Education Trip to Cuba: One Day in Vinales

The following entry is written by Sharyn Dreyer, legal counsel, Colorado Education Association, who is one of the 11 teachers traveling with Royal Oak High School teacher Steve Chisnell on the Global Exchange research trip to Cuba.

Cuba: July 7, 2011

We awoke to a cloud, rainy morning in VIñales, a town in Cuba’s easternmost province on Piñar del Rio. The view from our hotel was spectacular — a vast expanse of green leading to a range of mogotes, pin-cushion hills made of limestone karst and covered with dense vegetation. There are caves of various sizes under the mogotes which can be explored, but that will have to wait for another trip to Cuba (I hope).

Our first activity of the day was a visit to a dance and music program for children in the city of Piñar del Rio, the provincial capital. The building where it was located, and all the buildings in Piñar del Rio, had the shabby, run-down look of almost every building and street that we had seen in Cuba.

At first this was shocking and gave the appearance of extreme poverty. But after a while and upon closer examination, it became clear that the buildings have, in fact, been restored and maintained to a functional level. They are kept immaculately clean, as are the streets—almost no trash anywhere.

The dance and music projects, called Suenos de Angeles (Dreams of Angels), teaches 85 children of all ages Cuban music and dance after school and on weekends. Like all such programs in Cuba, it is free. The students had prepared a performance for us, which had to be moved indoors at the last minute due to the rain.

The quality of the performance exceeded all of our expectations. The children presented a series of dances wearing colorful home-made costumes and accompanied by lively rhythmic Cuban music (which is impossible to listen to without tapping your feet or clapping your hands).

Naturally, the students’ levels of talent varied considerably, but the quality of their instruction and the amount of their preparation was evident in the smooth, organized, and professional manner in which the performance was presented. Two little girls of about five years of age stick in my mind: a skinny black girl with beautiful eyes and a huge smile and a chubby white girl with a round face. They moved their bodies and shook their hips with the skill of adult women. In the U.S., we might think it inappropriately sexual for children of that age, but in Cuba, it appears that sexuality is a less controversial part of life. Many professional women wear low-cut blouses and tight clothing that would probably be considered inappropriate in the American workplace.

After a two-hour bus trip back to Havana, our next activity was a visit to the Museum of the Cuban Literacy Campaign. In 1960-61, more than 100,000 students mostly over the age of 14 volunteered to go into the countryside to teach Cubans to read and write. At that time, the literacy rate in these areas was about 25 percent; at the end of that time, it was over 96 percent, which is the equivalent of full literacy. Cuba was the first country in the Americas to reach full literacy. Since that time, two other countries — Bolivia and Nicaragua — have reached that level with the assistance from Cuba’s “Yes I Can” methodology of teaching literacy.

At the museum, our group learned for the first time that our bus driver Nafal had been one of the literacy volunteers in 1961. We applauded and cheered him and asked him questions about his experience. He seemed a bit embarrassed by the attention but, at the same time, proud of his work.

The museum and the guide referred to the literacy volunteers as heroes of Cuba. There appears to be a consistent effort in Cuba to recognize and praise people who contribute to the country’s welfare in every area. Heroes are not just military leaders, like Fidel and Che, but teachers, artists, doctors, and community workers.

There was one exhibit in the museum (and in every museum we’ve visited) that was a bit unnerving: what could be called the “anti-American” exhibit. At the beginning of the Literacy Campaign, the Bay of Pigs Invasion occurred and, as a result, many parents were fearful of allowing their children to go into the countryside to volunteer. (Later in the day, at Havana’s historic fort, we saw on display pieces of a USAF plane that had been shot down.)

The U.S. is consistently depicted as an imperialist aggressor, but there is also a consistent — and I believe sincere — effort to distinguish between the U.S. government and the people of the U.S. Whenever we tell Cubans that we are American, they welcome us warmly, tell us how much they appreciate our visit, and refer to us as amigos.