WASHINGTON -- Sgt. Carlos F. Lazo returned from Iraq in March and wants to see his children. But the combat medic and veteran of the battle for Fallujah, whose meritorious service earned him a Bronze Star, cannot because they live in Cuba.
Strict U.S. travel restrictions adopted a year ago limit family visits to the island to once every three years. Lazo, who was in Cuba in 2003 and whose youngest child has been in the hospital over the last few weeks, must wait until next year. By that time, he may be back in Iraq.
"We are telling a guy who fought for freedom that he doesn't have the freedom to see a sick child,'' said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., in an interview. Dorgan introduced an amendment this week to allow at least humanitarian exceptions to the travel ban (the Senate rejected the measure Wednesday night). He added that the White House informed him that Deputy Secretary of State Robert B. Zoellick is looking into the matter.
President Bush approved the restrictions during his re-election campaign last year as a way to lock in support from the Cuban-American community whose political influence in Florida can make or break a candidate. Mission accomplished -- Bush took Florida and kept the presidency. The humanitarian thing to do now is to drop the restrictions altogether, or at the very least for Lazo.
But if Lazo is not getting far it is because he is fighting much more than a bureaucratic process or politicians reticent to look soft on Fidel Castro. He is confronting the resistance of his own compatriots in this country, people such as Jose Cohen.
Cohen and Lazo have much in common. Both were born in Castro's Cuba 40 years ago and by the early 1990s, each had fled the regime on a homemade raft. Both have successfully settled in this country and both say they long for the chance to see the children they left behind.
But Cohen has a completely different take on the restrictions and believes that Lazo's fight to ease them is a "joke.'' Cohen identifies rather with los historicos -- as the older exiles who arrived just after Castro's revolution are known -- who generally remain convinced that what's needed are more restrictions, not fewer.
In Cohen's words, "the hard line has never been applied'' against Castro. If anything, Washington has been too "easy'' on the totalitarian regime. "To travel to Cuba is to do a favor to the tyrant,'' he said, even if it would mean an opportunity to see the children he left behind 11 years ago.
It is Cohen's sentiments and those of people like him that account for the teeth in Washington's Cuba policy. The intensity of their animosity toward Castro might make them appear callous to outsiders who would place the desire to see loved ones above anything else. And yet it is their status as victims and survivors of Castro's police state that give their opinion a legitimacy and weight that are nearly impossible to counter.
Rarely is one case sufficient to trigger any significant policy re-evaluation. Then again, rarely does a person such as Lazo, a war hero and a Cuban-American, come around. He can prominently shed light on the absurdity of the situation and do it from that same place of legitimacy.
Lazo makes us reflect on the contradiction of the policy. If banning travel can help change a regime, why is it, he asked me, "that you can travel from here to countries (with repressive regimes) such as North Korea, Iran or Syria," practically anywhere but the island 90 miles south of Florida? If the ban is meant to keep hard currency away from Castro's hands, why are Cuban exiles still allowed to send remittances to their immediate relatives on the island?
In the world beyond politics, there is little to no rational argument to be made to keep Lazo apart from his children. Even politicians such as Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., a Cuban-American, have admitted that the travel limitations do not serve to speed up Castro's downfall. Many argue, instead, that greater freedom to travel will only further the exchange of ideas about freedom and democracy.
Cohen remains skeptical of the positive impact that travelers from the United States can make in Cuba, unless of course they are with "the 82nd division.'' The U.S. Army "should go to get Castro out,'' Cohen said, "just like they did with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.''
Lazo couldn't disagree more with such a sentiment. Despite many of his compatriots' very real struggle to escape Castro and start anew in the United States, Lazo said, "they don't know what war is.''
Marcela Sanchez's e-mail address is desdewash@washpost.com.
