Rodney

I've heard that, but don't know for sure.

Just for the record, though, a friend (U.S.) is going to go to Cuba, and this is what he's found out about the situation:

As a U.S. citizen, you catch hell with a Cuban stamp in your passport. So what a lot of people do is go to Cancun, catch a flight to Cuba from there. The Cubans do _not_ stamp your passport.

The problem is, of course, that you end up with an exit stamp from Mexico at Cancun and an entry stamp _to_ Cancun a week or three later. U.S. authorities learned to look for this. So the Mexican gov't started giving Cuban-bound Americans their exit and entry stamps _on a separate piece of paper_ that could be slipped into the passport and later removed.

Fine. But now my friend is getting the word that American representatives are monitoring Cancun airport and cited Americans who they find to be going to Cuba. People cited for going to Cuba are liable to a $7000 fine, and it has apparently been levied numerous times. Nobody's actually paid it yet, however, because a civil rights attorney is running a pro bono class action suit against the gov't on behalf of everyone cited.

There are terrible places in this world -- horrible countries, lands of genocide and corruption -- where Americans can travel freely. But political gamesmanship requires that our country harass any of its citizens who try to visit Cuba, arguably not a threat to this country or any other at this time.