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N.C. Baptists, UNC keeping
strong ties with communist Cuba
By William F. West. bwest@heraldsun.com.
The
Herald-Sun, June 17, 2006.
DURHAM -- Baptists are hardly all amassed
in America's Bible Belt. They also can be
found in Fidel Castro's Cuba.
A small group, sponsored by the Cary-based
North Carolina Baptist Men, has just returned
from working to build a retirement home
in the communist island-nation.
"On any given Sunday in Cuba, there
are over 200,000 people worshipping in Baptist
churches," said Neil Yarborough, an
attorney back from his second trip since
December 2004.
Though Castro is head of an atheist state,
experts say the Marxist dictator doesn't
get involved in religion, as long as houses
of worship don't become centers of politics.
So Yarborough put aside his legal business,
including representing people who are against
the town of Creedmoor's annexation along
N.C. 56.
With a religious visa in hand, he led seven
people, including a son and a daughter,
to the city of Santiago, located on the
eastern end of Cuba.
Yarborough, of Fayetteville, spoke of seeing
well-educated people trying to live in a
depressed economy. He cites a more-than-40-year
U.S. embargo, the meltdown of the Soviet
empire in the early 1990s and "probably
the inefficiencies of communism, too,"
as reasons he believes Cuba is so poor.
"I mean, there's a lot of things that
Fidel did that probably helped people, but
the country would collapse if it wasn't
for an effective black market," he
said.
Castro took power in January 1959. Castro
soon embraced Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev,
and scores of Cubans began fleeing to the
U.S.
In 1961, the U.S. ended diplomatic relations
and backed the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.
The next year, the Cuban Missile Crisis
followed.
Long-hostile feelings between leaders in
Washington and Havana continue to this day,
and Castro's lack of tolerance for dissent
is extensively documented by human rights
groups.
Despite the situation, there is an open
line to Cuba via the Triangle.
That is because UNC is one of the few universities
in the U.S. where students can go to Cuba.
Robert Miles leads a study abroad office
offering programs in more than 70 countries.
Miles said an increasing level of interest
in Cuba prompted the idea at the beginning
of the decade to have UNC students take
courses taught in English at the University
of Havana. According to Miles, seven students
in 2004, seven students in 2005 and 14 students
this year completed the program.
Miles himself goes to Cuba about two to
three times yearly.
And he pointed out that UNC has an institute
for Latin American studies that dates as
far back as the late 1940s, with distinguished
longtime specialists on Cuba.
One of them is professor Louis Perez, who
also frequently goes to the island. He chuckled
when asked what's true and what's false
about Cuba, because he could spend hours
answering.
"I think it's reasonable to say that
there's probably no country in the world
right now in which Americans are more warmly
received" than in Cuba, he said, acknowledging
that such a comment is "fairly sweeping."
Perez said he believed a free exchange
between the U.S. and Cuba could benefit
North Carolina and the Triangle area, culturally
and educationally.
He said UNC was particularly interested
in Cuban medical research, to the point
that there was an effort to promote ties
between physicians at UNC's medical school
and at the University of Havana.
He couldn't say for certain whether lifting
the trade embargo would result in the development
of a democracy in Cuba. On the other hand,
he said, the end of such an official blockade
inevitably would lift a feeling of a society
under siege.
"Here is a country of 10 or 11 million
people, who live next to most powerful country
in the world, and it's the expressed policy
of this [U.S.] government to overthrow the
Cuban government," he said. "And
that cannot but create a kind of sense where
national security becomes the overriding
consideration in daily life."
© 2006
The Durham Herald Company
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