Cuba: Why most of us might be ready to visit

By Diego Zerpa Chang

Although the U.S. does not explicitly prohibit its citizens from visiting Cuba and although Cubans have always welcomed outside currency and spending with arms wide open, a visit to this colorful archipelago has always been looked upon with a bizarre eye. This has happened because of several reasons, such as the obvious political matter developed after the Bay of Pigs invasion –after which U.S. citizens can only visit the island legally as a part of an accepted educational or religious tour–, or the ongoing effect of the Trading with the Enemy Act –which forbids U.S. citizens from spending money on Cuba–, or even the hundreds of stories of Cubans living under extreme poverty and suffering human rights violations.

Yet, many citizens with a wholehearted desire to visit and experience Cuba have looked beyond those issues, or perhaps have used those same issues as encouragement for their trips, and they have toured the legendary sun-drenched destination filled with huge acreage in national parks after entering illegally, mostly through Canada, Mexico or another Caribbean country. This traveling trend might change pretty soon for the better, as a few U.S. Senators are on a crusade to lift the 47-year-old embargo that continues to press Cuba’s communist leaders to liberate dissidents and open up political freedom and to lift restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens to the island. If this were to happen, it would mean that U.S. travel agencies would soon be able to offer Cuba as a wonderful destination for U.S. travelers and it would probably indicate that most of us might finally be ready to visit our close Caribbean neighbor.

In Cuba, outsiders can truly find a complex but rich mix of culture, ecological landscapes and unusual traditions, all inside of an island environment which seems surrealistically frozen in time and which has numerous colonial buildings which have endured from even the 16th and 17th centuries, such as the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Cathedral of Havana, the Chinatown District, the El Templete monument and the Finca Vigia, the gorgeous residence of Ernest Hemingway bordered by fruit trees in the periphery of Havana.

Throughout these and other areas, music and loud laughs resonate from open windows and from public spaces where old men hold their chess matches or their afternoon talks. It is a destination where the smell of rice with black beans, fried fish and even pizza flows through the air in many of the streets were you can unhurriedly wander around. It is now a peaceful island, but one which has a sort of double reality, as the Cuban regime has proven reasonably skilled over the years at capturing tourist’s international bills and coins while maintaining them largely segregated from the civilian population.

Although it is true that the Cuban Revolution has affected greatly the style of life and the culture of the island, producing, for example, constant food shortages for its citizens or an intolerance of any form of artistic expression that differed from the official belief, the recent political departure of its longtime leader Fidel Castro has began to change things and has begun to connect Cubans with the outside world, helping the cause for more outsiders to feel as if they are ready to visit the island. This is a general desire and it is seen as a form of salvation in these moments of crisis, far greater than a challenge for the political landscape inside the island. Cuba currently trades with Canada, several countries in South America and in the United Kingdom and it receives over 2 million tourists each year: adding the U.S. fully to that list is something that will definitely happen sooner that later.

(Diego Zerpa Chang is a freelance writer for several publications and a contributor to Island Vibes Magazine. For comments, please feel free to contact him at diego@islandvibesmag.com.)