Cubans denied US visas have record of engagement

Posted on Friday, 05.18.12

Cubans denied US visas have record of engagement
By PETER ORSI
Associated Press

HAVANA -- The political hubbub over Washington's decision to grant a
visa to the daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro has eclipsed the
fact the State Department simultaneously denied nearly a dozen other
prominent Cubans permits to attend an academic conference in California,
among them some of the island's most independent and open-minded scholars.

They include academics with a history of collaborating with American
researchers, distinguished visiting professors who took up temporary
posts at universities like Harvard and Columbia, and some of the most
outspoken voices for change on the island, Cuba watchers and analysts
said Friday.

The ruling has many scratching their heads.

"It's just bizarre," said Joy Olson, executive director of the
Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, an independent think tank.
"I have trouble believing that all of these people who have been up here
working at the most prestigious universities in the United States have
gone from one day to the next to being a security threat."

"These are the people we as a country should want to be talking to,"
Olson added.

The State Department does not talk about individual visa cases as a
matter of policy, but spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Friday that 77
Cubans had applied to attend the Latin American Studies Association, or
LASA, conference in San Francisco next week. Of those, 60 were approved,
11 were rejected and six are still pending.

Nuland said denials happen for numerous reasons including security
concerns or other questions about applicants' reasons for traveling.

"For these 60 who were issued ... we thought that if they were applying
to come to this congress they were appropriate and legitimate
participants in the congress, and we didn't have any reason to have
concerns about how they would conduct themselves in the United States or
any security concerns," Nuland said.

One of those denied a visa is Carlos Alzugaray, a longtime diplomat and
professor who has publicly recommended Raul Castro's government deepen
nascent free-market economic reforms, called for changes to restrictive
travel rules and even urged a change of "mentality" within the Communist
Party.

Another is Rafael Hernandez, a political scientist and editor of the
magazine Temas, considered one of the most independent in Cuba for its
non-ideological bent and varied content from across the political
spectrum. Just last fall, he was a visiting professor at Columbia, he
told The Associated Press.

"In this group there's not one of us who does not defend dialogue and
exchange with the United States," Hernandez said.

President Barack Obama has made increased academic, cultural and
people-to-people exchanges a cornerstone of his Cuba policy, and such
trips have greatly increased in recent years.

Yet on the LASA visas, the White House has taken fire from both sides.

Cuban-American politicians were irate this week when news broke that
among those granted visas were Mariela Castro, the island's most
prominent gay rights advocate, who is to chair a panel at the San
Francisco conference, and Eusebio Leal, a historian who has spearheaded
the renovation of Old Havana and sits on the powerful Communist Party
Central Committee. He spoke at the Brookings Institute in Washington on
Friday.

"The administration's appalling decision to allow regime agents into the
U.S. directly contradicts Congressional intent and longstanding U.S.
foreign policy," wrote Representatives Mario Diaz-Balart, Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen and David Rivera of Florida, along with Albio Sires of New
Jersey in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hernandez, the magazine editor, said the visa decisions seemed arbitrary
and speculated that the White House was mixing in some denials with the
majority that were approved due to political pressure.

"They have denied visas to several of us who frequently travel to the
United States," Hernandez said. "That is the cost, I suppose, that they
are paying to bring in the rest. They have to throw a piece of meat to
(Cuban American hardline politicians) ... because they gave a visa to
Mariela and Eusebio."

---

Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana and Matthew Lee in
Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/18/2805828/cubans-denied-us-visas-have-record.html