Caribbean & Central America - January 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

As widely flagged in advance, the US and Cuba have reached a bilateral arrangement to re-establish scheduled air services between the two countries, marking another important step towards the normalization of ties between the near neighbours.

The agreement, announced on 17 December, will allow 110 round trips a day between the two countries, including 20 to Havana airport and 10 to each of the other nine regional airports in Cuba. Scheduled flights are expected to begin late in the first quarter of 2016, after US carriers submit routes for approval. No commercial flights from Cuba to the US were included in the initial agreement. Unlimited charter services from the US to Cuba will continue alongside the new scheduled routes.

The deal will make it significantly easier for US nationals to travel to Cuba, and while general US tourism to Cuba remains prohibited, US changes - first announced a year ago (in January 2015) by President Barack Obama - have made it significantly easier for people to travel under one of the 12 permitted licences.

The US State Department noted that the new arrangement “will continue to allow charter operations and establish scheduled air services, which will facilitate an increase in authorized travel, enhance traveller choices, and promote people-to-people links between the two countries”. It added that “while US law continues to prohibit travel to Cuba for tourist activities, a stronger civil aviation relationship will facilitate growth in authorized travel between our two countries – a critical component of the President’s policy toward Cuba”.

US travellers will still have to meet the criteria for the 12 permitted general travel licences for travel to Cuba. These are: family visits; official government business; journalism; professional research and meetings; educational activities; religious activities; public performances, clinics, workshops, exhibitions and athletic competitions; ‘Support for the Cuban people’; humanitarian projects, activities of private foundations or research for educational institutes; exporting or importing information or information materials; travel related to authorized export transactions.

Under new rules introduced earlier this year, US travellers no longer have to apply for one of these licences, rather they merely have to state in writing before their flight that they qualify.

According to Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who as chargé d’affaires is the current head of the new US embassy in Havana, US travel to the island is up by 50% in 2015. In the first half of the year, the number of US visitors – excluding Cuban-Americans – reached almost 90,000, up 50% over the same period the previous year, with the year-on-year rate of increase accelerating each month.

Crackdown on Human Rights Day

On 10 December, International Human Rights Day, local independent and international media sources reported the detention and harassment of dozens of opposition activists in Cuba’s capital, Havana, and other cities, as activists including the high-profile Damas de Blanco protest group sought to mark the day. According to reports, a least 12 activists were detained in Havana en route to a Damas de Blanco gathering, with another 11were arrested in Guantanamo and 23 in Camagüey.

The Damas de Blanco group, set up by the wives and relatives of imprisoned political dissidents in Cuba, have protested President Obama’s move to restore diplomatic relations with the island, arguing that the White House has failed to exert sufficient pressure on the government led by President Raúl Castro to improve human rights and fundamental freedoms in Cuba. The protests came as Cuba’s attorney general, Dario Delgado, told the state mouthpiece Granma that Cuba had no political prisoners. “It is sometimes said there are political prisoners here. There aren't. The majority of those who call themselves dissidents are common inmates who have been attracted by counter-revolutionary organizations, internal or external, and receive payments directly or indirectly. But they aren't prisoners of conscience.”

In January 2015, the Castro government released 53 inmates that Washington considered ‘political prisoners’. However, the Cuban commission for human rights and national reconciliation (CCDHRN), an NGO, says that another 60 political prisoners remain in jail in the country. The CCDHRN claimed that there were at least 1,477 politically motivated detentions in November, the highest monthly total in many years. Amnesty International also released a statement to mark Human Rights Day noting “a wave of almost 1,500 arbitrary arrests in just over a month”.