More than 75 young people from the Los Angeles area have registered to take part in the Youth Exchange. The group includes students from more than a dozen universities and two high schools.

The trip is an opportunity for young people from across the United States to learn from Cubans themselves about the Cuban Revolution and the impact it has had on the lives of millions of workers and youth. Four of Cuba’s main national youth organizations—the Union of Young Communists, Federation of University Students, the Federation of High School Students, and the Saíz Brothers Cultural Association—are hosting the week-long activities. They will include visits to Cuban historical sights, health-care facilities, and schools.

Participants will also see first-hand the projects that make up the Battle of Ideas. This is a series of more than 100 programs through which Cuban youth organizations aim to win and integrate reinforcements to the active political defense of the revolution. The initiatives include a school for revolutionary social work, popular libraries, and video and computer clubs for workers and youth who live in the more remote and less developed areas of the country.

Due to the U.S. laws that restrict travel by citizens of the United States to Cuba it is necessary to secure a license from the Treasury department in order to visit the Caribbean nation. Most Youth Exchange participants will be traveling to Cuba under an information-gathering license, specifically related to researching the conditions facing women and youth in Cuba. Several high school students around the country will be traveling under a people-to-people license, a category of legal travel for U.S. citizens to Cuba that allows for educational trips to the island.  
 
Exchange participants raise funds
The Los Angeles Coalition in Solidarity With Cuba is organizing a series of events to build the trip. They will include house meetings and a public forum at the University of California Los Angeles Labor Center. Among the guest speakers will be Andrés Gómez, co-founder and national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a group of Cuban-Americans who support the revolution. In addition to raising funds toward the travel and other costs, these events will help open a discussion on what is happening in Cuba today, the history of the revolution, and of U.S. hostility toward it. The group is also planning to raise funds through other political programs, parties, garage sales, and car washes.

At the weekly planning meetings in Los Angeles, participants are planning to hold discussions on “The Second Declaration of Havana,” a revolutionary program adopted at a mass gathering in Havana in February 1962, and other historical documents from the Cuban revolution. The discussions will take place at the weekly planning meetings. “There are a lot of misconceptions, rumors, and false information on everything about Cuba,” said Aldo Gonzalez, a design student at California State University Long Beach. “I want to learn more about the history, politics, and other aspects of Cuba.

“History classes never teach you about the revolution, or if they do, it’s one-sided. I want to see for myself,” Gonzalez added.

To find out more about the Youth Exchange, contact the Los Angeles Youth Exchange, which is serving as a national clearinghouse, at cubasovereigntyx@aol. com, 1498 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90026.