BY NANCY COLE
PHILADELPHIA - Two representatives of the Cuban Interests Section spent a busy two days here March 26-27, centered around a meeting they had been invited to address during Festival Latino de Penn, an annual week-long event organized by Latino student groups at the University of Pennsylvania. Some 80 people - the big majority students - crowded into a campus room March 26 to hear Eugenio Martínez and Manuel Alvarez speak and answer questions about "Cuba Today." Martínez is a third secretary at the Cuban Interests Section and a member of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in Cuba. Alvarez is an attorney who has been in the United States for two months and will be returning to Cuba after several more months in Washington.

One student said that responsibility for the economic blockade of Cuba lies not with the U.S. government but with the Cuban exile community in this country. Martínez replied that 60,000 Cubans living in this country traveled to the island last year. "Most of them, I'm sure, don't support the Helms-Burton law," he said, referring to the legislation President William Clinton signed into law last year intensifying the economic war against Cuba. Those Cuban- Americans with power, influence, and money who would benefit from the legislation lobbied for it, he said, "but Cuban- Americans' support for the Helms-Burton law was not the reason it passed."

Martínez and Alvarez also spoke to two classes, one at the University of Pennsylvania and one at Temple University, totaling 50 students. They taped a television show to be shown in early April on a regional cable station. The Cuba Support Coalition organized a reception for the Cuban representatives at Taller Puertorriqueño, a cultural center in North Philadelphia.

Martínez and Alvarez informed youth they met here of the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students, which will take place in Cuba July 27-August 6. Eight youth signed up to go on that trip during the two-day tour.  
 
 
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