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Marta Caminero-Santangelo’s parents left Cuba in 1960, soon after the revolution that brought the communists and Fidel Castro to power there.

“There is absolutely no love for Castro in my family,” the Kansas University English professor said Thursday.

But Caminero-Santangelo thinks it is time to end the U.S. embargo, which has failed for nearly a half-century to loosen Castro’s grip on power. She was one of dozens of Cuban-American scholars and artists who took out a full-page ad in Thursday’s Miami Herald, calling for a change in policy.

“I can’t think of another arena of foreign policy where that would be true, where a policy that had been ineffective for 40 years would be allowed to continue,” she said.

The ad comes in response to a recent tightening by the Bush administration of restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba. Cuban-Americans can visit their families on the island only once every three years, and their ability to send money home to family members has been reduced.

Congress has voted on several occasions to loosen the restrictions, but a series of presidents — influenced, in part, by the political power of conservative anti-communist Cuban-Americans in the swing state of Florida — have kept the embargo in place. Cuban-Americans make up nearly 6 percent of Florida’s population, but less than 1 percent nationally.

“The impression is that the Cuban-American community all agrees on the embargo, and we do not,” Caminero-Santangelo said.

Photo by Mike Yoder

Kansas University English professor Marta Caminero-Santangelo says it is time for the U.S. embargo, which has tried for nearly a half-century to loosen Castro's grip on power, to end. She was one of dozens of Cuban-American scholars and artists who took out a full-page ad in Thursday's Miami Herald, calling for a change in policy. Caminero-Santangelo was teaching an American Literature class Thursday.

Alfredo Mesa, executive director of the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, said the embargo should remain in place.

“The rest of the world does business with Cuba, and that has not changed the political system there,” Mesa said. Castro “still doesn’t release political prisoners, and he still doesn’t respect human rights.”

The Miami Herald ad, Mesa suggested, wouldn’t have been possible under Castro’s regime.

In America, “they have the right to take a full-page ad,” Mesa said. “That’s the beauty of democracy.”

The statement, signed by Caminero-Santangelo and more than 100 others calling themselves the Emergency Network of Cuban American Scholars and Artists for Change in U.S.-Cuba Policy, decries repression under Castro. The KU professor, though, knows the anti-embargo stance will be controversial among exiles.

“I tremble to think” she said, “what the Miami relatives think right now.”