Get to Cuba before Disney does

Get to Cuba before Disney does
By Clarence Page
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
April 2, 2009
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/pagespage/2009/04/get-to-cuba-before-disney-does.html


You can still see the glory of America's auto industry -- in Cuba.

Just don’t be surprised that your 1955 Ford, Buick or Chevy has a Russian engine under its hood.

Spring break in Havana? Hey, it could happen. Among other promising signs of intelligent life on Capitol Hill, lawmakers in both parties and both houses of Congress are calling for an end to the Cuba travel ban.
Sen. Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, has introduced a bill that would lift that ban except in cases of war, imminent danger to public health or threats to the physical safety of U.S. travelers.

His bill is co-sponsored by Richard Lugar of Indiana, top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee; Mike Enzi of Wyoming, ranking Republican on the Health Committee; and Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn.

Reps. Bill Delahunt, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican, have an identical bill in the House with 120 co-sponsors.

After 50 years of fruitless attempts to topple the Castro regime through disengagement, the times appear to be a-changing. Old timers knew that something was up when 55 percent of Miami-Dade County Cuban-American voters under age 30 voted for now-President Barack Obama. For almost a half-century, that turnout would have been almost as unlikely as 55 percent of young black American voting Republican.

Yet, as Palm Beach Post columnist Dan Moffett wrote in November, even within the Cuban-American bloc in Miami-Dade what’s left of Cold War politics is softening:

“Exit polls showed that 84 percent of Miami-Dade Cuban-Americans over 65 voted for Sen. McCain, and 55 percent of those 29 or younger voted for President-elect Obama. Young Cuban-Americans, most of whom were born here, are leaving the Bay of Pigs to history and questioning the value of a failed trade embargo. To many of them, Castro is a tired anachronism who grows increasingly irrelevant and is hardly worth the political preoccupation.”

Of course, even if the tourism ban is dropped, the trade ban would still be in place and that’s just fine with pro-embargo folks like Cuban-born Sen. Mel Martinez, a Florida Republican. He’s defending the travel and trade bans, saying "This is the time to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall."

Of course, any time is a good time to support pro-democracy activists. Yet, when I met with pro-democracy independent journalists in Havana a few years ago, two of whom were later jailed for being more independent than the regimes of Fidel or his brother Raul Castro approves, they opposed the embargo for several excellent reasons:

First, the embargo actually helps the Castro regime by giving it a standing excuse and scapegoat for whatever troubles the country happens to be suffering – and it is suffering a lot.

Second, if the embargo against Cuba’s oppressive regime is such a moral act, what do you call the USA’s enthusiastic travel and trade with China’s even more oppressive regime?

Besides, isn’t it at least a little bit hypocritical for a liberal democracy like the United States to oppose dictatorship and autocracy abroad while blocking its own citizens from traveling wherever they want to go?

Finally, if you believe in the persuasive tantalizing powers of free enterprise to sell itself to those who live in oppressive regimes like China, unleash that power on Cuba. Let millions of capitalist flowers bloom by way of American tourism to Cuba’s beautiful beaches, electric nightlife, scenic countryside and dynamic Afro-Hispanic cultures.

Catch the late show at the Tropicana. Take a tour of scenic old Havana. Sip a mojito made with fresh sugar cane juice the way Papa Hemingway loved them.

Why let tourists from Canada, Europe, Asia and everyplace else on the planet except the US have all the fun?

Just try to get there before Disney does. The island will never be the same.