Cuba News Spring 2003
The following articles are taken from the Spring 2003 Interchange newsletter.
Cuba articles from the Fall 2003, Spring 2002 and Summer 2002 Interchanges are still available.
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The Congress and Cuba by Mavis Anderson and Philip Schmidt, Latin America Working Group [Editor’s note: the following is adapted from the monthly e-mail posting of the Latin America Working Group in Washington. Updated information can be found at www.lawg.org or can be received on a regular basis by request to lawg@lawg.org] Background: There were two outstanding developments in 2002: First, the House of Representatives’ positive votes on the Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill for ending the ban on travel, ending financing restrictions for food sales, ending limits on remittances, and opposing an effort by the opposition to condition ending the travel ban on a Presidential “anti-terrorism” certification to Congress. These votes demonstrate real progress in strengthening support for changing US policy toward Cuba. Second, the continuing growth in agricultural sales to Cuba supported by farm state members of Congress and others seeking to engage with Cuba. A veto-proof majority in the House of Representatives and a strong coordinated effort in the Senate to pass legislation and send it to the President’s desk are possible this year. Despite strong bipartisan support in Congress, in February 2003 embargo supporters were able to strike all legislative provisions relating to Cuba from the FY2003 omnibus appropriations bill, which was the completion of 2002 congressional work. These included the three Cuba provisions noted above, plus a separate provision in support of cooperation with Cuba on counter-narcotics efforts, and a provision imposing greater accountability by the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in the issuing of licenses for US citizens to travel to Cuba. The White House had threatened to veto the entire $400 billion spending bill if any part of the embargo was weakened; and House Republican leadership pressed for removal of the Cuba provisions, in spite of the overwhelmingly positive votes achieved in 2002. Again, a small group of powerful lawmakers exerted their influence over the legislative process and the fate of the Cuba legislation. Current Efforts/Information: Outreach to farm state groups was bolstered by an extremely successful booth at the American Farm Bureau Federation convention in Tampa, Florida, in January. LAWG, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Center for International Policy, and the Cuban-American Alliance were on hand to distribute information on US policy toward Cuba, detail potential trade benefits to US farmers, collect signatures for the CubaCentral petition, and answer questions. The response was remarkable. Our booth was one of the most popular at the show, and most farmers wanted specifics on how they could sell products to Cuba and help to lift the trade and travel bans. Washington-based members of our coalition have been meeting with the staff of all new members of Congress. As of this update, we have met with about half of the House offices. Results have been encouraging in several ways. Most of the staffers have said that their members do not yet have a firm position on Cuba policy; this means that most of these members want to hear the opinions of their constituents and are open to learning about US-Cuba policy. We are optimistic that support for a change in Cuba policy among new members of Congress will be strong. Most staffers have been receptive to our information and quick to agree that the current policy is a failure. A recent poll by the Miami Herald showed that more than half of the Cuban-American community in south Florida supports some sort of dialogue with the Cuban government. This, combined with the October 2000 Florida International University poll, which found that over 63 percent of US citizens think that the United States should allow travel to Cuba, and 57 percent oppose the full embargo, shows that the tide of public opinion favors engagement, even increasingly among Cuban-Americans. A group of prominent moderate Cuban-Americans from Miami visited Washington in February to make their voices heard in Congress. These key members of the growing anti-embargo movement in south Florida met with strategically-important members of Congress and staff to explain that the Cuban-American community in its majority favors opening trade and travel to Cuba. These meetings will be instrumental in firming the resolve of our allies for the coming year and also in winning the support of some important new members. Senate forms Cuba Working Group On March 21, ten members of the Senate announced the formation of a bipartisan “Cuba Working Group.” According to their announcement, the purpose of this working group is to examine US policies toward Cuba, including current trade and travel restrictions. The group hopes to move in unison with the year-old House Cuba Working Group in this year’s legislative session. The groups will likely introduce identical bills on travel in the near future in their respective chambers, with the hope that this coordinated push will move the issue further legislatively than in past years and get travel legislation to the President’s desk. Founding senators are: Max Baucus (D-MT), Michael Enzi (R-WY), Byron Dorgan (D-ND), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Jim Talent (R-MO), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and Pat Roberts (R-KS). These initial senators are chairs, ranking members, subcommittee chairs, or members of several key committees, including the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; the Senate Finance Committee; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; the Senate Appropriations Committee; the Senate Agriculture Committee. Policy Outlook: Senate Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) has introduced the “United States-Cuba Trade Act of 2003”, S. 403, with co-sponsors Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Kent Conrad (D-ND). The bill seeks to repeal the embargo in its entirety. For more information on this bill (including the bill text) and to read a “Dear Colleague” letter about it, visit www.cubacentral.com. Additional Senate bills are pending, and senators will use any opportunity to attach amendments to appropriate legislation. We anticipate action on travel to be the highest priority. House Representative Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and other members of the House Cuba Working Group will likely offer legislation again this year to lift the travel, trade, and remittance bans. Rep. Flake’s travel amendment to the Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill last year passed overwhelmingly (262-167), and we expect comparable results this year. One of our goals is a significantly increased vote total this year; we have aspirations for a veto-proof majority. A companion bill to Senator Baucus’ legislation will likely also be introduced in the House, plus a variety of other initiatives that may include sunsetting the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, expanding cooperation with Cuba on counter-narcotics, repealing “Section 211” on trademark issues, and others. Action Alert: Recruit people to sign the petition on www.cubacentral.com. We would like to greatly expand the current more-than-8,000 signatories, and we need your help to do it. Please sign the petition if you haven’t, and let others know that this web site is updated regularly with developments on Cuba policy. |
OFAC Ends People-to-People Educational License Category [also see FRD's Letter to OFAC concerning the new regulations.] The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of Treasury, which enforces a longstanding U.S. embargo against Cuba, said in March that it would no longer issue new licenses for “people-to-people educational exchanges.”
According to these recent revisions of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, OFAC will not grant licenses to educational programs that are “unrelated to academic coursework.” The licenses for people-to-people exchanges which have already been issued, however, will be honored. Many organizations applying for people-to-people licenses, had trouble in the past receiving and renewing licenses, with OFAC often taking as much as half a year to respond to applications. By eliminating the category entirely, the adjusted regulations eliminate much of the ambiguous middle ground of applications that were ignored without being rejected, or were granted with increasingly cumbersome restrictions and reporting requirements. The new regulations will have a severe impact on many U.S. organizations that provide educational travel programs, and will significantly decrease the number of U.S. citizens who visit the island legally. Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto, in defense of the changes, argued that some Americans don’t take the education aspects of their trips seriously enough and use the licenses for tourism. However, attorney Bob Muse writes that “This is simply not convincing. First, to get a 515.565(b) [people-to-people] license an applicant was required to show substantial experience in conducting foreign educational programs. Second, OFAC required applicants for licenses to provide itineraries of the proposed educational programs to be conducted in Cuba. If the submitted itinerary disclosed ‘touristic’ as opposed to educational activity, the license was invariabley denied.” An article in the US Federal Register from March 24 introduces the amended regulations with language arguing, contrary to reason, that further isolation of the Cuban people from American tourism would make life better for Cubans. In accordance with President Bush’s Initiative for a New Cuba, the regulations purportedly expand the license eligibility for activities that “promote a rapid, peaceful transition to democracy.” Such activities include humanitarian programs, construction projects, and educational training programs on journalism, civic education, organizing, and advocacy. Other OFAC modifications include permitting U.S. citizens who visit close relatives in Cuba to spend more money, expanding the definition of “close relative,” and allowing remittances to be sent from funds in the United States in the name of a Cuban citizen. In an act of particular pettiness, remittances are forbidden to “senior-level Cuban government or Cuban Communist Party” officials. The changes and revisions to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations have been issued in interim form, and comments will be considered in the development of final rules up until May 23, 2003. Links to the documents explaining the changes are available at www.ffrd.org/cuba. Comments can be directed to the Chief of Records, ATTN Request for Comments, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Department of the Treasury, 1500 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20220 or sent via the OFAC web site. One may also want to contact U.S. Senators and Representatives to express concerns about these new counter productive limitations on travel to Cuba. Licensable Educational Exchanges now must be at least one of the following: (1) “Participation in a structured educational program by an undergraduate student or a graduate student or an undergraduate or graduate student group as part of a course offered at an accredited US college or university.” (2)”...research toward a graduate degree.” (3) “Participation in a formal course of study at a Cuban academic institution by an undergraduate or a graduate student currently enrolled in a degree program at an accredited US college or university, provided the formal course of study in Cuba will be accepted for credit toward the student’s undergraduate or graduate degree at the US college or university.” (4) “Educational exchanges sponsored by Cuban or US secondary schools involving secondary school students’ participation in a formal course of study or other academic institution and led by a teacher or other secondary school official.” --Attorney Bob Muse |
Popular Religions in Cuba Editor’s note: FRD sponsored Tom Barstow and Anne Driver under our license to travel legally to Cuba for their research, the results of which we hope our readers will find interesting. Regrettably, we will not be able to continue with such sponsorship due to the expiration of our license and its non-renewal to date (see article, cover).
Our initial plan called for exploratory research into Santeria. Once in Cuba, it became clear that the Cubans’ own term, “popular religions,” is more appropriate, since Santeria is but one of several Cuban religions that blend African elements with Roman Catholicism, show influence from Native American sources as well, and have taken form under the conditions of slavery and its aftermath in Cuba. Because we had done earlier research into the religion of Vodou in Haiti yet were poorly informed about Cuban religion, we were interested in similarities and differences between religious life in these two Caribbean countries geographically separated by only a few miles of water. There has indeed been some migration from Haiti to Cuba in the past, especially at the time of the Haitian Revolution from 1791 to 1804. With the black Haitians came Vodou, which is practiced by a few groups in Cuba to this day, especially in the eastern provinces. However, we did not seek them out, since our main concern was to learn about Cuba’s own religions. Our research is primarily concerned with three themes: 1) the performance characteristics of religious rituals, especially in trance/possession; 2) the interaction between religion and socio-political conditions; and 3) the role of women in religion. Our method of research involves as much photography and videography as possible, yielding material that is useful in conjunction with later study of written resources and is also very helpful in teaching and lecturing. We were able to conduct research with a variety of organizations and individuals, including various churches, babalaos, museums and other researchers both in and around Havana and in and around Santiago de Cuba. Observations Our investigations during this trip have from the start been regarded as exploratory. Their full analysis and explication will require further research and find publication elsewhere in due time. Here we content ourselves with a few first impressions, bearing in mind that since these can always be misleading they require further study. · The mix of popular religions in Cuba with African roots is far more complex than we had realized. Santeria, which itself takes various forms, is but one of many such religions. · Trance/possession seems far less frequent in Santeria than in Vodou and in many of the Espiritismo types that abound. · Divination seems to play a much larger role in Santeria than in Vodou. · Because Cuba’s social history has been so different from that of Haiti, its popular religions, and even its Catholicism, have followed different trajectories. Three examples: 1) The orishas (divine spirits) do not appear to reflect adaptation to the New World as obviously as do their counterparts, the Haitian lwa. 2) The Spanish overlords and the Catholic Church encouraged the formation in the 18th Century of cabildos, which were groupings based on the languages and cultures of the slaves’ African origins. As far as we know, similar groups were not formed in Haiti. Their role in transmitting African religious traditions in Cuba is a subject requiring further research. 3) The revolutionary government of Cuba has in recent years deliberately encouraged the study of popular religions as part of the national heritage. · We gave attention to the role of women. In Santeria the priesthood is not open to them. Hence they are excluded from the secrets and powers of divination. Although they play a large role in ceremonies and preparations, it is a secondary one. However, women do exercise leadership in some of the other popular religions, such as Palomonte, which depend upon possession by orishas or other spirits. In these cases, women seem to take on the strength, authority, and leadership characteristic of the Haitian mambo. · Finally, we noticed that popular religion in the two Cuban cities we visited is much more house-based than in Haiti. We did not see any structure comparable to the peristyles or hounfos to be found in Port-au-Prince. Instead, we saw casas templos that were small rooms in practitioners’ homes. — New York City 1/28/03. Tom Driver, professor of Theology and Culture Emeritus, Union Theological Seminary and Anne Barstow, retired Professor of History, SUNY Old Westbury. Contact tfd3@columbia.edu |