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This is how you bring down
Fidel Castro?
Carl Hiaasen. Posted on
Sun, Jul. 04, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
Just when you thought that U.S. policy
toward Cuba couldn't get any dumber, along
comes President Bush with another grandstanding
stunt that is doomed to backfire.
To punish Fidel Castro, the U.S. Treasury
Department last week rolled out new rules
sharply curtailing travel to Cuba by exiles
living in the United States.
This would be the same crackerjack Treasury
Department that admitted having six times
as many agents pursuing violators of the
Cuban embargo than it does tracking the
finances of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.
Under the new controls, Cuban Americans
will only be allowed to visit immediate
relatives on the island every three years,
instead of annually, and will be permitted
to stay only two weeks. Exiles going to
Cuba will be restricted to spending $50
daily, instead of the previous limit of
$167.
In addition, the Bush administration is
reducing the cash remittances sent by exiles
to their Cuban relatives. The annual $1,200
allowance may now go only to immediate family
members -- not cousins, aunts or uncles.
The theory behind the new policy is to
starve the Castro regime of precious income
and thereby hasten its downfall. Seriously.
That's the White House line -- the same
one we've heard for more than 40 years.
The immediate effect of the travel crackdown
is to provide Fidel with one more hardship
he can blame on the United States, and you
can hear him booming all the way from Havana.
In Miami, you can hear weeping.
Last week, hundreds of Cuban Americans
scrambled to get on charter flights for
one last visit to see grandparents and other
relatives who might not be around three
years from now.
On Tuesday, 11 of 16 flights from Miami
to Cuba took off empty because the State
Department had given the operators strict
instructions only to pick up exiles who
were already on the island -- not to take
others who wanted to visit.
At the airport, there were tears and anger
and disbelief.
This is how you bring down Castro? By putting
up a wall between Cuban Americans and their
loved ones 90 miles away?
For the rest of us, it's almost impossible
to conceive a circumstance in which our
own government would so aggressively endeavor
to fragment families.
Imagine being told you had to wait three
years to go see an ailing parent or grandparent
who lived in Ireland or Germany or even
communist China. U.S. authorities would
never stand in your way -- unless the country
was Cuba.
The futility of Bush's strategy is drearily
obvious. But the cruelty and pure coldheartedness
of it is astonishing -- particularly from
a president who so piously claims to be
''pro-family,'' a president who describes
himself as a ``compassionate conservative.''
There's not a trace of compassion in the
new Cuban policy, which is merely a shameless
election-year grab for conservative Hispanic
votes in South Florida.
The issue of travel to Cuba has always
been controversial in the exile community.
Thousands of Cuban Americans visit the island
every year, and not all of them go just
to see relatives.
Hardliners say that you can't claim to
be a true political exile and still take
family vacations to the country you fled.
They also object to the spending of U.S.
cash, which they say has bolstered the anemic
Cuban economy and helped keep Castro in
power.
That Cuba has benefited immensely from
exile visits and American tourism is indisputable
-- an estimated $200 million a year. No
less of a windfall, however, is the untrackable
gush of money sent from Cuban Americans
here to relatives struggling on the island.
A great irony of Castro's failed revolution
is that Cuba, for all intents and purposes,
now runs on imported U.S. dollars. Yet President
Bush doesn't dare outlaw all remittances
from exiles to family members, for it would
create a monumental uproar in Miami.
And understandably so. If you had a mother
or father living abroad who needed cash,
you'd make sure they got it -- and politics
be damned.
The theory that Castro will topple from
power if we strangle him economically is
as moldy as it is discredited. The United
States has been trying to strangle him since
1961 with an embargo that stands today as
the worst foreign policy flop in the Western
Hemisphere.
Thanks to us, Castro will never be overthrown.
He'll die in power, from a heart attack
or some old man's disease.
In the meantime, he is on the verge of
outlasting the 10th U.S. president to have
predicted his demise.
Throughout the embargo and all the trumpeted
sanctions, Castro's lifestyle hasn't suffered
at all. The people of Cuba certainly have,
and now they get to suffer even more, thanks
to George W. Bush.
This time it's emotional deprivation, not
economic. This time it's heartbreak, not
hunger.
Because we're going to ''punish'' Fidel
by keeping separated Cuban families apart,
reaping sorrow in Florida as well as in
Havana.
The punitive new rules sit just fine with
hardline Cuban-American politicians and
most older exiles, who tend to vote Republican
in large numbers.
However, many middle-aged and younger Cuban
Americans deeply resent being told when
they can travel to Cuba, whom they can visit,
how long they can stay and how much they
can spend. These exiles vote, too, though
the president had better hope that they
don't.
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