Economy & Trade, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

CUBA-US: Tour Operators to Defy Bush

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 14 2003 (IPS) - Tour operators from the United States and Cuba will meet with Cuban officials this week in Mexico to discuss the Caribbean island nation’s travel industry potential, in defiance of Washington’s plans to tighten the ban prohibiting U.S. citizens from visiting Cuba.

Cuban Tourism Minister Ibrahim Ferradaz and U.S. lawmakers will also attend the Oct. 16-18 U.S.-Cuba Travel Conference in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

The meeting is being held despite the new measures announced late last week by U.S. President George W. Bush, who pledged to stiffen the four-decade-old economic embargo against Cuba, including the travel ban for U.S. nationals.

”A broad delegation will travel to Cancun to attend the meeting,” a source with the Cuban Tourism Ministry confirmed to IPS Monday.

The Association of Travel Related Industry Professionals (ATRIP) is organising the meeting, which is co-sponsored by U.S. tour operators and travel associations like ABC Charters, MarAzul Charters Inc., Cuba Travel Services, USA*Engage, the National Foreign Trade Council, Alamar Associates, the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association, and the Cuban American Alliance.

ATRIP was created in June to give a voice to travel industry professionals ”who support the Constitutional right to freedom of travel for all Americans.”

The new association is spearheading the lobbying efforts to make it possible for U.S. citizens to travel freely to Cuba. The embargo includes a clause that makes it illegal for U.S. nationals to spend money in the socialist island nation – a de facto travel ban.

U.S. citizens wishing to visit Cuba must attain a special permit from the U.S. government, or face a possible fine.

Since Bush took office, over 1,200 U.S. citizens have received threatening letters from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) for travelling to Cuba. OFAC may impose fines of up to 55,000 dollars for spending money in Cuba without a licence.

Nevertheless, some 200,000 U.S. citizens visited Cuba in 2000, including around 160,000 who did so legally under licences issued by OFAC and an estimated 40,000 who did so without permission from the government, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Centre for International Policy.

ATRIP argues that lifting the travel ban could generate up to 1.6 billion dollars in additional revenue for the U.S. economy, and lead to the creation of 23,000 new jobs. In also estimates that ”as many as 2.8 million Americans would visit Cuba annually.”

Cuba’s National Statistics Office reported that in 2001, nearly 79,000 people visited from the United States – a figure that does not take into account the tens of thousands of U.S. citizens who evade the restrictions by flying to Cuba from third countries.

But on Oct. 10, Bush promised to ”target those who travel to Cuba illegally through third countries, and those who sail to Cuba on private vessels in violation of the embargo.”

As part of the government’s efforts to more tightly enforce the restrictions on travel to Cuba, the president also said inspections of travellers and shipments to and from Cuba would be increased.

A communique issued by the Cuban Foreign Ministry accused Bush of ”further deteriorating” relations between Cuba and the United States.

The president already warned lawmakers last month that he would veto any attempt by Congress to ease the embargo against Cuba.

Nevertheless, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would loosen the travel ban.

The meeting in Cancun has the support of congressional leaders in both the Senate and House Cuba Working Groups, who are in favour of easing the travel ban to Cuba, including Democrats like Senator Max Baucus from Montana, Representative William Delahunt of Massachusetts, and Representative Sam Farr of California, as well as Republican representatives Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, and Jeff Flake of Arizona.

The event will include conferences, workshops and panel discussions on Cuba’s tourist attractions and travel industry potential, practical questions on how to prepare for doing business in Cuba, the experiences of companies already doing travel business with Cuba, and the prospects for changes in U.S. legislation.

Participants will also have the opportunity to meet informally with Cuban officials.

On Sunday, the U.S. participants are invited to an ”all expenses paid” tour of Havana, provided by the Cuban government’s Havanatur agency.

The invitation extended by the Tourism Ministry will enable the U.S. participants to get around the ban on spending money in Cuba, the vice-director of Havanatur, Antonio Díaz, told reporters in Havana.

Ferradaz will travel to Cancun with a group of around 20 executives of Cuban and joint venture hotel chains and tourism companies, Foreign and Transport ministry officials, and travel specialists.

Last Friday, Bush also announced the creation of a Commission for the Assistance to a Free Cuba, to be headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell and Housing Secretary Mel Martínez, a Cuban-American.

The commission is being set up ”to plan for Cuba’s transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society (and) to identify ways to hasten the arrival of that day”, according to Bush.

The Cuban Foreign Ministry said the new measures reveal ”the U.S. government’s unlimited commitment to the extreme-right Cuban-American sectors” opposed to Cuban President Fidel Castro.

The Cuban exile community, which is mainly based in the U.S. state of Florida, ”will continue to exercise electoral blackmail, demanding further action against Cuba,” said the Foreign Ministry, alluding to the importance of winning over the large Cuban-American voting bloc in the 2004 U.S. presidential elections.

”We would not be surprised if new aggressions are planned against our country as we approach November 2004,” when the elections will be held, the statement added.

Four U.S. legislators visited Havana in the past month. Several of them met with Castro.

Democratic Senator from Indiana Evan Bayh told a news briefing on Oct. 8, shortly before leaving Havana, that ”I believe increased economic interaction is the best way to promote positive change. An absence of economic interaction has been tried for 40 years without success.”

Cuba, meanwhile, has continued to purchase food from U.S. companies, authorised by a 2000 bill that permitted direct sales of food and medicine to Cuba by U.S. producers for the first time in over four decades, but strictly on a cash basis.

Experts say that by the end of the year, Cuba will have imported a total of 500 million dollars worth of food from the United States.