Someone Needs to Stop the Kardashians Before They Blow This Whole Cuba Thing
According to the U.S. Department of Treasury and JetBlue, one of just a few airlines currently offering flights directly from the United States to Cuba, your trip must be categorized as one of the following in order to meet travel requirements:
- Family visits
- Official business of the U.S. government, foreign governments, and certain intergovernmental organizations
- Humanitarian projects
- Support for the Cuban people
- Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes
- Exportation, importation, or transmission of information or information materials
- Certain authorized export transactions
Which of these activities are the Kardashians engaging in while in Havana? Your guess is as good as mine. A “humanitarian” “project,” perhaps? “Support for the Cuban people,” even? Suspiciously absent from the approved list: filming a reality TV show.
MORE: The Complete Khloé Kardashian Guide to TMI
And yet! Kourtney, Kim, and Khloé Kardashian are staging “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” scenes in formerly forbidden territory as we speak. As part of their earnest celebration of Cuban culture, they’ve been wearing fedoras, smoking cigars, speaking Spanish, and captioning Instagram posts with things like “Pablo was here.” (I am confused—I do not know who this Pablo is. It can’t be Pablo Escobar, because that bad man was from Colombia, which is a different country entirely and one that Americans have been able to freely visit for years.)
But the real trouble is right here, with Khloé posing beneath a “Fidel” sign in the nation’s capital, thereby magnanimously rising to the occasion to be the first celebrity (of many to come, I am certain) to “spark controversy” in Cuba. “I’m so blessed to be able to appreciate another’s culture,” she captioned a later Instagram, just three hours after proudly displaying her revenge body alongside the name of a totalitarian dictator who destroyed his country’s economy, made a mockery of human rights, and prompted the Cuban exile that resulted in nearly one million citizens fleeing to the U.S.
Still, I don’t think she meant any harm—it’s just that going to Cuba is the new wearing a Che Guevara shirt for rich people.
