Congressman: “A sanction not on Cubans but Americans”

By Candyce Torres, University of New Mexico-Talk Radio News Service. Congressional support for lifting the long-held ban prohibiting Americans to travel to Cuba is gaining momentum. Today on the Hill, Rep. Bill Delaunt (D-MA) and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) announced bipartisan legislation to ease travel restrictions, and earlier in the week Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said that Congressional Democrats have enough votes to push the legislation forward.The bill is known as HR 874, or the freedom to Travel to Cuba Act.

Since 1962, the U.S. has imposed an embargo against Cuba which is fundamentally a commercial, economic and financial ban on the Castro government. As relations between Cuba and the U.S. further deteriorated after the Cuban Revolution the island became completely cut off from all U.S. citizen visitations.

At a press conference Thursday morning, Delaunt phoned Miriam Leiva, an independent journalist and human rights activist in Cuba and her husband Oscar Espinosa-Chepe, an independent economist and former political prisoner. Leiva gave an opening statement via telephone in which she expressed that she fully supports lifting the ban on travel.

Lifting the ban “would continue to better knowing and understanding the realities in our country. Even by a simple conversation, sharing everyday experiences Americans would be demonstrating how your society is capable of constantly deepening and improving democracy and could help our own efforts for democracy,” she said.

Leiva concluded that U.S. restrictions, specifically the embargo, have been used by the Cuban government as an excuse to justify and continue the use of a Totalitarian regime and repression. She spoke of no improvements by the Raul Castro Administration but expressed that for the first time in 50 years there is a possibility to open a pathway for changes.