VARADERO, Cuba (AP) — The battle for Cuba's economic future is being waged on its beaches. And at its all-inclusive resorts, dive sites and cobblestoned colonial plazas.
As most of Cuba's economy stagnates or declines, the country has launched a full-scale effort to turn virtually the only bright spot — tourism — into an engine that can drag the rest of the communist island through its worst economic crisis in two decades. In government meetings and propaganda, it has now set a goal of drawing 5 million tourists in 2019 — perhaps the modern-day equivalent of its Soviet-era dependence on the annual sugar-harvest production.
"In the middle of the hardening of the blockade on Cuba, the activation of Title III of Helms-Burton by the president of the United States, we're assuming responsibility for injecting foreign exchange and developing the economy," said Ivis Fernández, the top tourism official in Matanzas province, home to the beach resort town of Varadero.
Across the Florida Straits, the Trump administration is intently focused on scaling back tourism to the island as part of a campaign to smother the Cuban economy and force its government to sever ties with President Nicolás Maduro's government in Venezuela.
Trump recently activated a section of the 1996 U.S. law known as Helms-Burton, allowing lawsuits against foreign companies doing business on properties confiscated after the island's socialist revolution. His administration has also pledged to limit the legal reasons under which Americans can visit Cuba, saying too many people are disguising illegal tourism as educational, religious or other types of travel. The U.S. has also prohibited Americans from patronizing a series of hotels and other facilities run by the military conglomerate that controls many of the most important sectors of the Cuban economy.
But despite the restrictive measures, the Cuban government is only doubling down on its bet that tourism to one of the world's last communist nations will continue to surge.
Cuba began to open the island to tourists after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent loss of billions a year in aid. In 1996, Cuba had 30,000 state-owned hotel rooms and about a million tourists a year.
Last year it had about 70,000 rooms, with another 24,000 in privately owned bed-and-breakfasts.
In total, Cuba drew 4.7 million tourists in 2018, a 1.3% rise over the previous year that puts its latest goal of 5 million within reach. Visits to the island are already running 7% higher than the same period last year, when some 639,000 U.S. travelers took a trip, the second-highest of any nationality except Canada.
Official figures show that 257,000 Americans visited Cuba in the first four months of 2019, a 93% rise over the same period last year. Meanwhile, about 142,000 came on cruise ships, a form of travel that remains legal and is largely responsible for the rising number of American travelers to Cuba. Only 40,000 American cruise passengers visited Cuba in the first four months of 2018.
But even so, challenges loom large on an island whose most important business sectors are in varying states of shambles.
Cuba is currently trying to revive businesses ranging from agriculture to textiles by turning them into part of the supply chain for the tourism business. State-run factories, warehouses and workshops are largely in disrepair after years of embargo and central planning, and many of the millions earned by hotels and tour buses must be turned around and spent on imported goods ranging from food to bedsheets.
In a country full of mango and guava trees that drip with rich, plump fruit nearly year-round, it's also not unusual to see imported tropical fruits and juices at hotel breakfast buffets as Cuba's decrepit agricultural sector struggles to find a way to move enough produce to satisfy visitors.
"The big problem with tourism as a foreign-exchange earner is the amount of importing that it has to do," said José Luis Perelló, an economist and expert on tourism. "In order to keep developing tourism we need national industry to become more dynamic."
If the Trump administration is successful, the island might never get the chance.
Along with the collapse of the Venezuela economy and the reduced amount of cheap oil the government of Maduro sends to Cuba, increased U.S. pressure is blamed for a cash crisis that has forced the country to start rationing basic foods such as eggs and chicken and limit power consumption by state-run enterprises.
"They're going after Cuba's strengths, in this case the tourism sector, and trying to seek out its vulnerabilities," Raúl Rodríguez, director of the University of Havana's Center of Hemisphere and U.S. Studies, wrote in a recent article in independent journal Temas. "Boosting sanctions is an attempt to bankrupt the Cuban state."
Still, experts say that the state-run tourism sector brings in $3 billion a year and the private side brings in the same, despite being nearly one-third the size. In a country where food lines are growing, aid from Venezuela is dwindling and industries like nickel and sugar are mostly stagnant, tourism also might be one of the only ways forward.
On the paradise-like beaches of Varadero, small crabs crawl out of sand dunes and groups of tourists seem to forget their worries as they laze in the sun.
The city currently has 21,200 hotel rooms and is trying to build 1,000 more per year for at least the next five years, managed in partnership with hospitality giants Melía and Barceló of Spain and Fiesta Americana of Mexico.
While Spanish hotel chain Iberostar could be a major potential target of lawsuits under the activation of the Helms-Burton provision, owner Miguel Fluxá did not appear worried at an international tourism fair last week.
"I do not know (what is going to happen with Helms-Burton)," he said. "The only thing that I know is that any step we have taken we have taken according to the law."
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Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP
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Correspondent Michael Weissenstein contributed to this report.
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