Easy Travel to Another Planet

Will NPR and the N.Y. Times ruin Cuba before you get there?

by Kathleen Skeels, Free Press Contributor

ike the Bizarro Planet of Superman Comics, Cuba is a place where everything is turned inside out, upside down, and opposite from what we think of as normal in the U.S. In spite of extreme poverty, nobody in Cuba starves and everybody gets medical care, housing, and an education. There are so many more women scientists than men, the state has instituted a sort of affirmative action program to help boys get ahead. Advertising is so minimal, you can't tell where the stores are. And while music is everywhere, I heard the most terrific musicians play not in the luxury hotel where we were staying, but from someone's back yard.

In recent months it seems that everyone has discovered Cuba. From NPR's cycling author who bemoans his good luck at being able tour communism's impoverished outpost thanks to his mutual funds, to Andrei Codrescu, who channels the drooling of the First World's lechers as he surveys the Cuban "dating" scene in the New York Times Magazine, the message is clear: get it while you can. Although this message means different things to different people, Americans are defying the embargo like never before; and, as more travelers with money descend upon Cuba, change is inevitable, for better and for worse.

I went with a large family, whose members ranged from age 5 to age 80, so we stayed in one big hotel that was a joint venture between the state and a foreign business. The staff was courteous and dignified-- obviously there's no stigma attached to working as a servant. After all, these jobs offer the best access to U.S. dollars, Cuba's main currency. Engineers work as chamber maids, professors wash dishes. In Cuba's successful biotech industry the government had to start supplementing incomes paid in pesos with dollars, to keep technicians from becoming taxi drivers. "I love my research," one biotechnology scientist said, "but if I have to drive a taxi to support my family, I will."

Staying in a swank resort on a peninsula two hours from Havana made for an odd vacation, as many fellow travelers took Cuba for a J.G. Ballard sort of tropical high rise, where the well-employed come to live off all of the free liquor and bland food they can consume. Nonetheless, I was able to get out and meet people. Mostly, I found them to be literate, friendly, funny, and eager to talk. Their accent is reputed to be the fastest and most difficult to understand, but your ear can get used to it. Ask them to slow down; they will. There's a lot to be curious about, from art and architecture to the resourceful solutions they've devised to cope with life without petrochemicals, and if you have any knowledge of Spanish (or any desire to learn), I suggest you be prepared for some fascinating conversations.

One ex-English teacher working as a bellhop thought that if he lived in the United States there would be opportunities for him to do what he was trained to do. Hardly likely, I told him: teachers here are underpaid, and hotel workers get little respect. This brings up the most disturbing aspect of what I saw. Generally, people over 30 were proud of their country's accomplishments, but younger people wanted to move to the U.S. This desire to move was often provoked by nothing more substantial than what they heard on Radio Marti or saw on MTV.

Trading with friends

Although the law against "trading with the enemy" runs contrary to the supreme capitalist commandment of trading, period, Americans who go to Cuba should be aware of the law and take steps to protect themselves. To begin with, it's not illegal for U.S. citizens to go to Cuba but to spend money there. Even so, there are categories of exemption. In the first category, U.S. government officials have a "general license" to go to Cuba on official business, as do journalists and members of an international group that holds a meeting there. Although you may well qualify for a second category "specific license" to travel to Cuba (somewhat available to those whose jobs don't automatically qualify them for travel), people I talked to said it wasn't worth the trouble. The State Department can take forever to process applications. A third category allows you to go to Cuba if all of your expenses are paid by your host.

Whatever you do, don't lie to a U.S. Customs agent when asked where you have gone. This rather startling advice is not only the consensus, but comes from the best authority on Cuba travel, the Center for Constitutional Rights, in New York. These specialists in Cuba travel provide advice and can act as your attorney, if you're harassed by the FBI. Most people never get questioned by any federal agents, and in almost all such instances where citizens are interrogated by people whose salaries they pay, the citizens need only politely assert their rights to keep from being questioned further.

In a way, the senselessly punitive embargo against trading with Cuba makes it your duty as an American citizen to go there. When you go, fill your luggage with medical supplies, baseball equipment, guitar strings, anything easily manufactured here but unavailable there (One of the members of our group, a doctor, packed his suitcase with samples of Viagra; a gift the Cuban men cordially declined). At the moment, they especially need working computers for disabled people--IBM-compatible PCs, 386 or above, along with dot-matrix printers and ribbon cartridges.

While the travel sections of mainstream U.S. newspapers glamorize the forbidden country, there's still a noticible scarcity of Americans in Cuba. This, along with the state of economic hostility the U.S. government maintains versus the little island, paradoxically makes the American people who take the trouble to go there very popular. Of course, other foreigners have few qualms about visiting, which can put you in an oddly comfortable minority. How pleasant to go to a place that isn't overrun by American tourists. There may be more Italians or Germans than Americans where you are, and certainly wherever you go it's clear this is a place that is not for United Fruit or Nike or General Electric but for the Cubans themselves. Whether out of our dumb fear of law or because the silly trade barriers have yet to be removed or purely because of the resilience of the Cuban people, we can feel good about ourselves just because we haven't ruined it yet.

The Center for Constitutional Rights can be reached at 666 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y. 10012. 212-614-6464. ccr@igc.apc.org Their pamphlet "The Cuba Embargo: Advice for Travelers" is an essential reference, before you go, while you're there, and afterwards.

Thanks to Doug Barnes of the Seattle-Cuba friendship committee for providing info.