Word: cuba
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...Setting the Record Straight Terms of the Lease In our report on the U.S. military detention center at Guant?namo Bay, Cuba [Dec. 8], we mistakenly said that in 1903 the U.S. leased the base in perpetuity from Cuba for "2,000 gold coins a year, now valued at $4,085." The original lease called for an annual rental of $2,000 in gold, an amount that today would be worth about...
...Cuba's reliance on tourism is a somewhat humbling turn for the revolution, which has long prided itself on producing topflight doctors and teachers--not concierges. But the island state had few other options once it lost its huge Soviet subsidies in 1990. Since then, it has built a $2 billion-a-year tourism industry that accounts for 41% of the country's hard-currency reserves. The annual tally of visitors has quintupled in the past decade, to 1.9 million. The island, roughly the size of Florida, has 11 international airports. With its appeal to mambo-era nostalgia...
John and Fidel Castro too are betting that the customs hassles and permits required for travel to Cuba will become a thing of the past, perhaps as early as 2005, a change Cuban tourism officials believe will bring more than 1 million U.S. turistas to the island each year. This confidence is based on the burgeoning bipartisan support Congress has shown this fall for lifting altogether the ban on travel to Cuba. The Bush Administration has been able to stall that effort for now--and as of Jan. 1 will outlaw exchange tours like John's in order to tighten...
What effect would millions of visitors from the citadel of capitalism have on a communist state of 11 million people? Those in Congress who want to dump the travel ban argue that exposing Cubans more to Americans would promote change on the island. Oswaldo Paya, Cuba's leading dissident, finds that view naive. "I'm all for the right of Americans to travel here," he says, "but please don't think Cuba will be democratized by people coming to dance salsa and smoke cigars...
Island officials estimate that if the travel ban is abolished, 1 million or more Americans would enter Cuba in the first year; absorbing them is not a problem, says Tourism Ministry adviser Miguel Figueras, because most Americans travel from May to August, Cuba's low seasons. But what about the 2.5 million to 3 million the Cubans expect in Year Five? "I can assure you, for that we are not ready," Figueras says. But judging by the mood in Congress, Americans...