Boston Globe
As one of his last official acts, Clinton should go to Cuba/
By James P. McGovern, 12/26/2000. Boston Globe Online.
I have asked President Clinton to travel to Cuba before he leaves office on
Jan. 20.
Our current policy toward Cuba is a throwback to the Cold War and does
nothing to promote freedom, democracy, or human rights. Instead, it is used by
hard-liners in Cuba to justify the failures and inadequacies of their system.
I realize that such a trip would be controversial. But a majority of
Americans - indeed, a majority in Congress - favor improved relations between
the United States and Cuba. Sadly, after a recent bipartisan vote in Congress to
relax travel and certain trade restrictions, a small group of members in the
current House leadership who have a Castro fixation used their power to
undermine the will of their colleagues. The irony, of course, is that the very
same members of Congress who demand democracy in Cuba apparently do not believe
we should practice democracy on the floor of the United States House of
Representatives.
Both President-elect George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore pandered to
the Cuban-American community in South Florida in an attempt to win votes. it was
a sad and frustrating display. Clearly, Bush will do nothing to change a policy
that has not only failed but has also helped keep Fidel Castro in power for more
than four decades.
President Clinton, if he makes such a trip before the end of his term, can
save his successor the embarrassing job of defending America's indefensible
policy and at the same time can take a major step in promoting human rights and
democratic values.
In January 1998 I was in Cuba as Pope John Paul II visited the island. He
spoke freely and critically about the denials of basic freedoms in Cuba and
about the importance of religion in people's lives. His remarks were carried
live and uncensored on Cuban radio and television. It was a true and inspiring
moment in history.
I've since returned to Cuba, and I believe that at least two important
developments emerged from the pope's trip. First, the Catholic Church is a much
stronger and more relevant institution in Cuba, and it's getting stronger every
day. Second, the pope helped open and widen pockets of political space. To be
sure, Cuba has a long way to go, but the realities are slowly changing.
No one works a crowd or promotes the democratic values that we Americans
hold near and dear to our hearts better than Bill Clinton. He could further
create political space; he could expand academic, cultural, and political
exchanges; he could increase high-level cooperation on issues like immigration
and drug trafficking; he could breathe some new life into the cause of Cuban
dissidents; and he could make clear that the United States wants to engage Cuba
in much the same way it has engaged China and Vietnam.
And, yes, the president should meet with Fidel Castro. Like it or not, he's
the man. Such a meeting is important not so much for what is communicated to
Castro; rather, it's important for what will be communicated indirectly to those
around him: that a new day is coming.
US presidents have long grappled with the ''Cuba question,'' believing that
the right policy is engagement but fearing the political costs of taking such
action. The political costs to Clinton no longer exist; he now has the luxury of
evaluating this issue solely on the merits. He has the opportunity to do the
right thing.
President Clinton can once and for all put our outdated Cuban policy where
it belongs - in the history books.
James P. McGovern is the Democratic congressman from Worcester.
This story ran on page A23 of the Boston Globe on
12/26/2000.
From Boston to Havana...
By Christine Temin, Globe Staff, 12/24/2000.
HAVANA - When the delegation from the Massachusetts College of Art presented
Cuba's Instituto Superior de Arte with a gift of art supplies and MassArt
catalogs, it might have looked like a condescending gesture from the haves to
the have-nots. It wasn't.
Both ISA and MassArt are state-supported, underfunded, and housed in
quarters that cry out for improvement. In ISA's case, it's a complex including
what was once Havana's fanciest country club, which Fidel Castro decreed would
be the center of a ''city for the arts,'' which was only partly, and shoddily,
built, however adventurous the initial concept and design.
As public institutions, both schools are also subject to governmental rules
and regulations that don't necessarily make sense in an art school situation.
You get art students who feel the need to work with severed goats' heads, then
you get comments from health inspectors, in either country.
Both schools are top-notch, though MassArt has plenty of competition from
private US art colleges and ISA, as Cuba's only university of the visual and
performing arts, has none. It's there or nowhere for aspiring artists, which
makes it competitive: Of 150 who applied in visual arts this year, 35 were
accepted.
Last month's visit to ISA wasn't the first for Katherine Sloan, president of
the Mass. College of Art, and was one stop on a week in Cuba that took MassArt
faculty, administrators, and supporters to various Cuban arts institutions.
Sloan, who visited Cuba last year with Rep. Joseph Moakley and a group of
Massachusetts educators, is determined to re-establish links with Cuba that
MassArt had from 1985 to 1990, when it presented two major shows of art from the
island. ''MassArt also facilitated some Cuban artists' coming to Boston,'' Sloan
says, ''and showing their work at a time when it wasn't so popular. It certainly
is now.'' Cuban art makes news, and not only when Havana hosts another Bienal
(Spanish for ''biennial''), as it's currently doing. (See above story.)
Sloan envisions future exchanges of students, faculty and exhibitions, the
way eased by the two-year license for such programs that the US Treasury has
issued the school. Collaborating with a country with which the US has no
official relations would otherwise be possible - but a guaranteed nightmare. One
of Sloan's pet projects is to bring to Havana the work of Abelardo Morell, the
Cuban-born photographer who is a MassArt faculty star, nationally celebrated.
Traffic in the reverse direction is also feasible because MassArt has visiting
artists' accommodations - one loft space already in place and two
studio/apartments in a dorm under construction.
MassArt is hardly alone in communicating with Cuba's art and artists:
Several other US art schools have exchange programs, and on the day the MassArt
folks toured ISA, officials from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and its affiliate
school were also there. There have also been shows of Cuban art in Boston
galleries recently, and shows by Boston artists, including painter Jo Ann
Rothschild, in Cuba.
But MassArt, as the US's only stand-alone state-supported art college, has a
unique affinity with the state-controlled ISA. And MassArt, more than any other
Boston-area visual arts institution, has a record of international involvement,
especially commendable given its shoestring budget. Its foreign programs take
students as far afield as China; its faculty travels constantly, bringing back
ideas; its curators' sojourns have resulted in stellar shows on subjects from
art made secretly at the Terezin concentration camp to prints by Australian
Aboriginals.
Faculty travel is crucial not only in teaching, but to the faculty's own
artwork. Sharon Dunn, chair of the school's studio foundation department, has
made six trips to Cuba over the past 20 years, and is a scholar of its Santeria
religion, a grafting of West African traditions onto those of Christianity. ''As
an African-American artist,'' she says, ''Cuba has become a cultural, spiritual,
and artistic home to me; it's a living embodiment of the past, a connection to
Africa.''
In her roles as teacher, especially of MassArt's minority students, and as a
mother, ''I've investigated several belief systems where society embraces young
people into the group,'' Dunn says. ''Cuba does a better job than we do. The
rage, stress, and anger of young African-American people in American cities is a
real threat that I don't see in young Cuban people. And I don't experience the
kind of racism there that I do here. Physically, I'm more at home there. And the
rhythms, colors, and textures of the place fascinate me.''
Travel has been a critical part of art education at least since the
obligatory 18th-century Grand Tour that took aspiring artists to Rome and other
European cities. Travel is particularly important nowadays, though. For most of
the 20th century, artists could get by without leaving Paris or New York. In the
21st, that's no longer true. Art has gone global, and you're now as likely to
run into innovation in Cape Town, Tokyo, or Havana as you are in Manhattan.
Because MassArt's population isn't as affluent as those at high-tuition
institutions, ''Some of our students have never even been on a plane before they
wind up on the Grand Canal in Venice under MassArt's auspices,'' says Johanna
Branson, senior vice president for academic affairs, who is off to Vietnam next
month to explore yet another potential exchange. The money raised by the
Foundation of the Massachusetts College of Art goes in part to pay for student
travel. Foundation president and Boston lawyer Jay Frederic Theise, who was on
the Cuba trip, is a longtime champion of public education: He's a product of it,
law school included. Says Theise, ''Lots of people see making a contribution to
a public college as giving to the government, which they don't want to do.
There's never that issue with the Foundation, which is completely separate.''
Cuba, easing its official stance on such matters, is also starting to allow
foundations and fund-raisers: One recent event coinciding with the Havana Bienal
was the kind of charity art auction common in the States, the kind MassArt holds
every spring. Cosponsored by two Havana nongovernmental organizations, the Casa
de las Americas and the Ludwig Foundation, the event raised $70,000 for
children's cancer, and marked the first time since the Revolution that US credit
cards have been accepted in Cuba.
A focus on content
''On the last day of our Cuban trip,'' says MassArt professor Janna
Longacre, ''I thought, `Why would we ever want to bring students down here?'
Then I decided, it's a chance to see a whole culture evolving into the next
century, with material shortages forcing their decisions as artists.'' Painters
who don't have much paint don't waste it taking risks, so Cuban painting tends
to play it safe. ''The installation work that is more about ideas than materials
is where Cubans are strong,'' Longacre says. ''Content has become the
priority.''
Cuban artists and art students could demonstrate to MassArt how to make
meaning without much in the way of conventional means. MassArt could offer such
means - along with facilities including a foundry and glass-blowing and ceramic
studios of a caliber unknown in Cuba. Fred Han Chang Liang, a Chinese-born
teacher of printmaking at MassArt, was among the MassArt folks who pronounced
the printmaking facilities they saw in Havana both toxic and primitive. ''The
equipment is crude by our standards,'' says Liang. ''To make anything out of it
is amazing.''
The MassArt/Cuba exchanges and shows are not years away. In June, Liang and
Dunn will bring a group of students to Havana; the Ludwig Foundation will
arrange an enticing array of twice-daily lectures on such subjects as the
graphics of Cuban film posters in the 1950s and architectural restoration as a
series of ethical choices for designers in Havana.
Jeffrey Keough and Lisa Tung, who organize the exhibitions at MassArt, would
like to bring shows by two Cubans: a Boston-specific installation by Carlos
Estevez that would fill MassArt's 5,000-square-foot Huntington Gallery; and a
show, by the late Belkis Ayon, that is soon slated to travel to Spain.
''We have to move fairly quickly on this,'' Keough says. ''There's
competition from other US venues.''
Keough and Tung would also like to bring an Abelardo Morell show to Cuba.
Morell seems to be the only one at MassArt with any reservations about this
project. He was 13 when he left Cuba with his family, in 1961, and hasn't been
back. ''It's going to be difficult emotionally,'' he says, ''because of my
parents,'' who live in New York. ''It's going to seem to them somehow that I
agree with the [Castro] regime. They were both burned by the Revolution. My
mother is especially strong-willed about it. My mother once bought a Castro
convertible sofa and the first thing she did was cut the label off.''
''I'm a different generation, though,'' he says, adding that he'd like to do
new work in Cuba, perhaps a series of camera obscura pictures in his hometown,
outside Havana, to ''use my art as a way of bridging the past, as a passport to
feelings.''
This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe on
12/24/2000.
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