CUNY Professor Ted Henken just spent 12 days in Cuba talking to
bloggers. But the Cuba researcher says the trip may well be his last.
In a posting that should serve as a warning to journalists and
academics alike, he reports on his El Yuma blog that upon his exit at
the airport, state security agents had a daunting question for him: Who
did you get permission from? Well, Henken said, I asked the bloggers'
permission.
Henken acknowledges that he traveled on a tourist visa, as he has since
his first trip in 1997. The agents had lots of questions for him,
questions they already had the answers to. They admitted that they had
tracked his travels, including a trip to Matanzas.
"What we do know is that you are no tourist," they told him, "and,
rather, you came to write a book about bloggers. We'd like to read that
book and see how just and open the dialogue really is."
The agents told Henken, the chair of the Black and Hispanic Studies
Department at Baruch College, that this 15th trip would be his last.
-Frances Robles
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/2011/05/cuny-prof-banned-from-cuba.html
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