U.S. Cuba tours opening minds — on both sides
Americans say visits make them more inclined to oppose embargo
HAVANA — When U.S. President Barack Obama reinstated “people-to-people” travel to Cuba in 2011, the idea was that visiting Americans would act as cultural ambassadors for a U.S. constantly demonized in the island’s official media.
Two and a half years later, a survey shared with The Associated Press suggests the trips are not only improving Cubans’ views of Americans. They are also changing U.S. travellers’ opinions of the Caribbean nation for the better, and dimming their view of Washington policies that have long sought to pressure Cuba’s Communist leaders.
“I think U.S.-Cuban relations should be open. People should be talking to each other. People should be sharing,” said Ellen Landsberger, a 62-year-old New York obstetrician who recently visited on a people-to-people tour. “We have this tiny little island that is no threat to the U.S. that we’re isolating from the world. It doesn’t make sense.”
There’s surely significant self-selection among peopleto-people travellers; supporters of a hardline policy against Cuba are unlikely to consider such a tour. And the people who run the trips tend to be more or less sympathetic toward Cuba, or at least to the idea of easing or lifting the 52-year-old U.S. embargo, which could potentially be a boon to their business.
Still, the results of the multiple-choice survey by Friendly Planet Travel, a company based in suburban Philadelphia that promotes legal tours of Cuba, are eyecatching. Three-quarters said they were drawn by curiosity about life in a nation that has been off-limits to most Americans for decades.
Before travel, the most prevalent view of Raul Castro’s government was “a repressive Communist regime that stifles individuality and creativity,” 48 per cent of respondents said. That fell to 19 per cent after their visits, and the new most-popular view, held by 30 per cent of respondents, became the slightly more charitable “a failing government that is destined to fall.”
Most striking, 88 per cent said the experience made them more likely than before to support ending the embargo against Cuba.
Peggy Goldman, president of Friendly Planet Travel, said visitors are surprised by how hard it is to find many goods, even something as basic as an adhesive bandage.
Some leave Cuba blaming U.S. policy for the shortages — as the Cuban government does constantly, although analysts also point to a weak, inefficient and corruptionridden economic system as a key cause of scarcity.
“In day-to-day life, it’s so difficult for the average Cuban. When the travellers go and they see that, and they experience it themselves, it makes sense that they say (the embargo) doesn’t make sense,” Goldman said. “It hasn’t toppled the government in all these years. We need to try a different way.”
Goldman acknowledged that her informal poll, which surveyed 423 Americans who visited Cuba in December, was not scientific.
But others in the industry tell a similar story.
“Some people go back and say they want to write letters to their senators,” said Jeff Philippe, a guide who has taken 34 groups to the island in just over a year for Insight Cuba, which puts on people-to-people tours for Americans. “I’ve had several people say to me, ‘I want to make this my personal mission to end the embargo.’”
That could provide am-
“People should be talking to each other.” Elen Lands berger, visitor to Cuba from newyork
munition to the harshest opponents of people-to-people travel, who have argued from the beginning that the tours, partially organized in concert with Cuban state-run entities, let the Communist government put its best face forward and hide its warts.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone being exposed to Cuba’s reality and walking away with a more favourable view of the Castro regime,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, a CubanAmerican Republican from Florida.
“But it’s not surprising to hear that’s the case with these tourist trips to Cuba, since they are specifically designed to expose people only to what the regime wants them to see.
“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 said.
In general, the tours tend not to include much contact with Cuban dissidents.
In a written response to a request for comment, the U.S. State Department said people-to-people travel has successfully “contributed to a more realistic and therefore more positive view of Americans and the United States by the Cuban people.”