[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 123 (Tuesday, September 9, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1742]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[[Page E1742]]
                     CUBAN TRAVEL: FOLLOW THE MONEY

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. TOM DeLAY

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, September 9, 2003

  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Chairman, there is no such thing as a ``Cuban tourism 
industry.'' There is only Fidel Castro and his thugocracy.
  If we pass this amendment, the money American travelers spend in 
Castro's Cuba will be confiscated by his regime and invested in his 
criminal empire.
  If you believe American tourism will somehow help the situation 
there, remember that Cuba's tourist hotels--enjoyed by travelers from 
Canada, Europe, and elsewhere--have been up and running for decades, 
yet Castro's regime remains one of the horrors of the Western 
Hemisphere.
  Make no mistake: Fidel Castro is not some curious anachronism. He is 
a violent criminal.
  More than 100,000 Cubans have been imprisoned, and more than 15,000 
murdered by his regime. Just in the last six months, he ordered what 
Amnesty International called ``an unprecedented crackdown'' on Cuba's 
pro-democracy movement.
  This past spring, seventy-five pro-democracy advocates, working 
within Cuban law, were rounded up and imprisoned by Castro's secret 
police. They are now serving prison terms of up to 28 years, in 
unsanitary conditions and without access to health care, many for 
simply borrowing the wrong library books.
  This amendment would reward such injustice.
  Fidel Castro--thief, murderer, and tyrant--is the only Cuban who will 
benefit from this amendment. The hotels American tourists will 
patronize are off limits to ordinary Cubans, and so will be the profits 
they generate.
  Proponents of this amendment would have us believe that vacationers 
in flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts, sipping mojitos at Cuban beach 
resorts will somehow improve human rights conditions there. Instead, 
Mr. Chairman, it will subsidize Castro's oppression and torture.
  Those are the stark and unavoidable terms of this amendment. And I 
urge all my colleagues, in the name of justice, to vote no.

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