The Impact Of Tourism In Cuba

A precise point by Jay Nordlinger in NPR:
 
As for tourism, European and Canadian tourists have been enjoying Cuba's beaches and hotels for years. Has this sparked internal reforms? "European and Canadian governments would like to make that case, but I don't believe there is any evidence to support it," Peter Orr, a retired Foreign Service officer who served as Cuba coordinator at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) under President Clinton, told me in an e-mail. No surprise there: The Cuban tourism industry is dominated by the armed forces, and foreign tourists are generally isolated from ordinary Cubans. Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, a shrewd observer of Cuban and Latin American affairs, dismisses the "U.S. tourists will bring democracy" claim as "wishful thinking." He writes that the millions of European, Canadian, and Latin American tourists who have come to Cuba during the past decade have not had "any visible impact on the island's totalitarian system."