SAN FRANCISCO — From her third-floor office in the weathered Mission District, Ana Perez has arranged for more than 6,000 Americans to travel legally to Cuba on education and cultural exchange tours in the last two years.
The Cuba "reality tour" program is the most successful of several operated by her San Francisco nonprofit organization, Global Exchange. But Perez said a recent Bush administration push to restrict travel to the island would cut her business to a trickle by the end of the year.
Long Beach travel agent Michael Zuccato, who operates a weekly charter flight to Havana from Los Angeles International Airport, fears losing customers to a rival Cuban government charter that departs from Tijuana.
"The only result of the travel restrictions," he said, "is to take money away from American businesses."
Also affected by the administration's restrictions on the "People to People" travel category established under President Clinton are university alumni associations, Central and South American study programs and nonprofit religious organizations.
"We are worried about being stopped by U.S. officials and asked a lot of questions. It's scary," said George Friemoth, whose Marin Interfaith Task Force on the Americas leads three small delegations a year to Cuba, with each traveler carrying 30 pounds of medicine and humanitarian supplies.
In a Rose Garden policy speech last week, President Bush vowed to crack down on what he described as "deception" by sponsors of humanitarian and educational trips to Cuba in violation of the long-standing U.S. economic embargo of the island nation.
This followed a March announcement by the Treasury Department that it would not renew most group travel licenses granted under the Clinton administration.
"Our license expires Dec. 31," said Perez, a 35-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen from El Salvador who directs Global Exchange's Cuba program. "We have been told it will not be renewed. This will cut our programs by at least 75%."
The Bush announcements, including a move to use the Department of Homeland Security to track illegal American travel to Cuba from third countries, have been celebrated by conservative Miami-based Cuban American organizations that still play an important role in Florida politics.
"A lot of these travel licenses," said Joe Garcia, executive director of one of the most outspoken of those groups, the Cuban American National Foundation, "were basically a joke that allowed them to operate a tourist service in Cuba and promote the Castro regime."
