A growing number of Americans are traveling to Cuba

A growing number of Americans are traveling to Cuba

BY RICHARD STRADLING

rstradling@newsobserver.comMarch 22, 2014 Updated 9 hours ago



50 years after leaving Cuba, a chance reunion in Raleigh

RALEIGH — There was a time when average Americans were as likely to slip

over the DMZ into North Korea or talk their way through Checkpoint

Charlie into East Berlin as they were to visit Cuba.



But the end of the Cold War and President Barack Obama's easing of some

travel restrictions in 2011 have resulted in record numbers of Americans

traveling to the communist island about 100 miles south of Key West, Fla.



The Cuban government reported last fall that more than 98,000 U.S.

citizens visited the country in 2012, up from 73,500 the year before.

The numbers don't include Cuban-Americans, which Cuba doesn't count as

tourists.



Cuba has been drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists a year since the

1980s, mostly from Canada and Europe. But it's still not easy for

Americans to make the trip across the Florida Strait; U.S. airlines

can't fly to the island nation, and U.S. citizens who want to visit need

special licenses from the U.S. government and a visa from Cuba.



Obama made it easier to travel to Cuba by making those licenses

available to a larger number of cultural, religious and educational

groups, with the goal of increasing "people-to-people" contact between

the two countries.



Triangle residents Saul Berenthal and Israel Srebrenik are arranging the

licenses and visas for 40 people from the Triangle. The group will make

the short flight from Miami to Havana on a charter jet.



They're working with a Cuban nongovernmental organization that arranges

for hotels, transportation and meals. In accordance with U.S. embargo

restrictions, the travelers will pay for everything in advance, and the

payments will go through a third country before arriving in Cuba.



Many Cuban-Americans won't go to Cuba and don't believe the

people-to-people trips are helpful. They still harbor resentments about

the revolution and the property and the freedoms that were taken from

them and their families. They believe in the spirit of the embargo,

which means not spending any money that could support a repressive

government.



U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American from Miami, speaks for many of them.



"It's clear these tourist trips do little more than help the regime's

image, fund its repressive machine, and undermine the courageous work of

Cuba's democracy fighters," Rubio, a Republican whose parents came to

the U.S. before the revolution, told The Associated Press last fall.



But Berenthal and Srebrenik say things are changing in their native

country, and the best way to nudge them along is with direct contact

between Americans and Cubans. Government imposed isolation hasn't

worked, Berenthal notes.



"The only way things are ever going to get better between the two

countries is if we learn about each other," he said.



Source: RALEIGH: A growing number of Americans are traveling to Cuba |

Local/State | NewsObserver.com -

http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/03/22/3724314/a-growing-number-of-americans.html