Tom Stieghorst
Everyone, at least in the travel industry, feels the lost opportunity now that cruises from the U.S. to Cuba are once again banned.
It is disheartening that, like some tropical Brigadoon, there was a window that opened to see a fabulous destination by ship, only to have it been slammed shut by forces larger than tourism.
Amid the wreckage of spoiled vacation plans, the paperwork of rebooking and the inevitable hardening of attitudes in Cuba about whether cruises should resume if it ever becomes possible, are there any bigger-picture points to take away?
I think there are two.
The first is that cruising to Cuba represents the biggest test yet of the theory that more open exchange between people in the U.S. and people in Cuba will improve daily life in Cuba and lead to a less repressive government.
For years, a theoretical argument raged between the advocates of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and its detractors. I'm sure some people with more expertise than I will make the case that cruise tourists did lead to better incomes and more individual enterprise in Cuba, and that the money spent by 17 cruise lines that called on Cuba last year did not prop up the government.
But three years after the Fathom ship Adonia pulled into Havana harbor, it is hard to see any more freedom for the average Cuban. Speech is still censored. Dissent suppressed. Detention arbitrary. Due process denied. Freedom of assembly means freedom to be hectored and hounded by state-sponsored vigilantes. And Cuba remains a one-party state where the citizens have no say in who governs them.
"Sociolismo o muerte!" new Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel repeated in a speech last fall, dashing hopes that Cuba will be governed much differently now that someone not named Castro is in charge.
If the embargo failed to produce the democracy that Cuba so richly deserves, the non-embargo has also failed. So now we know.
The second takeaway from three years of cruising from the U.S. to Cuba is the knowledge gained about how it is done. Cruise lines have picked up invaluable experience about Cuban ports, infrastructure, tour capabilities and market demand that will make it much easier to resume sailings if the political climate changes again.
Prospects look bleak right now, but who's to say that two years from now, under a president Biden or a Warren, ships won't once again ply the waters between Miami and Havana?
If they do, their operators will have benefitted enormously from the three-year experiment just concluded.