Students Seek Improved Relations Among Cubans

Students from over 20 colleges and universities met at Harvard this weekend to encourage communication between Cuban expatriates and the dissident community within the island.

The student-run conference, entitled “Raíces de Esperanza,” or “Roots of Hope,” was jointly organized by the Harvard University Cuban American Undergraduate Association and the Georgetown University Cuban-American Students Association. Around 100 students joined academics and activists in attendance.

The event opened with a teleconference featuring two dissidents opposed to the government of Fidel Castro who are currently living in Cuba: Vladimiro Roca and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. Both spoke of the need for Cubans to work with expatriates to plan for the island’s post-Castro future.

“We have to stop thinking about it as two communities, but as one community that has been long divided, but now needs to unite,” Roca said.

Others speakers at the conference encouraged the students to build solidarity with the island nation by visiting Cuba, interacting with Cuban students and bringing their parents to the island, as well.

These speeches marked a departure from what has historically been the mainstream stance taken by Cuban-Americans, said Carlos E. Diaz, a second year Ph.D student at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who attended the conference.

“It used to be that the great majority of Cuban-Americans were adamantly against visiting Cuba, mainly for idelogical reasons, whereas now there are more Cuban-Americans who advocate actively engaging the Cubans on the island on more pragmatic grounds,” he said.

Diaz noted that the speakers were not supporting Castro’s regime, but merely trying to “bring democracy to the island.”

Despite the speakers’ call to visit Cuba, the conference’s delegates did not vote to endorse a resolution calling for the exiled community to return to the island. The majority of delegates felt the conference had convened to bring awareness to the issue and not to take a policy stance.

Those who attended this weekend’s conference said they agreed that greater efforts need to be made to rebuild Cuban-Americans’ connection to their roots, even if the process will be painful.

Helen Jimenez, a second-year law student at American University, said she was pleased with the speakers’ call to return to Cuba.

“By going back, we can arm ourselves with the facts, we can show the rest of the world the conditions in Cuba and that’s what Castro fears most,” she said.

But when asked whether or not she would visit Cuba, Jimenez, who said her father was tortured by the Castro regime following the Bay of Pigs in 1961, said she was uncertain.

“I won’t go back without my father’s blessing, out of respect for what he went through,” she said. “But I really need to talk him into going.”

But Cristina M. Mendoza, a first-year graduate student at Tufts University, said she was disillusioned by her visit to Cuba. She said her access to native Cubans was limited and that she was shocked by the way the island’s residents were treated by the government in tourist destinations.

Open discussion of such traditionally controversial issues was a major goal of the conference, said Fidelma Leonor Cobas ’04, one of the event’s co-chairs.

“A lot of emotion goes into Cuba, and we wanted to provide a forum where people could express conflicting passions,” Cobas said.

Conference attendees said that the openness of the conference had important results.

“I think people were expecting the Cuban-American students to come to the conference with the same views—not advocating a return to Cuba,” said Bianca M. Ferrer, a sophomore at the University of Florida at Gainesville. “What they found was older generation Cubans calling for the youth to go to Cuba—to make their own decisions—instead just listening to their grandparents, who often have emotionally-charged opinions.”

Eric C. Lincoln, a senior at Georgetown University, said that he wondered if the call to build bridges with the dissidents was a result of the Elian Gonzalez incident.

“The exiled Cuban community was portrayed as staunch and stubborn in the press in the aftermath of Elian Gonzalez,” he said. “The speakers at this conference have been quite the opposite, encouraging students to go to Cuba, to bring their parents.”

Lincoln said that he agreed with the new way of thinking.

“I’m very pleased that the future generation of leaders in the Cuban-American community are taking a second look at what their parents and grandparents believed, and are trying to build connections with their brothers on the island.”