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Rereading David Allester and Eileen Quinn’s account of their experiences with Cuban authorities (“Tourists or terrorists?”) underscores Cuba’s many contradictions. On the one hand it is an authoritarian state with a leaden bureaucratic heritage inherited from Spanish colonial rule. On the other, the people are genuinely friendly and official policy is to encourage tourism.
One thing is certain: Despite U.S. assertions to the contrary, nothing in Cuba’s policy toward the U.S. constitutes a threat to honest cruisers. Inconvenience, yes. Petty corruption, ocassionallly, but a threat to property or safety, no. Not only have we at Cuba Cruising Net never felt threatened, we have never talked to anyone who has, and we have never talked to anyone who has talked to anyone who has.
This online magazine will be happy to report any incidents or trends to the contrary, but at the outset, it is clear to us that Cuban policy makes that country safer for U.S. citizens than many other places in the Caribbean, including the U.S. Virgin Islands with its crime rate and Puerto Rico with its overzealous marine police.
This, we believe, is the result of two realities: The inherent decency of the vast majority of the Cuban people and control over those who lack that sense of decency by the forces of Cuba’s police state. The idea of a police state may be anathema to freedom-loving peoples, but give the devil his due when it comes to keeping crime down.
What Cuba should do to make it truly cruiser friendly is to issue a single permit for all its waters, the way it is done in the Bahamas, instead of requiring re-documentation at every port. That would make it truly cruiser-friendly.
And let’s hope, in the inevitable transition to come, that Cuba preserves the safety it now ensures its visitors, even as it broadens the freedoms of its own people.
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