Back in September of 2011, much was made of the restarting of direct flights from Tampa to Cuba. And for good reason. It had been more than half a century since the last one. Tampa was reconnecting with its roots, exile politics from hell notwithstanding. Currently there are five TIA-Cuba flights a week.
But that changes next month. It will be three times weekly.
What happened?
Officially, it’s a function of market evolution. Adjustments in new routes are not unexpected, especially with many other gateways to Cuba opening around the country.
Unofficially, no one in the know is surprised with anything that is part of the dysfunctional, frustrating dynamic that continues to be US-Cuban relations. While the Tampa Bay area has the third-largest Cuban-American population in the country, approximately 80,000, that is still not nearly enough to sustain five flights a week–notably during non-peak periods–from here to Cuba. Too few non-Cuban-Americans have been booking. That’s because most can’t.
Tampa-to-Cuba is a microcosmic example of why it’s imperative that unacceptable restrictions on travel to Cuba for most Americans be lifted. It’s a blatant infringement on Americans’ right to travel freely that has countless subplots. This is one. And with our port, airport, geography and history–before there was Miami there was Tampa–no city is more economically/emotionally slighted by this Cold War-era, foreign-policy relic than Tampa.
It’s not enough that a local U.S. Representative, Kathy Castor, or a city council member, Mary Mulhern, or a World Trade Center Tampa Bay official, Steve Michelini, see the need and market for more Cuban-American interaction initiated out of Tampa. They are more than trumped by the usual South Florida suspects. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the brothers Diaz-Balart and cabal cohorts can still exercise inordinate, counterproductive influence on U.S. foreign policy. Cuban generational change is surely coming, but not fast enough. They still intimidate Democrats with their politics and money.
Ever wonder why, for example, the sassy, otherwise outspoken Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the classic Jewish liberal from Long Island who chairs the Democratic National Committee, falls in line with hard-liners on Cuba? Wonder no longer. It’s not over conscience and ideology, or else she wouldn’t be on the wrong side of an issue rife with humanitarian, geopolitical and economic concerns.
Would that President Barack Obama, although busy enough with the debt ceiling, gun policy and immigration, could just do the overdue right thing on this unconscionable anomaly and spend a little bully pulpit capital on Cuba. Frankly, this could still be low-hanging, legacy fruit for a president with no more elections to run in.
Why not finally call out those whose personal, pandering priorities are not in the best interest of this country–and certainly not this (swing) state? And as a consequence, no longer be the one answering for a foreign policy that confoundingly features normal relations with blatant non-democracies such as Vietnam, China and Saudi Arabia, but embargoes unfettered trade and travel with Cuba? Why not formally stop, in effect, replicating the George W. Bush policy on Cuba?
Meanwhile, let’s hope that TIA, still international flights-challenged, can at least hold on for now to thrice weekly nonstops to Cuba.