TRAVERSE CITY — Leith and Gloria Butler were 12 when President John F. Kennedy imposed a U.S. economic embargo on Cuba on Feb. 7, 1962.
Fifty years later, the near-total trade ban aimed at toppling Fidel and Raul Castro is still in place. The communist dictators are still in power. And many Americans like the Butlers, now 62, believe it's high time that the embargo was lifted.
"It hasn't worked, so who is suffering from the embargo is the people of Cuba," said Gloria Butler, who recently returned from a visit to the country, where she and her husband saw ration books, crumbling buildings (amid some renovation), well-preserved but aged cars, farmers plowing with oxen, and children using an empty water bottle for a soccer ball.
"Instead of getting things from the United States, they're getting things from other countries, and other countries are influencing Cuba. I think we're missing out. Cuba is a nation of 11.2 million people, and I think it would only be beneficial to our country, also, if we were trading with Cuba," Butler said.
In the White House, the first sign of the looming embargo came when Kennedy told his press secretary to go buy him as many H. Upmann Cuban cigars as he could find. The aide came back with 1,200 stogies.
Supporters of the policy acknowledge that many U.S. strategic concerns from the 1960s have been consigned to the dustbin of history, such as halting the spread of Soviet influence and keeping Fidel Castro from exporting revolution throughout Latin America. But they say other justifications remain, such as the confiscation of U.S. property in Cuba and the need to press for greater political and personal freedoms on the island.
"We have a hemispheric commitment to freedom and democracy and respect for human rights," said Jose Cardenas, a former National Security Council staffer on Cuba under President George W. Bush. "I still think that those are worthy aspirations."
The Butlers traveled to Cuba on a 10-day "people-to-people" expedition with National Geographic. The January trip was possible with a special license from the Treasury Department, part of President Barack Obama's 2011 policy changes designed to encourage more contact between Americans and citizens of the Communist-ruled island.
The expedition was the first time small towns near the Bay of Pigs had ever seen a group of American tourists, Gloria Butler said.
"Those towns just opened their hearts to us. They wanted to keep us, talk with us, tell us about their towns, show us their museums," said Butler, a retired Forest Area Schools teacher from Traverse City. "In Caibarien, the whole town came out and they gave a concert in the plaza just for us."
During their stay, the group also met and talked with everyone from lawyers and judges to elementary schoolchildren and university staff and students from Cuba's free education system, she said.
Travelers to Cuba are limited on how much they can spend and what they can purchase there. Permissible items include books, CDs and art, said Butler, who brought back a colorful handpainted tile by José Fuster, considered one of the country's most original ceramists. Though the U.S. does have significant trade with Cuba under a clause allowing the sale of food products and some pharmaceuticals, cigars are not on the list.
"It's illegal to bring Cuban cigars into the country, so we can't possess any, sell any," said Ben Wyckoff, manager of Nolan's Tobacconist in Traverse City. While it's likely that the store would see a "huge rush" of people anxious to try Cuban cigars if the embargo were lifted, he said, the lack of trade in the cigars hasn't impacted business.
"Because people can't have Cuban cigars, they think they're the best cigars. But if you look at the ratings from (cigar magazines and reviews), cigars from places like Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Honduras are becoming equal to Cuban cigars," he said.
That's because many cigar manufacturers moved their operations to those countries when Fidel Castro nationalized the Cuban cigar industry in the early 1960s, he said.
The embargo is a constant talking point for island authorities, who blame it for shortages of everything from medical equipment to the concrete needed to complete an eight-lane highway spanning the length of the island. Cuba frequently fulminates against the "blockade" at the United Nations and demands the U.S. end its "genocidal" policy.
It's unlikely Obama would do anything in an election year to risk losing support in Florida, which he won in 2008. Even if he wanted to lift the embargo, the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 stipulates that it would have to be approved by Congress.
"I don't see it happening before Fidel dies because that would be his triumph," Gloria Butler said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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