BY KATY KARLIN
PITTSBURGH - "It's my opinion that the ban on travel to Cuba isn't about spending dollars over there," said Dan Kovalik. "I think the United States government doesn't want people to travel to Cuba because they might learn, they might like it, and they might come back and ask for nationalized health care or subsidized housing."

Kovalik, an attorney for the United Steel Workers of America, participated as part of a broad panel of speakers protesting the U.S. government's ban on travel to Cuba held at the University of Pittsburgh on February 11. Entitled "Why is Travel to Cuba a U.S. Crime?" the meeting attracted more than 50 people, including many college students.

Kate Daher, a member of the Pittsburgh Cuba Coalition, chaired the meeting. Daher, who visited Cuba in 1995, is one of many travelers who got a questionnaire from the U.S. Department of Treasury about her trip late last year. "The letter is dated Thanksgiving Day," she said. "Apparently the Treasury Department is working overtime to harass people who have been to Cuba."

Daher added that the letter asked questions similar to those asked in the House Un-American Committee hearings of the 1950s. "Who did you go with?" she read. "Who paid for your trip? Please provide the names and addresses of all travel companions who accompanied you on your trip."

Daher declared, "We reject the U.S. government telling us that we don't have the right to travel there, to talk to Cubans." Pittsburgh City Councilman James Ferlo, who has visited Cuba and who sponsored a city resolution declaring Pittsburgh a sister city of Matanzas, Cuba, opened the meeting. He encouraged the audience to go to Cuba and see for themselves.

Arleen Kelly, a board member of the Pittsburgh Sister City Association, recounted how she met the Sister Cities program through her interest in her Irish heritage and establishing a sister cities ties with Ireland.

It was through the program she traveled to Cuba. After returning to the United States, she received a letter from the FBI probing the details of her trip. "It was terrifying to receive a letter from the government," Kelly said. She responded to the FBI with a letter of her own explaining the history of the Sister Cities program, which was founded by former president Dwight D. Eisenhower. "I didn't hear from them after that," she said.

However, upon her return from a trip to Ireland some time later, she was detained at customs. "I did not have a Cuban visa stamped in my passport. But they stopped me, went through my bags, asked me where else I had been, and whether I was bringing cigars into the country," she said. "I never knew Ireland was known for its cigars."

Stefanie Swenko, a student at the University of Pittsburgh who participated in an international youth festival in Cuba in 1997, protested the curbs on the academic freedom to study about and visit Cuba. She told the audience that the university's Center for Latin American Studies, which has supported and co-sponsored programs of the Pittsburgh Cuba Coalition in the past, received a phone call from the FBI a few weeks before the meeting on the travel ban.

"The FBI asked the Center for Latin American Studies department what they knew about the Cuba Coalition," Swenko said. "All the Coalition's meetings are open. We post up fliers. We have phone numbers on the fliers. I don't think that phone call was about getting information about the Coalition," she said, "but to let the Center know that the FBI" is aware of its relations with the Coalition.

Kovalik told the audience how he first became interested in Cuba, as a teenager visiting Nicaragua in the 1980s. In 1996 he attended a congress sponsored Cuban Congress of Trade Unions. "It was real democracy," he said. "People were talking about all kinds of different problems they faced. Fidel Castro was there, and they were frank with him about these problems."

Jules Lobell, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh Law School, traced the history of travel restrictions and the ban on travel to Cuba in particular.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home