Should US citizens be allowed to travel to Cuba?

Yes

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by Sammy Stein

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A sense of colonial grandeur, now sadly slightly faded at the seams, one of the most comprehensive health services in the world, but run on a shoe string, a place where everybody is guaranteed a home, albeit a tiny one, wonderful cigars where the workers in the factories making them can smoke as many as they like (but get paid peanuts and could never afford to actually buy one). All this and more is on offer in Cuba. Plus you can see the oldest, yet best kept and prized cars, where mechanics still know what a big end is!

Cuba offers much for the visitor and to deny US citizens the right to travel there is ridiculous. Seen from the UK, it smacks of state control - something we should all be against in a democracy-. It also smacks of using people and their tourist dollars (or lack of them if you ban people travelling there) for political gain. The sad thing is that perhaps it is best the US governement keep controlling travel there by US citizens beause it makes no difference and perhaps Cuba is better off that way. Cuba is one of the most poular destinations of European travellers. They bring currency and outside influences with them and take away a sense of poignancy and a poor opinion of Cuba's rich neighbour who is in the best position to help the Cubans yet, for political reasons which are lost on this generation when Cuba is no longer a threat in real terms, they won't.

Yet, for all that, this somehow endears Cuba to the rest of the world. The little (relatively) island with the big heart, not bowing to their neghbour and refusing to be inhibited by the refusal of the yankee dollar.

Scruffy round the edges they may be, down at heel and lacking in some of the basics (food rashioning is normal in Cuba), they certainly are, but yielding to pressure from the US, they are certainly not and the world loves them for it. Cuba still retains (possibly partly due to the US ban on their citizens travelling there) its own strong identity. Its colonial and Spanish influence can be felt stonggly, with its 'casas' and groves of trees, its huge but delapidated hotels and its crowded, busy flats and streets.

Cuba is alive- and that is something which cannot be said for a large number of US towns. Cubans are welcoming, a mix of traditions, music (oh the music!), fetes and salsa. Dance, eat, drink (carefully) and bring your currency (where Cubans can spend it heaven only knows with few goods coming in from the US). Somehow though, I do not think this will bother Cuba much. As change happens and one regime passes, a sense of expectation is in the air. Cuba will open up - they have to, but the US will lose out as Cuba establishes links with Europe and the Far East. These wily countries will see Cuba as a rich market, close to the US yet without the brash pretentiousness of its huge neighbour.

The US is doing itself no favours by continuing to ban its citizens from travelling to the jewel that is Cuba. The world has changed and the US needs to adapt with it.

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