Gabriel Molina

ON June 29, 1961, less than three months after the Bay of Pigs invasion, the U.S. Kennedy administration ratified and extended the Cuba policy of the Eisenhower government, which had prohibited U.S. citizens from traveling to the island since January of that year.

Some people thought that it wouldn’t be difficult to evade this order. But no, the measure was not going to be left open to chance. Upon discovering that many Americans were going to third countries in order to reach Cuba, the Department of State established that it was illegal to travel indirectly to Cuba via Central or South America and threatened to fine those violating this measure with fines of up to $5,000 or five years’ imprisonment. That was the response to 30 students from California, who proposed to travel to Havana via Mexico. They were threatened with arrest on the Mexican border if they persisted in their endeavor.

It was not by chance that another measure was adopted in the United States on that same day, likewise political and economic in nature. The Harris Company proceeded to seize 20 containers of butter in West Palm Beach, Florida, acquired by the Cuban state in a sale which amounted to $750,000. The company alleged that it had seized the goods because Cuba’s National Tourism Industry Institute had not paid for a publicity contract. It was at least the third seizure on the part of Harris & Company, which led one to think that the alleged debt was inexhaustible.

A media executive, Harold P. Mike, took it upon himself to explain the background to the confiscation, noting that the intention was to provoke hunger in Cuba by suppressing all exports to the island. The act was inspired by that cruel decision of Lester Mallory, deputy assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, "to refuse Cuba money and supplies…with the objective of provoking hunger and desperation and defeating the government."

In this way Washington demonstrated that it didn’t believe in the gods. In fact, the first U.S. citizen banned from traveling to Cuba was Ernest Hemingway. As his secretary and Irish friend Valerie Danby-Smith revealed, in the spring of 1960 Philip Bonsal, the U.S. ambassador in Cuba, warned the writer that he should leave Cuba and not return. In January ‘61, the warning was converted into an order and in June, photos of him presenting Fidel with the Hemingway fishing tournament trophy were the detonator: "If he was not prepared to adopt an attitude befitting a public figure in defense of his country, he could find himself obliged to confront the consequences. The word traitor had been brought up again."

The author of Farewell to Arms was forced to leave the country for good in June of 1961, and FBI pressure on him increased.

Fifty years later, in June of 2011, the Washington government has not forgiven Hemingway for his disobedience to the order to condemn Cuba; the Obama administration, while allowing Susan Wrynn, curator of the John F. Kennedy Hemingway Collection, and another three or four intellectuals to travel to Havana, is maintaining the prohibitions drawn up by Eisenhower.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury also refused licenses to travel to the island to 14 American researchers who were to take part in the Ernest Hemingway Colloquium in the Ambos Mundos Hotel where the Nobel Literature laureate lived for some time in Cuba. It also limited the entry in Cuba of 20 yachts belonging to U.S. citizens who wanted to attend the International Blue Marlin Fishing Tournament, although some were authorized.

The ban on travel to Cuba has covered a torturous road during the last 50 years. After President Carter left it without effect, his successor, Reagan, reinstated it. At the end of his mandate, President Clinton granted licenses for certain kinds of visits, with the self-stated objective of gaining influence via a person-to-person policy. But President Bush once again prohibited travel and even limited visits to the island by Cuban Americans, as part of a package of measures to please the Miami ultra-right Cubans, who saw their prerogatives in that direction drifting away.

The controversial measure has contributed to corrupt practices in the U.S. Congress, as was the case of Tom DeLay, former U.S. House leader who, together with representatives of Cuban origin and others funded by them, prevented with disgraceful maneuvers the restoration of Americans’ right to travel to Cuba, approved in 2000 as the result of a bipartisan initiative. During the period dedicated to reconciling the Senate and House versions of the bills, DeLay simply allowed time to run out, at the urging of Ileana Ros, Lincoln and Mario Díaz-Balart, followers of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who utilize government funds to bribe and corrupt U.S. legislative and executive powers, one of the most serious problems in the system.

In early 2011, a Texas court found former Congressman Tom DeLay guilty of laundering money from illicit sources in order to use it to bribe legislators. The influential Texas politician was forced to resign five years ago on account of having used large sums of money from corporations to finance the campaigns of seven aspirants to the House in the 2002 elections.

During Bush’s first term, Democrat Congressman William Delahunt exposed the carefree squandering of money assigned by the U.S. government to contribute to the defeat of the Fidel Castro government under the mantle of aid programs for diverse groups to facilitate a peaceful democratic transition.

Bush had won the presidential election, despite receiving fewer votes thanks to acts of fraud committed during the elections by anti-Cuba activists headed by Congress members Díaz-Balart and Ros-Lehtinen to ensure that he won the state of Florida.

A large percentage of the dollars set aside for funding anti-Cuba campaigns are channeled into bribing legislators into torpedoing efforts by political, social, religious, business, labor and agricultural institutions, among others, to normalize relations and, in particular, to end the prohibition on travel to Cuba.