Don’t play number 1310 — you’ll lose
The
opinions of visiting Cubans and their relatives on the island
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
Florida
Law 1310, which would have taken effect on July 1 until Judge Alan
Gold granted a temporary injunction, obliges all travel agencies and
other companies that provide Cuba-related services in that state to
post a bond between $100,000 and $250,000, depending on the type of
service they provide. That money will serve the Department of
Agriculture of the State of Florida to cover its expenses during any
investigation it may…
From
Havana Read Spanish Version
Don’t
play number 1310 — you’ll lose
The
opinions of visiting Cubans and their relatives on the island
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
Florida
Law 1310, which would have taken effect on July 1 until Judge Alan
Gold granted a temporary injunction, obliges all travel agencies and
other companies that provide Cuba-related services in that state to
post a bond between $100,000 and $250,000, depending on the type of
service they provide. That money will serve the Department of
Agriculture of the State of Florida to cover its expenses during any
investigation it may conduct into the company’s business, as well as
to pay fines the DoA may impose for possible violations of the
standards established for such operations by the travel agencies and
charter-flight companies. The fines could rise to $10,000 each.
All
travel operations to the island are controlled by OFAC (Office of
Foreign Assets Control), the Treasury Department office in charge of
supervising, controlling and enforcing the law. That’s what the OFAC
has been doing all along. Then, why this new state law? Are we
looking at a substitution of functions, pressure on the OFAC, or an
unofficial delegation of functions in order to save the Chief
Executive’s face? I don’t think there is a single cause; there are
several, and obviously some have greater weight and urgency.
I
opt for a combination of the first two, with a strong touch of the
third. Bush has never spoken publicly about his policy toward the
Cuban family, because he knows that once U.S. public opinion becomes
aware of it, a negative reaction is sure to follow. So, better to
take the high road and pretend "it’s a thing among Cubans."
And the "thing" was plotted by Cubans (quote-unquote) and
Americans.
David
Rivera, a Republican representative in Florida’s Congress, introduced
House Bill 1310, which passed both chambers and was signed into law
by Governor Charles Crist.
Rivera
is the straw man of the Díaz-Balart brothers, who are part of
the control machinery over Florida and have been, according to Bush
himself, good advisers. If it weren’t for the umbilical cord that
joins Miami to Washington, Crist, who is hoping to run for Vice
President on McCain’s ticket, would not have signed it, because he
has lost too much public support.
According
to a Zogby poll published June 24 in El Nuevo Herald, 52 percent of
the respondents described Crist’s performance as governor as either
"fair" or "bad."
Needless
to say, state-run investigations and controls will begin soon and
will exhaust the funds of many companies, forcing them to shut down.
In turn, family visits — which are very restricted, thanks to the
regulations added in 2004 by President Bush — will grind to a halt.
And I repeat: Bush has never talked publicly about those regulations.
Also
looking at the November elections, there is a political-electoral
objective whose logic escaped me when I wondered — along with more
than 60 percent of all Cuban-Americans opposed to the 2004
restrictions — whose privileged brains thought that by striking at
the Cuban family they could buttress the Díaz-Balarts and John
McCain, the Republican presidential candidate? And I didn’t add the
votes of the Hispanics who supported Hillary Clinton, who now will
support the other Democratic candidates.
If
Florida boasts an unemployment index of 5.5 percent (a figure that
"represented an increase of 1.6 percent since May 2007,"
according to El Nuevo Herald of June 21) the newly jobless will add
to the figure of 500,000 currently unemployed. The campaign against
terrorism — the argument wielded by Representative Rivera — demands
military sacrifices (in this case, pecuniary) from the others. And
the others, those left unemployed by this law, and those who will be
unable to visit their relatives or who must travel through third
countries to the detriment of their budgets and violating U.S. law in
a way almost impossible to detect, what will they do?
I
went through these and other cogitations and concluded that the logic
of political-electoral control machines is different. It is peculiar
and narrow, all the more so when it is in crisis and the machines are
breathing their last, along with Bush, so the call for "change"
must be made loud and clear. The objective is to save themselves,
like survivors from a sinking ship who battle 24-foot waves while
their life-vests deflate. Never mind if the only way to survive is to
cling to the necks of others and choke them to death.
While
the issue is the political struggle for three Congressional seats and
the next presidency of the American Union, the objective of House
Bill 1310 is to preserve a docile, cheating, antidemocratic machinery
without a drop of humanism.
The
trick in that law is to tell the public, as the core of the debate,
that the new measures are intended to stop the flow of money to
"countries that promote terrorism." But how many family
trips are made from Florida to Iran, Syria and other countries that
join Cuba on that infamous list issued by the State Department?
Evidently, the objective is to reinforce the rules of the blockade,
which is so dear to the Cuban-American far right, by depriving the
Cuban government of the money that comes from travel. In so doing,
HB-1310 blockades even more people’s legitimate rights to family
visits. Never mind family pain, never mind the likely loss of
hundreds of jobs.
A
word of advice to those who play the lottery: don’t play 1310,
because 13 is the birth date of Fidel Castro, leader of the Cuban
process and the key man in the overthrow of Batista’s tyranny, which
was installed on March 10, 1952.
The
opinions of travelers and their relatives in Havana
Recently,
I went to Terminal Two of Havana’s International Airport looking for
opinions. I share with you the most remarkable opinions of travelers
who were returning to Miami — and who declined to give their names
or those of their relatives in Cuba. Why? They didn’t want to get in
hot water.
I
asked the first one whether freedom of opinion existed in Miami.
"Yes
and no. Yes, to ‘follow the crowd’; No, to say what one really
thinks," he said and laughed. Then: "I am registered as an
independent and I will give my opinion in November. I’ll vote for
Raúl [Martínez] and Obama."
One
of the relatives who was seeing him off said he had read in Granma an
article about the topic "and my relative gave me more details.
People who don’t think about families, don’t love anyone. And this is
something [my relative] knows."
"I
am not a communist, but [Miami] is not the way people picture it.
People don’t matter, only money," said a traveler, tears in her
eyes, before bidding her relatives goodbye. "Politics are
disgusting and I will come to see my grandchildren no matter what. I
will vote with my family in mind."
"I
will have to spend more, but who’s going to prevent me from embracing
my people?" an older man said, angrily. "Only if the people
here [in Cuba] don’t let me in."
One
of the man’s relatives on the island, who identified as Juan, 35,
married, with children, joined the conversation. "Look, I don’t
know what they’re going to do in the States when the people here [in
Cuba] eliminate the white card or relax the restrictions on people
from abroad. Cuba knows how to raise the ante." The "white
card" is the official permit needed to leave the island.
"I
still don’t have U.S. citizenship," said a relatively young
woman, "but where I work my friends support Obama and Joe
García. I’m thinking of becoming a citizen and, look" —
she pointed to her relatives and friends, who had just taken a
picture of her — "how can you think I won’t be back, even if I
have to go around the world to do it?"
"I
am not an exile," said a 38-year-old man. "I left because I
didn’t have a place to live in. There were seven of us in an
apartment not big enough for my son’s dog to bark in. And I had to
expectations to become independent. Either I left or I got a
divorce," he said, describing his dilemma. "Now some
sonsabitches want me to divorce my parents and cousins. They can go
to hell. Because I have the right to vote, I’m going to exercise it
against those who don’t want me to come visit my family."
Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and
editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso
Weekly.
