Jul 26, 2007
"Sicko" reminds us once again of our fatuous embargo against travel to Cuba
Michael Moore's latest film, Sicko, ends with a trip to Cuba. After discovering that three of the "early responders" to Ground Zero have apparently suffered lung ailments that their insurance plans refuse to cover, Michael accompanies these heroes of 9/11 to a hospital in Havana.
I have myself traveled to Cuba twice in the last five years. I went there, I am ashamed to say, legally, as a journalist, under license from the Treasury Department. I express that regret because I believe our government does not have the constitutional right to choose the countries that we, as freeborn Americans, are entitled to visit or not visit in peacetime. Travel is a learning activity, a means by which we expand our knowledge of the world; we travel, among other reasons, to reach our own judgments about the foreign policy of our nation. It follows that our government has no more right to prevent us from traveling to a particular country than it has to stop us from attending a lecture or reading a book.
I am aware of the difficulty of making a trip to Cuba into a learning experience, of ascertaining facts in a totalitarian state. And I know full well that Cubans are less than free to express their own opinions to tourists passing through. But while those factors make information-gathering difficult, they do not make it impossible, and there is much that can be learned about such a state in visits to it, just as there is in visits to Vietnam and China, to which our country not only permits but encourages travel.
It is now several years since agreement was reached between aviation officials of the U.S. and communist Vietnam permitting direct flights between major American cities and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. We readily permit Americans to travel to all sorts of antagonistic countries without legal hindrance, provided only that such tourists recognize that they do so at their own risk. What distinguishes the regime of Cuba from the regimes of Vietnam, North Korea, China and others, other than the political influence of a community of émigrés in Florida?
It is time to stand up for our right to travel, in peacetime, to wherever we wish.
Write and read comments about this post.
I have myself traveled to Cuba twice in the last five years. I went there, I am ashamed to say, legally, as a journalist, under license from the Treasury Department. I express that regret because I believe our government does not have the constitutional right to choose the countries that we, as freeborn Americans, are entitled to visit or not visit in peacetime. Travel is a learning activity, a means by which we expand our knowledge of the world; we travel, among other reasons, to reach our own judgments about the foreign policy of our nation. It follows that our government has no more right to prevent us from traveling to a particular country than it has to stop us from attending a lecture or reading a book.
I am aware of the difficulty of making a trip to Cuba into a learning experience, of ascertaining facts in a totalitarian state. And I know full well that Cubans are less than free to express their own opinions to tourists passing through. But while those factors make information-gathering difficult, they do not make it impossible, and there is much that can be learned about such a state in visits to it, just as there is in visits to Vietnam and China, to which our country not only permits but encourages travel.
It is now several years since agreement was reached between aviation officials of the U.S. and communist Vietnam permitting direct flights between major American cities and Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. We readily permit Americans to travel to all sorts of antagonistic countries without legal hindrance, provided only that such tourists recognize that they do so at their own risk. What distinguishes the regime of Cuba from the regimes of Vietnam, North Korea, China and others, other than the political influence of a community of émigrés in Florida?
It is time to stand up for our right to travel, in peacetime, to wherever we wish.
Write and read comments about this post.
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
