US Congress takes first step to dismantle embargo on Cuba

Washington.-The legislative battle to end the commercial and economic embargo of more than half a century against Cuba is underway in Washington.

Eight senators, Democrats and Republicans, took the first step by presenting a bill to end all travel restrictions for Americans to the island. Next week, a Republican congressman and another Democrat will introduce a parallel initiative in the House of Representatives, AFP reports.

“There is an appetite among Americans to travel to Cuba,” said one of the sponsors of the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act of 2015, Democrat Dick Durbin. “Let’s remove this restriction on Americans,” he urged.

The bill comes to light exactly one week after the first official bilateral negotiations, on Thursday the 22nd in Havana, for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations announced by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro on December 17.

But the normalization of relations will only be complete, both Washington and Havana acknowledge, when the embargo ends. And that is something – as Obama recalled in his State of the Union address, also delivered last week – that only Congress can do. For example, the Democratic president has already relaxed part of the travel restrictions by executive order, but tourism as such to the island remains formally prohibited, something that this bill seeks to end, which now begins a long legislative path.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake, one of the co-authors of the initiative, stated that it also begins the path to ending sanctions that have not worked.

The end of the embargo “will come,” he asserted. “Ending everything (the embargo) is going to take longer, but I think the travel ban will end very soon,” he confided and maintained that support for this first step is “overwhelming” among the American population. But support for this position is not necessarily replicated on Capitol Hill.

It is true that on Wednesday, six Republican senators – including the “presidential” Rand Paul – signed along with Flake a letter sent to Obama supporting his change of course with Cuba and promising to work in Congress to “modernize” US policy towards the island.

But a day later, Flake did not want to reveal whether the first concrete proposal in this regard, that of eliminating travel restrictions, even has the support of the leadership of his party, which has the majority in both chambers of Congress. Republican colleagues such as Senator Marco Rubio and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, both of Cuban origin, have denounced any step taken towards the island as a “concession”, a position shared by Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez.

This is something however that Flake flatly rejected on Thursday. “We are not offering a concession, what we are saying is that Americans should be able to travel wherever they want as long as it does not constitute a problem for national security,” he said.

Both Flake and the other promoters of the initiative – Democrats Durbin, Patrick Leahy, Tom Udall and Sheldon Whitehouse, as well as Republicans Jerry Moran, John Boozman and Michael Enzi, who also signed the letter to Obama – are aware that the changes in Cuba they will not occur “overnight.”

“There are no guarantees that this will bring democracy (to Cuba) this year or next, but I think it is much more likely that the conditions will be established for democracy to arrive faster,” Flake summarized. “We have prevented travel and it has not worked. It’s time to try something new.”

Above all, Durbin noted, because the United States is in a privileged position to encourage major changes on the island. “They are only 90 miles from the United States (140 kilometers),” he recalled. “Clearly, we are better positioned to have an impact on Cuba’s future than any other nation.”

“Although it does not happen overnight, with these exchanges, for example opening Cuba to the world with the Internet, we are going to see an acceleration of the debate, of the exchange of ideas. And all these things are in the interest of both Cuba and the United States.”