Failed
U.S. Cuban Policies
A Reflection of Local Politics?
Written
by Luis E. Rumbaut
and Rubén G. Rumbaut
to The Miami Herald,
August, 2007
To
the Editor:
Hillary Clinton, like most of the Republican contenders for the
presidency, agrees with George Bush and wants to continue policies
on Cuba that have failed for 46 years (“Candidates bring Cuba
into race,” August 22). Barack Obama, opting for modest change,
proposes to lift the limits on family travel to the island. But
your article did not mention that there are bipartisan bills pending
in Congress that would resolve the family-travel question legislatively,
including by permitting general (not just family) travel to Cuba
— bills co-sponsored by four other presidential candidates
from both parties — nor that a related court decision on limitations
on academic travel is being appealed. The U.S. should do away with
restrictions on the Constitutional right to travel to Cuba, leaving
behind the fantasy that by limiting travel the Cuban government
will, this time, really, fall. Cuba should be addressed as a matter
of statesmanship, not of selective horse-race commentary and domestic
— and specifically, Floridian — politics.
The title of your article could well have been “Race brings
Cuba into candidates.” Clinton is pursuing the historically
hard-line vote of Florida Cubans, while Obama surely knows that,
according to polls, a majority of Cuban-Americans (and two-thirds
of all voters nationally) now agree that the current policy has
failed. The candidates’ estimations of which way the wind
is blowing don’t mention the effect on Cuban families—one
reason why opinions are changing. Consider this case: a woman living
in the U.S. is unable to visit her mother in Cuba, very ill with
cancer, for any longer than 16 days, and then not again for three
years. This is a real and current case, like many others resulting
from the travesty of the Bush Administration’s travel rules.
The rules offer no humanitarian exception, no chance to comfort
or help or say goodbye to a dying parent outside the prescribed
calendar. Families, we are told, should schedule illnesses and deaths
accordingly. Further, the rules exclude cousins, uncles, aunts,
nieces, and nephews, who cannot visit at all, ever. No U.S. resident
may visit, for example, a now-elderly former guardian in Cuba who
brought him or her up as a substitute parent.
Mr. Bush’s Free Cuba commission, with the firm support of
some Cuban-American personalities, concocted these rules as a way
of bringing down the Cuban government. Self-described defenders
of “family values,” they chose to use the Cuban family
as hostages to somehow bring about regime change. To no other country
do such anti-family rules apply. Even during the Cold War, family
visits to the Evil Empire were not so limited. Even for the new
Axis of Evil, such rules do not apply.
The family-travel restrictions are the worst of a long list of bad
rules governing U.S. policy toward Cuba. It's time to allow travel
to Cuba, especially for family members — cousins, uncles and
nieces included, and with humanitarian exceptions.
—Luis E. Rumbaut,
—Washington, DC
—Rubén G. Rumbaut
—Professor of Sociology
—University of California, Irvine
EDITOR'S NOTE:
The authors are members of the steering committee of ENCASA/US-CUBA,
the Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists for
Change in U.S. – Cuba Policy, a national organization of more
than 400 members based in 150 universities in 37 states.
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Muhammad
Ali, Colin Matthes
