Janine DeFao, Chronicle Staff Writer. San Francisco Chronicle. Saturday, July 29, 2000
OAKLAND -- After dancing in the Cuban streets until dawn to celebrate the birthday of Oakland's new sister city, Mayor Jerry Brown met with Fidel Castro yesterday over a marathon lunch.
The leader of the communist island and the leader of the East Bay dined on lamb, salad and almond ice cream while discoursing for 3 1/2 hours on topics from the global economy to Elian Gonzalez to their mutual Jesuit educations.
"He has a lot of thoughts on how things are going in the world and a very knowledgeable perspective that's quite interesting,'' Brown said yesterday from Havana, before departing for a city three hours away to hear Castro speak, at the invitation of the Cuban president.
Brown said he could meet with Castro again today before heading back to the East Bay tonight.
Oakland's mayor has been in Cuba for a week, leading a delegation of city officials and residents to formalize a "sister city'' agreement with Santiago de Cuba in the country's eastern region.
Upon arriving in Havana yesterday, Brown got a call at his hotel from a Castro aide inviting him to lunch -- a meeting not on the delegation's official itinerary.
Brown, his longtime friend and adviser Jacques Barzaghi and Assistant City Manager George Musgrove met Castro, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon and two other Cuban officials at Castro's Palace of the Revolution.
The mayor and Cuban leader talked, with the help of Castro's translator, as the head of Oakland's cable television station, KTOP, filmed the meeting for future broadcast.
Cigars were offered but not smoked, Brown said. Castro wore his trademark green fatigues but no hat.
The two men discussed their mutual interest in the arts, education and the environment, while touching on the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba.
Castro asked Brown about Oakland and Silicon Valley, "where it got its name and what was there before.''
Prunes, Brown told him.
Castro told Brown about a new education program that will use television to teach all Cubans to be trilingual -- in Spanish, English and French.
Brown described his excitement "walking into that room'' where he met Castro, whom he described as "highly educated'' and at ease talking about subjects from history to literature to philosophy.
"Obviously, this is a country that's been walled off a long time from formal contact with the United States,'' he said.
Brown has been speaking out against the embargo and U.S. travel restrictions since he departed for Cuba.
"I think we're nearing a point of real breakdown in this traditional U.S.-Cuban policy because of all the developments that have happened in between, the end of cold war, trade with China and now Vietnam,'' he said yesterday.
Last week, Congress, with bipartisan support, passed a historic easing of the embargo on food and medicine sales and travel to the island nation, 90 miles from Florida. But the Republican leadership Thursday scrapped the measures, under pressure from anti-Castro Cuban Americans.
Meanwhile, Brown was in Santiago de Cuba, hoping to strengthen ties between that port city and his own.
Brown and Santiago Mayor Nicolas Carbonell Igarza signed an agreement Thursday, written by Brown, that calls for "people-to-people exchanges involving teachers, scholars, scientists, musicians, painters, dancers, poets, philosophers, athletes and those interested in urban agriculture.''
Brown said he hopes some of them will come teach at a new arts charter school opening in Oakland next year.
"Dismayed by growing injustice, mindless armaments, assaults on nature and the flood of useful things which make people evermore useless, and certain of the beauty of hospitality and the good that comes from strangers receiving one another,'' Brown wrote, the two cities will work together
to bring about a closer relationship between their two countries.
To that end, Brown and company joined their hosts in celebrating the 485th birthday of Santiago de Cuba and the 47th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. A group of Oakland kids danced at the ceremony.
"It's carnival time. There's dancing in the streets 'til sun-up,'' Brown said. "We did a lot of that, too.''
And while he may have passed on the cigars, the mayor noted that Cuban rum is very, very good.
E-mail Janine DeFao at jdefao@sfgate.com.
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