Denial of Visas for Delagation of Cuban Acadenics to Attend Academic Conference

March 6, 2006

Charles venator Santiago shared this message about a recent visa controversy with me.

RE: URGENT – Petition on Denial of Cuban Visas

From:

Latin American Studies Association [mailto:lasa+@pitt.edu]
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2006 1:26 PM
To: gcandela@smith.edu
Subject: URGENT – Petition on Denial of Cuban Visas

Dear Ginetta Candelario:

Our Association faces a crisis. For the second consecutive time, the U.S. government has decreed a blanket denial of the entire delegation of Cuban scholars to the LASA Congress. We have been provided with no rationale for this denial beyond the citing of Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, which prohibits entry into the United States of any individual whose entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States. We, the members of the LASA Executive Council, view this denial as an outrageous affront to the core mission of our Association and to the fundamental principle of free and open scholarly exchange across the hemisphere.

Since there are still 11 days until the Congress begins, we do not want to rule out the possibility, however slight, that the decision could be reversed. The letter to Secretary of State Rice, signed by the members of the LASA EC, urges her to enact such a reversal.

If you agree with this action, we ask you to do the following:

1. Indicate your support of the letter by checking below “I do support the letter to the Secretary of State”, adding your name and returning this message. Your name will be added to the letter before it is sent.

2. If you are a U.S. citizen, write your Senator, and urge him / her to contact the State Department to register opposition to these ideologically-driven exclusions of our Latin American colleagues.

3. If you are a citizen of a Latin American country, write the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, requesting that the OAS pursue this matter through the mechanisms of Inter-American governance. (pi@oas.org)

Sincerely,

Sonia E. Alvarez
Leonard J. Horwitz Professor of Latin American Politics and Society
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
LASA President

Charles R. Hale
Associate Professor of Anthropology
University of Texas at Austin
LASA Vice President

Marysa Navarro
Charles Collis Professor of History
Dartmouth College
LASA Past President

Merilee Grindle
Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development
Harvard University
LASA Treasurer and Executive Council Member

Joanne Rappaport
Professor of Anthropology
Georgetown University
LASA Executive Council Member

George Yúdice
Professor of American Studies; Spanish & Portuguese
New York University
LASA Executive Council Member

José Antonio Aguilar Rivera
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas AC (CIDE)
México, D.F.
LASA Executive Council Member

Elizabeth Jelin
Consejo de Investigaciones Científicas y Tecnológicas
Buenos Aires, Argentina
LASA Executive Council Member

Lynn Stephen
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology
University of Oregon
LASA Executive Council Member

Amalia Pallares
Program Co-chair
University of Illinois, Chicago

Frances Aparicio
Program-Co-chair
University of Illinois, Chicago

Peter Ward
Editor of the Latin American Research Review
University of Texas, Austin

We, the undersigned, endorse LASA Executive Officers’ letter and urge the U.S. government to reverse its decision to deny visas to Cuban scholars and other Latin Americans wishing to attend the XXVI International Congress of the Latin American Studies
Association.

WE NEED YOUR RESPONSE NO LATER THAN MARCH 4, 2PM, EST.

Please indicate your support and return this message to lasa@pitt.edu. Thank you.

_____I do support the letter to the Secretary of State.

____________________________________________________________(Your name)

LETTER TO SECRETARY OF STATE CONDOLEEZZA RICE

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Secretary Rice:

We are writing to you as Executive Officers of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the foremost professional organization in the world of individuals and institutions devoted to the study of Latin America. On behalf of the LASA membership, we write to express our concern over the United States government’s blanket denial of visas to fifty-five Cuban scholars scheduled to participate in LASA’s XXVI International Congress, to be held on March 15-18, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and to entreat you to reverse the State Department’s decision. The U.S. government’s decision seriously interferes with LASA’s ability to carry out its core mission and represents an egregious affront to academic freedom.

LASA’s mission is to “foster intellectual discussion, research, and teaching on Latin America, the Caribbean, and its people throughout the Americas, promote the interests of its diverse membership, and encourage civic engagement through network building and public debate.” Our ability to fulfill this mission is seriously compromised by the systematic denial of visas to our Cuban colleagues and the increasing difficulties encountered by many of our colleagues from other Latin American and Caribbean countries in securing visas to the U.S. in recent years. This is the second time that the State Department has issued a blanket visa denial to a group of Cuban academics. In September 2004, ten days before LASA members were to meet in Las Vegas, Nevada, the State Department denied visas to sixty-five Cuban scholars. In 2003, only 60 of 105 Cuban scholars scheduled to take part in panels were able to attend our Congress in Dallas, Texas.

The visa application process also is becoming ever-more difficult and costly for other Latin America-based members. For our forthcoming meeting in Puerto Rico, LASA members based in Uruguay, Ecuador, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia have reported that they have been denied visas for scholarly travel, despite presenting LASA’s formal invitation to the Congress and all other requisite documentation in a timely fashion. The case of one Bolivian member of LASA, Dr. Waskar Ari, a historian who recently received his doctorate from Georgetown University merits special attention. Ari has been offered an Assistant Professorship in History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and he has been waiting for approval of his HI-B visa for over eight months in La Paz, where he traveled to visit family before moving on to Lincoln. He has been branded as a security threat, without any conceivable rationale. We are appending a separate letter of appeal on his behalf.

Promoting intellectual exchange and scholarly collaboration are also at the heart of LASA’s mission, as we strive to “bring together experts on Latin America from all disciplines and diverse occupational endeavors, across the globe.” With over 5,000 members, well over twenty-five percent of whom reside outside the United States, it is absolutely vital that non-U.S. citizens be able to have access to our Congresses when these are held in the United States and that decisions to grant or deny visas be based on case by case assessments, rather than on blanket determinations. In 54 of the 55 cases of visas denied to our Cuban colleagues on February 23, 2006, the reason for exclusion given was “Section 212(f) which prohibits entry into the United States of any individual whose entry would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” We ask that you to reconsider all of these cases, as we are certain that enabling Cuban scholars to engage in vigorous, open, democratic debate with colleagues from around the world can only be of benefit to the interests of the United States. A list of scholars denied visas is appended.

We urge you to reconsider the decision to deny visas to our Cuban colleagues and to all other Latin American colleagues wishing to attend our XXVI International Congress. We further entreat you to respect the core democratic value of free intellectual exchange by refraining from the use of visa denials to restrict academic freedom.