Responding to a Reader

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 23


BY: CAPITOL HILL CUBANS


The following was published as a Letter to the Editor in the Miami Herald:

I read Mauricio Claver-Carone's Feb. 12 Other Views column, Travelers to Cuba beware, with disappointment. I do not support the treatment that U.S. government contractor Alan Gross has received, and I hope that he comes home soon. However, I find Claver-Carone's insinuation that those who travel to Cuba for educational purposes will somehow be subjected to the same treatment off-base.

I have traveled to Cuba twice through such programs. They are supported by the Cuban government-run Cuban Institute for Friendship with the People. Indeed, such programs always begin with a welcome from Institute officials who, surprisingly, are quite frank in their criticism of the status quo in Cuba.

Whether the people-to-people programs are effective in meeting their stated goals is a legitimate debate I look forward to having with Claver-Carone someday. In the meantime, I invite him, and the organizations that he leads, to do some hands-on, face-to-face research with the Cuban people before he makes such dangerously misleading statements.

Chad Purdie, Miami

Allow us to emphasize two sentences:

I have traveled to Cuba twice through such programs. They are supported by the Cuban government-run Cuban Institute for Friendship with the People.

And that, Dear Reader, is precisely the problem -- not to mention the absolute sham -- of such travel to Cuba.

Have no doubt, as long as you continue to travel to Cuba under Castro-vetted, approved and controlled programs, you are in no danger.

However, you are doing nothing to help the Cuban people free themselves from the longest and most repressive dictatorship the Western Hemisphere has ever seen.

To the contrary, you are (perhaps unwittingly) doing exactly what the regime wants.