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A high-octane effort to let U.S. tourists visit Cuba got a major
endorsement Thursday from one of the island's leading dissidents, who
suggested that "along with suitcases, Bermuda shorts and sun block,
support, solidarity and freedom could come, too."
Cuban
blogger Yoani Sanchez, who this week drew the attention of President
Barack Obama, wrote in an essay to Rep. Howard Berman, D-California, the
chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, that lifting the ban
on U.S. travel to Cuba "could bring more results in the democratization
of Cuba than the indecisive performance of Raul Castro."
"Both
peoples," she wrote of Cubans and Americans, "would come out winners."
Berman read portions of Sanchez's essay at an impassioned House of
Representatives hearing on whether to lift the travel ban, noting that
both critics and supporters of the decades-old ban had cited Sanchez's
recent beating and detention at the hands of Cuban security forces.
"Three,
that's the number of Cuban agents who threw a blogger head-first into
an unmarked black car and beat her for speaking about freedom," said
Rep. Connie Mack, R-Florida, dubbing the effort to lift the ban a "Castro
bailout, a bailout for beatings, oppression, rape, torture, corruption
and tyranny."
Sanchez, an increasingly brassy blogger, got even
more attention Thursday when she got a response from Obama, to whom she
had posed seven questions in an effort to engage in a bit of "popular
diplomacy." She also posted questions to Raul Castro, who had yet to
reply.
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