The U.S. has had restrictions on travel to Cuba for most of the past 40 years. While the Constitutional right to travel was technically won in a 1958 Supreme Court decision, the U.S. government and its ideological allies have tried to prevent us from traveling through a variety of legal, extra legal, and illegal means. Since the beginning, people have fought back vigorously and continuously for our right to travel to Cuba.

In the 1950’s the US government attempted to curtail our right to travel through passport controls (either by not issuing a passport to certain persons – Paul Robeson and Rockwell Kent were the most famous) or – when that method failed to survive court challenges – by listing countries in the passport which were ‘invalid’ for travel. When this method also failed in court, the government switched from ‘travel controls’ to ‘currency controls’. The current restrictions on travel to Cuba come under the Treasury Department - and not the State Department- because they have to do with the spending of money by US citizens, residents, and corporations. Of course, these ‘currency controls’ are just a back door method to restrict our right to travel. 

1958 
Kent v Dulles - Freedom to Travel established as a Fifth Amendment guarantee.

Jan 1, 1959 
Victory of the Cuban Revolution

October, 1959 
American Society of Travel Agents Convention takes place at Hotel Nacional in Havana. Plane piloted by CIA agents and originating in Florida strafes Havana killing 2 and wounding 45.

1961 
US restricts travel to Cuba via passport controls. 
African American journalist William Worthy challenges the passport controls and wins in 1964.

1963 
US restricts travel to Cuba via currency controls under the general US economic blockade.
Student groups travel to Cuba 1962, 1963 and 1964. Leaders indicted and case goes to Supreme Court in 1967.

1964
Supreme Court Justice William.O.Douglas: "Freedom of movement is the very essence of our free society…Once the right to travel is curtailed, all other rights suffer. From 1965: "The right to know, to converse with others, to consult with them, to observe social, physical, political, and other phenomena abroad as well as at home gives meaning and substance to freedom of expression and freedom of the press."

1969
Student and civil rights activists initiate an educational solidarity project to defy the restrictions and cut sugar cane side by side with Cuban workers. More than 5,000 people since then have traveled with the Venceremos Brigade in yearly contingents without ever requesting a license from the government. 

1972 
Center for Cuban Studies organized to bring academic and cultural groups to and from Cuba. Center is bombed in 1973. 1199 Hospital Workers union hall also bombed for exhibition called ExpoCuba.

1975
Miami Airport bombed in response to US policy change allowing third country subsidiaries of US companies to do business with Cuba.

October 6, 1976 
Bomb explodes on Cubana civilian flight taking off from Barbados killing all 73 passengers. CIA-trained bomber Orlando Bosch is now an honored member of the Miami community openly supported by the first President Bush and his sons. CIA-trained bomber Luis Posada escapes from prison in Venezuela and later helps CIA efforts to supply Nicaraguan Contras in the 1980’s. In the 1990’s he receives funds from the Cuban American National Foundation to coordinate the bombing of hotels in Cuba. He is currently in jail in Panama for ‘arms violations’ related to an assassination plot against the Cuban President. 

1976 
Cubana Airline offices are bombed throughout Latin America.

1977 
President Jimmy Carter lifts the restrictions on travel.
Composed of young Cuban Americans, the Brigada Antonio Maceo travels to Cuba as an act of friendship and reconciliation.

1978 
600 young people from the US attend the World Youth Festival in Havana
Meeting in Havana, representatives of Cubans living abroad in the United States, Spain, Puerto Rico, and Mexico establish a Dialogue with the Cuban Government. Cuban American leaders establish the Committee of 75 and travel agencies are initiated to coordinate the travel of Cuban Americans to visit their relatives. 125,000 do so in the next year and regular charter service is established between Miami and Havana. 

1979
Carlos Muniz, president of Viajes Varadero travel agency in Puerto Rico, and member of the Committee of 75, is assassinated in San Juan.
Eulalio Negrin, another member of the Committee of 75, is assassinated in Union City, New Jersey.

1982 
President Ronald Reagan re-imposes the travel restrictions. 
Law firm of Rabinowitz, Boudin, Standard, Krinsky and Lieberman – which had originally litigated the Kent v Dulles suit in 1958 - brings suit on behalf of Professor Ruth Wald, the Center for Cuban Studies, and other plaintiffs to end the restrictions, a case which was finally lost by a 5-4 Supreme Court decision in 1984. The majority rule that foreign policy concerns of the executive branch could override our Fifth Amendment right to travel.

1985
Subpoenas demanding the names of all Marazul Tours clients who had traveled to Cuba is fought and won by the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, and the National Conference of Black Lawyers.

1986
Marazul is bombed and would be bombed again in 1989. Mackey International, Airline Brokers Company and other 
travel agencies in Miami are also bombed over these years. 

1992
Cuba Democracy Bill (Torricelli Bill) passed by Congress to further restrict travel and increase the effects of the economic blockade as Cuba’s economy bottoms out in the wake of the collapse of her trading partners in the socialist world. 
Pastors for Peace initiates the first of annual US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravans demanding the right to travel to Cuba to deliver humanitarian supplies and refusing, on principal, to apply for ‘permission’ from the US government to do so. In 1993, Pastors for Peace mounts a 23 day hunger strike and world wide campaign which wins the release of a school bus and supplies. Each caravan has been harassed and in some cases terrorized at the border and numbers of ‘caravanistas’ have received letters from OFAC. In 1996 participants risked their lives in a 94-day Fast for Life successfully demanding the release of 400 computers. IFCO has risked jail by refusing to appear before a grand jury and, in 1998, successfully sued the Treasury Department to prevent US government access to their bank records.

1992-98
In a series of attacks coordinated by Luis Posada (see above) and funded by the Cuban American National Foundation leaders, bombs explode at a number of Cuban hotels resulting in the death of an Italian tourist.

1993 
Global Exchange and many other organizations launch the Freedom to Travel challenge sending eight delegations without licenses for the next three years. The government responds by freezing Global Exchange’s account. 
The former head of the US Interests Section in Havana, Wayne Smith, initiates a similar campaign bringing unlicensed academics to Cuba beginning in 1994.

1996
Freedom to Travel Campaign v. Newcomb: 9^th Circuit Court rules they will not intervene in foreign policy decision and maintains travel restrictions. 
Helms Burton Bill tightens and codifies travel restrictions giving only Congress the power to eliminate them.

1997
900 unlicensed young people defy the restrictions in the largest single challenge organized by our movement.

1998
Pope John Paul II visits Cuba and calls for an end to the restrictions and US economic blockade.
President Clinton modifies restrictions allowing some increased travel – but only under licenses.

1982-2003
During these years, hundreds of universities and colleges and high schools, professional and cultural organizations, religious institutions and groups, and thousands upon thousands of individuals flood the Treasury Department with applications for travel, by enlisting the aid of their congressional representatives and writing of their experiences. Virtually 100% of the people and organizations and institutions that have engaged in this process have emerged in total opposition to the restrictions.

2000
Nethercutt Amendment allows limited food and medicine sales to Cuba, but also further codifies travel restrictions.

2001
The House of Representatives votes to withhold funds for the enforcement of the travel restrictions. However, the House leadership manages to remove this provision in the joint House-Senate conference committee (the President vows to veto any bill with this provision included)

2002

• OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) fines more than 100 travelers $1000 each. OFAC fines 74-year grandmother $8500 for bicycling in Cuba. Hundreds of others have cases pending before OFAC. 
• 350 Cuban Americans meet in Florida to demand a new Cuba policy and an end to the restrictions. 
• Over 150 citizens and elected officials representing 37 cities and 17 states met with their counterparts in Cuba as part of the US-Cuba Sister Cities Association Conference. In response, OFAC sends Requirements to Furnish Information (subpoenas) to members of the US-Cuba Sister Cities Association alleging they organized an "illegal" conference in Cuba. OFAC also threatens to fine the secretary of the Seattle-Cuba Friendship Committee for merely posting a notice on a web site about the meeting in Havana. 
• Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former President Carter travels to Havana for discussions with the aim of a new Cuba policy and calls for ending the travel restrictions as a first step.
• People who have made past trips to Cuba – no matter if the trips were ‘licensed’ or not – report harassment by US customs officials whenever they travel internationally. 
• US imposes new procedures further restricting the ability of Cubans to visit the US. 
• National Summit on Cuba – sponsored by the American Farm Bureau, Americans for Humanitarian trade with Cuba, the World Policy Institute, USA*Engage, and other conservative, centrist and liberal organizations – meets in Washington and calls for ending the restrictions. 
• Hundreds of U.S. businessmen organize and attend Agricultural Exhibition in Havana.
• The 13th US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan and the 33^rd Contingent of the Venceremos Brigade return from successful challenges to the restrictions. 

** For further information on the history of U.S.-Cuba relations and the fight for the right to travel, please see the indispensable Cuba and the United States, A Chronological History by Jane Franklin, Ocean Press, 1997.