Sunday, November 21, 1999
UC forges friendship with Cuba
Study group seeks 'sister' relationship
BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
They could have picked the splendor of Barcelona, Spain. Instead, students and faculty from the University of Cincinnati chose to spend 10 days among peeling pastel mansions and '57 Chevies that dot the streets of Havana, Cuba.
The study tour next month by the group of 12 UC students and faculty members could lead to a formal link between the Tristate and the Communist is land. The trip, Dec. 4-12, reflects both a resurgence in American interest in Cuba and a chance for UC to grab an academic lead.
UC is interested in a “sister relationship” with the University of Havana — a move that could result in a regular exchange of students and research.
“The implications could be pretty broad,” said university spokesman Greg Hand. The university already has such relationships with 50 universities around the world. “With Cuba, it's a lot more unexplored territory.”
A range of other Tristate interests also are watching Cuban developments — multinational companies, such as Chiquita Brands International and Procter & Gamble, farmers hungry for new markets, travel agents, or Cincinnati Reds officials looking for the next “El Duque.”
“I think there are lots of opportunities in Cuba for our company should the day arise,” said Steve Warshaw, Chiquita's president and chief operating officer. The company had extensive holdings in pre-Castro Cuba.
Four decades after Fidel Cas tro's revolution on the island just 90 miles from Florida led to a U.S. embargo and often-hostile relations, there is renewed interest after the historic visit by Pope John Paul II almost two years ago and growing debate over U.S. policy.
In January, President Clinton announced a relaxation of some travel restrictions to Cuba. Now more chartered flights can fly from the United States directly to Cuba, including direct passenger flights between New York and Cuba starting Dec. 3, the first time since the early 1960s. Also, universities can apply for education visas for groups of students and faculty, making it easier than the old system, under which students and professors applied individually.
Though Americans are still not allowed to visit Cuba as tourists — only researchers, journalists, human rights groups and relatives can go — travel to Cuba is rising.
Marazul Tours in New Jersey booked 45 religious and education groups to Cuba in January alone, compared to about five during the same time the year before, said spokesman Bob Guild.
The 10 travel agents at Travel Exchange in Norwood are receiving an increasing number of phone calls about Cuba, said Irene Trunick, a leisure counselor with the Exchange and vice president of the TriState Travel School, which trains people to work in hotels, airlines and travel agencies.
“For some of your people who have been everywhere and done everything, it's been a forbidden place,” she said. “They want to jump on that opportunity.”
So does professional baseball.
“(Cuba) would be an intense, very intense, battlefield for talent,” said Darrell “Doc” Rodgers, assistant general manager of the Cincinnati Reds. “They are the elite, the best.”
“You want impact, go to the World Series and see the impact right now,” he said, referring to Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, the 1999 World Champion Yankees' star pitcher, and his half-brother, Livan Hernandez, who helped the Florida Marlins win the 1997 World Series.
Diplomatic baby steps
Despite the changing sentiments, political dealings with the island can still cause a stir.
Gov. George Ryan of Illinois last month became the first sitting American governor to visit the island under Mr. Castro during a “humanitarian” visit. He delivered $1 million in aid. Gov. Ryan came under attack by fellow Republicans for what earlier had been described as a “trade mission.”
For now, hamstrung by the embargo and the lack of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States, the UC group plans to take baby steps in establishing formal ties.
“This is probably a first date, and you don't know if you're going to get married for a while,” Mr. Hand said.
Unlike past trips by researchers and their small groups of students from UC and other Greater Cincinnati universities, two UC professors will give lectures for free at the University of Havana and otherwise try to establish permanent connections there. The group's educational purpose for the trip is the 20th annual Latin American Film Festival.
Sister university relationships elsewhere have led to partnerships between UC engineering graduate students and the Chinese railroad industry, Mr. Hand said. One obvious match would be Cuba's rich musical and medical spheres with those strong programs at UC.
But this trip packs personal as well as professional meaning.
Dr. Patricia O'Connor, one of five professors in the group, began her love affair with the island in the 1940s before the revolution when she lived there during a paid high school summer scholarship.
Though she has returned to Cuba several times on her own, this UC trip would be a bookend on her career: she plans to retire next year.
“It's lovely that I'm going back,” she said. “It's the alpha and omega.”
She and Dr. Elizabeth Sato, associate director of UC's institute for global studies and affairs, will give lectures at the University of Havana during the trip and will explore sister-relationship possibilities.
For Manuel Martinez, the Cuba trip is a recovered past. The 35-year-old graduate student and Clifton resident left Cuba with his parents and sister at the age of 6. He went back for the first time last year for “quite an emotional experience.”
Visiting his old house, he ran his fingers over the studded back of a sitting chair that once belonged to his family.
“It immediately gave me memories of when I was a kid,” he said.
Even more moving was seeing the cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents he left behind years ago.
“We always talk in the abstract about how terrible it would be to be apart from our families. But I really didn't know how much I missed my family until I got to know them,” he said. “I came back and felt this tremendous sense of loss, 30 years of lost relationships.”
While trips by American students and researchers have been going on for years, Robert Witajewski, deputy coordinator for Cuban affairs in the U.S. State Department, said he's not aware of any other universities dubbing them “sister” relationships.
Since January, 70 universities have applied and received license for travel for their faculty and students.
But he said the academic exchanges with Cuba are not two-way.
“It would be nice if the relationships were more balanced, if they could bring up more Cuban students, researchers and professors to the United States for study here, and not just the ones the university rector recommends,” he said.
Policy debate continues
Academic exchanges do more than educate American students. They help expose Cubans to American democratic ideals, said U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Cincinnati. But he is not in favor of ending the economic embargo.
“My concern, and the accepted position in Washington right now, is we are finally on the brink probably of Castro being near the end of his reign,” he said. “We don't want to lengthen his reign any longer than possible, so I would not be in favor, for example, of liberalizing or opening up trade at this time.”
But the Cuban people — and American farmers — are the ones suffering from the U.S. stance, said Katie Donahue, co-founder and board member of nonprofit Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba in Washington.
American farmers, suffering from some of the lowest prices in years, are begging for new markets. She noted that the American government allows trade with Communist China, which last week won a landmark trade agreement with American negotiators.
“It's so inconsistent and frustrating,” she said.
Debate aside, Rebecca Timm was pulled to the island through something a little more harmonious: music.
One of the two undergraduate students on the UC trip — joining five graduate students — the Cincinnati native became enraptured with Cuba after hearing the soundtrack to the movie Buena Vista Social Club two summers ago. Afterward, she began reading everything she could about the island.
“I feel like this is a special time to go to Cuba, because if anything happens to Castro, because he's old, it's going to change,” she said.
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