BY NANCY COLE

PHILADELPHIA - Four youth who participated in the U.S.-Cuba Youth Exchange related the impact the two-week trip had on their perceptions of life in capitalist America at a meeting of 45 here September 10.

Matthew Smucker, 18, said someone had told him that a lot of what you learn in Cuba won't really become apparent until later. "That happened this past week," he told the meeting, "when I was detained by police for trying to help a homeless man get a train ticket. The policeman said to me, `Why don't you go to a socialist country!' `Been there, done that!' I replied, as I realized that you wouldn't see this in Cuba - a man abused and subjected to racist language just because he wanted to spend some time in the train station, having gotten together enough money to buy a ticket."

Twenty-two-year-old John Ottomanelli described his background as a sociology major who got into "urban planning" and worked for a year as a community organizer in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Kensington. "Nobody I spoke to in Cuba knew what I was talking about when I tried to explain the concept of `sociology,'" he said. "Finally, someone told me that there is no separate field of sociology in Cuba, but it is incorporated into what everyone learns about their duty to society, whether you're an artist, a doctor, or a construction worker."

"They have the CDRs [Committees in Defense of the Revolution] and other mass organizations where the people are really involved in local government. Here in the United States community organizations are constantly competing with each other for funding before they can actually begin the struggle to make change. No one in Cuba could understand this." "This was one of the best experiences of my life," Ottomanelli said in conclusion.

Fermin Morales, a 27-year-old electrician from North Philadelphia's Puerto Rican community, said a conversation he had with a Cuban sailor in the merchant marine on a bus in Havana made the biggest impression on him. The sailor had been all over Latin America and he pointed to Cuba with pride as an example for the world. "`Yes,' I told him, `you are an example to Latin America.'

"`Not just Latin America,' the merchant marine replied. `But to the United States as well. Because we take care of our people.' "

The United States is a rich country, Morales told the meeting. "But I think Cuba is rich. It provides the basic necessities for all its people. I would love to have a system like that in Puerto Rico."

Anyone interested in revolutionary change and how workers and farmers reorganize society and transform themselves in the process, once they take state power, "really has to take a look at Cuba," said Philadelphia Young Socialist member Becca Arenson.

She was among the participants in the youth exchange trip. "Can you imagine," she asked, "being at work and your boss or union delegate telling you to stop working because you're all going to have a meeting to discuss whether or not the government should pass a new tax law? In Cuba, they are -just normal everyday people in the factories and the rural areas."

The program, held at the American Friends Service Committee national offices, included remarks from Mario Hardy, a Cuban citizen who lives in Philadelphia and works with others to defend death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE group, and Jennie Nilson, a local activist who spent six weeks this summer studying Spanish at the University of Havana.

Orlaida Cabrera and José Estevez representing the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), who happened to be in the area, also attended and spoke.

Nilson told the group that she had been in Cuba twice last year on trips similar to the youth exchange. During her six weeks this year, she said, she witnessed the day-to-day effects of Washington's brutal economic war on Cuba.

When she saw the so-called camels last year - two buses welded together and hauled by a semi - she was impressed by the inventiveness of the Cuban people who have tried to get around the lack of spare parts. "Yet this ingenious invention is not a very romantic reality for the Cubans." People still have to wait a long time in lines and then get crowded onto busses that can hardly fit another person, she said.

This was the third report-back meeting members of the youth delegation have organized, having spoken to a larger than usual Cuban Support Coalition meeting in August and a Militant Labor Forum attended by 35 people several weeks later. A front-page interview with the youth appeared in Al Día, a Spanish- language regional weekly. A series of three articles by participants has also begun appearing in El Hispano, a bilingual paper circulated throughout the region.  
 
 
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