TOURISM-CUBA: Ex-CIA Agent Creates On-Line Agency

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Feb 24 2000 (IPS) - A former member of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Philip Agee, has set up an Internet business promoting tourism to Cuba, with the aim of creating a small breach in the nearly four decades-old US trade embargo against the island.

Cubalinda.com opened its website Wednesday, after sending faxes the day before to foreign media accredited in Havana, promoting itself as the first 100 percent US-owned independent company doing business with Cuba since the blockade was put in place.

Some of you will be surprised to find me involved in an ambitious project promoting travel and tourism to Cuba, wrote Agee, the director and founder of the new company, in a letter addressed to potential clients.

The former CIA agent said he got the idea of an on-line travel agency while he was writing a new book on “the secret side of the Cold War”, and began to visit – as a customer – the virtual bookstore Amazon.com.

“One day in 1997, I was looking for some books on that website, and all of a sudden I thought why couldn’t someone” market trips to Cuba and everything that country has to offer like Amazon.com sells books?

In 1968 Agee left the CIA – the agency that Cuban authorities accuse of planning hundreds of unsuccessful attempts on President Fidel Castro’s life and of trying to subvert the political system in place since Cuba’s 1959 revolution.

After leaving the CIA, Agee became an outspoken critic of the agency and US foreign policy.

His book: “Inside the Company; CIA Diary” published in 1974 and printed in 20 languages, exposed undercover CIA agents and described the agency’s operations in various countries of Latin America.

“We are a commercial company, but we are in this project trying to respond to Pope John Paul’s call to help Cuba open its doors to the world and help the world open its doors to Cuba. The best way to answer that call is by visiting the island,” he said in a telephone interview.

Agee, who lives in Hamburg, Germany, added that he did not fear reprisals from the US Treasury Department, commenting that one more problem, added to so many over the years, would not make a difference.

Armando Tabío, the firm’s representative in Cuba, said Agee had not “sought authorisation from any government to set up his business” on the island, where the US government prohibits its citizens from investing or travelling with commercial aims.

Cubalinda.com is a trademark patented by Beveridge Consultants Limited, an international company registered in Nassau. It is also registered with the Cuban Chamber of Commerce. The new company’s partner on the island is the Cuban state tourism company Cubatur.

Tabío said he was confident in the project’s success, given the explosive growth of e-commerce.

“There will always be traditional travel agencies, but there is also a market of 130 million people or more on-line, who prefer to do their shopping there,” he said.

The agency offers a global interactive catalogue of what Cuba has to offer tourists, on the website Cubalinda.com, which is in English but will soon be available in Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese.

The webpage also offers options for those interested in visiting the island for purposes other than tourism.

“We are global, and our clients will come from any country,” said Tabío, who added that “tens of thousands of people come to Cuba from the United States every year, some with permission (from the US government) and others without.”

The interested tourist will be able to make all of the necessary reservations – air tickets, hotels, travel insurance, transport within Cuba, tours, excursions and other activities – by computer, said Tabío in the communique announcing the new business.

Once the reservations and other arrangements have been confirmed, the client pays the bills on-line by credit card, through high security mechanisms, and the receipts are sent to the customer’s own private file on the website.

For now, the agency offers “sun and beach,” snorkeling and scuba diving, sports fishing, golf and tennis. But in the future it plans to offer cycling, caving, horseback riding, medical treatments, educational courses, cultural events and nature tours.

“People who are interested select an activity, and Cubalinda.com, using maps, texts and images, shows them the places in Cuba where they can practice that activity,” said Tabío.

There are already around 15 websites promoting tourism to Cuba, but Cubalinda.com will be the first “100 percent American- owned,” said Agee.

“We hope to create a break in the blockade, and salvage US foreign policy from the hands of the terrorist mafia in Miami,” he said, echoing the Cuban government’s description of hard-line anti-Castro sectors of the Cuban exile community in that US city.

Tourism has become Cuba’s main foreign-exchange earner, even bypassing sugar, which for centuries was the Caribbean island nation’s top export.

Over one million people visited Cuba in 1997, two million are expected this year and – according to Agee – seven to 10 million should be visiting the island annually by the year 2010.