Right to Travel to Cuba > History > Travel Fight History

"ASTA has always supported open access to all destinations. Travel leads to understanding and communication, and peace." - The American Society of Travel Agents, the world's largest organization of travel service providers, has long backed freedom of travel to Cuba and elsewhere as a basic human right.


Right to Travel to Cuba > History > Travel Fight History

Travel Fight History

U.S. citizens are the only people in the world whose government restricts them from going to Cuba.
For nearly half a century, our government has restricted our right to travel, banned trade with Cuba,
and even supported terrorist groups that target and kill people for promoting tourism in Cuba. The U.S. government policy was intended to paralyze the Cuban economy, and force the Cuban people to turn against their government out of desperation. Why is the US government so afraid of people-to-people contact with our Cuban neighbors?



1959 Fidel Castro leads the Cuban Revolution overthrowing General Batista on January 1.


1959 CIA planes kill 2 and wound 45 people in an air attack over Havana during the American Society of Travel Agents convention.


1961 US restricts travel to Cuba via passport controls.


1963 US further restricts travel to Cuba under the Trading with the Enemy Act.


1969 US students and civil rights activists form the Venceremos Brigade which means "We Shall Overcome" to promote solidarity with the Cuban people.


1973 The Center for Cuban Studies in New York is bombed for organizing academic and cultural exchanges with Cuba. NY Hospital Workers Local 1199 union hall is bombed for sponsoring an exhibit called ExpoCuba.


1975 The Miami Airport is bombed in response to a shift in US policy allowing US-owned companies based abroad to do business with Cuba.


1976 A Cubana Airlines flight leaving Barbados is bombed killing all 73 passengers, including the Cuban Olympic fencing team. (President George H. Bush later pardoned CIA-trained Cuban exile Orlando Bosch for his role in the bombing. Bosch now lives as a free man in Miami.)


1977 President Jimmy Carter lifts restrictions on travel to Cuba, opening the doors to educational, religious and cultural exchanges.


1977 Cuban-Americans form the Antonio Maceo Brigade and travel to Cuba to re-establish relations with family members in Cuba.


1978 600 young people from the US attend the 10th World Youth Festival of Peace & Friendship in Havana.


1978 Cuban-Americans in the U.S. form the Committee of 75 and begin arranging visits to the island.


1979 125,000 Cuban-Americans visit relatives for the first time in 20 years via charter flights between Miami and Havana.


1979 Committee of 75 member and travel agent Carlos Muniz is assassinated in Puerto Rico. Committee of 75 member Eulalio Negrin is killed in Union City, New Jersey.


1982 President Ronald Reagan re-imposes travel restrictions, making Cuba once-again off-limits.


1985 The Supreme Court upholds the travel restrictions in a 5-4 ruling that says a President's foreign policy concerns could override our Fifth Amendment right to travel.


1985 The Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild and National Conference of Black Lawyers win a case preventing the US government from obtaining the names of people who had traveled to Cuba with Marazul Tours.


1986 Marazul Tours is bombed along with other Miami-based travel operators arranging flights to Cuba.


1992 Pastors for Peace delivers its first "Friendshipment" of humanitarian aid to Cuba in response to the "Cuba Democracy Bill" which further restricts travel and tightens the economic blockade producing shortages of food and medicine at a time when Cuba loses its favorable trading relationship with Eastern Europe due to the collapse of the Soviet Union.


1993 Pastors for Peace mounts a 23-day hunger strike and wins the release of a school bus and humanitarian aid to Cuba.


1993 Global Exchange and other organizations launch a 'Freedom to Travel' challenge sending eight delegations to Cuba without licenses over the next three years. The US government responds by freezing Global Exchange's bank account.


1994 Former US Representative to Cuba, Wayne Smith, begins taking scholars to Cuba without a license as part of a challenge to the travel restrictions.


1995 President Bill Clinton restores family visits to Cuba and eases restrictions on people-to-people contacts between the U.S. and Cuba.


1996 Pastors for Peace members risk a 94-day Fast for Life successfully winning the release of 400 computers confiscated from an earlier Friendshipment of Aid to Cuba. The Helms-Burton Bill passes new travel and trade restrictions on Cuba.
1997 900 young people defy the restrictions and travel to Cuba without a license in the largest challenge ever organized. Meanwhile, an Italian tourist is killed in a string of hotel bombings in Havana organized by CIA-trained Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles. (Posada Carriles is now in US custody for illegally entering the country, although the Bush Administration refuses to extradite him to face murder charges.)


1998 Pope John Paul II visits Cuba and calls for an end to the US economic blockade and travel ban.


1998 Pastors for Peace successfully sues the US Treasury Department from gaining access to their bank records.


2000 The 1st National Summit on Cuba is held in Washington with more than 120 members of Congress and their staff as well as representatives from corporations, labor, and the media. The Summit, hosted by then US Senator John Ashcroft, was aimed at lifting the ban on the sale of food and medical products to Cuba, which according to a World Policy Institute study would bring $1.6 billion and 20,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in sales of food and medical products alone.


2000 The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) fines more than 100 travelers $1000 each, and a 74-year grandmother is fined $8500 for bicycling in Cuba.


2001 Hundreds of colleges, high schools, professional and cultural organizations, churches and thousands of individuals apply for travel visas to Cuba.


2002 Former President Jimmy Carter travels to Havana and calls for ending travel and trade restrictions.


2002 The 1st US Food & Agribusiness Exhibition is held in Havana and authorized by OFAC. Nearly 1000 representatives of private companies, trade organizations, and 33 state departments of agriculture attend the trade fair eager to do business with Cuba.


2003 An estimated 200,000 people travel to Cuba, approximately 140,000-150,000 with licenses and 50,000-60,000 without licenses.


2004 The Bush administration imposes new restrictions on family visits to Cuba limiting them to immediate relatives and once every three years. Meanwhile, bi-partisan majorities in both houses of Congress favor lifting travel restrictions, but the Bush Administration threatens to veto any legislative changes.


2005 More than 700 people-Republicans, Democrats, Cuban-Americans, representatives of churches, businesses and educational institutions, solidarity activists - attend "Cuba Action Day" in Washington DC to lobby Congress to lift the travel ban.


2006 The Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECDET) challenges travel restrictions on the grounds they interfere with academic freedom. The National Council of Churches and Church World Service renew objections to travel restrictions. Pastors for Peace take its 17th Friendship of Humanitarian Aid to Cuba without a license. More than 5,000 solidarity activists have traveled to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, now in its 37th year, without ever requesting a license from the US government.