Text: Julie Schwietert Collazo
Photos: Brayan Collazo
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Yesterday, I wrote an article about the introduction of the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, which, if passed, will allow ALL Americans to travel to Cuba for the first time in decades.

You can be sure the tourism industry is firming up all the logistics (which they’ve been working on secretly for years) that will make it possible for Americans to line up for flights as soon as the law goes into effect. An expat acquaintance of mine who lives in Havana has been consulting on such topics for years, so it won’t take long at all before you’ll be able to flash your blue passport with the eagle on it at any major US airport and hear “Next stop: Jose Marti International Airport, Havana, Cuba.”

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The Freedom to Travel Act isn’t the first bill of its type to be introduced in Congress; almost every year in recent memory a bill proposing this particular piece of US foreign policy be abolished has been put before US lawmakers for their consideration.

The difference this time is this bill might just pass.

There’s a critical mass of senators and representatives backing the bill and a diverse cluster of lobbies and special interest groups have come out publicly in support of the Act.

It’s entirely possible that by this time next year, everyone I know who’s nurtured a desire to go to Cuba will have already been.
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There are lots of questions about the implications of the bill, particularly for Cubans. The blogosphere is electric with people who have been to Cuba, wondering aloud if a sudden influx of Americans will somehow corrupt Cuba.

Will McDonalds and Starbucks pop up on every corner of Havana?

Will the island suddenly start selling cheesy t-shirts with palm trees imprinted on them?

Will our tourist experience somehow become less authentic?

Will those Americans who didn’t visit pre-freedom to travel be considered less adventuresome tourists than those of us who did go pre-FTCA?

Will it even be cool to bring back Cohibas and bottles of Havana Club now that everyone can do it?

And, as an afterthought, how will “exposure to capitalism” affect Cubans?

I get these questions, and I even think they’re well-intentioned, but I also think they’re misinformed and evidence some logical flaws.

First, Cuba has had a thriving tourism industry for the past 40 years without Americans. Why do we somehow think that because we’re not allowed to visit that Cuba has been isolated from the rest of the world?

Cuba’s Office of National Statistics reported that the island had almost 3 million visitors in 2008. Canadians, Italians, British, Australians, and people from all over Latin America keep the tourism industry of Cuba thriving. Many travelers who step foot in Cuba are repeat visitors. In fact, Italians, Chinese, and a number of other European governments and private interests have invested significant sums in improving and expanding the tourism and hospitality infrastructure in Cuba. While the Cuban government has made a number of concessions in order to attract these investments, you haven’t noticed illy cafes spurting up on Havana’s streets like grass between sidewalk cracks.

Cuba has remained Cuban–a quality that is all but indefinable and which has nothing to do with cafes or fast food restaurants– and believe me, no one can take that away from the Cubans I know.

Second, the notion that Cubans somehow can’t handle a sudden influx of American tourists is, I think, both presumptuous and–dare I say it?–neocolonialist. Underneath this argument is the implication that there’s a certain sort of romance to poverty as long as we aren’t living in it ourselves.

We want Cuba to stay as it is right now–charmingly colonial, not modern; crumbling around the edges; its people impressing us with their ingenuity, their generosity and their joy in the face of what we view as constant hardship; with old cars that barely run; without access or exposure to the “conveniences” of modern life to which we ourselves are addicted but which we love escaping when we’re there.

Keeping electronics or brand name clothes of capitalism out of Cuba doesn’t mean that Cubans don’t know about them, or that they don’t already have them. Family members in the US, in Brazil, in Mexico, or in Europe send home iPods, cell phones, DVD players and even flat screen TVs. My stepson can name more brands of clothes than I’ve ever owned, much less heard of, and our 15 year old niece knows when we’ve sent her clothes from K-Mart instead of something from Juicy (which is all the time). There’s already competition among family members and neighbors over these objects even without the formal exposure to capitalism. There’s already the influence of American pop music and Puerto Rican reggaeton in the popular music that fills the air in Centro Habana– you just don’t want to see it or hear it because it doesn’t square with your version of what you want Cuba to be.

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Don’t worry about how Cuba will handle the American bumrush. It will be just fine.

Think, instead, about how you’re going to handle it.