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By
Luis E. Rumbaut and Ruben G. Rumbaut                             Read Spanish Version

After
reading the Beth Reinhard article in The
Miami Herald
dealing with the Barack Obama suggestions for travel to Cuba, the
writers reacted by sending a letter to the newspaper that was not
published. Progreso
Weekly
reproduces it.

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 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 be visited 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.
 
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
in 37 states. Luis lives in Washington, DC, Ruben in Irvine, CA.