From: "Wahome, Kimamo" <WAHOMEK@uwec.edu> Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 15:01:47 -0500 Subject: Cigars, Baseball, Cuba, and Me Message-ID: <E3F0E607B3CF71418CE725F002B5F604415A56CF96@CHERRYPEPSI.uwec.edu>
PS. Note the author's profession & place of residence at the bottom of the
page!
Published on Thursday, January 12, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
Cigars, Baseball, Cuba, and Me
by Mary Jo Thompson
Okay, I thought I had a direct flight back to Minneapolis. I was mistaken.
So last Friday my re-entry into the States after a weeklong educational res
earch trip to Cuba happened deep in the heart of Texas.
No problemo I thought. Dallas/Forth Worth customs officials see thousands o
f travelers entering the US from third world countries to the south. With t
hat kind of volume an elementary school teacher returning from Cuba couldn'
t cause much of a stir. Mistaken again.
I know, I know. The current climate is charged. Everyone has heard about th
e Cuban national baseball team and recent Olympic champions now banned by a
former ball club owner and governor of Texas from participating in the US
hosted World Baseball Classic coming up in March. But who was I? Nadie. No
one.
I'm not small peanuts. I did not sail through. Pulled aside, I was tersely
directed to Room Number 2, and instructed to drag my luggage and carry-on b
ag along a red arrow on the floor. My heart raced a little. I pictured a ba
re light bulb and a tiny room, but arrived to find the Olympic sized custom
s area empty-- except for a Taiwanese couple being seriously questioned nex
t to an open suitcase that apparently contained a few small jars of home-ca
nned meats. The half dozen officials standing around watching this drama se
emed positively delighted to see me pull up.
A kindly agent with a Latino last name greeted me warmly, asking if I'd bee
n in Cancun. Curve ball. If I simply said yes I would then omit that I'd al
so visited an apparently loathsome nation ruled by a bearded, cigar smoking
, baseball-loving revolutionary. Lying to a customs agent is an automatic f
elony. I wasn't going for it.
"Yes," I said, and then added, "and I've also been in Cuba." Just how naļ
ve did I look? There was a reason I wasn't headed back to recheck my bags w
ith Sun Country. I was standing at his counter with a big red G (gotcha?) m
arked on my customs declaration. He knew why, and so did I.
"Well, I'm not going to try to beat around the bush. (Bad pun I'm thinking.
) You were pulled over because you went to Cuba. Why did you go to Cuba?"
I said that I was there to do research. He asked my profession. I answered
that I was a language arts teacher, and I was interested in Cuba because it
had an impressive history of eradicating illiteracy and was now devoting i
ts scarce resources so that every school in the country had qualified teach
ers of the arts. He asked, "How were the schools? I hear they're really han
ds-on."
I thought for a minute about what I wanted to say and then, I admit, about
what I thought he might want to hear. Then I told him that I found the whol
e education system very impressive.
I explained that Cuba has no racial or economic achievement gap and that th
ey score among the top countries in the world in math and reading. I offere
d that this might be because they provide every Cuban child free preschool
education, and of course, unlike any other third world nation I could think
of (and some first world nations I wouldn't even mention) they've had near
ly 100% literacy in their nation since 1961.
I even let it slip out that they assiduously maintain low class sizes-20 in
the elementary, 15 in the secondary grades-and are training thousands of n
ew art and music teachers to meet their goals. They also give universal acc
ess and free tuition to all citizens for university level education. "I thi
nk they've actually achieved "No Child Left Behind," I added. He seemed a l
ittle surprised by the last bit. "How many days were you there?" he asked.
Then he probed in his good-cop way, "How did you like Cuba?
Better weather than in Minnesota!" he winked. "But isn't it extremely poor?
" I said yes, from what I'd observed, the people were suffering greatly fro
m the 42-year old US embargo, especially during the last 15 years since the
Soviet block dissolved. I agreed that they had hardly any consumer goods a
nd some foods were rationed, but I was impressed that they ate well nonethe
less and were very healthy. "In Cuba they have a lower infant mortality rat
e and a longer life span than in the US." I elaborated. "You know, they hav
e free health care and great medical schools," I added, but he didn't pick
up on the last things I'd said. He might have been trying to imagine a plac
e with few consumer goods.
"That's too bad," he said. "That will get better some day soon." I didn't r
eply and there was a long pause. I said, "Well, I suppose all things change
eventually." I was trying not to shudder as I pictured a Cuban version of
Disney World.
He continued asking questions with his seemingly friendly demeanor.
"Were you teaching there?"
"No, I was visiting schools and meeting with teachers and education officia
ls. Would you like to see my itinerary?" He said yes, so I gave it to him.
"Were you traveling alone?"
"No. I was traveling with a tour group sponsored by an organization called
Global Exchange. They're out of San Francisco. There were ten of us-all US
teachers and professors."
"Do you have a license?"
"I have a teaching license."
He laughed. I knew what he'd meant, and that wasn't it.
Ever since the Trading with the Enemy Act of 1963, Americans have had to be
licensed to travel to Cuba. According to our State Department, the basic g
oal of this policy is to isolate the Cuban government financially and depri
ve it of US dollars. Unauthorized travelers risk penalties for violating th
e sanctions that range up to 10 years in prison and $250,000 in individual
fines.
I suddenly felt a pit in my stomach. I did not have the specific license he
was looking for, but I decided that I should stay confident. "I have a tra
vel affidavit," I explained. "It verifies that I've traveled legally under
the US general license for travel to Cuba. Would you like to see that?" Yes
he would.
He looked it over while maintaining his smile. "I've never seen this before
. Where is the license number? I'm going to have to call someone over who h
as more experience with this sort of thing." He called over another agent,
this one Anglo.
The second man took the travel affidavit and read it. He began to question
me, not aggressively, but with his eyebrows and mouth held in a manner one
might call severe.
"Were you invited there by the Cuban government?"
"No, I wasn't. "
"Were you sent by a university to do research?"
"No, I'm a public school teacher on sabbatical and this is an element of my
sabbatical project."
"Well, you don't qualify under this license. You have to be sent by a Unive
rsity or be invited. "
I suggested that I had worried about that very thing. That was why I had so
licited an opinion from my school district's attorney. She felt that I qual
ified under the general license because I was traveling to Cuba for educati
onal research. I handed him a copy of the letter from the attorney. He look
ed that over for a few minutes.
"This doesn't hold any legal weight. It's worthless. It's just this attorne
y's opinion. That wouldn't stand up in court. And, why didn't Global Exchan
ge put their license number on this travel affidavit?" he asked.
I told him that my understanding was that the US Treasury Department last y
ear restricted travel to Cuba even more severely, even for Cuban Americans
who want to visit their families, and that our government no longer license
d groups like Global Exchange to lead study delegations into Cuba unless th
e group fit under the few categories covered by the general license. I fit
category number five, I explained. Full time educator doing educational res
earch.
It hit him. Now he remembered Global Exchange. They were that group, he opi
ned, that had been taking hundreds of people who claimed they were teachers
down to Cuba just so they could buy Cuban cigars, drink Havana Club rum, w
atch baseball and party.
"We saw a lot of them go through Dallas who traveled with that outfit, but
we haven't seen any for a long time. They must have abused their license be
cause now they've lost it," he added. " All these groups want to do is get
your money. Sure, you'll probably give a little talk when you get back or w
rite a report, but that's not what the government means in this general lic
ense."
I thought about how much I should say. I have a friend who recently visited
Cuba with Pastors for Peace, a religious organization that brought in over
140 tons of humanitarian aid, most of it medical supplies and medicines un
available to Cubans because of the US embargo. My friend, like all of the p
eople on that trip, has received a letter from the US Office of Foreign Ass
et Control announcing that he stands to face fines and civil charges.
I'm a chicken, I confess. I had wanted to travel legally, and I knew it was
nigh onto impossible, given the Bush brothers' election-timed promises to
Cuban-Floridians to try harder this term to strangle Cuba and topple Fidel.
Why spend energy even trying? The general license was my sucker ball.
But all I said was that Global Exchange had connected me to the Cuban educa
tion officials and teachers that I needed to meet with. Throughout three pr
ovinces, during meetings that had lasted from early morning into the evenin
g each day, I had visited with teachers, professors who prepare teachers, p
edagogical experts in the ministry of education, principals, special educat
ors, artists, school social workers and community youth workers. I ended by
saying that I felt that the experience had been extremely professional.
He repeated himself. I needed to consult with the State Department directly
or something could happen to my passport. After all, I was traveling in a
Communist Country with a Terrible Dictatorship. I could also get in trouble
or even get fined, he added.
Yes, I agreed. I knew that to be true. On a record somewhere, I had probabl
y earned a strike or two against me.
I debated whether I should say more.
I swung. I told the agent that I knew that some humanitarians travel to Cub
a without a license to protest the idea that we Americans, who are supposed
ly free, need to have permission to travel and to behave humanely. I hadn't
gone with one of them. "I point out to you, sir, that I have chosen to fol
low what I understood to be the rules. I've made the effort to show that I
am qualified under the general license. Perhaps there is a gray area in int
erpreting it?" Yes, a gray area, he could buy that. I was not out yet.
"You've already gone. We can't really do anything about it now. We're not g
oing to keep you here and browbeat you. What are we going to do? Did you bu
y anything there? Do you have any Cuban cigars?"
He was the third customs agent that day to ask about cigars. I had none. I'
d declared two music CDs, legal acquisitions for the educational traveler.
Oh, and I also bought a tee shirt that said CUBA, ” Si! "If that is a pro
blem, sir, I can turn it over to you." Was he disappointed that I had no ci
gars?
No one opened my suitcase. All this time the "good cop" agent kept looking
over the itinerary but saying nothing. We seemed to be going through a rout
ine designed to educate me, a person they perceived to be polite but innoce
ntly dumb. They'd sized me up: an elementary school teacher nearing retirem
ent, obviously earnest. They didn't want to give me too hard a time.
But they sure wanted me to know that I had better follow the rules of the A
merican government's game when it came to traveling to a communist dictator
ship-but only some communist countries--not Viet Nam, not Laos, not China-a
nd only some dictatorships--not Myanmar, not Libya, not Iran. This inning h
ad been about that demonic little next-door neighbor that gets excluded and
isolated, but won't give up or cry---that willful collective of cigar smok
e and baseball. Oh my god, I'd gone to Cuba!
GRRRR.
*Global Exchange<http://www.globalexchange.org/%20> is a membership-based i
nternational human rights organization that describes its mission as promot
ing social, economic and environmental justice around the world. Since its
founding in 1988, it has lead international tours designed to increase publ
ic awareness of root causes of injustice while building humane partnerships
and mobilizing for change.
Mary Jo Thompson has been the project manager of the ARTFUL TEACHING AND LE
ARNING program, a joint project of the Minneapolis Public Schools and the P
erpich Center for Arts Education, a state agency, since 2001. In addition t
o being a published poet and essayist, Mary Jo Thompson has been a public s
chool teacher for 32 years. Email to: mjthompso@visi.com <mailto:mjthompso@
visi.com>