College Students Get Rare Look at Cuba

College Students Get Rare Look at Cuba
By ANITA SNOW
The Associated Press
Friday, March 31, 2006; 2:53 PM

HAVANA -- Molly Morris didn't realize how isolated Cubans are from the
United States until a worker at her hotel asked for a U.S. map to see
where she and other visiting American college students came from.

"It just about broke my heart," said the 19-year-old from Houston, who
didn't have a U.S. map and didn't know where to find one on this
Caribbean island.

Cubans' isolation from the United States has sharpened over the past two
years as the U.S. government has increasingly choked off travel to the
communist-run nation.

As the Bush administration tightens the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba,
students, academics, religious groups and even Cuban-Americans with
family on the Caribbean island are finding their travel here
increasingly restricted.

"They're trying to find more ways to get tough with Cuba," said Philip
Brenner, a Cuba expert and associate dean at American University in
Washington D.C.

"This is a foretaste of more restrictions that will prevent Cubans and
Americans from dealing with each other at all," added Brenner, who
helped arrange the four-month visit to Cuba by nine students from the
university.

The students said they were at times puzzled by the contradictions
between Cuban government rhetoric about the benefits of a socialist
society and Cubans' lack of material wealth.

"I've traveled a lot and for me it has been very frustrating," said
21-year-old Jessica Skinner, of Grand Junction, Colo. "I came here being
very anti-embargo and now that I'm here, I'm confused."

Such exposure to the complex Cuban reality is increasingly rare.

In June 2004, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed restrictions
requiring that academic trips to Cuba be at least 10 weeks long,
eliminating popular one- and two-week visits that universities once
offered on everything from salsa dancing and bird watching to colonial
architecture.

Treasury officials had complained the shorter visits were often tourism
disguised as academic tours and were enriching the government of
President Fidel Castro, who has been in power for 47 of his 79 years.

U.S. licenses for academic travel to Cuba have fallen from 181 in 2003,
before the new restrictions took effect, to 69 last year, Treasury
spokeswoman Molly Millerwise said.

Among the trips halted was an annual cruise-ship visit to Cuba by the
University of Pittsburgh's Semester at Sea, which brought hundreds of
students for trips of a few days that often included a face-to-face
meeting with Castro himself.

At the same time, authorized visits by relatives of people living on the
island were sliced from once annually to once every three years _ a move
criticized by some Cuban-Americans.

A Cuban report released last fall said 57,145 Cuban-Americans visited
Cuba in 2004, compared with 115,050 in 2003 _ a 50 percent drop.

For other Americans, the number of visits fell from 85,809 in 2003 to
51,027 in 2004, the report said. The numbers continued to decrease in
2005, it said. Cuba has not yet released figures for 2005.

Castro and other Cuban officials have criticized the travel crackdown,
saying the Bush administration is violating the constitutional rights of
American citizens.

The United States has also tightened travel by Cuban academics to the
United States. In March, it denied visas to about 55 Cuban academics who
had hoped to attend the Latin American Studies Association congress in
San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 2004, U.S. visas were also denied for more
than 60 Cuban scholars who wanted to attend the congress held that year
in Las Vegas.

The Bush administration has also tightened restrictions on American
religious groups wanting to visit Cuba.

But for now, the American University students are getting a glimpse of a
country unfamiliar to most Americans who don't have the means or the
time to make an academic visit lasting at least 10 weeks.

The students, who arrived in January, are studying Cuban history,
culture, international relations and Spanish at the University of Havana.

"Ten weeks gives you a much better look at the country," said
20-year-old Jake Patoski of Austin, Texas. "But it rules out a lot of
Americans who now cannot come here."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101138.html