Why don´t Americans travel to Cuba?

By Roberto Pérez Betancourt

The government of the United States maintains in force an anti-constitutional ban that prevents its citizens from traveling to Cuba.

The measure was implemented 49 years ago and it is rejected by the majority of the American people.

After breaking diplomatic and consular relationships with Cuba in early January 1961, a prelude to different kinds of attacks against the newly-born Cuban Revolution, on the 17th of that month, John F. Kennedy’s administration eliminated the US citizens’ right to travel to the Island without any reasons whatsoever.

The roots of this hostile policy did not emerge, like some people wrongly think, after January of 1959 when the Cuban Revolution passed laws that were of great benefit to the people in virtue of the recently won political sovereignty and that pursued to consolidate the country’s economic independence.

As far back as the American War of Independence, their hegemonic ambition to take over Cuba was exposed when leaders of the Thirteen Colonies expressed these whishes.

One frustration after another, the Island was always a highly coveted apple. The triumph of the armed struggle over Batista’s tyranny was a hash blow to these US aspirations after the Cuban people seized the political power of the country.

This January, 49 years after Washington put into force this illegal measure that prevents US citizens from benefiting from numerous services they can obtain in the land of Jose Marti, the rejection of this arbitrary imposition among the American people is gradually increasing.

A recent report by AFP is eloquent. It reveals that 70% of Americans are in favor of lifting the Cuba travel ban while 59% believe that it is time to try a new policy toward the Cuban government.

According to a poll carried out by the website www.WorldPublicOpinion.org, 62% of Republican voters, 77% of Democrats, and 66% of Independents, wish to travel to the Caribbean Island without restrictions.

A total of 59% of the people surveyed answered affirmatively to the question: Is it time to try a new policy toward Cuba?

This issue is a subject of increasing debates in the US Congress, where the number of legislators in favor of lifting the ban and allowing US citizens to visit Cuba – as they can visit China, Viet Nam and North Korea, nations with which Washington still has controversies - grows.

In this regard, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) said that, by December 2009, a bill for the lifting of the Cuba travel restrictions had advanced, although he admitted that it is still short of the 218 votes needed to pass in the House of Representatives.

The essence of the issue is not whether or not the measure entails a sanction against Cuba, but rather that it constitutes a violation of the US citizens’ constitutional right to travel freely.