News that President Barack Obama is lifting some restrictions on travel and financial dealings with Cuba is a signal that one day the U.S. and Cuba can again have normal relations, say some who fled the Caribbean nation after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.
“Cuba won’t be so closed,” said Deputy Denver Mayor Guillermo “Bill” Vidal, who left Cuba in 1961 at age 10. “I think it’s a good step forward, but I’d like to see the embargo lifted.”
Obama announced policy changes Monday, including allowing unlimited money transfers and visits to family in Cuba. The U.S. government also will start issuing licenses to allow telecommunications companies to provide cellphone, radio and television services there.
Maria Garcia Berry, chief executive of CRL Associates, a public-relations consulting firm, said she is encouraged by the new rules.
“I have been historically anti- embargo,” said Berry, whose family came to the U.S. in 1962. “It (the embargo) has not accomplished what it was intended to do. Any movement freeing up more activity between the two countries would be helpful.”
She wonders whether Cuba’s communist government will be as accommodating as the U.S., noting that the Cuban regime already takes 30 percent from U.S. remittances sent to family members in the country.
“The question you have to ask yourself is, are they going to take advantage of the situation?” Berry said. “I think the Cuban government is scared that we’re going to go back there and say, ‘Can we have our house back?’ ”
Vidal, who visited Cuba in 2001, said easing the financial and travel restrictions will bring help to Cubans who are living in poverty and cannot afford basic necessities.
“The one thing I learned when I went back is that the Cuban people are really suffering as a result of the embargo,” said Vidal, whose memoir, “Boxing for Cuba,” about his journey to the U.S and life here as well as the political unrest in his birth country, was published two years ago. “The only people it was empowering was Castro, because he gets to keep a lot of people and ideas out.”
Travel, even with permits, can be tricky. Berry wondered just how much the Cuban government will cooperate with more Americans visiting there.
She said she went back to Cuba a few years ago and had a special travel permit but was detained at the airport for 1 1/2 hours as officials pondered whether to let her stay.
Still, any movement by the countries to get closer is positive, she said.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, the year that Maria Garcia Berry emigrated from Cuba to the United States was incorrect. She came to the U.S. in 1962.
