Government welcomes tourists even as thousands of evacuees await OK to return home

By TRACEY EATON / The Dallas Morning News

HAVANA – Cuba's tourism minister said Wednesday that the island is again welcoming visitors in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, while anti-Castro lawmakers in Washington urged American tourists to boycott the country.

Ivan gave more than 30,000 tourists a scare Monday when it clipped Cuba's western tip before roaring toward U.S. shores. Cuban officials say the storm flattened homes, uprooted countless trees and wrecked utilities in the sparsely populated western end of the Pinar del Rio province.

About 1,600 tobacco curing houses were also damaged or destroyed, dozens of power lines were downed, miles of coastline roadway was torn apart, and scores of orange, lemon and grapefruit trees were devastated, authorities said.

Yet not a single injury or death was reported as of Wednesday afternoon because 1,898,396 Cubans – and 4,324 tourists – were evacuated, said Tourism Minister Manuel Marrero.

The hurricane's impact on Cuba's $2 billion-per-year tourism industry was "minimal," he said. "All tourism facilities are operating."

Some Washington lawmakers who oppose Fidel Castro say they wouldn't mind seeing the island's tourism industry crippled. And on Wednesday, they celebrated the withdrawal of an amendment by U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., that would have allowed unrestricted U.S. travel to Cuba.

"This is a great victory for freedom in Cuba," said Rep. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., one of four Cuban-American lawmakers who fought against the Flake amendment.

"The majority of our colleagues have come to understand that providing unrestricted tourism and its dollars to Castro does not benefit the Cuban people, but rather, it would prop up the regime," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.

Tourism is Cuba's No. 1 source of hard currency and key to the island's struggling economy. As of Aug. 7, about 1,453,000 tourists had visited this year, a 10 percent increase over 2003.