way to “hasten democratic reform.”

Delahunt had said: “This bill is about our Cuba policy. A policy that I believe has been a total failure. A policy that has reduced American influence on the island to almost nothing as dramatic changes are occurring.”

Lee and McGovern also defend the right to travel to Cuba, and their proposed legislation, like similar bills, is co-sponsored by six Congress members, including McDermont, Ramstad, Snyder, Moran and Emerson.

In general terms, the different bills establish that the president should not regulate or directly or indirectly prohibit travel to Cuba by U.S. citizens or legal residents. They expressly refer to getting rid of current regulations that authorize or prohibit this travel and regulations that affect transactions to carry out such travel. Likewise, they say that current actions underway by the president to punish those who travel should be halted, even with respect to travel carried out before the legislation is passed. They aim at rendering ineffective other related laws, such as the one limiting the number of trips to the island by Cuban-Americans and the amount of money they can spend while in Cuba.

Despite Bush’s commitments to the extreme right, the current composition of Congress is a principal factor in the possibilities of success for these bills on travel to Cuba being passed. Nevertheless, the iron-clad opposition of Bush, who is threatening to veto these bills despite majority opposition, could lead to them being sent back to Congress, where they would require two-thirds of the vote to override the presidential veto.

This political will for change is based on important forces that see the normalization of relations with Cuba as being in the real interest of the United States. Kirby Jones, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, which represents powerful corporations such as Cargill Inc. and Caterpillar Inc., affirms that to be so.

The USA Rice Federation, based in Arlington, Virginia, opposes the Treasury Department regulations requiring Cuba to make up-front payments for U.S. goods, which hinders such sales. Carol Guthrie, the organization’s spokeswoman, said that Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, would propose the annulment of those regulations.

A particular sign of the prevailing climate is the tone of articles published in major newspapers in the country’s largest cities.

An unusual article published on January 13 in The Wall Street Journal, for example, noted how 20 Miami-based groups that are enemies of the Cuban Revolution — including the Cuban American National Foundation — were calling on Bush in an open letter to end the restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. Advocates of the current policy, above all the three intransigent Congress members (Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the Díaz-Balart brothers) are increasingly isolated, the article said.

In effect, these groups took their distance from the gang of recalcitrant henchmen of the former Fulgencio Batista, always favored by Washington, but now they are almost exclusively supported by the Bush family and its inner circle.

The article added that it would not be difficult to get rid of the travel restrictions, but that the new Congress should eliminate the Helms-Burton Act, to give flexibility to the president. Of course, in proposing to do away with the extreme aspects of that law, the “moderate” groups are proposing other conditions that allow them to be included.

An article titled “Fidel’s Final Victory,” published in December in Foreign Affairs magazine, demonstrated how opinions on Cuba policy have evolved in the last few years. In a long and detailed analysis, author Julia E. Sweig noted, “Cubans have not revolted, and their national identity remains tied to the defense of the homeland against U.S. attacks on its sovereignty.”

The Latin America Working Group, for its part, called on the U.S. people to help by urging their respective Congress members to change U.S. policy on Cuba, supporting those who sponsored H.R. Bill 654 — which they advocate, because it involves family and educational travel — with the goal of obtaining 100 co-sponsors by March.

In Havana, Ricardo Alarcón, president of the National Assembly, said in a speech that the current policy will doubtless endure for some time, as long as “this gentleman (Bush), who stole the presidency, is present.”

The way things are going, many Congress members on the other side of the Atlantic who hold hard-line views on Cuba could be left hanging in thin air before 2007 is over. •

RECUADRO

National organizations urging Congress

• DURING the first days of this year, 12 national organizations in the United Sates sent letters to Congress members Max Baucus and Charles Rangel, urging them to change the policy of isolating Cuba maintained by Washington for more than 45 years, and proposing new commitments in the areas of travel and trade with the island.

The letters are signed by Sarah Stephens, director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas; Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute; Steven Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program, New America Foundation; John McAuliff, director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development; Mavis Anderson, senior associate, Latin America Working Group; Geoff Thale, director of the Washington Office on Latin America Program; Kirby Jones, president of Alamar Associates; Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of Puentes Cubanos; Alvaro Fernandez, president of the Cuban-American Commission for Family Rights; Ruben Rumbaut, Ph.D. of the Steering Committee for the Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists (ENCASA); Wayne Smith, director of the Cuba Program at the Center for International Policy; and Lissa Weismann, director of the National Summit on Cuba, World Policy Institute, The New School.