Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live At Daybreak

Americans Going to Cuba

Aired November 06, 2003 - 05:36   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Going to Cuba can seem like time travel, but even though President Bush wants to turn off the switch, many American tourists are defying him.
Our Havana bureau chief Lucia Newman has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some come to savor the extravagance of the tropics, others for the world famous cigars or simply to experience a country where the cars, the architecture and the politics seem to be in a time warp.

WAYNE GILBERT, AMERICAN TOURIST: It's silly, but it just, it fascinates people.

NEWMAN: Wayne Gilbert is an American artist who says he feels strongly enough about his right to visit Cuba that he's defied President George Bush by coming here without a specific Treasury Department license. Since the early '60s, Cuba has been the forbidden fruit of the Caribbean for Americans, who aren't allowed to come and spend money here as tourists. Washington argues American dollars only fuel a cruel communist dictatorship.

(on camera): Tell me, doesn't it, does the politics of this bother you? I mean this country...

GILBERT: Yes, it does. As a matter of fact, I'm so totally anti-Castro from the viewpoint of Castro being the man that can make an ultimate decision on the behalf of all of the Cuban people.

NEWMAN (voice-over): But Gilbert and tens of thousands of other Americans who come here each year through third countries, often illegally, believe coming to Cuba is their constitutional right.

JACK ASHWALD, AMERICAN ART COLLECTOR: Because, you know, it's a free world. So, you know, we should all be able to go where we want to go.

NEWMAN: And go they do. All over Havana, you see Americans. For example, this group, which was surprised to stumble across another compatriot, leftist philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky, who was in Old Havana to present one of his books published in Spanish. This group came here on Treasury Department licenses for cultural and educational exchanges issued just before President Bush vowed to crack down on what he calls disguised tourism to Cuba. JOHN TRUSHLOW, AMERICAN TOURIST: They should start listening to the majority of Americans who want to travel here, not the minority who are Cubans who have fled and live in Miami and have other issues to settle.

NEWMAN: For many Americans who don't have those issues, Cuba's attraction is precisely that it is a communist country, living in a political time warp many say they want to see now, before it disappears.

Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired November 6, 2003 - 05:36   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Going to Cuba can seem like time travel, but even though President Bush wants to turn off the switch, many American tourists are defying him.
Our Havana bureau chief Lucia Newman has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Some come to savor the extravagance of the tropics, others for the world famous cigars or simply to experience a country where the cars, the architecture and the politics seem to be in a time warp.

WAYNE GILBERT, AMERICAN TOURIST: It's silly, but it just, it fascinates people.

NEWMAN: Wayne Gilbert is an American artist who says he feels strongly enough about his right to visit Cuba that he's defied President George Bush by coming here without a specific Treasury Department license. Since the early '60s, Cuba has been the forbidden fruit of the Caribbean for Americans, who aren't allowed to come and spend money here as tourists. Washington argues American dollars only fuel a cruel communist dictatorship.

(on camera): Tell me, doesn't it, does the politics of this bother you? I mean this country...

GILBERT: Yes, it does. As a matter of fact, I'm so totally anti-Castro from the viewpoint of Castro being the man that can make an ultimate decision on the behalf of all of the Cuban people.

NEWMAN (voice-over): But Gilbert and tens of thousands of other Americans who come here each year through third countries, often illegally, believe coming to Cuba is their constitutional right.

JACK ASHWALD, AMERICAN ART COLLECTOR: Because, you know, it's a free world. So, you know, we should all be able to go where we want to go.

NEWMAN: And go they do. All over Havana, you see Americans. For example, this group, which was surprised to stumble across another compatriot, leftist philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky, who was in Old Havana to present one of his books published in Spanish. This group came here on Treasury Department licenses for cultural and educational exchanges issued just before President Bush vowed to crack down on what he calls disguised tourism to Cuba. JOHN TRUSHLOW, AMERICAN TOURIST: They should start listening to the majority of Americans who want to travel here, not the minority who are Cubans who have fled and live in Miami and have other issues to settle.

NEWMAN: For many Americans who don't have those issues, Cuba's attraction is precisely that it is a communist country, living in a political time warp many say they want to see now, before it disappears.

Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com