The (Non) Right of Cubans to Travel

The (Non) Right of Cubans to Travel
February 1, 2010
Haroldo Dilla Alfonso

HAVANA TIMES, Feb. 1 — A while ago, Cuban Parliament President Ricardo
Alarcon was asked whether Cubans should be entitled the right to travel
freely. This prominent member of the island's political elite responded
—in the finest style of standup comedy— saying that if this right
existed, the sky would become so filled with airplanes that some would
collide with others, causing great a disaster. In my opinion, the
greater disaster was this official's response.

This statement was probably no more disastrous than what was later said
by the president of the Cuban National Union of Writers and Artists
(UNEAC), writer Miguel Barnet. He affirmed that in Cuba there exists
complete freedom to travel, citing as an example the fact that he
himself has traveled to thirty countries. As I suspect he hopes to
continue traveling, Barnet knows he must walk a thin line, otherwise he
risks discrediting himself and seeing the end of his journeys.

Such collusion extends to a good part of the Cuban intellectual camp,
including many "progressives" and "reformists" whose critical poses are
so well-liked by foreign correspondents here in Havana.

A few weeks ago, a distinguished Cuban intellectual who resides in New
York wrote to me disappointed by a well-known and active "verbal
reformist" —a comrade of days gone by— who spent several minutes at a
forum in Pittsburgh explaining that the only obstacle that his fellow
Cubans face in traveling is obtaining a visa from the destination country.

Sometimes this matter is not mentioned so directly in self-rewarding
displays of immodesty, as those of Barnet and the old friend; rather,
they divert their sights, focusing insistently on the US side without
distinguishing anything else around them. It's as if an epidemic of
political pigmentary retinopathy has broken out on the island.

The Cuban intellectual world reacts in convulsions every time a travel
visa to the United States is refused for a personality in Cuba – as
happened with Silvio Rodriguez at the beginning of the Obama
administration. Similar responses result with the annual rejection of
demands by the Cuban members of the Latin American Studies Association
(within which there are many Cubans from the island, both reformists and
hardliners); that advocates the US government grant greater freedom for
American academics to travel to Cuba. These are only a couple examples
of this hypocritical collusion.

The situation in Cuba concerning the freedom to travel is unfortunate.
What I'm describing here is not for Cuban readers (who are all too
familiar with this issue), but for those who are unaware of the matter
and are forced to accept the information of those who close their eyes
to this flagrant civil rights violation, a veritable wedge driven
between the Cuban nation made up of both émigrés and those residing on
the island.

Above all, travel for Cubans is not a right, but a legal privilege. It
is a condition that can be granted or rescinded. It is a revocable
concession by an unappealable power and is without a defined judicial
framework.

In Cuba there are three ways to travel abroad:

1 – as someone holding an exceptional status, with which they can enter
and leave almost freely at whatever moment they consider it necessary.
This is granted to some people (but not all) who have married foreigners
and to prominent members of the political and intellectual elite or
their family members. This would almost be a normal status if it didn't
have to be negotiated and if it weren't revocable should the person
demonstrate some type of political behavior unacceptable to the
government. Very few people are in this stratum.

2 – as someone who is leaving on an official assignment (officials,
academics, artists and technicians). These individuals require an
official institution to authorize and sponsor their trip, and in each
case the person's passport must be revalidated by Cuban authorities for
each trip abroad. If the person who leaves on one of these trips
decides not to return to Cuba —if they "desert"— they then lose all
rights of citizenship and cannot return to the country for several years
(up to five); nor are their family members allowed to leave the island,
which means the family is condemned to several years of separation.
Needless to say, if some academic demonstrates themselves to be
particularly critical while on their trip, it's possible that they will
not see the inside of international airport terminal for quite some time.

3 – as someone going on a private trip, of which there are two
categories. The first category, opaque for most earthlings, is the
"definitive" exit; meaning the person is emigrating and cannot return to
live in Cuba. With this they lose all of their rights and property on
the island.

The second category includes people who plan to travel only temporarily.
They may remain outside the island for up to 11 months, after which
time they must return or else they become "definitive migrants." In all
cases the departure by such individuals must be specifically authorized
by the Ministry of the Interior and by the institution where that person
last worked.

Other categories of technicians exist —for doctors, for example— who
cannot leave through this channel. Likewise, there is a category for
people considered "politically adverse," for which the obstacles to exit
are numerous.

The most dramatic case of denying the right to travel was that of Hilda
Molina. By then an elderly scientist, she had previously broken with
the official party machine —to which she had once passionately adhered—
and therefore her reunion with all of her family living in Argentina was
denied for years, until the Cuban government finally conceded to a
petition by Buenos Aires.

What is particularly negative is that people who want to travel
temporarily cannot take their children (those below legal age). This is
only possible when the person decides to emigrate "definitively."

In all cases, the departures of these people imply considerable fees
that can end up in well excess of US $500, an immense sum for a
population with exceedingly depressed wages that average $20 a month.
In short, to leave, each person must be able to pay for a letter of
invitation, a passport and an exit permit.

On top of this, once in the destination country, the traveler must make
payments to the Cuban embassy in that country a sum that varies each
month they remain in that country, which is a highly uncustomary
practice. This sum fluctuates between $40 and $150 a month.

Deciding to live abroad

I have not been exhaustive in the preceding account because I prefer to
proceed to briefly explain what happens when a person decides to reside
in a foreign country (those apart from the very small minority that has
been authorized to do so).

As noted, this person loses all of their property and rights in Cuba,
which technically makes them an exile. If at some time they wish to
return, they can do so only as a visitor. For this they must be
specifically authorized by the government through a stamp that is placed
in their passport and authorizes them to stay for 21 days.

Many Cubans are not authorized, not even in cases of family emergencies.
There exist groups of émigrés —the case of most of the 1994 "balseros"
(boat people) — who face special difficulties in obtaining entry
permits. Others are authorized but are turned back once they land on
Cuban soil.

They can only travel to the island under a Cuban passport, their current
citizenship doesn't matter; moreover, their citizenship must be renewed
every two years at a cost of one hundred dollars.

The logical upshot is that Cuban émigrés live in legal limbo, since the
Cuban government does not accept "returnees," and because of that they
are undesirable in many places. A tragicomic example was that of a
Cuban who had to spend 50 days in San Jose's airport because he could
neither enter Costa Rica nor return to Cuba – like what happened to Tom
Hanks in his outstanding movie "The Terminal," though without the prize
of Catherine Zeta Jones. Here, as Oscar Wilde once said, life imitated
art.

There are no laws or clearly written regulations covering these
processes; rather, there are arbitrary and discretionary practices that
mix starkly fascist reins of political control with mercurial
motivations of the worst kind. In this way, the Cuban government denies
a right that it alternately sells to those who can afford it.

Cubans who travel abroad must behave with "political correctness" if
they want to continue traveling, if they want see their loved ones again
or if they want to one day return to Cuba – to the place where they were
born, to feel fully Cuban. That right has been expropriated by an
authoritarian and repressive political elite that has —one by one—
denied the values and the human goals of the revolution and socialism.

But we must pay them, and pay them well, so they can continue
reproducing their power with the same parasitic style they've displayed
over the last fifty years.

I'm sure that in the case of Cuban emigrants, we are faced with a
situation of the uppercase violation of the rights of people and one
which is the source of much human suffering.

Only for this reason it is worth our trouble to look into this matter
and to begin to move in that direction. We must even lend assistance to
people like Miguel Barnet and the friend of days gone by, so they are
not forced to stoop to such ignoble positions in the face of the brutish
legal scaffold that the Cuban government has erected before them.

…simply so Cuba becomes better.

The (Non) Right of Cubans to Travel - Havana Times.org (1 February 2010)
http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=18972