Can tourism liberate Cuba?

By Alberto de la Cruz

cubainfos.net

Can foreign tourists spending billions of dollars in Cuba really play an intrinsic role in liberating the Cuban people and be the catalyst to end a half-century of tyranny and repression on the island? The "Cuba Experts" will tell you that is certainly the case. But since these "Cuba Experts" are neither Cuban nor experts, perhaps it would be better to ask the Cuban people themselves.

Let's ask the people actually living on the island who in 2012, after being visited by almost 3-million tourists and having billions of dollars injected into the Cuban "economy," have suffered one of the most oppressive and violent years of repression in recent history. Ask the families of Laura Pollan, Oswaldo Payá, or Wilmar Villar, dissidents who mysteriously died under the "care" of the Castro dictatorship. Ask the thousands of democracy activists who were mercilessly beaten by State Security thugs and government organized mobs. Ask the thousands of dissident who have been arrested and imprisoned simply for asking the government to respect human rights. Ask the Ladies in White who are viciously beaten, harassed, and arrested on an almost weekly basis for the heinous act of going to Church on Sundays in a gourp. Ask 15-year-old Berenice Hector Gonzalez who was brutally slashed on her face, breasts, and other parts of her body by the knife-wielding daughter of a high-ranking State Security official for defending the Ladies in White.

2.9 million tourists visited Cuba in 2012, and repression is at an all-time high on the island...

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