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Students eye Cuba for study abroad
(AP) -- Although Europe remains by far the top destination for U.S. college students studying abroad, more and more are choosing to enhance their education at an exotic location closer to home: Cuba. Long off-limits to all but a few Americans, Cuba allowed 905 U.S. students to visit during the 2000-01 school year, a 64 percent increase over the year before. The number is expected to grow the next time figures are released as students increasingly turn to the only communist nation in the Western Hemisphere. "It's sort of forbidden fruit," said University of Nebraska senior Shane Pekny, part of a contingent of 12 communications majors who will visit Cuba this month.
Before traveling to Cuba, a school must first obtain a license from the U.S. Treasury Department prohibiting the students from engaging in commercial enterprise during their visit. Each student must also obtain a visa from Fidel Castro's government. The vice president of educational services at the Institute of International Education said the mystique about a country largely inaccessible to U.S. tourists since 1963 is just part of the attraction. "I think universities around the United States are seeing this as a good site to give students the opportunity to look at a lot of issues at once," Peggy Blumenthal said. "To look at the issue of Cuba, per se, is to look at a communist system compared to a capitalist system, as well as the opportunity to look at transition issues" facing a developing nation. Learning the landDuring their one-week visit, Pekny and his classmates plan to study such things as Cuban agriculture, the impact on Nebraska farmers should the U.S. trade embargo be lifted, and the mechanical magic that keeps 1950s-vintage American cars on Cuban roads. "The Cuban mechanics are practically gods," said Drake University philosophy professor Jonathan Torgerson, who has taken groups from Des Moines to Cuba every year since 1996. If relations between the United States and Cuba are normalized, Torgerson believes college students deserve part of the credit. "We have forged the way in terms of making contacts," he said. Charm lessonsOmar Lopez, a spokesman for the Cuban American National Foundation -- the powerful Miami-based group of anti-Castro exiles -- said U.S. students who travel to Cuba are being used by Castro.
Lopez pointed out that visits with dissidents or the jails holding political prisoners are not part of the itinerary. "What they're trying to do is have a charm offensive aimed at the United States," he said. Sarah Phend was charmed during the three months she spent in Cuba last summer taking classes, working on a farm and mingling with ordinary citizens. "Cuba was always something I'd been taught to fear," said Phend, a senior communications major at Goshen College in Indiana. "And then, when I went, I wasn't afraid of it anymore. When I got back I could tell people Cuba is a very good place." Convinced she saw the real Cuba, Phend has spent the months since her return regaling classmates, relatives and others with tales about the people met during her visit. "Sometimes I wish I could talk to George Bush about Cuba," Phend said, "and say, `Look, dude. These people aren't evil. What's your problem?"' Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Cuba was always something I'd been taught to fear. And then, when I went, I wasn't afraid of it anymore. 
