By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Mar 23 2004 (IPS)

The United States seems to have opted for open confrontation with Cuba on all fronts, even to the detriment of the ”people-to-people” contacts allowed by U.S. law and promoted since the 1990s.

”Neither the organisers of these concerts nor I could imagine that an election year in the United States could hurt these contacts to such an extent,” said Cuban singer-songwriter Carlos Varela, who was recently denied a visa by Washington.

Varela, one of the best-known exponents of Cuba’s Nueva Trova or ‘New Song’ movement, was planning his second U.S. tour this month. In Miami alone, nearly all of the 1,700 tickets for his show had already been sold.

”Any decision that keeps Cuban artists from travelling to that country will only separate the people of the two nations, the two cultures,” said Varela, who has written songs seen as critical of the socialist government of Fidel Castro.

The U.S. State Department provided no explanation for refusing Varela a visa.

But sources in the Cuban exile community in Miami, Florida criticised Varela for performing in ”the Venezuela of President Hugo Chávez” – a populist, left-leaning leader who is anathema to the right-wing Cuban exiles in the United States and the administration of President George W. Bush.

The votes of the Cuban exile community in Miami are seen as crucial to winning the state of Florida in the November elections, in which Bush is running for a second term.

The long list of Cuban artists turned down for visas by the United States in the past few months has included musicians nominated for Latin Grammy as well as Grammy music awards, filmmaker Fernando Pérez, and Protestant pastor Raúl Suárez.

Last year, the fact that a group of Cuban intellectuals was unable to participate in the annual congress of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) in the United States gave rise to a heated debate.

”They are acting ‘by the book’, trying to strictly apply every aspect of the economic sanctions that have been in effect for decades,” said a political analyst in Havana, referring to the trade embargo put in place by the United States 42 years ago.

The analyst, who preferred not to be identified by IPS, works in an academic institution in Havana, and her area of specialisation is U.S. affairs.

Along those lines, Washington announced measures against several companies that have helped arrange visits to Cuba by U.S. tourists, and against U.S.-registered vessels that enter Cuban ports.

A year after the arrest of 75 Cuban dissidents who were given lengthy prison sentences, the Bush administration announced that anyone who took part in the trials against the dissidents would be refused a U.S. visa.

”In his determination to win the votes of the Cuban community in southern Florida, Bush is abandoning ‘track II’ of the Cuban Democracy Act, and is even violating the U.S. constitution,” said the analyst.

That U.S. law, sponsored by Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli, tightened the U.S. embargo in 1992.

But track II of the Torricelli Act is aimed at promoting a peaceful transition in Cuba towards ”a free society” through people-to-people contacts, including the exchange of informational material, academic conferences, and greater comprehension between the two nations at the cultural and individual levels.

The idea was to increase the free flow of information to Cuba and to ”build bridges” between the two countries, to promote the growth of a ”pro-democracy” civil society in this socialist Caribbean island nation, in line with Washington’s interests.

But observers say that instead of helping destabilise the Cuban government, the people-to-people contacts have favoured the growing anti-embargo trend in the United States.

The cultural exchanges grew to the point that hundreds of U.S. artists took part in the last few jazz festivals in Havana and in Cuba’s biennial art fair.

The average number of U.S. nationals visiting Cuba every year has climbed to between 160,000 and 180,000, a large number of whom travel without the necessary permission from Washington, according to estimates by the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

Events in Cuba that have drawn U.S. participants in the past few years include bi-national conferences on medicine, biotechnology, the environment, philosophy, history and culture.

But this month, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control denied permission for a group of around 70 doctors, professors of medicine, and scientific researchers to travel to Cuba.

”This is a violation of academic freedom, of our right as citizens to travel, and it also undermines science in the United States and around the world,” complained Stuart Younger, chair of the Department of Bio-ethics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, in the state of Ohio.

The group was to participate in the Fourth International Symposium on Coma and Death, in Havana. But in Washington’s view, such initiatives merely contribute to bringing badly needed foreign exchange into the Cuban government coffers, and thus to strengthening the government.

Earlier, Washington had banned the publication in the United States of scientific articles from Iran, Libya, Sudan and Cuba, on the grounds that it violated the embargos against those countries.

Any infraction of the ban is punishable by fines of up to 50,000 dollars or 10 years in prison.

”This is a sign of the Bush administration’s political blindness” towards Cuba, said the president of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, Ismael Clark, issuing a statement to protest the U.S. measure.

It is ”comparable to the burning of books by fascist regimes,” said Clark, who defended ”the free flow of ideas and knowledge between scientists and academics around the world.”

Democratic President John F. Kennedy (1961-1963) decreed the trade embargo against Cuba on Feb. 3, 1962. On Mar. 12, 1996, Democratic President Bill Clinton (1993-2001) stiffened the blockade when he signed into law the Helms-Burton Act, named for its authors, senators Jesse Helms and Dan Burton.

Helms-Burton provides for sanctions for third party countries that do business with Cuba involving assets that were nationalised by the socialist government since the 1959 revolution.

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