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As Trade Restrictions Crumble, Airbnb Offers Rooms In Cuba
As reported by the Associated Press, and carried by the Washington Post, one major move toward normalized relations between Cuba and the United States has been made not by diplomats, but by entrepreneurs. Airbnb has opened its crowd-sourced roomfinding service to Cubans and Americans, such that American tourists visiting Havana can book space in private homes — as of today.
From the article:
“We believe that Cuba could become one of Airbnb’s biggest markets in Latin America,” said Kay Kuehne, regional director for Airbnb, the website and mobile app that allows users to book rooms in more than 1 million private homes around the world. “We are actually plugging into an existing culture of micro-enterprise in Cuba. The hosts in Cuba have been doing for decades what we just started doing seven years ago. ... Because of continuing restrictions under the U.S. embargo, the company’s Cuba listing will only be available to U.S. travelers visiting under one of 12 U.S.-government approved categories of legal travel, ranging from professional research to religious activities.”
Cuba is easy to travel around. Reserve a room in a casa particular in Havana before you arrive, or just turn up. After that, the owners will just call ahead where ever you want to go and help you out. Or take your chances and just turn up and see what you find.
I loved Cuba, but accessing Internet wasn't much fun (my mobile phone company charged through the nose, and the equiv of USD$10/hr at one of the rare internet cafes that barely worked wasn't worth it. Go to Cuba and enjoy the music, interacting with people and being generally unplugged.
On issues that the constitution is silent, the feds can do what they want.
No, that's actually the exact opposite of how it's supposed to work. Powers not specifically enumerated by the constitution are reserved to the people and states. The misconception you have is exactly why there was such debate when the Bill of Rights was originally proposed...
As trade restrictions crumble its worth reiterating why cuba has been a sticking point in american foreign policy for so long. During our proxy war with Russia, most of the south and central american countries that endorsed socialism and communism were quite easy to crush. First we'd enlist the CIA to foster a coup by backing violent militias with arms and capital in return for targeting specific parts of government infrastructure like police departments and hospitals. Then once our ringer was in, we would establish NGO's (non government organizations) to divide and conquer society into rich, poor, and inbetween. the wealth of the nation, generally petrochemical, fruit, or limited manufacturing, would then be syphoned overseas to the United States under the guise of free market principal and democracy.
Cuba saw this coming from a mile away; give castro credit for that at least. He formed an alliance with Russias communist politburo and a symbiotic relationship was borne from mutual interest. Russia ensured the us wouldnt dare invade their member state, and in turn Cuba provided a close-range base for advanced russian ballistics. Taking a step back, Russia was pressured into the relationship when we planted missiles in Turkey, and before that a whole slew of brinksmanship "dick moves" that nearly blew us apart. At this point the US was furious at the deal, and knew ballistic non-nuclear missiles existed on the island but wanted proof. Rudolf Anderson was enlisted to fly a U2 over the island and, much to his surprise and Washingtons chagrin, Cuban commanders launched an S-75 Dvina missile that obliterated the plane in seconds. Defcon's were advanced, a US naval blockade of cuba began, and unbeknown to american politicians a 4 story tall akula class nuclear submarine slipped right past the fleet and into cuban waters. When people talk about how close we came to turning boca raton and washington into deserts, they are not kidding.
anyhow washington and russia eventually stepped back from the void, but the egg on washingtons face was well remembered for 40 years. American policitians didnt want to sacrifice votes from cuban ex-pats in florida and america as well as slews of boomers that were dyed in the wool anticommunists, so the embargo persisted. Fast forward to 2015 when America has lost both the afghanistan war (Taliban members hold seat in kharzai's government) and the Iraq war (no weapons were ever found and ISIS was formed.) We've shut the government down twice, we cant come to terms with even simple things like gay people or healthcare, and we're pretty much flat broke. We've been relegated to third-party observer in so much of the foreign world, the embargo was bound to collapse at some point.
Good people go to bed earlier.