Alabama on Cuba: Tear down this embargo

[Judi Lynn]

Alabama on Cuba: Tear down this embargo
As the U.S. considers further thawing relations, support for a more lenient policy is emerging in the South, where Cuba is seen less as a Cold War antagonist than as a rare growth market.
By Richard Fausset
8:35 PM PDT, May 6, 2009

Reporting from Mobile, Ala. -- The barges bound for Cuba already glide down the Mobile River from time to time, past James K. Lyons' office and south to the Gulf of Mexico.

These days, Lyons, the director of the Alabama State Port Authority, dreams of when the Cuban trade embargo will be fully dismantled. That would mean more barges loaded with even more goods from Alabama.

For Mobile, the state's graceful colonial port of call, it would also mean the revival of a commercial relationship with Havana that is older than the United States.

"They are one of our closest neighbors, and a historical trading partner, and we've drifted too far apart," Lyons said here recently, in his office overlooking the busy port of Mobile. "Where's the cheapest and best place for them to buy? It's here."

The debate over U.S.-Cuba policy has long been dominated by voices from Florida, home to the majority of Cuban Americans. But this year, as the Obama administration and Congress consider thawing U.S.-Cuba relations, support for a more lenient policy is emerging in, of all places, the conservative South, where Cuba is seen less as a Cold War antagonist than as a rare growth market.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-alabama-cuba7-2009may07,0,457767.story