By Lisa Stiffler. Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter. Tuesday, February 29, 2000
Group to represent island nation at meeting
When Cuban leader Fidel Castro canceled his trip to the Northwest for the World Trade Organization conference last fall, students at Bellevue Community College decided they would go to him.
Nine students and a BCC instructor recently traveled to Cuba to see firsthand what life is like on the Caribbean island before they represent the country in the National Model United Nations meeting in New York this spring.
The trip, which they returned from last week, marked the first time in the model United Nations' 77-year history that a group of students visited Cuba in preparation for the conference.
Although students did not get an audience with Castro during their weeklong whirlwind tour of Havana and the countryside, they did meet with government officials, prominent student leaders, professors and physicians to hear their concerns about the country.
The students were surprised by what they found.
"What I learned (in the United States) about Cuba didn't coincide with what I saw there," said Robin Conway, 17, a Lake Washington High School senior who attends BCC full time through the Running Start program. "I expected all the people to be unhappy."
Instead, they found the Cubans friendly and eager to talk to Americans despite living in crumbling buildings and struggling to survive on meager food rations, which they said was a result of the continuing U.S. trade sanctions against the country.
"I feel like I have a much better picture of who I'm representing," Conway said.
When the students go to the model U.N. meeting in April, they will join more than 2,500 students from colleges and universities around the world.
At the five-day conference, they will simulate a real U.N. meeting, proposing resolutions that deal with such international issues as human rights, regional conflicts and economic and social development.
Students at the model U.N. conference are encouraged to adopt the characteristics of the country they represent. For the BCC students, that will mean adopting the politically charged language of the Cubans.
Instead of calling the trade sanctions against Cuba an "embargo," it is a "blockade." And Elian Gonzalez, the little boy embroiled in the custody battle between his U.S. relatives and his father in Cuba, has been "kidnapped" and is being "held hostage" in
the United States.
Elian was a constant presence during the trip -- giant posters emblazoned with his image hung everywhere, and the students participated in a march of 200,000 protesters who waved the Cuban flag and demanded the 6-year-old's return.
If Elian is still in the United States when the U.N. meeting takes place, Traca Alger, a 30-year-old BCC student, plans to incorporate him into the team's presentation.
"My plan is to ask for a moment of silence for Elian," she said.
Aslam Khan, adviser for the Bellevue U.N. team and chairman of BCC's political science department, has been attending the model conference with students for 25 years.
He said the students wanted to represent Cuba when they heard Castro might attend Seattle's WTO meeting. So did 41 other schools. As one of only three community colleges participating in the model United Nation, "it took a lot of work to get Cuba," Khan said.
"It was a chance of a lifetime," Alger said.
The students will make a public slide-show presentation at 10:30 a.m. Thursday in Room N201 in the Northwest Center for Emerging Technologies on the BCC campus.
With their slides and stories, the students hope to dispel what they say are many myths about the communist country.
"Maybe it's not censored, but we're not getting the full picture (of life in Cuba)," Conway said. "It's very important we give people a better idea of what Cuba is like."
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