A great article by Margarita Alarcon.  There are many reasons for which the travel ban has a negative effect.   This article focuses on the hindrance it poses on people-to-people exchange that would bring two countries who have such strongly interlocked histories together.

So, now, today, the Treasury Department has finally gotten its OFAC to put in print the deregulations of the previous constraints, or at least the better version or a lesser evil. Still, there is something failing in all of this. Now Cuban families will be broader in concept, now trips will be more frequent, and the influx of whatever cash anyone happens to have left over in a pretty messed up world wide economy will be able to reach the Cuban shores, but what about that other family concept? What about the fact that Cubans and Americans have been “related” in one way or another dating back to the 19th century? What about friendships established In the meantime between then and now? What about the new relations that could flourish?

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the peoples of two nations also have an entire history together that unites them. In the fields of science, the arts, agriculture, architecture, academia, medicine the list is so long it’s almost scary. Collaborations between both countries would be formidable in this day and age and especially now, when Cuba is open and the United States seems to be willing. Contact between both and all peoples from both nations is equally if not more important; whether they are Cuban or not.