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By Irene Sanchez. Contributing Writer. Published on
Wednesday, February 19, 2003 in The Harvard
Crimson Online.
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." | 
