Cubargo: Power Trip to the People.

VamoSanctity (Freedom of Movement) + Border/Shutdown Update (Premise).

The New Renormal (5/17/22)—The Biden administration has just introduced plans to relax tough Trump-Era sanctions, enabling Cuban citizens to live freer from “government oppression.”

Beyond removing a $1,000 per three-month cap on family remittances, expanding consular services and family reunification programs, increased commercial and charter flights to Havana will be allowed and visa claims accelerated.

US officials maintain that such remittance funding will be screened through “electronic payment processors” to ensure payments end up in the proper familial hands, and that no individuals will be removed from the Cuba Restricted List. Otherwise, the dogged Cuban embargo still holds.

“A small step in the right direction,” replied Cuba’s foreign minister. But critics charge that “…those who still believe increasing travel will breed democracy in Cuba are simply in a state of denial.” So claims Senator Robert Melendez (D-NJ), Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, adding that “…for decades the world has been traveling to Cuba and nothing has changed…this risks being the wrong message…to the wrong people…at the wrong time…”

On the other hand, perhaps this baby step toward renormalization, fostering more island hopping back and forth, can serve to remind Melendez and other aging ‘cold warriors’ that it is 2022, not 1962 any longer. (MTC…)

Update: Mid- 2020—Seems “veiled tourism” to Cuba is still tripped up and unavailable. So had determined the U.S. Treasury Department, in the wake of NSA head John Bolton slamming the Obama era’s “people to people” travel category as a tourism trojan horse, plain and simple—at least in his chickenhawkish eyes.

This means Cubaphiles who have been, or plan to join P-to-P educational and cultural groups to the island nation, or cruises, private yachts, planes—even fishing boats seeking to dock or land are ship out of luck.

According to a number of Cuba tour operators, the latest Trump administration embargo ‘power trip’ figures to be “devastating to the island’s travel industry and the Cuban people at large, much less cruise lines (Carnival, Norwegian and Royal Caribbean taking the biggest hits–rerouting itineraries, shifting discounts and/or compensation like hurricane season winds).

Havana Syndrome: Tantrums, Tariffs and Trade Sanctions.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin charged that “Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the Western Hemisphere, providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua (that ‘troika of tyranny’) by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law and suppressing democratic processes. This administration has made a strategic decision to reverse the loosening of sanctions and other restrictions on the Cuban regime. These actions will help to keep US dollars out of the hands of Cuban military, intelligence and security services.”

Apparently, the idea is to choke travel/tourist revenue to squeeze an already reeling island economy, leading to political unrest and regime concessions, if not change. But what that geopolitically motivated position has to do with poor, sunny people driving colorfully patched-together 1950s vintage jalopies is anybody’s guess. Weaponizing travel as a foreign policy agenda: Hell of a strategy that, as this administration bullyrags the U.S. into deeper international isolation. But more on that a bit later…

Close, But No Cigar.
Fortunately, there remains a loophole among the 12 categories of Cuba visitation/exchange established by the Obama administration in 2016. Labeled “support for the Cuban people”, this distinction still allows Americans to travel in groups that have itineraries geared toward local Cuban activities. They must lodge in private homes (e.g., small-scale cases particulares) rather than commercial hotels, then meet with local business owners, artists and the everyday populace ‘in support of family and other lawful forms of travel’. Anything less or somehow deemed nefarious by U.S. authorities is officially banned.

In other words, from here on, that saucy gambol to Cuba may be no mere day at the beach. But Vamigré will soon swim further into that quag as well. (MTC…)