New US restrictions cut visits, money to relatives in Cuba
by Miguel Enesco
Thursday, July 1, 2004
MIAMI, USA (AFP): Washington Wednesday
tightened restrictions on visits and money remittances to Cuba in a move aimed
at undermining the island's communist government, angering Havana and many of
the 1.5 million Cubans living in the United States.
Anticipating the tightening of the
42-year-old US embargo on Fidel Castro's government, Cuban-Americans this week
had scrambled for seats on packed planes to Havana before the measures took
effect. Under the move, Cuban-Americans can
only visit close family on the island once every three years instead of every
year. And those visits, previously unlimited in length, are now restricted to
14 days, with daily spending of 50 dollars, down from 165 dollars.
Cuban émigrés can still send 300 dollars home every three months, but only to
immediate family and not to cousins, aunts and uncles. Government and
communist party officials are still excluded from receiving any money from the
United States. The move angered the estimated
1.5 million Cubans living in the United States, even though most oppose the
Castro government. "A blatant error,"
"inhumane measures," and "trampled freedom for Cuban-Americans," were among
comments heard among Miami's Cuban-Americans.
Cuban authorities called the measures "cruel."
Officials at Havana's Jose Marti airport said there was a sharp drop in
charter flights to the island from the United States.
"Yesterday 17 flights arrived, today we expect seven," an airport official
told AFP. "The new measures are inhumane and
un-American," said Silvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Miami-based
Cuban-American Commission for Family Rights.
"We find it particularly ironic that in the name of freedom for Cuba, the
freedom of Cuban Americans to travel and to maintain normal family relations
are being trampled," she said. "The measures
hit at the external side of the (Cuban) economy, basically the trade and
services that are the driving motor behind the modest recovery that has been
going on (in Cuba) since 1995," a Havana economist told AFP on condition of
anonymity. But some analysts saw the new
restrictions as well considered, with precedent in fighting past communist
regimes. "All those things have been done and
had relative success in undermining the communist regime in Eastern Europe,"
said Jaime Suchliki, director of the University of Miami's Institute for Cuban
and Cuban-American Studies. "This was not an
overnight operation," he said. "It took years."
According to Havanatur travel agency, there are normally three to five daily
flights between the two countries depending on the season.
As the midnight (0400 GMT) deadline neared late Tuesday, one group of
Cuban-Americans staged noisy protests at Miami airport shouting: "We want to
fly!" and "Cuba! Cuba!" US President George
W. Bush in May ordered measures to tighten the embargo on Cuba, calling it "a
strategy that says we're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are
working for the day of freedom in Cuba."
Large queues formed outside Western Union offices in Havana as family members
lined up to receive money orders wired by relatives in Miami before the
deadline. According to the Inter-American
Development Bank, remittances from US-based Cubans in 2002 were worth more
than 1.1 billion dollars and played a major role in keeping the Cuban economy
alive. But the US administration claims much
of the foreign currency entering Cuba is siphoned directly to Castro and his
entourage. The US State Department had said
that those in Cuba before the new restrictions must return by June 30. But
because of the crush on scarce return flights, the US government Tuesday
extended the deadline until July 30.
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