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Last week in this space, I reported on a visit to Cuba and a meeting with Elian Gonzalez. Many of you asked how you can go to Cuba.

The enemy of freedom: Al Neuharth, founder of Freedom Forum, Salutes Elian

Media Research Center's in depth study using the media's own words: Back to the "Peaceable" Paradise: Media Soldiers for the Seizure of Elian

Al Neuharth: Most U.S. citizens are denied their constitutional right to travel to Cuba.
A special ''license'' from the U.S. Treasury Department is possible, but very difficult to get.

Why doesn't Castro let Cubans freely travel? Maybe Al Neuharth, founder of USA Today daily newspaper and the Freedom Forum should come down on Castro's communist oppression. Maybe all the news personalities that sit on the board of Al Neuharth's Freedom Forum need to come clean on why they pushed Elian back into Castro's arms.

Vicki Huddleston Q&A: Veteran leader speaks about dissidents, Castro and the U.S. role--[Excerpt]

Q: Should travel restrictions to Cuba be lifted?

A: The problem with the lifting of travel restrictions is that the Cubans control it because they issue the visas. They can put quotas. They can decide to allow only the tourists going to Varadero and Cayo Coco and ensure they have very little contact with the Cuban people. And all that will do, initially, is fill the government coffers and build up the regime. It's ironic because what you need is for the government to respond to the current economic crisis by opening up, by letting Cubans own and operate their own businesses, by letting them invest, letting them stay at hotels. [In Cuba,] the economy is shrinking. It is too dependent on tourism and remittances. Their way of fixing the problem is to fill up the hotels. A far preferable way . . . would be to grow the economy by letting the people invest in their community by starting small businesses -- not just restaurants and taxis and services, but also . . . creating products. You have natural capitalists in Cuba, and the proof of that is in the cars they have and how they take care of them. If allowed to work independently, they would create wealth through their own labor . . . [End Excerpt]

I don't know if somebody put this article already in this post, but it is just to the point.

On Trade, Cuba is Not China"

Senator Jesse Helms

The New York Times

June 24, 2000

Some lawmakers, including a number of Republicans, have argued in recent weeks that if Congress believes trade will promote democratic change in China, then why not adopt the same policy for Cuba? Here is why: Cuba is not China.

The argument that American investment will democratize China has itself been wildly oversold. Beijing is doing everything in its power to dampen the impact of private investment: placing stringent control on the Internet (all users must register with the Public Security Bureau), and most recently declaring that it will insert "party cells" into every private business that operates in China.

But regardless of how one feels about permanent normalized trade with China, there is simply no case to be made that investment would democratize Cuba.

Cuba has undertaken none of the market reforms that China has in recent years; there is no private property, and there are no entrepreneurs with whom to do business. The Fidel Castro regime maintains power by controlling every single aspect of Cuban life: access to food, access to education, access to health care, access to work.

This permits Castro to stifle any and all dissent. Any Cuban daring to say the wrong thing, by Castro's standards, loses his or her job. Anyone refusing to spy on a neighbor is denied a university education. Anyone daring to organize an opposition group goes to jail.

American investment cannot and will not change any of this. It cannot empower individual Cubans, or give them independence from the regime, because foreign investors in Cuba cannot do business with private citizens. They can do business only with Fidel Castro.

It is illegal in Cuba for anyone except the regime to employ workers. That means that foreign investors cannot hire or pay workers directly. They must go to the Cuban government employment agency, which picks the workers. The investors then pay Castro in hard currency for the workers, and Castro pays the workers in worthless pesos.

Here is a real-life example: Sherritt International of Canada, the largest foreign investor in Cuba, operates a nickel mine in Moa Bay (a mine, incidentally, which Cuba stole from an American company). Roughly 1,500 Cubans work there as virtual slave laborers. Sherritt pays Castro approximately $10,000 a year for each of these Cuban workers. Castro gives the workers about $18 a month in pesos, then pockets the difference.

The net result is a subsidy of nearly $15 million in hard currency each year that Castro then uses to pay for the security apparatus that keeps the Cubans enslaved.

Those who advocate lifting the embargo speak in broad terms about using investment to promote democracy in Cuba. But I challenge them to explain exactly how, under this system, investment can do anything to help the Cuban people.

The anti-embargo crowd should drop its rhetoric about promoting democracy and be honest: the one reason for their push to lift sanctions on Cuba is to pander to well-intentioned American farmers, who have been misled by the agribusiness giants into believing that going into business with a bankrupt Communist island is a solution to the farm crisis in America.

Whoever has convinced farmers that their salvation lies in trade with Cuba has sold them a bill of goods. Cuba is desperately poor, barely able to feed its own people, much less save the American farmer.

Castro wants the American embargo lifted because he is desperate for hard currency. After the Soviet Union collapsed and Moscow's subsidies ended, Castro turned to European and Canadian investors to keep his Communist system afloat. Now he wants American investors to do the same. We must not allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, some in Washington are all too willing to give Castro what he wants. At the least they should stop pretending that they are doing this to promote Cuban democracy and American values.

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It is a great loss for the United States that Senator Helms, probably the greatest American stateman of the whole century, is retiring.