Cuban travel policy: Genie leaves bottle

economist

WHEN Cuba announced last October that, after more than 50 years, it was removing the requirement of an exit permit for its citizens wishing to travel, one person it was widely assumed would not be granted that right was Yoani Sánchez. A blogger and single mother, her acerbic comments on some of the absurdities and hypocrisies of life in contemporary Cuba have made her the island’s best-known critical thinker abroad. Over the past decade, the authorities have repeatedly refused her requests to leave the country, often to attend award ceremonies or seminars connected with her blog. The change in the law specifically included a caveat that permission could be denied to anyone for “national security” reasons, a clause that seemed to have been written with Ms Sánchez in mind.

Ms Sánchez held out little hope. On January 30th she wrote about the “long slumber” of bureaucracy in Cuba, after being told that there was no news about her passport request. But just a few hours later, she was amazed to be told the document was ready for collection. She has indicated she will travel very soon, though she has not specified a destination. The government has said that the new law gives anyone with a passport both the right to leave Cuba and to return, so it appears that she will be able to come back after she leaves.

The decision is evidence that the government is changing its tactics towards its critics. Under Fidel Castro, vocal dissidents effectively found themselves with two options: imprisonment or permanent exile. For generations of Cubans, emigration became the only form of protest. The United States has made that easier by offering any Cuban who sets foot in the country near-automatic political asylum. Mr Castro, who used to describe those who left Cuba as “scum”, is probably proud of how the policy worked in his favour. His loudest, and most numerous, critics were safely off the island.

Mr Castro’s younger brother and successor as president, Raúl Castro, seems to believe that the time has come to let Cubans come and go, whatever their political views. This is largely an economic decision. Most of the investment flowing into the small private businesses that he now permits, which relieve pressure on the hugely inefficient state sector, comes from Cubans living abroad. Barack Obama’s removal of all almost all restrictions on Cuban-Americans sending money or travelling to Cuba has helped that process. One of the more high-profile beneficiaries of the easier rules is José Contreras, a pitcher in America’s Major League Baseball. He defected from Cuba in 2002, but last month returned for the first time to see his family and take a jog on the beach.

But letting Ms Sánchez travel is not without risk. It will raise her profile in Cuba, as she will presumably take the opportunity to appear on international television networks. Although they are not legally broadcast inside Cuba, they can be seen via black-market satellite systems and pen-drive recordings. For the first time, a small, but perhaps significant, number of Cubans will be able to watch another Cuban who still lives on the island criticise the system in a public forum.

The government could of course rescind Ms Sánchez’s travel privileges, or those of anyone else it chooses. Some dissidents have already been told that they will not be given passports, including those that were imprisoned during a 2003 clampdown and are technically on parole after they were released in 2010-11. But Ms Sánchez has escaped their fate. Officials at the foreign ministry privately reserve their most contemptuous, and sexist, swearwords to describe her. Perhaps their boss does not afford her enough respect to consider her a potential threat.