Apparently a CNN reporter has fallen off the proverbial yuca truck and come to the realization that among the myriad of freedoms denied the Cuban people by the dictatorship, the freedom to travel within your own country is one of those.
Cuban migrants illegal in their own country
Havana, Cuba (CNN) — “I was caught because I was an illegal,” explained a bicycle taxi driver as he gripped the rusted blue handle-bars of his vehicle in Havana’s Central Park. “And because I’d been here several times before, I was deported back.”
But the driver working his trade in the capital city did not arrive in Cuba from another country. Instead he is among the thousands who have come from rural provinces in search of work and a place to live — but who have been deported back because of “Decree 217.”
The 1997 law restricts rural migration to Havana, making this taxi driver an illegal resident in his own capital city.
Without this young Cuban taxi driver enlightening him, it seems this reporter on his own would have never guessed in a million years that a dictatorship that prohibits, among other things, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and freedom of association, would also prohibit the freedom to live and travel wherever you want in your own country.
It’s that damned embargo!
I was drinking in a Moscow hotel with a Russian guy back in the soviet days and when it was time for him to leave, he took me to a special office in the hotel that handled “internal travel” to retrieve his “internal passport”. He needed to surrender it before visiting anyone in the hotel.
Yes we can!!