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House Votes to Overturn Bush Rules on Cuba

By ALAN FRAM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON, 8 - The House dealt an election-season setback to President Bush on Wednesday by voting to overturn restrictions his administration has issued on the gift parcels that Americans can send to family members in Cuba.

The 221-194 vote was won by a coalition in which Democrats were joined by nearly four dozen farm-state and free-trade Republicans to rebuff the president. The vote came just four months from an Election Day in which Bush would like to once again win Florida, the pivotal state in his 2000 victory, by gaining the support of that state's Cuban-Americans.

The House vote followed a familiar pattern of recent years in which the Republican-run House - and sometimes the Senate - has voted to block Bush policies restricting trade and travel with Cuba, which communist leader Fidel Castro has now run for more than four decades. Last year, both chambers voted to end curbs on travel to Cuba by Americans, only to see lawmakers back away after Bush issued a veto threat.

Wednesday's debate was an emotional one, as the debates over Cuba policy often are.

"It's hard to think of an economic sanction that does more harm to the welfare of families in Cuba, or does more to make the U.S. seem mean-spirited toward families who already have the misfortune to live under communism," said Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., one of the sponsors.

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla., a Cuban-American, said the proposal was "dishonest" and "condescending," adding, "It seeks to undermine an entire policy President Bush has just implemented ... to hasten the Democratic transition in Cuba."

The new Commerce Department rules, which took effect July 1, bar people from shipping items including clothing, seeds, veterinary medicine and soap-making ingredients to Cubans.

No items at all can be shipped to relatives who are not parents, grandchildren, spouses or other immediate relatives. And nonfood gifts cannot be shipped more than monthly to each household of relatives - down from the current limit of once a month per individual relative.

The administration and its supporters have said the restrictions are aimed at weakening Castro. They say the Cuban government seizes the packages and demands money from families before the parcels are delivered - payments they say garner Castro millions of dollars annually.

Opponents say the rules - like others limiting trade and travel - will do little to hinder Castro. They have also accused Bush of politically motivated restrictions aimed at courting Florida's Cuban-American voters.

The amendment was offered to a $39.8 billion measure financing the departments of Commerce, Justice and State next year. The Senate has yet to write its version of the bill.

Church Groups Lead Annual Relief to Cuba

By LYNN BREZOSKY, Associated Press Writer. Wed Jul 7.

HIDALGO, Texas - School buses and other vehicles loaded with medical and office equipment crossed the border into Mexico on Wednesday on a relief trip to Cuba that violates the U.S. embargo.

It was the 14th straight year that Pastors for Peace, an American humanitarian aid group, has sought to bring supplies to the impoverished Communist nation despite the embargo.

"It's a policy that has no redeeming value," said the Rev. Lucias Walker, a New Jersey pastor who founded Pastors for Peace. "What we're doing is an act of civil obedience to a higher power that says you should love your neighbor."

Border officials did not try and stop the nine buses, a truck and several minivans loaded with donations. The equipment was gathered by churches and other groups from 127 U.S. cities.

In fact, customs agents and Hidalgo police blocked border traffic to allow the caravan to cross.

However, they did hand out fliers warning that only three of the group were authorized to travel on to Cuba and the rest were subject to prosecution leading to jail time or fines if they tried to travel to the island.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Rick Pauza said the group was given a license to pass through customs into Mexico because of the type of equipment they were bringing.

Molly Millerwise, spokeswoman for the Office of Foreign Assets Control, which regulates U.S. travel in Cuba, declined to comment on whether the office would prosecute the group or its members.

She defended the administration's support of a trade embargo, however.

"The continuing crackdown measures are meant to help hasten the day to a free Cuba," Millerwise said.

The U.S. embargo with Cuba is now in its fourth decade. Last week, President Bush imposed more stringent restrictions on U.S. travel to visit family there, arguing that U.S. dollars only bolster the Communist government led by Fidel Castro.

The group's inaugural "Friendship Caravan" in 1992 drew attention when news cameras filmed federal border officials trying to wrest a load of Bibles from a Catholic priest.

In recent years, however, the caravans have passed through the border without much incident.

Powell prescribes Cuba travel waiver for U.S. medical students

By DeWayne Wickham. USA TODAY, Wed Jul 7.

Just as the lingering Cold War freeze that hangs over relations between Cuba and the United States is reaching a new low, Secretary of State Colin Powell has warmed things up a bit.

Days before tighter restrictions on travel to Cuba went into effect last week, Powell quietly agreed to tweak the new rules to allow a small group of U.S. students attending medical school on the island to continue to do so.

Nearly 80 U.S. students - mostly black and Hispanic - are enrolled in Cuba's Latin American Medical School. Located on the outskirts of Havana on the campus of the country's old naval academy, it has more than 3,000 students from Africa, Central and South America, plus the U.S. contingent.

The Cuban government, which has offered to provide a free medical-school education annually for up to 500 students from disadvantaged communities in this country, pays the full cost of tuition, housing and meals for the U.S. students. Under the old travel restrictions, these students were exempted from the Cuba travel ban because their stay was funded by the Cuban government - not payments from this country. But under the new rules, this "fully hosted" category expires on Aug. 1.

The students are attending school in Cuba "because our constituents could not - and still cannot - afford the high cost of medical education in the United States," 28 black and Hispanic members of Congress said in a letter to Powell late last month. They asked him to ensure that the students "be permitted to continue their studies uninterrupted."

That's exactly what Powell has done. After reading their missive, he scribbled on the letter: "We ought to find a way to fix this," according to a State Department spokesman. A special education-travel license is being hurriedly written to ensure that current and future students can take advantage of this offer, the spokesman said. "Our goal is to get the regulation change out on the street by July 15."

For that, Powell deserves some thanks. In the past, I've taken him to task for the bad acts I thought he committed. Now I owe him a few words of praise for doing the right thing in this case.

Ideally, Powell should have left the old fully hosted travel category in place. But the compromise that he approved fixes an immediate problem.

"He did the right thing," said Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., who wrote the letter to the secretary of State. "This case was very compelling. Students should not be penalized by election-year politics."

Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., said: "Clearly the whole Cuban policy is based on Miami politics. Powell is taking something of a chance of offending the Miami crowd, but he is doing what is in the best interest of most Americans."

Under the old rules, Cuban-Americans could return to the island once a year and take as much as $3,000 to aid family members. The new rules limit them to one visit every three years - and just $300 to give to relatives on the island.

The Bush administration's decision to tighten the screws on those who want to travel to Cuba panders to those politically active conservative Cuban-Americans who helped him win in Florida in 2000 - and who want to end Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s 45-year regime at any cost.

Powell ultimately will have to shoulder some of the blame for the Bush administration's Cuba policies.

But for now he deserves to be lauded for not allowing U.S. medical school students in Cuba to become the collateral damage of those bad ideas.

Crude Near Cuba

By Brian Gorman. Motley Fool, July 7, 2004.

Spanish oil and gas company Repsol YPF is currently facing a big risk, but it's a gamble a lot of American companies would gladly take.

A New York Times article yesterday explained that the firm is now drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba. Repsol is sinking $200,000 a day into the venture, which it launched in partnership with the Cuban government. The chances for success are slim, so for the energy concern, discovery of large energy reserves would be a major coup. But a major find would be an even bigger victory for cash-strapped Fidel Castro (news - web sites), which is perhaps precisely why U.S. companies are prohibited from exploring in Cuba.

Not that American corporations are not interested in the communist island nation. Halliburton has expressed its support for lifting the long-held sanctions that block most U.S. firms from doing business with Cuba. Despite the White House's supposed ties to the company through Vice President Dick Cheney, so far the administration has only tightened restrictions.

One wonders, though, whether this policy makes sense. No one wants to coddle dictators, but the track record of economic sanctions has not been stellar. Sanctions failed to change leadership in Iraq (news - web sites), and Castro continues to maintain a firm grip on Cuba, while the populace in each of these countries has suffered from lack of trade.

Meanwhile, the United States has re-opened relations with Libya, providing an opportunity for ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP - News), Marathon Oil, Amerada Hess, and Occidental Petroleum, among others. The thaw resulted in part from Muammar Qaddafi's change of heart on weapons of mass destruction. Nevertheless, Qaddafi is hardly completely "reformed" -- the Libyan leader remains a dictator with a poor human-rights record. At the very least, though, by re-establishing relations, the United States stands a chance of helping to lift the living standards of the Libyan people.

The record of oil discoveries in Cuba is mixed. Petrobras tried and failed to find petroleum, while Canadian firm Sherritt International has had some success extracting low-quality crude. But the reality is that companies cannot afford to leave any stone unturned in their quest for new energy reserves. Unfortunately, though, this particular stone is off-limits to U.S. outfits, a fact that could redound to Repsol's benefit.

What's your opinion? Should we allow U.S. companies to drill for oil off Cuba? Discuss the Oil and Gas industry with other Fools.

Fool contributor Brian Gorman is a freelance writer living in Chicago, Ill. He does not own shares of any companies mentioned here.

Americans Still Traveling to Cuba

By VANESSA ARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer

HAVANA, July 6 (AP) - Many tourists in Havana pay tribute to Ernest Hemingway by drinking a frozen daiquiri alongside the life-size bronze statue of the late author at El Floridita restaurant, his onetime watering hole.

But few of them used to drink with the man himself at the restaurant's bar, like Lee Minor, a 90-year-old resident of Fort Myers, Fla.

"We had drinks together at the bar," said Minor, who spent much of the 1940s and 1950s traveling to Cuba as president of an American electrical company operating here. "He enjoyed friends, enjoyed knowing people."

Decades later, Minor returned to the island with his 60-year-old son for a tour of "Hemingway's Cuba" with a group of American Hemingway fans.

The travelers are among just a sprinkling of American groups still coming to Cuba after tough new U.S. restrictions against travel to the island took effect June 30.

Organizers of the group said the travelers came to Cuba, via Mexico, on a humanitarian license. They brought bags of clothing, medicine and school supplies to give to Cubans they meet on their weeklong trip, which ends Sunday.

Other groups come in direct defiance of the U.S. measures. Brigada Venceremos, a group of American activists, arrived via Canada earlier this week to the eastern city of Santiago, telling reporters they came in solidarity with Cubans and in protest of U.S. policy against the communist-run island.

The new U.S. rules are meant to squeeze the island's economy and push out President Fidel Castro by cutting the amount of cash coming in from the United States and limiting visits to Cuba by cultural and academic groups, as well as Cuban-Americans.

On Tuesday, the Hemingway group visited the rambling hacienda of Finca Vigia just east of Havana where the author lived from 1939 to 1960, a year before he committed suicide in Ketchum, Idaho.

They toured the inside of Hemingway's home, preserved much as he left it and filled with thousands of books by authors including Fyodor Dostoyevsky, J.D. Salinger and himself. Posters of Spanish bullfights and stuffed animal heads cover the walls, and a leopard animal skin stretches across a wide couch in front of Hemingway's massive mahogany desk.

Anti-dandruff rinse still sits next to the sink in the bathroom, where Hemingway penciled in his weight - which dropped from about 240 pounds to 190 over five years - on the wall next to the scale.

The group stopped to listen to a group of Cuban men in their 70s who recounted tales of playing baseball as children on Hemingway's hacienda. They were allowed to run all around the grounds and eat as much fruit as they wanted.

The neighborhood boys played alongside Hemingway's children, and were eventually given uniforms by the author, who served as the team's pitcher. The children also often piled in Hemingway's car to go to a baseball field next to the hunting club he frequented.

"We were just poor kids, but he never discriminated against us," said 74-year-old Oscar Blas Fernandez, who was 10 when he first met Hemingway. "We never asked for anything, he just gave to us spontaneously. He treated us like his own children."

Indeed, "he was like a second father to all of us," said Jose Rodriguez, 76, another of the former baseball players.

The Americans said they loved experiencing such living history.

"If we don't talk to them now, we'll lose their stories," said Myron Lubin, 64, of Phoenix.

"It's about Hemingway the man, not Hemingway the writer," said David Martens, of Anacortes, Wash. "It's about the humanitarian side of Hemingway, and his connection with the Cuban community."

The group also met Hemingway's former cook, Alberto "Fico" Ramos, and planned to visit the seaside fishing village of Cojimar, where Hemingway docked the Pilar, his 40-foot fishing boat.

Ex-Olympic Wrestler Charged in Fla. Crash

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. 7 (AP) - A former Olympic wrestler who defected from Cuba in 1997 was charged Wednesday with committing airport violence by crashing his sport utility vehicle into a terminal at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

Alexis Vila Perdoma was charged after the FBI concluded he intentionally drove through two plate-glass doors at 45 mph and slammed through a Southeast Airlines ticket counter on Sunday.

Vila, 33, suffered minor scrapes. No one else was injured, even though several people were near the doors.

He was turned over to federal agents Wednesday, and an initial court appearance was set for Thursday. Vila faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted on the federal charge. It could not be determined if he has an attorney.

Vila, of Williamston, Mich., was involuntarily committed for a psychiatric evaluation after he was subdued by an air marshal and police.

A three-page FBI affidavit offered no motive. Investigators found no skid marks where the SUV jumped the curb, crossed the sidewalk and crashed through the terminal until stopped by a wall.

Arriving fights were rerouted to other terminals, and outbound passengers were directed to a different security checkpoint.

At the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, Vila won the bronze medal for Cuba in the 105.5-pound division. He defected after winning a gold medal at the 1997 Pan American Games in Puerto Rico.

Self-mutilation

By William F. Buckley Jr. Tue Jul 6.

In the general political commotion centering on John Edwards (news - web sites), the Fourth of July and Fallujah, attention strays from matters Cuban, except when a cigar is being probed. Well, what's been going on is one of those Fidel Castro extravaganzas in Havana in which he vows eternal hostility to anything that threatens his dictatorship or loosens the shackles of the dystopia he has presided over longer than Hitler and Stalin combined.

One important irritant is the ruling by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). It has ordained that Cuban-Americans may not visit their families in Cuba more often than once every three years, that they may not spend more than $50 per day, that they may not stay in Cuba for more than two weeks (this is Uncle Sam talking, not Fidel Castro), and that contributions to Cuban family members must be limited to $1,200 per household per year.

Nobody who keeps political tallies will deny that these initiatives are politically based. This conclusion derives from a general knowledge of the impotence of boycotts, and a particular knowledge of Castro's indomitability. So the pinpricks are not going to derail Castro; will they deliver Florida to Bush? That, of course, is the idea. If it's anti-Castro, the Cuban-American community is for it, right?

But not all Cuban-Americans will cheer. For one thing, the law is designed to prevent them from doing what some of them would otherwise do. Regulations of the kind promulgated by OFAC have no effect on people who do not plan to visit Cuba or to send money for Cuban relief. It can be held that the measures affect everyone concerned with a free Cuba -- if it could be established in which way they would tilt the Castro scene. If they weakened him, the world would benefit. If they strengthened him, then we would have bad politics bringing on bad days.

Some Cuban-Americans, who no longer have family ties to Cuba (Castro took power 45 years ago), have expressed resentment of those who feel free to travel to Havana. There are Cuban-Americans who believe that any traffic of any kind with Castro weakens the solidarity of U.S. policy.

But such policies haven't brought on reforms. No reform in Cuba is going to be effective except as it brings on the death or retirement of Castro. He is a monument of socialist dogma. In the early 1960s he chided Khrushchev for exhibiting less ideological rectitude than Mao Tse-tung. There isn't anything this side of a volcanic eruption while he is nesting in the volcano's crater that is going to get him to loosen up. The papal visit in 1998, to which so much hope was attached, had no permanent effect. Even the American Library Association simply gave up on a movement to gain liberty for jailed Cuban librarians.

There is a very high cost to Castro's obduracy. But the cost being paid is by Cubans. Over here, it is odd that a government that recognizes the government of Vietnam, and is ready and willing to send aid to Sudan and the Congo, should engage, for spite and politics, in denying to Cuban-Americans the right to gratify their own impulses.

There is resistance to this initiative of OFAC. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has for three years sponsored an amendment (the Flake Amendment) that seeks to forbid the use of federal funds to enforce the United States' anti-travel regulations. He recently succeeded in getting the Senate's endorsement of it. But that is still this side of the horsepower required to write the provisions into law. His own view is that the new OFAC regulations will cause net damage to Republican political interests in November.

The final irony is that Fidel Castro is being permitted, by Americans, to impinge on the freedom of Americans. That, at least, should please Castro, and he can ride about the country proclaiming his success in imposing on the lives of yet more Cubans, who hoped to be living in the land of the free.

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