Cuba suspended its consular activities in its Interest Section in Washington. The article published is quite clear about the reasons. However, many people on both sides of the Florida Straits are concerned about what this decision means. The end of the year approaches and families want to get together, but unfortunately policies set again obstacles to that.
The decision to suspend consular activities is due to the fact that virtually all consular activities involving payment in the U.S. occur through banks. The users of these services pay via credit card in a country where if you do not have a bank account is like you don’t exist, something difficult to understand sometimes in Cuba. So, if the banks do not want to provide services any consular activity involving a payment is prevented or hindered. Without own transactions consular activity is directly affected such as issuing passports and visas to come to Cuba.
Since last July M & T, the bank that provided services to foreign diplomatic missions , gave the Interests Section of Cuba and the Permanent Mission of Cuba to the United Nations a deadline to find a new bank with which to operate , but, despite the effort Cuban diplomats, this has been impossible . The cause is not in the banks, whose interest is profit; the cause is in the U.S. government, which continues an immovable policy of blocking, and keeps Cuba on the list of the stats that sponsor terrorism.
These two conditions imply that having Cuban money in the coffers of a bank carry very cumbersome and much persecuted by the U.S. government processes. So many indeed that banks have simply preferred not to provide services to the Interests Section in Washington.
So all this means that the reason why Cuba cannot find banks for its transactions is the direct responsibility of the government of the United States, who violates the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Consular Relations.
This topic has had a wide coverage in the U.S. media, perhaps the largest in recent times. The review of the act by the media also realizes the importance given to how the decision may affect Cuban Americans and Americans who want to travel to Cuba.
Of particular interest is the fact that this problem reaches its peak now, when a few days ago the Secretary of State, John Kerry told the Organization of American States that the U.S. should update its policy towards Cuba and also the best ambassadors of ideas and values are the Americans themselves. They say they will increase travel licenses for most Americans to visit Cuba, however, Kerry can say whatever he wants, Obama with his crisis of governance and his inability to control congress, can also say what he wants, but until now, the blockade designed, defended and deepened by hardliner Congressmen against Cuba with broad influence in the U.S. Congress is intact, immovable. Congressmen that have little to do with the population composition and ideology of the new immigrants , who have come to that country in the last 25 years , and their main desire is the normal flow of visits and remittances, a large group , but unfortunately , has little political participation , for now.
The administration is talking to update the policy, but in the meantime an army of bureaucrats has as sole function to track down all banking activities performed Cuba in the world, and incidentally also make thing very difficult to U.S. banks.
This will have an immediate impact on those interested in traveling and do not yet have their documents in hand. Now the ball is in the court of the concerned person whose ability to travel to their country of origin is hampered by a policy that they do not want. Do not forget, most of which are citizens eligible to vote. Hopefully circumstances like this offer them a lesson and finally they choose representatives to Congress that deal with their needs and not those of an outdated historical exile in time, and whose sole purpose is to make life more difficult for Cubans.
Either they change the policy in a comprehensive manner or not, but you cannot say much, and do nothing. That is the option that the U.S. government seems to have, at the expense of the freedom of Americans who want to come to Cuba, and Cuban Americans closely linked to their country of origin.
Author
Cristina Escobar
