University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee students had a chance to learn firsthand how the United States and Cuba could benefit from reestablishing diplomatic relations under policies recently announced by President Barack Obama.
Over UWinteriM, 14 students traveled to Havana with adjunct professor Michael Martin of UWM’s School of Architecture and Urban Planning to learn about the city’s sustainability efforts as well as its culture and history. This is Martin’s third such trip, and it’s usually difficult to organize given the United States’ embargo and strained relationship with Cuba. That could change in the coming years, a prospect that Martin said seems welcome in Havana.
“What was amazing was the lack of knowledge of what it all really meant … but you could feel in the atmosphere that there was a great, great warmth and (hope) that this would all be over someday,” Martin said.
Rebels supporting Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban president in 1959 and instituted a communist dictatorship backed by the Soviet Union. In response, the U.S. imposed a trade embargo still in effect. When the Iron Curtain collapsed in 1989, so did Cuba’s Soviet support. Gasoline imports dried up and with limited fuel, it became harder to transport crops from rural farms. To keep from starving, Cubans cultivated urban, organic farms.
UWM students visited some of these farms on their trip.
“I’ve tried to integrate the idea of looking for what are known as organoponicos and the distribution of urban farm food networks,” Martin said. “We’ve got a map of them, and I go out and try to have students find them and take pictures, interview people about them, and come up with observations.”
Students also toured portions of Old Havana, studying the architecture of the city’s 500-year-old buildings.
“I think, as Americans, we have this image of Cuba post-1959. To see the history of Havana going all the way back to the 1400s was interesting,” Spanish major Olivia Davidson said. “It was beautiful. The people are wonderful.”
