Summer Hotspot: Havana, Cuba

Click on a label to read posts from that part of the world.

The available trips are a great step forward and many Americans will prefer their first visit to Cuba be in a guided tour. But they will find they are not exactly alone. More than last year's 2.7 million foreign tourists plus 400,000 Cuban Americans are expected to visit Cuba in 2012.

What we need now is for the President to give all self-attesting people to people visitors the same general license he gave to self-attesting Cuban American family visitors. That way self directed travelers, families, backpackers, etc. could join Europeans and Canadians to rent cars, pick up hitch-hikers, use the public bus and train and stay in privately owned bed and breakfasts, the best way to achieve spontaneous people to people contact.

It will also remove travel from the secretive, slow and arbitrary judgments of the Office of Foreign Assets Control which is still led by a Bush appointee.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

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