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Professors Return From Cuba Tour, Say They Felt Welcomed

By Indiana Public Media News Staff

Posted March 23, 2016

As President Barack Obama spotlights increased relations with Cuba after decades, several Ball State professors have returned from their own exploration of the island nation.

Official tourist trips in Cuba are still closed to Americans, so Ryan Sparrow and Colleen Steffen went with a group of professors on what's called a "person to person tour." It's one of several new categories of travel that Americans are permitted to take.

"You cannot go as a tourist, you are going as a cultural visitor. Which really essentially means that you can't have free time on their beautiful beaches, but instead need to kind of fill up your itinerary with meeting with people and doing the sorts of things that expose you to Cuban culture," Sparrow says.

And as a cultural visitor, Steffen says there were some less conventional stops on their tour.

"We went to a communist block party. We met with revolutionary war veterans. We had a lecture from a history professor at the University of Havana," Steffen says.

She says the Cubans she met had a strong sense of cultural identity but welcomed them nonetheless.

"We met a lot of ordinary people - not politicians," says Steffen. "This idea that they can't wait for Americans to bust down their doors with the Starbucks and McDonalds I think is not true. At the same time, they're incredibly warm and open to visitors, and we were met with nothing but friendliness, patience and warmth."

Sparrow says that the polarized view many Americans have of Cuba based on what they've heard or read does not accurately sum up its true political climate.

"It's not quite as cut and dry as socialism is bad, capitalism is good. If you look at their literacy rates, their education rates, how they care about their citizens, it kind of puts our system to shame a little bit. It makes us seem a little more self-centered. Now, that being said, the whole country is in a severe state of poverty."

Several students from Purdue University also traveled to Cuba over spring break last week, leaving just before President Obama arrived for his own historic visit.

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