While there's been a lot of talk about legislation on US travel to Cuba lately, the Miami Herald reported over the weekend on a substantial -- but quiet -- increase in travelers coming the other way since President Obama came into office. The Department of State reports that in the 11 months from October 2008 to August 2009 16,217 Cubans made the trip to the U.S. In the same period last year, the number of visitors was 10,661.

Herald sources make it sound easy: ask and you shall receive. The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell was able to get a group of Cubans, including a member of the National Assembly, to a recent conference; and the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota will host a visit from the Cuban Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment this week (more about that visit here). And Professor Rafael M. Hernández Rodríguez, quoted in the Herald story, is to assume a visiting professorship at the excellent Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

And, on the heels of the unsurprising news that Cuba would be buying far less from the United States than it did last year, the Herald Blog cites Mexico's La Jornada indicating that things might be worse than that. The paper reports that Cuba, facing a colossal trade deficit, is in default to hundreds of foreign companies. The Cubans say it is a temporary problem and blame it on difficulties with financing, higher costs of imports, the global financial crisis, and (lest we forget) the American embargo. Times are tough all over, but it probably wasn't the way they wanted to kick off the Havana International Trade Fair.