By Steve Piacente, Of The Post and Courier staff. Charleston.Net. Friday, November 26, 1999
WASHINGTON - Some 50,000 Americans travel to Cuba each year in violation of a long-standing U.S. travel embargo, according to the State Department.
Last October, 1st District Rep. Mark Sanford became one of them.
"I could have gone in an official capacity at the drop of a hat," Sanford, R-S.C., said Wednesday. "But that wouldn't have served my purposes."
So Sanford said he and a friend took a long weekend in October, flew to the Bahamas, then on to Cuba, where they stayed with a Havana family for $35 a night.
"I didn't tell anyone I was a congressman," he said.
Over the next two days, Sanford said he spoke with as many people as possible ("I can stumble through Spanish," he says), thanked his hosts, and returned home further convinced that U.S. policy toward Cuba has not worked.
Come January, Sanford said he plans to introduce a strikingly simple - yet potentially explosive - bill "to allow travel between the U.S. and Cuba."
Other lawmakers have tried to do away with the embargo, but have always been thwarted by anti-communist hard-liners.
Says Sanford, "We're not going to weaken (President Fidel) Castro's grip on power by keeping Americans from traveling there. If we want to create change in Cuba, let good, average American citizens interface with the Cubans."
A member of the House International Relations Committee, Sanford added, "Our citizens are the best ambassadors in the world."
Though nervous about his trip, Sanford was likely covered by a general license that permits certain categories of people, including government officials and journalists, to travel to Cuba, a State Department spokesman said.
His bill, meanwhile, has drawn support from ideological opposites such as New York Democrat Charlie Rangel and Iowa Republican Jim Leach. Sanford's biggest problem is that he needs lots more votes than the 23 co-sponsors now on board.
He is also expecting intense opposition from lawmakers such as Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., who represent Florida districts that are fiercely anti-Castro.
Cuba is an island nation smaller than Pennsylvania that sits 90 miles off the Florida coast. It has 11 million people and a per capita income of $1,540.
Besides his covert trip, Sanford has made one official visit.
"Unfortunately, what I saw was that both Cuba and our Cuba policy stand in disrepair," he said.
Relations between the United States and Castro's Cuba started near the boiling point, but have chilled considerably over the last 40 years.
After Castro came to power, expropriated United States properties and established what the State Department calls "a one-party Marxist Leninist system," the U.S. imposed an embargo that took effect in October 1960.
The most dangerous moments in the relationship - now the stuff of history books and TV biographies about President John F. Kennedy - came during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the October 1962 missile crisis.
Today, the goal of U.S. policy is to "promote a peaceful transition to a stable, democratic form of government and respect for human rights," according to the State Department.
The agency has extensive information about U.S.-Cuba relations on the Internet at www.state.gov/www/regions/wha/cuba/index.html.
Sanford insists the embargo has failed.
"To go to Cuba is to see the might of the American economy," he said after his official trip in 1997 with a group called the Human Rights Project. "By being blocked from (America), Cuba's economy has become frozen in time."
Sanford said he saw streets filled with 1958 Chevys and Fords and dilapidated buildings that were once "spectacular."
He also met Castro.
"He's still going strong," Sanford said. "He and (veteran Sen.) Strom Thurmond - even though they see the world very differently - are a lot alike."
Though impressed, Sanford said he didn't approve of the way Castro seized power and "I think he should go."
Sanford's legislation will win support from lawmakers who no longer see Castro as a threat, as well as those who believe the U.S. government should not be able to restrict travel by Americans, according to Ernest Preeg, a foreign policy expert at the Hudson Institute.
Dr. Anthony Kirkpatrick of the University of South Florida said support will also come from those who believe unrestricted travel will permit human rights monitors to move more freely about the country.
Opposition will come from those still concerned about Castro and a communist nation so close to the U.S. mainland.
It will also come from those skeptical of Sanford's basic argument, according to Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst Dan Fisk.
"There's this very seductive idea that if we let Americans go down there and interact with Cubans ... our precepts will rub off. Cuba will change," Fisk said. "It's one of those ideas that on an intuitive basis is very appealing."
However, Fisk said Cuba has not changed despite open travel with numerous other nations, including Canada.
The only difference between Americans and Canadians, Fisk said, is that Canadians dip french fries in vinegar and hold a deeper passion for ice hockey.
Fisk also warned of "cocoon tours," essentially controlled tourism that would not permit average Americans to interact freely with average Cubans.
"They're happy to fly people in, take them to some of the most beautiful beaches in the world ... You get tan, you get back on the bus," Fisk said. "How many Cubans do you interact with? Where's the instilling of American values?"
Sanford envisions Joe Six-Pack from Charleston or Des Moines doing just what he did last October - "stumbling around" and talking with anyone who's interested about issues, politics, and what's going on in America.
"Engagement with Cuba now will plant the seed for a democratic government following Castro's death," he said.
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