¡Qué Vengan Los Yuma!

Last Thursday, the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a much anticipated hearing on the topic, "Is It Time to Lift the Ban on Travel to Cuba?" (see the full 3-hour webcast). While this is not a new subject for Cuba-watchers, there are a pair of bills currently winding their way through the Congress that seek to do just that. Current prospects for the change aren't good, however, what with the pro-embargo lobby donating generously to the Democratic members of Congress and with Nancy Pelosi saying essentially, "Yeah, but now ain't the time...".

However, those who favor the openning managed to bring together a new and quite forceful group of speakers, including activist and dissident Miriam Leiva (who addressed the gathering from the U.S. Interest Section in Cuba) and blogger Yoani Sanchez (who sent in her own powerful and typically literary statement). Coverage of Sanchez's participation from the Miami/Nuevo Herald is here and here, with a quick summary of parallel events in Cuba and on her blog here.

Phil Peters has covered this ground comprehensively on his own blog, The Cuban Triangle and, in fact, was an invited speaker at the hearing.

I leave you with an excerpt from the statement of La Flaca Indomable, "In the suitcases - A reflection on the necessary liberalization of Americans' travel to Cuba":

"Eliminating these long obsolete travel restrictions would mean the end of the main elements with which official propaganda has repeatedly satanized American Administrations, and the anachronistic travel permit that we Cubans need to enter and leave our country would be even more ridiculous. Of the phrase spoken by Pope John Paul II that January 1998 in the Plaza of the Revolution - 'Let Cuba open itself to the world, and let the world open itself to Cuba' - only the first part would remain to be accomplished..."

Vamos a Cuba! Well, Perhaps Not

You would think that in a "free" society, we would no longer have to worry about our government "protecting" us by banning books or restricting the free movement of its citizens.

You'd be wrong.

Today, McClatchy and the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from the Florida ACLU hoping to reverse a lower court's decision in February that upheld Miami-Dade officials' 2006 removal of the "objectionable" children's book, "Vamos a Cuba" (and its English language counterpart "A Visit to Cuba"), from the city's libraries.

Dear Mr. Obama - We've Seen This Movie Before...

In late February, 1996, as President Bill Clinton entered the last laps of a tough, though ultimately successful re-election campaign, he was confronted with a Cuban monkey wrench dropped directly into U.S. presidential politics.

Up to that point the Clinton administration had indicated its steadfast opposition to the Helms-Burton Act, which aimed at tightening the U.S. Embargo by adding third-country sanctions, strengthening the claims of Cuban-Americans for expropriated property, and transforming what had always been a presidential prerogative into a policy imbued with the force of law. In fact, the bill had been tabled a year earlier in 1995 when Helms faced an intractable Democratic filibuster.

All that changed on the morning of February 24 when Cuban fighter jets shot down two private planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. While his administration had initially - and correctly - opposed the bill on principle, Clinton quickly reversed course and signed the bill with great fanfare, unwilling to risk losing any Cuban-American votes in the exile-rich swing states of Florida and New Jersey. (See criticism of the Act from Global Exchange and the American Enterprise Institute - a rare case when these two ideological enemies were in strong agreement!)