Cuban travel study program breaks down student, alumni misconceptions

Sebastian Flores’ stay in Cuba was far from a walk on Havana Beach. After morning classes, Flores would return to his host family and hear firsthand the tales of another era of Cuban history.

For the first time, students participated in the International and Area Studies: Revolutionary Culture and Popular Religion travel study program in Cuba this summer. The program is the first Cuban study abroad program on record organized by the UCLA International Education Office, according to Emily Moon, the travel study program coordinator.

In 2014, President Barack Obama announced the United States and Cuba would re-establish a diplomatic relationship, ending the embargoes the U.S. imposed on Cuba starting in the 1960s.

Before the lift, alumni were able to travel to Cuba through the UCLA Alumni Travel Tours program, with the exception of the period between 2003 and 2011 when travel restrictions to Cuba were extremely strict.

Summer in Cuba

Then-fourth-year Chicana/o studies student Flores, whose final course was the travel study program, said he was intrigued by the country’s practices of free education and wealth redistribution.

Flores and other students in the program stayed with a host family for their trip. Staying with a host allowed him to talk about things he wouldn’t talk about in public, Flores said. He added interactions with his host, whom he called his “host abuela” because she reminded him of a grandmother, deconstructed his prior beliefs about nationalized land in Cuba.

Flores said he was surprised to learn the property values of land nationalized by the Cuban government was paid back, including his host’s mother’s six properties, because he thought American media outlets portrayed the Cuban government as confiscators of property.

While Flores found some aspects of his understanding of Cuba were affected by American media, Maria Torres, a third-year Spanish and Chicana/o studies student, learned about repression of certain topics in Cuban society.

Torres said she found some topics were not often discussed by Cuban guest lecturers, such as racism and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

While she didn’t learn about racism in the classroom from the locals, Torres said she was able to observe the issue while touring Old Havana with a professor. She said many residents believe there is only one race in Cuba, the Cuban race, so people would often curb discussions of the issue.

“They don’t really like to discuss the repression and the marginalization that these communities experienced in the past,” Torres said. “They’re kind of just trying to put that aside, but it’s neglecting the history and the struggle of these people.”

Both Torres and Flores noted how the limited technology highlighted a significant difference between Cuba and the United States, which Torres said encouraged her to socialize more with her peers.

“Going (to Cuba) just really teaches you to take a step back from capitalism and these attachments and materialistic things,” Torres said.

Despite the limitations in technology and often lack of basic necessities in Cuba, Flores said he felt Cubans’ social needs were met well.

“It’s definitely not a perfect country,” Flores said. “I was just amazed by how Cuba can provide (kindergarten to doctorate) education and healthcare for free.”

From his experience, Flores said he was able to view Cuba in a different perspective from the one he had seen through American media.

“My whole life, I’ve heard a lot of misperceptions about Cuba,” Flores said. “And I think a lot of those misconceptions were deconstructed.”

Alumni trips

This summer marked the first time UCLA students were able to travel to Cuba, but the UCLA Alumni Travel Tours program offered trips to the country before 2003 and after 2011.

When UCLA alumnus Wayne Kaplan received a UCLA Alumni Travel newsletter that advertised the 2003 program to Cuba, he told his mother, who lived in Cuba until she left her home country to study pharmacy at USC in 1936. Kaplan said his mother often talked about wanting to go back.

By the next day, Kaplan’s mother had gotten herself and her family placed on the waiting list.

Kaplan said touring the Cuban landscape with his family brought stories of his mother’s childhood to life, but that many of her recollections had become somewhat obsolete.

“She kept bringing up the revolution and overthrowing (Gerardo Machado y Morales, the former President of Cuba), but it was so long ago most people didn’t know who she was talking about,” Kaplan said.

One day during their trip, his mother was determined to find her old home. His family hired a taxi for the day, but all the street names had changed and were unrecognizable to his mother. Most people didn’t know what the streets used to be called, but some older people on the street were able to direct Kaplan’s family to the correct locations.

“It’s very hard to think that in the United States you just go to the library or Google to find all the old addresses, but they just don’t have that much documentation in Cuba,” Kaplan said.

Getting permission

Since the alumni trips began again in 2011, Christel Pailet, director of UCLA Alumni Travel, said the program has sent 523 travelers – more than any other school in the country – and has organized 20 departures, including two in February and one in April of 2015. The student travel study program began this summer.

Pailet said she thinks alumni are very interested in traveling to Cuba, but acquiring a license for the travel program was tedious. It took months to get through the Department of the Treasury and justify reasons for travel, but UCLA became the second U.S. party to receive the people-to-people license in 2011, Pailet said.

For alumni trips, the program organized about eight hours of daily scheduled activity to legally acquire education visas, Pailet said.

Torres also said she noticed her travel study trip had a busy schedule, between morning classes and guest lecturers, and guided excursions in afternoons.

Since relations between Cuba and the U.S. are improving, Pailet said it is becoming easier to get licenses approved.

“It’s life changing to see what they do with so little, and experience the joy they find in life, in music and in the arts,” Pailet said. “(Cuba is) frozen in time – it’s like seeing how the U.S. was in the 1950s.”