Cuba and the Press

By Sarah E. Phend

The email came from my college’s International Education Office this past December: I had a chance to talk with an Associated Press reporter about my summer of studying in Cuba and possibly get into the national papers.

It seemed like a good deal. I had a 30-minute conversation with the reporter who covers education for the AP and had decided to look in on what Goshen College had done recently. He had found out from our International Education program that a group of students had spent the summer of 2002 studying in Cuba. The 3-decades-old faculty-led program, Study Service Term (SST), fills Goshen’s unique international education graduation requirement.

I tried to say only things that I wanted printed. But near the end I mentioned something about how I thought that the Cuban people are not as evil as my government seems to think and was quoted verbatim—in my college jargon—in newspapers across the country.

In fact the article was not about my school’s program in Cuba, and the reporter’s spin felt devastating. The article was particularly hurtful because it attempted to further smear the tarnished name that Cubans have been given by Americans—the very thing I was hoping to help change when I told my Cuba story to the reporter.

The Red Story

We left for Cuba on May 1, 2002: 11 women and 11 men embarking on what is to date the longest stay for a college group in Cuba since the 1960s. We were all pretty nervous, not knowing what to expect.

Once we got settled into the Vedado district of Havana, things became as normal as life can be living in a country filled with poverty, and politics so in your face you feel smacked at every turn.

For six weeks Cuban profesoras came to teach us Spanish and culture in the mornings. Then we picked up lunch, paying a few Cuban pesos (which equal about four cents in U.S. currency) for sandwiches, batidos (milkshakes), and guava-filled pastries on the street. In the heat of the afternoon we had lectures on many aspects of Cuban culture including Cuban women, Cuban religions and U.S./Cuba relations.

The first words our leader, Carlos Romero, Goshen College’s former dean of students, told us to learn to say were: "Soy estudiante, no soy turista." ("I am a student, not a tourist.") I still felt like an American but I tried—as much as I could—to live as the Cubans did, a painfully difficult task at times.

Unlike in the States, in Cuba there were few beggars on the street. Cuban people are much friendlier than Americans and call everyone they meet "my friend." The Cuban host families we stayed with on Saturdays shared food with us even when their rations were few. They taught us about their lives, their music, and their work. I spent most of my Saturdays in Havana with my 22-year-old host brother and my host mother. My Cuban brother and I conversed about the world—he was well traveled because he was a member of a traveling Cuban choir. I enjoyed our walks along La Malecon, Havana’s sea wall, and saw the long barge that, like a watchdog, travels back and forth guarding the country, less from intruders than from potential escapees.

Our host families knew that we had material wealth at home beyond their wildest dreams, but they showed no envy. They treated us as members of their own families and continue to write us letters asking to see us again.

After six weeks of study, we took a trip across the island to Santiago de Cuba, where we viewed relics of Cuban history. My friend and I hung our legs over the wall of the best-preserved seventeenth-century Spanish castle in the hemisphere and gazed at the sea, hundreds of yards below; we visited the Moncada Barracks where Castro and his comrades began their quest to overthrow a corrupt government; in downtown Santiago we joined the party at a house of music, where we clumsily danced salsa, merengue, and rumba with patient Cuban partners.

For two weeks I worked in a cannery, canning every vegetable known to Cubans. The workers taught other Cubans how to stretch food by canning their vegetables—one of the few foods that Cubans can buy in pesos and not in U.S. dollars. For another three weeks I worked the fields of a Cuban farm that was much like a large garden, with medicinal herbs, beans, and many rows of cucumbers.

The farm workers were curious why American students would want to work on their farm. However, we enjoyed it, even in the blazing heat—which the Cubans thought might kill us. I came home every day with more bits of useful knowledge and a healthy sense of accomplishment. I learned much more about Cuba from working and talking to co-workers and host families than from my lessons in Havana.

In Cardenas, my Saturday host mother, who spoke English, was from the former Soviet Union. She had married a Cuban man who was studying in Russia during the 1980s, had a daughter, and moved back to her husband’s country knowing only a few Spanish words. After my six weeks visiting with her she truly felt like a very close friend.

A Beautiful Country with Beautiful People

Cuba is a beautiful country with beautiful people whom I came to know and love, and, more importantly, to respect. Traveling to Cuba with my college was one of the best things I have ever done, and I would recommend travel in Cuba to anyone. The fact remains, however, that the political tensions between the Cuban and the U.S. governments are still very strong, making it difficult even to study there.

In the month following the article’s release I have admitted many times that I only lived in Cuba for three months. I was reminded of this fact in the emails that I received from Cuban immigrants who misinterpreted my comment about Cuban people and mistakenly thought that I was defending Fidel Castro and his government.

When I talked to the reporter I assumed that he would understand and hear me out because he told me that he had also studied abroad. However, it seems he didn’t hear me at all. I would caution anyone who has recently been abroad about talking to the media about the trip without carefully calculating what to say. Because I hold my trip deep in my heart, others will always have a hard time understanding what Cuba meant to me. It is just too bad that I tried to tell my story to a reporter.

SARAH PHEND, from Fort Wayne, IN, is a senior communications major at Goshen College.