Limits on Trips to Cuba Cause Split in Florida

By ABBY GOODNOUGH and TERRY AGUAYO

New York Times

MIAMI, June 23 Miriam Verdura could hardly wait to visit family in her native Cuba next month, her second trip since immigrating to southern Florida in 1999. But the Bush administration has dashed her plans with restrictions that start next Wednesday.

"It’s inhuman," said Ms. Verdura, who was at the airport Wednesday morning seeing off friends who managed to book round-trip flights before the rules take effect and who were checking baggage with dozens of other travelers.

Because she last visited in 2002, Ms. Verdura will be ineligible to return until next year.

"Bush’s priority should first of all be to not keep Cuban families apart, because we suffer a lot," she said.

The rules, published over the last week, have been promoted by President Bush as a way to hasten the end of the Castro government and were formulated at the urging of Republican Cuban-American lawmakers and others here. They limit Cuban-Americans to one trip home every three years and make it nearly impossible for most other Americans to visit the Communist island. They also restrict cash transfers and gift packages to Cubans.

"The only way to get rid of Fidel is to get tight on him," said Mario Guzman, 75, who immigrated here in 1973 and was waiting to play dominoes in a park in the Little Havana section. "The main reason why he’s still in power is because the very Cubans he forced out are bringing him dollars back."

But if supporters of a hard-line position toward Havana are applauding the measures, other Cuban-Americans are not. The regulations have sent travel agents and many travelers spinning as they try to rearrange plans by next Wednesday, when the government-issued licenses that Cuban immigrants have used will become invalid, and violators of the rules will face up to $4,000 in fines.

Charter companies are adding flights this week between Miami and Cuba, and travel agents are scrambling to find customers who have already left and warn them to return before Wednesday. Colleges and universities face canceling dozens of Cuban travel programs, and boaters can no longer dock there, even if they spend no money.

"People are crying, saying, ’Please, can’t you put me on a plane?’ " Tessie Aral, vice president and chief executive of ABC Charters, said. "One said, ’I have to go because my mother is dying.’ They can’t wait another three years."

The measures are part of a broader plan that President Bush announced last month to be tougher on President Fidel Castro and speed a transition to democracy in Cuba. Democrats and even some Republicans say the election-year crackdown is a nakedly political move to bolster Mr. Bush’s support among Cuban-Americans in southern Florida, a crucial segment of his base in this swing state.

A debate is raging about whether Mr. Bush went too far and whether the crackdown could in fact hurt his re-election prospects.

"It’s very important for people to vote against him because of this policy," Ms. Aral said. "When we were helping check people into a flight last weekend, I said: ’Are you registered to vote? Then you need to vote this November.’ Eighty percent said they would."

On the other side of the debate are older Cuban-Americans like Mr. Guzman who arrived here decades ago, who take a much harder stance than their younger counterparts against Mr. Castro and press Washington do the same. Many are more affluent and educated than recent immigrants, far more likely to vote and less likely to visit Cuba. They are steadfast Republicans who helped ensure Mr. Bush’s 537-vote victory over Al Gore here in 2000.

A spokesman for Mr. Bush’s campaign, Reed Dickens, said the rules were not a vote-getting tactic but an effort to free Cubans from Mr. Castro’s hold. "No one has a stronger record than President Bush in fighting the Castro regime while at the same time helping the oppressed people of Cuba," Mr. Dickens said.

Under the changes, United States residents will be allowed to visit relatives once every three years instead of once a year. They will be able to spend $50 a day, down from $167, plus $50 a day for transportation, if needed. Visitors will need a special license that will let them visit immediate family members only, for up to 14 days at a time.

Until now, a "general license" has allowed them to visit relatives like cousins and aunts.

Another change limits gifts sent to the island to food, medical supplies, radios and batteries. Although any American older than 18 can now send up to $1,200 a year, the rules will allow only people with immediate family members in Cuba to send money, and just to those relatives.

Sergio Bendixen, a pollster here, said the changes might benefit Mr. Bush, because most Cuban-Americans who vote are rigidly anti-Castro. More recent immigrants, who tend to hold more moderate views, make up 15 percent of the Cuban-American electorate even though they make up half the Cuban-American population in Florida, Mr. Bendixen said. Of the 600,000 Cuban-American voters here, more than 80 percent supported Mr. Bush in 2000.

Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, the most prominent exile group, said he would not be so sure, pointing to a survey by Telemundo that showed a 50-50 split among local viewers on the new rules.

"I don’t know if we are standing on strong moral ground here," Mr. Garcia said. "Someone who has been as pro family as President Bush should not be affecting family relationships between exiles and Cubans on the islands."

Mr. Garcia said his group did, however, support other proposals that Mr. Bush made last month, including adding millions in spending to support Cuban dissidents and beaming anti-Castro broadcasts financed by the United States from a specially equipped plane.

Mr. Bush made his announcement seven months after he appointed a panel to recommend tighter sanctions and after Republican Cuban-American lawmakers complained that he should do more to bring down the Castro government. At the time, the lawmakers warned that Cuban-Americans might withdraw their support for Mr. Bush if he did not act boldly.

Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Miami Republican who is one of the strongest anti-Castro voices here, said Cuban-Americans should not return to the island at all because they are political refugees.

"In any other country in the world," Mr. Diaz-Balart said, "if you’re an asylee, you cannot go back until the political conditions change."

As part of the crackdown, Mr. Bush is also prohibiting college students from visiting for courses that last less than 10 weeks and secondary school students from going at all. The change will eliminate dozens of short educational trips sponsored by American colleges and universities in conjunction with cultural groups.

"We are all writing letters and urging that these measures be rescinded because they are a violation of academic freedoms," Wayne Smith, director of the Cuba Exchange Program at the Johns Hopkins University, said.

Last year, Mr. Bush banned cultural visits to Cuba organized by museums and other charitable groups, visits that President Bill Clinton began allowing in 1999. The United States has imposed a trade embargo against Cuba since 1962, three years after Mr. Castro seized power, though food and medicine sales are allowed case by case. Congress voted to end the travel ban to Cuba last fall, but removed the provision from an appropriations bill after Mr. Bush threatened to veto it.

In a sign that the government is beefing up enforcement, federal prosecutors on June 10 charged the organizers of several sailboat races between Key West and Cuba with violating the embargo and "trading with the enemy."

"This is simply an abuse of nautical rights," Commodore José Miguel Díaz Escrich, founder of the Hemingway International Nautical Club, said in a telephone interview from Havana. In a typical June, he said, at least 40 American boats docked there at a time. Now, Mr. Díaz said, there are none.

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