BY JAMES V. GELUSO
The following is an excerpted article from the August 9
Daily Cougar, the campus newspaper at the University of
Houston (UH).
BY JAMES V. GELUSO
Three UH students were among seven arriving from a week- long stay in Cuba Monday.
Michael Chamberlain, Paul Coltrin and Lori Williams left July 30 for the Cuba Lives International Youth Festival. All three are members of UH's Cuba Friendship Committee, which successfully lobbied the UH Students' Association to establish a sister-campus relationship with the University of Havana.
While in Cuba, the group participated in a march that drew more than 500,000 to protest the U.S. embargo on Cuba.
The group also stayed with Cuban families during a three- day session that sent them to different areas of the island nation.
"That was just brilliant," said Chamberlain, who visited the province of Villa Clara. "We got a chance to feel what life is like to average Cuban families. We couldn't have gotten that by just walking around the cities and talking to people."
Chamberlain said the blockade has had real effects on the Cuban people, but hasn't broken them.
"There are real shortages caused by the blockade," he said. "For instance, my family always runs out of toilet paper. I left them a few simple items they couldn't get, like aspirin and shampoo.
"They never run out of food, due to a crash program they started three years ago that's paying off very well."
The blockade hurts the United States as well as Cuba, Chamberlain said. "It would be very beneficial to U.S. businesses to sell simple things like that to the Cubans."
Cubans have to pay inflated prices for simple goods, he said, because they have to go halfway around the world to buy the items, and then must buy from merchants who can charge higher prices because they know they don't have to compete with American manufacturers.
Coltrin said that while he met many Cubans of all sorts, he didn't meet any that were vehemently anti-Castro.
"I talked with some people who were thinking of leaving, but it wasn't because they were specifically anti-Castro," Coltrin said. "The migration from poor countries to rich countries is universal."
Chamberlain said the group also met with the student leaders at the University of Havana, where they discussed ways to further the relationship between the two schools. Ideas included student exchanges, intercollegiate sports competitions and a visit by some of Havana's physics professors.
That relationship exists only between the student bodies of the two schools. The administration here has disassociated itself from that union, according to Chamberlain.
The following article appeared in the August 8 Houston Chronicle under the headline "Students visit Cuba."
BY ANDY ALFORD
Despite the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba, eight Houstonians went to the communist island to see a side of Cuba few U.S. citizens ever see.
"You hear so much about Cuba - mostly in a negative light," said University of Houston senior sociology major Lori Williams, who went with other members of her student organization. "I just wanted to see (Cuba) for myself."
Members of UH's Cuba Friendship Committee visited the country to be part of the first annual International Youth Festival.
The multicultural exchange was held in Havana, and the United States - one of 65 countries represented - had 160 youth delegates, the largest. [There were in fact more than 260 in the U.S. delegation - Militant editor.]
Cuban families opened their homes to the delegates, showed them the island and, for a week, shared their way of life.
Delegates from as far away as South Africa debated free and universal education, abortion, world health and unemployment.
Houston delegates circumvented the travel ban by obtaining media credentials from newspapers and radio stations.
Delegate Paul Coltrin will write articles on his experiences in Cuba for UH's Daily Cougar.
He said he hopes the cultural exchange he experienced in Havana will be reciprocated in this country one day.
"The Cubans are bombarded by news from the United States about how wonderful everything here is," Coltrin said.
"They should come and see (for themselves) how things are here."