By Stan Hastey
The Alliance of Baptists’ partner organization on Capitol Hill, the Latin America Working Group, has sent a carefully drafted letter to President-elect Barack Obama on changes it wishes to see implemented by the incoming administration throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.
The letter was circulated among members of the Alliance board of directors, and I have signed it in my official capacity.
In the section urging new policies with Cuba, the letter reads, “We ask you to support the lifting — for ALL Americans — of the travel ban that divides the U.S. and Cuban people — because it is the right policy and as a demonstration to our Latin American neighbors that a new day has dawned in our relationship with the region.”
In addition, the letter urges Mr. Obama “to explore diplomacy and dialogue with Cuba,” noting that the relationship between our countries “is at a potentially transformational moment.” This new moment has to do both “with new visions for change in this country” and the fact that “change is also occurring in Cuba.”
Throughout the past eight years and especially during the Bush administration’s second term, the essential cruelty of our policies toward Cuba has been exposed for the whole world to see. These include the strengthening of a trade embargo dating to 1962 and the imposition of stricter rules on travel to and from Cuba, by U.S. and Cuban citizens.
Of the latter, by far the cruelest are those that severely limit the ability of Cuban Americans to travel to their homeland, even in cases of medical emergencies or for the funerals of family members on the island.
Whereas in better times Cuban Americans were allowed to travel annually and stay for unspecified periods of time with immediate or extended families, the new Bush policies imposed in 2004 limit such visits to once every three years, for no more than 14 days, to be spent with immediate family members only. Visits to uncles and aunts and cousins, among many other extended family members, no longer were allowed.
Also in 2004 nearly all Cuba travel licenses previously issued to colleges and universities were nullified, again by regulatory decree and without benefit of congressional hearings or even a period for public comment — usual practices before such sweeping measures are implemented administratively.
This meant that schools such as Furman University and the Divinity School of Wake Forest University, both of whom had used the Alliance’s license to send students, faculty and administrators to Cuba, no longer were permitted to do so. Only those schools with graduate-level courses on Cuba requiring a minimum of 10 weeks of study on the island were to be licensed.
Finally, less than a year later licenses to national and regional religious bodies were discontinued, with the exception of bodies such as the Southern Baptist Convention, whose leaders have been Bush administration sycophants.
Among those previously licensed to travel to Cuba adversely affected by the new policy was the Alliance, and for a time we were doing legal battle with the Treasury Department over false allegations some of our travelers had abused the license we previously had.
As a consequence, you can understand my eagerness to sign the Latin America Working Group letter to President-elect Obama at the point it declares, “We should move beyond the past eight years, which have brought a reduction in citizen contacts, increased enforcement of cruel U.S. sanctions, and accelerated curtailment of Americans’ fundamental right to travel.”
My longstanding passion for improved U.S.-Cuba relations is rooted in deep friendships developed over 15 years and 26 trips to the island nation scarcely 90 miles from the Florida coast.
Our self-imposed isolation from the people of Cuba is a national disgrace and a despicable abandonment of a long history of diplomatic engagement as over against the practice of unilateral bullying of those nations that refuse to be our lackeys.
We must do everything within our power as citizens to encourage President Obama to reverse course on Cuba.