BY NORTON SANDLER
BERKELEY, California - Some 700 students, academics, and political activists participated in "A Dialogue With Cuba" conference at the University of California campus here March 19-21. A similar size crowd attended a concert featuring Cuban music and poetry the opening night of the event. More students participated the first day, which was the last school session prior to spring break. Many were learning about the Cuban revolution and its accomplishments for the first time.

The conference, which had been in the works for more than a year, was sponsored by the university itself with the faculty of various departments offering invitations to 20 individuals in Cuba and to representatives of the Cuban government's Interests Section in Washington, D.C., to participate.

The U.S. State Department denied visas to 11 of the 20 invitees. Among those excluded from the country were Carlos Fernández de Cossio, Chief of the North American Section of Cuba's Foreign Ministry; Olga Fernández Ríos, Director at the Institute of Philosophy; Pedro López Saura, Center for Biological Research; Alberto Juantorena, Cuba's vice president of the National Institute of Sport; and Sergio Arce, a Presbyterian Theologian. The State Department used a 1985 law that gives the government discretionary power to ban entry to representatives of the Cuban government, including those elected to its National Assembly and the Cuban Communist Party.

The FBI also barred entrance into the U.S. to three Cuban musicians slated to perform as part of the event. The FBI stalled their entrance from Canada, where they had been rehearsing, citing a statue that allows U.S. officials to investigate whether or not percussionist Pancho Quinto, jazz pianist Hilario Durán, and drummer Jimmie Bramely committed "crimes" during their last visit to the country in October 1997.

Denial of U.S. visas to Cubans protested
The fight around the visas received extensive coverage in San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. The defense of academic freedom and right to travel to exchange views was a major theme of the conference. Ling chi-Wang, head of the Ethnic Studies Department at U.C. Berkeley and a main conference organizer, told the press, "We are outraged that our government would use the visa approval process to undermine a legitimate academic conference."

"We thought this was going to be a nice little academic conference like we have all the time at the University of California," added Percy Hintzen from the university's African American Studies Department. "All of a sudden it exploded into an international incident."

Twenty-one members of Congress from California wrote Secretary of State Madeleine Albright urging her to reverse the visas denials.

Representatives from the Cuban Interests Section replaced those barred on several panels. Video tape presentations from several of the Cubans denied visas were also played at the conference sessions where they were slated to appear. Local musicians filled in at the last minute for the three Cuban musicians.

In his remarks at the opening plenary session, Fernando Remírez de Estenoz, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., thanked the university for organizing the conference. He explained, "We support dialogue and we are certain that this idea of dialogue and exchange of ideas on culture and economic topics is a demonstration of sincere interests in our country."

"What has characterized our history is our long struggle for our independence, the commitment of our people to defend our sovereignty," he added. "Together with Puerto Rico we were the last Spanish colonies. The Cuban people lost one- fifth of our population in the 30-year war, the Spanish- American War or War of American Intervention, whatever you want to call it. With the introduction of the Platt Amendment, the U.S. granted itself the right to occupation, including the continued occupation of the Guantanamo Naval Air Base." Congress adopted the Platt Amendment, allowing U.S. military intervention in Cuban affairs, in 1901 and forced it into the Cuban constitution. Remírez noted that "for us the only precondition to dialogue is respect-absolute respect for our rights, our dignity, freedom and sovereignty, achievements that only the revolution and socialism have made possible in the history of our country."

The conference had five plenary sessions and 13 workshops on topics including economic development, religion, racism, tourism and trade, journalism, urban planning, biotechnology, agriculture, youth, trade unions, literature and poetry, and film making. U.S. academics, politicians, and business representatives joined the Cuban participants on the plenary and workshop panels. Many of the U.S. professors indicated that they had visited Cuba during the past half decade. Questions from the audience were sent to the panelists on note cards.

AIDS and health care in Cuba
A discussion took place in the workshop on "Public Health and the Health Care System: AIDS and Other Challenges." Dr. Jorge Pérez Avila, Director of the Havana AIDS Sanitarium, was on the panel along with three Bay Area doctors also involved in fighting AIDS. Avila said Cuba can be a model for public health because it provides free health care to all its citizens. He stressed that Cuba today badly needs U.S. pharmaceuticals and medical equipment that it is not allowed to obtain because of the U.S. economic embargo of that country.

Avila also said that Cuba has contained the spread of AIDS to just 703 cases in an island of 11 million through a combination of sex education for youth and others and because the country does not have a problem of drug addicts spreading the disease by sharing contaminated needles. Avila explained that those who contract the disease can live in sanitariums where they receive extensive health care and education. This measure also prevents spread of the disease.

Another significant feature of the conference was the participation of Chinese-Cubans - Alfonso Chao Chiu, president of the Chung Wah Casino (Chinese Benevolent Society) in Havana, Cuba, and Yrmina Eng Menéndez, Director of the Cuba Chinese Development Group. In addition to participating in the conference, several of the Cubans visited San Francisco's Chinatown and met with community organizations there.

John Kavulich II, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, played a prominent role in workshops and plenaries. Kavulich's group, funded by U.S. corporations including Archer-Daniels Midland, is trying to get the U.S. government to make adjustments in its economic embargo of Cuba. Kavulich said he has visited Cuba a number of times and that his group provided $100,000 in financial assistance to the Catholic Church in Cuba during the recent visit of Pope John Paul II there, including paying for the red carpet the Pope walked on upon his arrival in that country. "Cuba will be good for investment," Kavulich stated. "It's a big island with a very strong labor force." He proposed a number of "reforms" in Cuba's judiciary system and labor code that he said could lead to reciprocal steps being made by Washington in easing its trade embargo.

Los Angeles area Congressman Esteban Torres, who played a leading role in organizing Congressmen to protest the visa denials, addressed the plenary on "U.S.-Cuba Relations." Torres has sponsored legislation in Congress to make exceptions for the export of food, medicines, and medical equipment to the U.S. embargo, including the misnamed Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, or Helms-Burton law, enacted in 1996. Under these reactionary laws, the U.S. government can authorize donations of food and medicine and medical supplies to nongovernmental institutions in Cuba. The Torres bill would allow the Cuban government to purchase these items as long as they are not used for "purposes of torture or other human rights abuses" or to develop Cuba's biotechnology industry.

The final plenary focused on "Democracy, Elections, and Peoples Power." Cuban Interests Section representative Sergio Martínez was joined on the panel by former Berkeley Mayor Gus Newport and Pedro Noguero, a U.C professor and former Berkeley school board member who said he spent three years in Grenada during that country's 1979-1983 revolution.

Martínez told the crowd, "Democracy cannot be attained without social justice, equality, and equal rights. The Cuban revolution allows this for the first time in the history of our country, based on our concept of direct participation of our people in the decision-making of all aspects of our society."

"For over 36 years,' added Martínez, "the U.S. administration has practiced an economic embargo and blockade against our country with very serious consequence on the lives of our people....We are forced to use short-term commercial loans for capital development at very high interest. We must sell our sugar below world market price. Over 200 radio hours a day are broadcast into Cuba with slanders and instigation of terrorism."

Martínez further explained, "We cannot even compare the two exercises of democracy. We don't criticize anyone. We simply defend our right to choose our own path.... Our weapons are our example and our ideas-those we will never give up."

In the days following the conference, the Cuban participants spoke on several area campuses and at some community meetings.

Norton Sandler is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 1781 in San Francisco. Cathleen Gutekanst contributed to this article.  
 
 
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