MSNBC
September 7, 1998

Americans flock to ‘forbidden’ isle
Many ignore travel restrictions to sample island paradise

                                                            By Mary Murray
                                                                  NBC NEWS
 
 
 
 

                        HAVANA, Sept. 7 — Due to a 40-year-old embargo,
                        it’s still illegal to travel to Cuba unless you have
                        a license. But with gateways available through
                        other countries, it’s not hard to find plenty of
                        Americans haunting the historic resorts.

                        UP UNTIL VERY RECENTLY, the United States’ ban on
                        travel to Cuba — in force since Washington first severed
                        diplomatic ties with Fidel Castro’s government almost four
                        decades ago — had been enough to stop American tourists
                        from visiting Cuba.
                               Nowadays though, with the Cold War mentality eroding
                        away, some U.S. tourists are venturing beyond the limits of
                        the law to explore this holiday spot known as the “other
                        Caribbean.”
                                Thomas Paul Treat is one of a new breed of American
                        travelers to Cuba. He’s not anything like what had once been
                        the typical visitor to the socialist mecca — members of
                        solidarity delegations traveling to express support for the
                        Cuban revolution. Treat, a Vietnam veteran and fifth-grade
                        teacher from Colorado, considers himself a world traveler
                        who’s twice circled the globe.
                               While touring Latin America this summer, Treat and eight
                        other grammar-school teachers snuck over to Cuba from
                        Mexico basically to see what all the noise is about.
                               “I’ve heard from many Americans who say Cuba is a
                        paradise, and I wanted to see a part of the Caribbean I’ve
                        never seen before,” explains Treat as he leans back in a bar
                        chair in Havana’s Hotel Nacional, inhaling deeply from a
                        Cohiba cigar and consuming a cold Cuban beer.
                               Treat gestures at a wall crammed with photos of
                        Hollywood’s rich and famous pre-Castro guests at this
                        five-star hotel: Buster Keaton, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn,
                        Fred Astaire, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Tyrone Power,
                        Marlon Brando, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Nat King Cole
                        and Johnny Weismuller. Treat notes the obvious: “Cuba has
                        always held a special attraction for Americans ... This country
                        is part of our own history.”
                                  Americans are still largely responsible for the Hotel
                        Nacional’s 92 percent occupancy rate. “We’ve been flooded
                        with Americans since 1995, when people began hearing
                        about the changes here,” explains Liset Conde, public
                        relations officer.
                               Conde says Americans arrive from third countries since
                        the scheduled flights from the United States are strictly
                        reserved for Americans licensed to travel to Cuba — Cuban
                        Americans, journalists and academics. The law even prohibits
                        U.S. offices of airlines that fly to Cuba from third countries,
                        like Mexicana de Aviacion or Air Jamaica, from booking
                        flights to Cuba.

                        THE SURREPTITIOUS ROUTE

                               Vacationing Americans skirt the law by going through an
                        airline office or travel agency outside the United States. The
                        most popular gateway cities are Montreal, Toronto, Nassau,
                        Cancun, Mexico City, Merida and Kingston.
                                   It’s not clear just how many Americans are sunning
                        themselves on Cuba’s sparkling white sand, bathing in
                        her warm turquoise waters, or paying $25 per person to
                        watch the Tropicana dancers grind their hips at the notorious
                        nightclub under the stars.  Michael Kozak, Washington’s
                        top diplomat in Havana,  believes it’s probably less than
                        50,000, while Havana sources claim as many as 125,000
                        Americans will spend tourist dollars in Cuba this year.
                               Either way, when compared to the more than 7 million
                        Americans who head to the Bahamas every year, Cuba
                        remains an unspoiled and forbidden fruit.
                               And that’s part of the grand lure.
                               Curiosity about Cuba present and past is what drives
                        many of these Americans to defy the long-standing embargo
                        and engage in illegal travel to the island.
                               “We have Americans who come and ask for Room 225,
                        where Ava Gardner always stayed, or 232, which belonged
                        to Johnny Weismuller,” Conde says. Hotel management,
                        distinctly trying to capitalize on the Nacional’s past fame,
                        made plans to renovate Room 212 — the place where Frank
                        Sinatra hung his hat — just days after the singer died.
                               Treat found his long weekend in Havana “a journey into
                        a time warp ... Latin and intense.” The city is a kaleidoscope
                        of colonial, Eastern Bloc and late-’50s architecture. For $12
                        you can hop in an American classic like the 1956 Chevys and
                        1928 Fords parked outside all of the city’s major hotels to
                        tour convents, castles, cathedrals and forts dating back to the
                        15th century.

                       A WARM WELCOME
                                American visitors generally voice surprise at the
                        graciousness they’re shown by the Cuban people. “I
                        expected hostility, ill-will ... After all, our governments have
                        been at each other’s throats for a long time ... Instead, I got
                        warmth,” observed Mark Watson, an Alabama lawyer who
                        sailed to Cuba for a boat race.
                               Even Cuban immigration, notorious for its lengthy
                        Soviet-style red tape, is doing its part to embrace their
                        northern neighbors. American tourists can buy their Cuban
                        visas just minutes before boarding a Havana-bound flight.
                        The visa is never stamped into the passport but issued as a
                        loose document. Monica Ramos, an Argentine travel agent
                        who specializes in sending American tourists to Cuba, admits
                        this is a stroke to get around U.S. law: “It’s done for
                        convenience’s sake ... nothing appears in the passport, so no
                        one’s the wiser.”
                               The U.S. government accuses Cuban officials of “trying
                        to hide the evidence” of American tourists spending dollars in
                        Cuba without a U.S. Treasury license, thereby in violation of
                        the “Trading with the Enemy” Act. Treasury is empowered to
                        impose fines of up to $50,000 on lawbreakers, although the
                        enforcement of this law has been lax lately.

                       ENFORCING THE LAW

                               The American Mission in Havana, however, says that
                        things are about to change. Officials from Treasury, State and
                        Justice just met in Miami to discuss ways to improve
                        enforcement of embargo regulations.
                               “Mostly people are being told Cuba is a neat,
                        adventurous vacation,” Kozak warns. “People shouldn’t
                       believe that propaganda. It’s not risk-free. Treasury has
                        collected up to $1.7 million in fines over the last three years.
                        ... You can get hit pretty hard with penalties.”
                               But people like George Wycoff, an 80-year-old retired
                        minister, claims he had no choice except to take the risk and
                        defy the law. “If I wait until the White House lifts the ban, I’ll
                        be dead!”

                       BRINGING THEM BACK

                               Notwithstanding today’s controversy, Cuba didn’t
                        always have the welcome mat out for American tourists.
                               During the years following Fidel Castro’s ascent to
                        power in 1959, the government halted the lucrative
                        international tourism trade to focus energy on building
                        factories, collectivizing agriculture and designing a generous
                        social-welfare program.
                               It wasn’t until the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union —
                        until then, Cuba’s main benefactor — that the government
                        turned to tourism as a way of becoming economically
                        independent, earning fast, hard currency for its badly battered
                        economy.
                               Since then, even without colossal numbers of American
                        tourists who make up the traditional mainstay of Caribbean
                        resorts, Cuban tourism has grown at a dizzying speed.
                               In 1990, just 330,000 tourists visited Cuba. By 1995,
                        numbers swelled to 740,000. This year, its sun, sand and surf
                        is expected to attract about 1.2 million visitors, and officials
                        forecast 2 million by the year 2000.
                               Economically speaking, tourism is now king — the
                        island’s top dollar maker as income from this growing
                        industry soared since the start of the decade. In 1994,
                        tourism bought $850 million to the national treasury, while this
                        year revenues will exceed $2 billion.
                               In the beginning of the decade, the Ministry of Tourism
                        tried containing visitors to a few choice places like the
                        exclusive Varadero Beach Resort or chic and pricey Cayo
                        Largo, so as not to mix with the often-impoverished local
                        population. But tourists wanted to taste and feel the “real”
                        Cuba, so today all of the island’s 14 provinces are open to
                        international tourism.
                               Cuba is a bright, bewildering land full of color, rhythms,
                        motion and heat, texture and form. Americans frequently
                        comment on how the Cuban people share our satiric sense of
                        humor, our generous and sociable natures.
                               “I feel alive here,” comments Becky, an American navy
                        nurse in Havana for a few days of sightseeing. “I love the
                        music and dance. The mix of African and Spanish roots ...
                        The old churches and the forts. The fact there’s no drugs.
                        Cuba’s unspoiled. The only drawback is the prostitution.”

                       THE DARK UNDERBELLY

                               Cheap thrills is exactly what’s bringing some Americans
                        to the island.
                               Kozak, expressing the view of the U.S. State
                        Department, charges that “Americans who come here are not
                        above what the other tourists here do ... A lot of this tourism
                        involves sex tourism — exploiting the young, who are just so
                        desperate for money they’ll do anything.”
                               In Havana alone, unofficial estimates put 20,000
                        prostitutes out working the streets. And even more
                        unfortunate is how tourism prostitution has drawn under-age
                        Cubans into its net.
                               The Cuban government may frown on sex tourism, but it
                        hasn’t been able to do much to keep it from blossoming —
                        especially as the boom in tourism coincides with the harshest
                        economic recession to grip Cuba in half a century.
                               Industry managers take offense at this portrayal. Miguel
                        Angel Solano, who helps run the large outfit Cubanacan,
                        asserts that his company strives to attract what he calls
                        “wholesome” tourism.
                               “We’re promoting tourism that exploits Cuba’s 4,000
                        miles of expansive coastline, 50 cays and 280 sparkling
                        beaches,” Solano says. “We promote wholesome diversions
                        like horseback riding, bird-watching and nature hiking in
                        Matanzas and Pinar del Rio, exploring picturesque colonial
                        villages in Trinidad; sunbathing, snorkeling, and yachting off
                        the Cuban coast.”

                        AN OCEAN-GOING BOUNTY

                                That’s what lured David, a medivac pilot, to sail to
                        Havana’s Hemingway Marina seven times over the past
                        three years. The U.S. travel ban hardly matters to David:
                        “Some people are scared, but I’m not. I don’t pay attention
                        to the ban,” he says.
                               He admits that’s part of the mystique for him — “a
                        cruising adventure to a land officially off-bounds” — along
                        with some of the “greatest deep-sea fishing for marlin and
                        shark there is.”
                               At any one time, you can spot American flags flying from
                        about 80 yachts docked in the broad canals of Hemingway
                        marina. “Cuba’s a stepping-stone to cruising between the
                        Caribbean and Central America,” says Jose Miguel Diaz
                        Scrich, Commodore of Havana’s International Hemingway
                        Yachting Club.
                               The Commodore says more American boaters come to
                        Cuba for leisurely sails and local races than any other
                        nationality. “They see Cuba as the last major Caribbean
                        destination unexplored by the current cruising community,”
                        asserts Diaz.
                               The club also provides logistical help for members and
                        non-members alike: docking, auto and hotel reservations;
                        customs notification; and even guides to help you navigate
                        around the island. The Club can be reached by e-mail.
                               Actually, boating is becoming one of the easiest ways to
                        reach Cuba. The country has a chain of eight international
                        marinas strategically located around the island’s perimeter
                        with customs and immigration officers right on the premises:
                        Marina Hemingway near Havana; Darsena and Gaviota at
                        Varadero; Jucaro at Trinidad; Cienfuegos; Santiago; Maria la
                        Gorda and Cayo Largo.