Word: castros
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...limitations on travel to Cuba offer two justifications for the policy. The first is that since the United States maintains no diplimatic representatives in Cuba, the safety of Americans who go there cannot be guaranteed. The second is that unrestricted travel would involve a significant flow of dollars into Castro's treasury, dollars which could presumably be used against the United States both in Cuba and in other Latin American countries...
...dollars" argument has no basis in past experience. During the first two years after Castro came to power, when travel was unrestricted, very few Americans visited the island in spite of a huge publicity campaign in American newspapers and magazines. If the ban were lifted now, not many Americans are likely to want to go to Cuba, and those who would go probably would be mostly political and social observers rather than free-spending tourists...
...event, neither reason applies to the students under indictment. Their safety was guaranteed by the Cuban government which was anxious to exploit their trip for propaganda purposes. Also, the Cubans paid the entire cost of the junket. Far from bringing dollars to Castro, the trip involved an outflow of pesos from Cuba. By contrast, newspapermen and others whom the State Department allows to go to Cuba spend money there...
...travel ban is useless as a way of protecting American citizens and preventing dollars from reaching Castro; it is worse than useless as an instrument of U.S. foreign policy. Forbidding all but a few people to go to Cuba invites defiance, especially defiance by people who, like these students, are pro-Castro to begin with and are likely to return with glowing reports of happy peasants and contented workers. In the process, the U.S. government is made to look as if it is trying to suppress "the real truth" about Cuba...
...United States should leave banning travel to Castro; it suits him better than it does us. The restrictions on travel to Cuba should be withdrawn as a thoroughly unnecessary limit on the freedom of American citizens. And they should be withdrawn soon: the students who organized the last trip plan a second one this winter on a much larger scale. The resulting publicity will stimulate Congressional pressure which could make a change in policy politically impossible...