By Linda Arntzenius, Special Writer
Princeton resident, Quaker, peace activist and book repairman (he’s a beloved volunteer at the Princeton Public Library where he saves a bundle on repairs to children’s books), Bill Strong — octogenarian — has just returned from a trip to Cuba.
It’s not the first time he’s been there, but the circumstances this time were different from those of any of his previous trips, and a far cry from the time he was there wielding a machete alongside local workers, journalists, students, even Fidel Castro himself for a time, bringing in a bumper crop of sugar cane. That was in late 1969 and Mr. Strong was there as a member of the Brigada Venceremos as part of that year’s Ten Million Ton Harvest.
Back then, Mr. Strong, in his late 30s, had given up a high-paying job as head of Planned Parenthood in Massachusetts to join a group of Peace Corps volunteers (and a few Weathermen). The group had to travel through Mexico to get to Cuba, and Mr. Strong recalls being lined up against a wall with 200 to have his picture taken and his passport numbers noted. On that trip, some took him for a communist, others for U.S. government plant. When he returned (via Nova Scotia on a converted cattle boat), his visit was written up in the local press, and he was grilled by Sen. James Eastland, the Mississippi conservative.
This time Mr. Strong went with a group of mostly Spanish-language teachers, from across the country. But what made this visit extra-special, besides the fact that it might well be his last trip to the island, was the presence of Mr. Strong’s son, Tom, a fluent Spanish-speaker who lives in Spain.
”We were there on Father’s Day, which was celebrated widely and it was wonderful to be able to share this with my son, and not for a day but for 10 days,” he says.
Mr. Strong has been a keen observer of Cuba since his first trip there in 1958 during the revolutionary period, a second honeymoon of sorts with his wife, Nancy. Dictator Fulgencio Batista was in power then, but only just; his regime would fall on Jan. 1, 1959, after Castro’s armed revolt that had lasted for five years. Since then Mr. Strong has returned to the island four times. These aren’t typical tourist trips, however. His last three, in 1999, 2004 and this June, have been under the auspices of the Quaker Witness for Peace program and supported by the Quaker community in Philadelphia. Until the Obama administration introduced new regulations, travel to Cuba by U.S. nationals was illegal. New regulations allow for people-to-people educational visits under special license.
On this trip, Havana was Mr. Strong’s base for visiting a variety of educational institutions including the Ministry of Education and schools of all levels: a kindergarten, a home for children without family support, and a school for children with autism. “I never expect to meet again a group of leaders of educational institutions so dedicated, so passionate, so in love with their work and so lacking in basic supplies,” he says. “These are the children of those cane-cutters I met 40-some years ago.”
He also visited the Latin American School of Medicine, housed in a former naval base, and training young doctors from all over Africa, Latin America and the United States: “People might be surprised to learn that there are young Americans being trained as doctors in Cuba, most are minorities and most would not be able to afford to train in the United States. Cuba’s foreign policy reaches around the world with literacy teachers and doctors in scores of countries.”
The group was housed in rudimentary accommodation at the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, where the food was local and nutritious, lots of starchy cassava and yucca as well as mangoes, guavas and avocados, and excellent coffee. On his cane-cutting visit, Mr. Strong indulged in a daily luxury that holds no attraction for him these days: A Havana cigar smoked during the rest period from fieldwork.
On this trip however, he did manage one tourist-type visit, seeing the inside of deposed dictator Batista’s office, which has been preserved much as it had been when the U.S.-backed dictator left hurriedly for the underground tunnel and the plane that took him off the island.
From Havana, Mr. Strong and his son traveled by school bus west to Pinar del Rio to visit schools, a tobacco farm and to a woman-led fishing cooperative in the northern port of Puerto Esperanza.
Mr. Strong rattles off statistics gleaned from this and earlier trips: “Cuba has 20,000 doctors around the world, 345 in Haiti even before the hurricane hit there, even more now; Cuban doctors are teaching medicine in Venezuela, in trade for oil; Cubans are now having children at a rate comparable to the United States (about 1.7 children per family); life expectancy and infant mortality rates are also comparable.”
In the years since the revolution, says Mr. Strong, Cuba has faced two main challenges: A population that has doubled from six to 12 million in 60 years and its dependence on a Soviet Union that had been a major buyer of sugar until it collapsed in 1991.
”Although it is a poor country, it has first-rate preventive health care with very active family practice doctors who see their role as educational as well as medical, teaching prevention as much as cure, actively promoting healthy lifestyles without drugs and without smoking — Cuba exports most of its cigars,” he notes.
Mr. Strong observes significant differences in style between Fidel and Raoul Castro, finding the former an inspired leader, a lawyer who created all sorts of new programs (for literacy, for cross-breeding cattle to yield high levels of milk in the Cuban climate) and the latter more of an administrator who cultivates changes slowly and is nowhere near as dramatic a persona as his brother.
Tourism and foreign investment are growing, particularly from Japan and Europe. But Mr. Strong is saddened to note that Cuba is losing ground in terms of racism: “More than one foreign-owned hotel has been reprimanded by the Cuban government for racist policies and practices involving the hiring of ‘appropriate’ personnel,” he reports.
One heartening change, however. has more to do with Americans than with Cubans. Visiting the United States Interests Section (which serves in place of an embassy since the United States has no formal diplomatic relations with Cuba), Mr. Strong found an improved attitude in State Department staff. “They were much more flexible than on previous visits and they showed a great appreciation for the Cuban people.”
One relatively new staff member whom Mr. Strong challenged on a point of fact was receptive: “He told me quite emphatically that there were no elections in Cuba and I challenged him on that, knowing that there are elections at the municipal, provincial, and national levels. They aren’t accompanied by the media hoopla there is here. but they are elections, nonetheless.” The young staffer said he’d look into the matter. “He even walked me to the bus, the sort of friendly interaction that wasn’t typical in previous years when progressives like me were not at all welcome.”
The change bodes well for the possibility of future of dialogue between Cuba and the U.S., talks that are long overdue, Mr. Strong believes.
One thing that hasn’t changed? “Cubans still talk with their hands; they feel their commitments very strongly and believe that you can go as far as your talents will take you,” Mr. Strong reports.
On his return home, Mr. Strong indulged in the luxury of a long hot shower, ruefully that he had used as much water in that shower as during his whole 10-day trip to Cuba: “The shower there was no more than a dribble of cold water!”
Over his long career, Mr. Strong, who moved to Princeton from Newtown, Pa., a decade ago, has worked in 38 countries and lived in five Latin American countries working on behalf of self-help economic development missions for human rights, U.S. surplus food distribution, family planning, fund raising and development. He recently joined board of the Princeton-based nonprofit People and Stories/ Gente y Cuentos. Mr. Strong will be speaking about his recent and past visits to Cuba at Quaker meeting houses in Princeton and Newton in the fall.
