MIAMI, Florida (Reuters) -- The idea was to squeeze Cuban President Fidel Castro and lock in some exile votes on the way, but new U.S. curbs on travel to the communist-ruled island have infuriated many Cuban Americans who would otherwise support President George W. Bush.

Castro, who has called the rules "pitiless and inhumane," has found unlikely echoes in south Florida, home to most of the more than one million Cuban Americans in the United States.

From the end of this month, Cuban Americans will be able to visit relatives only once every three years, rather than once a year, and for a maximum of 14 days.

Other restrictions in an effort to limit dollars and resources flowing to Cuba include cutting how much money Cuban Americans can spend in Cuba and limiting what they can put in parcels to relatives coping with chronic shortages.

"You can't send underwear or soap. Who wrote this? It almost seems like something someone would write to make the policy look absurd," said Joe Garcia, executive director of influential exile group the Cuban American National Foundation.

The group welcomed other measures announced last month, such as increased support for dissidents, but the travel curbs were pushed by a hard-line sector of the exile community and were ill-advised, Garcia said in an interview this week.

"I don't think anything that's against families can help the development of democracy," he said.

Critics say the rules are less about bringing down Castro than trying to shore up Cuban American support as Bush courts swing state Florida for the November presidential election.

In 2000, Bush beat Democratic rival Al Gore by just 537 votes in the state, in a victory decided after a five-week legal battle, to clinch Florida's electoral college votes and so win the White House.

Economic embargo
They say tightening the four-decade-old economic embargo -- but not areas that have been relaxed in recent years such as allowing U.S. food sales to Cuba -- could backfire because it hit the emotionally charged issue of family ties.

"How can you tell a person that because they left a child or parent behind that they can't go and visit them?" said Maria Aral, chief executive of ABC Charters, which operates flights to Cuba. "How inhumane can you be?"

Aral, a Cuban American, said she was a Republican but would not vote for Bush in November and hoped many other exiles also would not.

Cuban Americans used to be able to visit any family member, but now they may travel to see only close relatives such as parents or siblings. Travel by U.S. residents with no relatives in Cuba, very restricted before, has been further limited.

Cuba says 117,000 Cuban Americans and more than 60,000 other U.S. residents visited the island last year.

Illustrating split feelings in the Cuban community, the Bush measures have been hailed by some, including U.S. House of Representatives member Lincoln Diaz-Balart, a Republican from Florida.

Ninoska Perez, a radio host and head of exile group the Cuban Liberty Council, said the curbs would hit the state-owned Cuban tourism industry. "The people complaining most are the people from the (Miami) travel agencies," she said.

But Aral and other critics said the policy was inspired by a group of exiles from the early days after Castro's 1959 revolution who no longer had family ties on the island and did not care about those who did.

Damian Fernandez, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University, said Bush had angered at least part of the Cuban community. "The resentment among Cubans comes from the politicization of the family," he said.

But such anger will not necessarily be costly to Bush, who won the bulk of the Cuban vote in his razor-thin win in Florida in 2000. More recent immigrants who are closer to families in Cuba are also less likely to vote, often because they are not yet U.S. citizens.

Copyright 2004 Reuters.