This is the time of year when the travel sections of the Saturday newspapers start to become thick with ads for packaged holidays to warm and sunny southern locales. Winter-worn Canadians can take their pick of Florida, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Trinidad, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico and many other places.

In recent years, though, Cuba has become the destination of choice. Canadians love Cuba. And the Cuban government loves Canadians.

On Nov. 29, the country's Ministry of Tourism reported that the number of visitors had exceeded two million for the third consecutive year. As usual, Canada was the No. 1 source of visitors.

More than 600,000 Canadians travel to the island annually and, in truth, Cuba has its attractions. Wonderful beaches. Warm water. Verdant mountains. Lovely Spanish-style architecture. Friendly people. And let's not forget the prices. Cuba has been cheaper than many of its competitors.

The vast majority of those tourists, virtually all of them in fact, will stay in hotels or resorts that are owned and rigidly controlled by Cuba's Communist government. Most will have little or no contact with ordinary Cubans.

Indeed, the government practises what outside experts call "tourist apartheid," an official policy aimed at keeping foreign visitors apart from its citizens. "Cubans are not allowed in tourist hotels unless they have special permission or work there," says Archibald Ritter, a Carleton University economist who specializes in the study of developing countries. "They are not allowed to stay in those hotels even if they have the money. They are not allowed to walk in the front door."

More than 100,000 Cubans work in the tourist industry and the ministry issues strict guidelines to regulate their dealings with the outsiders. They are to limit their relations with foreigners "to those that are strictly necessary.”

They are "to be vigilant at all times of any deed or attitude that could be harmful to the state.”

They are to refuse "remuneration, gifts, donations, accommodation or services that go against dignity and respect and create commitments ... " Tourists with a social conscience might argue that the dollars they spend go into government coffers to provide essential services. Therefore, the argument goes, they are contributing to the well-being of the populace,.

There is some truth to this. Tourism is now Cuba's largest source of foreign currency.

It brings in US$2 billion annually - big bucks in a US$40-billion economy.

And Ritter says that the government spends the money on health care, education, infrastructure and other basic necessities.

But nobody should be under any illusions about Cuba's tourist industry. It is one of the cornerstones of an aging and corrupt dictatorship that has ruined the island's economy, has oppressed, persecuted and impoverished its own people, and has no objective other than its own survival.

In the merry days of the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro and his comrades had no interest in tourism, not when Moscow was paying higher than world prices for Cuba's declining sugar production and selling oil at less than world prices.

This fantasy disintegrated with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain. Cuba's gross domestic product plummeted 35 per cent between 1989 and 1993 and the economy was thrown into crisis.

The government experimented with limited reforms by legalizing self-employment in about 150 occupations and it began to develop the tourism industry.

Tourism has been a roaring success and probably saved the government itself from collapse.

Now the limited free-market reforms are being rolled back. Since October 2004, the government has stopped issuing new licences for entrepreneurs who want to try their hand at one of the approved occupations. In June 2005, more than 2,000 existing licences were revoked. Even as it squeezes the private sector, government enterprises are incapable of delivering adequate supplies of food, clothing and household goods, which has created a thriving black market.

Meanwhile the repression and persecution continue. Reporters Without Borders calls Cuba the second-largest jailer of journalists in the world.

As of June this year, at least 315 Cubans were behind bars for political crimes, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

By any rational measure, Cuba's socialist experiment, now approaching its 50th anniversary, has failed abysmally. It survives thanks to the stubbornness and stupidity of a feeble, old dictator and his pampered henchmen, and tourists from a free and prosperous nation who are prepared to look the other way in order to enjoy cheap southern vacations.

(D'Arcy Jenish can be reached at jenish@businessedge.ca)