Michele A
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the US officially put an embargo against Cuba and that entails all tourism travel or anyone doing business with that country. Cuba (Castro) does not mind Americans visiting Cuba, it just means more money for him. It is the US that has passed laws prohibiting US citizens from legally visiting the country. The embargo does not actually hurt Castro, but the islands citizens feel the effects. There is more below....
A U.S. arms embargo had been in force since March 1958 when armed conflict broke out in Cuba between rebels and the Batista government. In July 1960, in response to the nationalizations and expropriations by the Castro government, the United States reduced the Cuban import quota of sugar by 700,000 tons; the Soviet Union responded by agreeing to purchase the sugar instead, and further Cuban expropriations followed. A partial economic embargo was imposed by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower on October 19, 1960, and diplomatic relations were broken on January 3, 1961—two years after Castro's rise to power. The Soviet Union promptly stepped in, offering Cuba "preferential" trade prices, mainly for the sugar that Cuba exported and the crude oil the USSR sold them.
In response to Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union during the Cold War, President John F. Kennedy extended Eisenhower's measures by Executive Order, first widening the scope of the trade restrictions on February 7 (announced on February 3) and again on March 23, 1962. (According to former aide Pierre Salinger, Kennedy asked him to purchase thousands of Cuban cigars for Kennedy's future use immediately before the extended embargo was to come into effect.) Following the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy imposed travel restrictions on February 8, 1963, and the Cuban Assets Control Regulations were issued on July 8, 1963, under the Trading with the Enemy Act in response to Cubans hosting Soviet nuclear weapons, which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Under these restrictions, Cuban assets in the U.S. were frozen and the existing restrictions were consolidated.
Multilateral sanctions were imposed by the Organization of American States (OAS) on July 26, 1964, but these were abandoned on July 29, 1975.
The restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba lapsed on March 19, 1977; the regulation was renewable every six months, but President Jimmy Carter did not renew it and the regulation on spending U.S. dollars in Cuba was lifted shortly afterwards. President Ronald Reagan reinstated the trade embargo on April 19, 1982. This has been modified subsequently with the present regulation, effective June 30, 2004[3], being the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 C.F.R. part 515.[4] The current regulation does not limit travel of US Citizens to Cuba per se, but it makes it illegal for US Citizens to have transactions (spend money or receive gifts) in Cuba under most circumstances without a US government Office of Foreign Assets Control issued license.
The 1963 U.S. embargo was reinforced in October 1992 by the Cuban Democracy Act (the "Torricelli Law") and in 1996 by the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (known as the Helms-Burton Act) which penalises foreign companies that do business in Cuba by preventing them from doing business in the US. The European Union resented this act because it felt the US was dictating how other nations conducted their trade and challenged it on that basis. The EU eventually dropped its challenge in favor of negotiating a solution.
While the U.S. has sought to normalize trade relations with other Communist states, such as the People's Republic of China and Vietnam, there is a large lobby among the largely conservative Cuban-American constituency, particularly Cuban exiles living in Florida, that opposes such normalization with Cuba. Because Florida is a politically important state, it is difficult for either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party to substantially change American policy towards Cuba. However, the Republican Party has generally been in favor of a more hardline approach, as evidenced by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. This Title III of this law also states that any non-U.S. company that "knowingly traffics in property in Cuba confiscated without compensation from a U.S. person" can be subjected to litigation and that company's leadership can be barred from entry into the United States. Sanctions may also be applied to non-U.S. companies trading with Cuba. This restriction also applies to maritime shipping, as ships docking at Cuban ports are not allowed to dock at U.S. ports for six months. It's important to note that this title includes waiver authority, so that the President might suspend its application. This waiver must be renewed every six months and it has traditionally been. It was renewed for the last time July 17, 2006, therefore the suspension of this provision will remain effective for, at least, another six months following that date.
In response to pressure by American farmers and agribusiness, the embargo was relaxed by the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which was passed by the Congress in October 2000 and signed by President Bill Clinton. The relaxation allowed the sale of agricultural goods and medicine to Cuba for humanitarian reasons. Although Cuba initially declined to engage in such trade, seeing it as a half-measure serving U.S. interests, Castro began to allow the purchase of food from the U.S. as a result of Hurricane Michelle in November 2001. These purchases have continued and grown since then.
Spurred by a burgeoning interest in the assumed untapped product demand in Cuba, a growing number of free-marketers in Congress, backed by Western and Great Plains lawmakers who represent agribusiness, have tried each year since 2000 to water down or completely erase regulations preventing Americans from travelling to Cuba. Four times over that time period the United States House of Representatives has adopted language lifting the travel ban, and in 2003 the U.S. Senate followed suit for the first time. However, each time President George W. Bush, conscious of Florida's anti-Castro voters, has taken a hard-line stance and threatened to veto the bill. Faced with a veto threat, each year Congress has dropped its attempt to lift the travel ban. United States nationals can circumvent the ban by travelling to Cuba via a third country (such as Mexico, The Bahamas or Canada), as Cuban immigration authorities do not stamp passports. In doing so, they would risk prosecution by the U.S. government if discovered. On October 10, 2006 the United States announced the creation of a task force made up of officials from several US agencies that will pursue more aggressively violators of the US trade embargo against Cuba, with penalties as severe as 10 years of prison and hundreds of dollars in fines for violators of the embargo |
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