Cuba and the Agricultural Appropriations Bill
In practice, the absence of US financing will severely limit the ability of small and medium-sized farmers with no foreign bank contacts to make sales to Cuba, meaning that any agricultural sales that could take place as a result of this legislation would benefit primarily large companies. The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement at the time of the committee’s vote on this bill saying, “Cuba will not cooperate with those attempting to worsen the blockade—nor will it participate in the public relations stunt of these sectors to pretend some alleviation of the blockade when they are actually setting out to tighten it. The Cuban Government—while reiterating its willingness to maintain normal trade relations with US companies—makes it clear that should this draft bill pass under such discriminatory and humiliating conditions, Cuba will not engage in any trade transactions whatsoever with the United States.”
The freezing into law of the travel restrictions makes Congressional action necessary to expand any of the allowable travel categories, and it removes the power of the President to issue new general licenses for travel to Cuba. This provision, viewed as a victory by the Cuban-American legislators from Florida, who generally take a pro-embargo anti-Castro view, is a very unfortunate development and a huge step away from normalizing relations, and considering the travel vote this July, can in no way be viewed as the will of the Congress.
While President Clinton did sign the Agricultural Appropriations bill, it was a large bill with a great many things to consider other than the Cuban language. FRD encouraged him to veto the bill, as it takes a step backward where his previous actions had taken a small step forward. Clinton had expanded the list of general categories for which US citizens could get licenses to visit Cuba, encouraging a program of people-to-people contact. The Agricultural Appropriations bill took the right of the President to create such categories and gave it to the Congress.
Most of this article is taken from a statement put out by the Latin American Working Group. LAWG is a coalition of over 60 organizations working to promote peace, justice and sustainable development in Latin America. For more information, contact the Latin American Working Group, 110 Maryland Avenue NW, Box 15, Washington, DC, 20002; phone (202)546-7010; lawg@lawg.org; http://www.lawg.org.
Join FRD in Cuba!
See page 31 for details.
Cruises to Cuba Postponed Indefinitely
For cruise patrons who wanted more than simply sun and ocean, the Cuba Cruise Corporation attempted to include educational aspects, partially to make the cruises legal for Americans. The cruises would include educational seminars on Cuban history and culture, and day visits to the island. While US law requires that US citizens not spend money on the island, the portions of the cruises on the island were to be fully hosted by the Center for Education and Training, a Canadian organization specializing in adult education.
After getting around a host of legal issues, though, only a week before the inaugural voyage, the cruises were suspended because of numerous telephone threats, including a bomb threat. Sam Blythe, president of Cuba Cruises, and of the Toronto-based Blythe Travel, said that threats made it impossible to guarantee the safety and security of passengers and crew. He promised full refunds for passengers already booked, and indefinitely postponed his inaugural cruise.
Asked about his future plans, Blythe says that he intends to form an underground railroad for Americans wishing to travel to Cuba. He also mentions that the numbers of Americans who travel to Cuba each year are growing rapidly from a current 150,000 per year.
For more information, contact Cuba Cruise Corporation: phone (800)387-1387, fax (416) 964-5644, exotic@blythtravel.com, www.cubacruising.com.
Bombings and Water Pumps
Lawyers say that Luis Posada Carriles came to Panama (clandestinely under a false passport) to “buy a water pump” and “they never heard any talk about killing Castro.” The laugh comes from the fact that in Spanish, the word “bomba” means both “bomb” and “pump.” The defense is that any witnesses that heard them talking about a bomb, simply misinterpreted, and they were really just talking about a water pump. Carriles was arrested in Panama this November for terrorism hours after Fidel Castro publicly announced that Carriles was in Panama attempting to kill him. Castro was there for an Ibero-American summit. Cuba has requested extradition of Carriles and vowed not to execute him.
Carriles left Cuba shortly after the 1959 revolution. He spent nine years in prison in Venezuela before escaping from custody during several trials for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner which killed 73 people. In the 1980s, Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government accused Posada Carriles of working with the CIA to run guns for the Contra rebels. More recently, Posada Carriles admitted to masterminding about a dozen bombings of Havana tourist locales in 1997, including one that killed a young Italian tourist.