Local teachers help out people of Cuba

Long stretches of sandy beach, turquoise seas and salsa music draw in thousands of tourists to Cuba every year.

The country is not just a resort destination however – it’s a place brimming with history, culture and political struggles, and two retired Winnipeg teachers want people to discover “the Real Cuba”.

Diane Zack is a semi-retired Winnipeg School Division teacher, who’s also been acting as the president of the Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee for the last few years.

Under the umbrella of the Canadian Network on Cuba, the committee organizes political, educational and cultural events to strengthen the solidarity and friendship between the people of Manitoba and the people of Cuba. As well it fights for Cuba’s right to sovereignty and rejects the U.S. embargo on the country.

Zack has helped to organize a number of initiatives including a first-ever Cuban Film Festival in Winnipeg in 2005. The two day event featured a reception with acclaimed Cuban director Enrique Barnet who flew in from Havana and 8 films that celebrated the work of Cuban filmmakers since the revolution.  

“That was a great success; we had hundreds and hundreds of people. It was just a great opportunity to highlight Cuban culture,” says Zack, who estimates that there are roughly 110 Cubans living in Winnipeg, while the Cuban embassy reports between 10 and 15,000 across the country.

Zack has also organized meetings between Cuban and Manitoba organic farmers. After Cuba’s major trading partner, the Soviet Union, collapsed in 1991 and the U.S. tightened its embargo, the country’s imports and exports were drastically cut. Cuba could no longer get materials and machinery needed for conventional farming, thus they turned to smaller farms, co-op farming and urban agriculture.  Today the country has proven itself in the efficiency and management of traditional farming, with 100 per cent organic agriculture and no chemicals or pesticides.

“The government gets the people to cultivate any irrigable land to produce food at a local level,” says Zack. “The people who work at these urban gardens then make arrangements with day cares, seniors’ centers and other organizations to provide food for them, while the surplus goes back to the people. At the community level, people look out for each other.”

For Canadians looking for more than a tourist experience, the Manitoba-Cuba Solidarity Committee is involved with a number of initiatives that let people discover the country first-hand.

Every summer, the annual Che Guevara Volunteer Work Brigade (http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/brigade/) sees 50 to 60 people from across Canada travel to Cuba and for four weeks. Touring the country in their off times, the participants of the Brigade get a chance to work alongside Cuban people in the fields of agriculture and construction.

Retired Winnipeg teacher, Tom Cherveny, travelled with the Che Guevera Brigade in 2006 and says the trip was a life-altering experience. 

“I’ve travelled to Cuba prior to that as a tourist, and having grown up at the time of the Cuban revolution and seeing it through television and media, I really wanted to get to know the ‘real’ Cuba,” he says. Tom’s brigade consisted of several other retired teachers from across Canada, as well as a number of university students.

The group Cherveny travelled with had its base of operations set up in a school for art instructors in rural Granma province. The Canadians slept in the student dorms, worked the fields in the mornings and explored historical and cultural sites when the work was done in the afternoon.

 “As a retired teacher, there was nothing closer to my heart than to see and experience the education system in Cuba,” says Cherveny who returned to the country six months later to see the school in full session. “Education is incredibly important in Cuba. Students are so well educated, and so knowledgeable about the world – they may be a third-world country economically, but they’re exceptional in their education system.”

The group formed close friendships and bonds with the Cuban people they worked and lived with. “It was an experience none of us will forget,” says Cherveny.

In addition to the Che Guevera Brigade, a delegation of Canadian teachers visits Cuba every summer to examine Cuba’s acclaimed system of free education from kindergarten to university. The tours last eight days and the groups are hosted by island experts in the fields of education, art and history.  To learn more about this tour visit http://www.canadacuba.net/index2.php.