View Cuba beyond the Castros

Tourism will help open closed society

The legal niceties of the Beyonce, Jay-Z Cuba trip seem to have been observed — or so says the U.S. Treasury Department, which certified that the couple, celebrating their fifth anniversary, was traveling with a licensed organization on an “educational exchange trip.”
This appears to not make the anti-Castro zealots in South Florida any happier, but then perhaps it’s time this nation’s Cuba policy got a fresh look from those outside the confines of Miami’s Little Havana.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), born in Havana and with plenty of reason to detest the Castro brothers’ regime, demanded the explanation from Treasury after the all-too-happy couple was photographed on the streets of Havana. She was less than satisfied with the outcome.

“That was a wedding anniversary vacation that was not even disguised as a cultural trip,” according to a statement she posted on her website.

“If the tourist activities undertaken by Beyonce and Jay-Z in Cuba are classified as an educational-exchange trip, then it is clear that the Obama administration is not serious about denying the Castro regime an economic lifeline that U.S. tourism will extend to it.”
To which we can only say, well, duh. And what of it?
The Obama administration to its credit has vastly expanded the number of licenses to all kinds of groups — cultural, religious, environmental. Heck, National Geographic Society runs nature trips to the island that sell out within hours of their posting — there is that much pent-up demand. It is perhaps still a dirty little secret — at least to Rep. Ros-Lehtinen — that it’s not all that difficult to get to Cuba these days and lots of Americans see little point in fighting a 50-year-old battle against two aging dictators when there are far greater threats on the world stage.
The late Hugo Chavez was certainly no prince — his heavily subsidized oil sales to Cuba have been propping up its economy for years and his support for Iran and for Hezbollah terrorists was well documented. And yet our government doesn’t ban Americans from visiting Venezuela.
So Ros-Lehtinen is pretty much right when she calls officially-licensed trips “a scam endeavor.” They are the fig leaf by which the administration has changed policy on the ground without changing policy — and without writing off lots of Cuban-American voters in South Florida.
You can go, have a good time, buy lots of wonderful art work — just forget about bringing back rum and cigars (both prohibited).
In 2009 the administration also lifted restrictions on Cuban-Americans, who are now allowed to travel back and forth fairly freely and regular flights from several major American cities have sprung up to accommodate the traffic. Younger Cuban-Americans — especially those born here — recognize the island for the economic basket case it is, not the Soviet satellite threat it once was. Many of them want to reconnect with their culture and with family members who remained behind.
No one is saying the aging Castro brothers have had an epiphany or that Raul has seen the error of his ways. Of course, there are human rights abuses. U.S. government contractor Alan Gross, who has been in a Cuban jail since 2009 for the “crime” of distributing satellite phone equipment to Cuba’s small Jewish population, is testament to that. But if that were the criteria for cutting off U.S. contact, Cuba would only be one in a long list of countries we’d have to “isolate.”
Tourists — yes, even Beyonce and Jay-Z — are this nation’s most effective force for good and for opening up a closed society like Cuba. The more we can send, the better.
Rachelle Cohen is editor of the editorial pages. She traveled to Cuba in 2012.
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