Beyonce and Jay-Z are in hot water over their Cuban holiday

Two US Republican representatives have written a letter to Washington DC questioning the motives Beyonce and Jay-Z’s recent – and, naturally, highly publicized – anniversary break to Cuba.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, who both represent the exile community in South Florida, wrote to ask the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the Treasury Department about the type of license granted for their visit. Though relations have gradually opened since the embargo originally enforced by the Kennedy administration after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, travel is still limited to full-time academic, cultural and religious exchanges.

The Carters’ trip was widely reported as a vacation, and even as a propaganda coup by some local commentators, leading to a critical response from the Congress members and lobbyist groups like Cuba Democracy Now – who accuse the couple of helping to “legitimize and support the repressive regime, with both their presence and their cash, [and also] turn a blind eye, cruelly, to the perils and languishing of the Cuban people.” on their blog..

Despite the fact that American tourists frequently bypass the ban by travelling through third party countries, Beyonce and Jay-Z will probably receive a fine if they did indeed flout it – though the ire of staunchly anti-Castro exiles is much harder to appease.

Watch a video of Beyonce getting in the local spirit by joining in with a salsa performance below (via Complex).