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 News from Around the Americas | February 2007 
New Bills Aim To Weaken, End U.S. Embargo Against Cuba
 Matthew Borghese - All Headline News
| | A woman watches Cuba's President Fidel Castro speak on television during the daily newscast Mesa Redonda in Havana January 30, 2007. (Reuters) |
A new bill in the House of Representatives would seek to ease a ban on U.S. travel to Cuba. However, critics say the timing of such legislation would only serve to flood Cuba with much sought-after U.S. dollars at a time when the communist government may be at its weakest since the Revolution.
The House bill is part of a new wave of legislation which seeks to end the economic embargo on Cuba, which was enacted as an effort to bring down the government of the only nation in the Americas to target Washington with nuclear weapons.
The embargo has gone through many changes since the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950's. However, currently the embargo prohibits Americans and American businesses from trading or conducting business with Cuban interests. Travel is also restricted to visiting immediate family members, attending academic or government conferences, or as a part of the media.
U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control oversees "a total freeze on Cuban assets, both governmental and private, and on financial dealings with Cuba; all property of Cuba [and] of Cuban nationals."
However, under the new Democratic Congress, a bill has been introduced to relax rules for selling food, while another bill looks to abolish the travel restrictions entirely.
Representative William Delahunt (D-MA) and Representative Ray LaHood (R-IL) have proposed a bill to allow Cuban-Americans unlimited visits to relatives living on the communist island.
"This bill is an effort to change an immoral policy, one that has caused pain and suffering to our own citizens as well as the Cubans," Delahunt says. "It's startling in its cruelty."
However, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Every dollar that goes to Cuba goes directly to the Cuban government," says Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, based in Washington.
"Families will take that money, go to Cuban-government stores and pay a very high price for whatever they want to buy. Denying Castro hard currency means he has less money to repress the Cuban people and mount anti-American activities around the world." |
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