U.S. withdraws diplomats from Cuba
After embassy attacks, Americans warned not to travel to island
It was grim, unsettling news: The United States warned Americans on Friday not to travel to Cuba and ordered the withdrawal of more than half its diplomats in Havana.
The announcement, which spread around the island in spurts, largely by word-ofmouth, dealt a harsh blow to Cubans who had hoped the nascent normalization of relations with the United States that began in late 2014 would usher in a period of economic growth and greater prosperity in the impoverished communist nation.
“It’s a shame that they continue to throw up obstacles preventing two countries that are so close to engage culturally,” said Yaylen Vilches, 26, manager of El Dandy, one of Havana’s most popular private restaurants. “This doesn’t just hurt us; they’re hurting people in both countries.”
The measures announced Friday — taken in response to hearing loss and other ailments that U.S. government employees in Cuba had experienced in recent months — stirred anxiety and dread on the island.
The State Department’s decision to stop issuing visas in Havana indefinitely leaves thousands of Cubans in limbo. Washington typically grants 20,000 immigrant visas a year to reunite Cubans with relatives in the United States, and thousands more to enable students, academics and tourists to travel.
“This will have many repercussions,” said Harold Cárdenas, a popular Cuban blogger who recently started a master’s degree program in international relations at Columbia University. “The most immediate is it will perpetuate estrangement, not just political, but physical. There will be a price, and it will be paid by Cuban families.”
The travel notice, which “warns U.S. citizens not to travel to Cuba,” could deal a blow to the island’s tourism sector, one of its economic engines, and call into question the viability of dozens of projects under construction. Since diplomatic relations with Washington were restored, Havana has begun an ambitious program to build up its dilapidated tourism infrastructure. It announced plans to partner with international hotel chains and other investors to build hundreds of new projects by 2030, including resorts with golf courses and marinas.
Americans remain nominally barred by law from traveling to Cuba as tourists. Yet the number of American visitors increased sharply after the Obama administration relaxed travel restrictions and began allowing airlines to offer service to Cuba in 2016.
Through August, more than 475,000 U.S. citizens traveled to Cuba this year, a 173 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the Cuban Embassy in Washington. During the same period, more than 240,000 Cubans traveled to the United States, an 84 percent increase, the embassy said.
The Trump administration preserved many Obama-era changes that eased travel, while assuming a more antagonistic posture toward Havana. Despite that, Cuban officials continued to woo American travelers.
The government has sought to persuade visitors that its hotel infrastructure will be in top shape by the winter, a peak travel season, despite the considerable damage that Hurricane Irma caused this month.
Cuba’s “commitment to you is not limited to recovering from the effects of the hurricane,” Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz said in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, “but that everything will be better than before and that we will have as a final result an updated and higher quality tourist product.”
That optimism stood in sharp contrast to the mood of Silvio Ortega and his wife, Julia de la Rosa, owners of a bed-andbreakfast in Havana. The couple invested thousands of dollars in recent years to turn a barebones room rental business into a 10-room establishment with a pool and a stunning view of Havana.
After 2014, their client base, once mainly European, became increasingly American and upscale. “We watched the rise of American tourism with great optimism and enthusiasm,” Ortega, 60, said.
That’s why news of the travel warning, which a reporter relayed during a phone conversation, landed like a thud. “I have the impression that the American people adhere to the laws and are reluctant to cross them,” he added.