The complex
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I commend you for your effort with teaching American high school students about other cultures, politics and languages through your exchange program. In an ideal world a program such as yours would prove to be an invaluable educational tool. The only true way to learn about and understand different cultures is to fully immerse oneself in them.
However, when it comes to Cuba, I feel you do your students a great disservice as we do not live in an ideal world. In an ideal world, while you send 25 high school students to live with Cuban families, a Cuban instructor very much like yourself would be able to send 25 of his students to live with American families. Thus, your currently mis-named program, CubaExchange, would depict a true exchange of values and ideals and students. Unfortunately, and despite President Bush, this is an impossibility. Under the current system of government in Cuba, there is no true free exchange of ideas and ideals.
After visiting your website I see no mention as to who decides which Cuban families will be honored with the presence of your students. Undoubtedly, these Cuban families will be chosen by the Ministry of Education and since, as in all aspects of Cuban life, this Ministry is but an arm of the ruling Communist party, your students will be privy to exactly what that party chooses to show them. I wonder if during their stay, your students will be taken to the fields for the compulsory agricultural labor that all Cuban are subjected to. Perhaps they may even be allowed sit in on classes where they are taught the evils of capitalism and the imperialist United States of America.
You should encourage your students to each bring along a copy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States so that they may share these openly in a Cuban classroom. Cuban students should know about the freedoms afforded us in our First ammendment. I am sure that the faculty of the school as well as the Ministry officials will have absolutely no problem with this, yours is, after all, an exchange program, despite President Bush.
I also noticed that the tuition fee for your program is $4995. How much of that goes to the Ministry of Education? How much of it goes to travel expenses? Since you have been so kind as to email me because you thought Id be interested in your program, could you please be so kind as to offer a breakdown as to where these moneys go? Also, it would probably be a good idea to let the Cuban students and their families know exactly how much each American student paid for their exchange program, thus allowing for more openness between the two cultures. I wonder how a father of a Cuban student might feel knowing he is housing an American student whose two-week trip costs more than what the father has made in the past 5 years of hard labor.
You may want to take a day away from the classroom and beaches and picnics and visit a few of the prisons where Cuban dissidents and journalists and political prisoners are held. See firsthand the conditions they live under and why they are imprisoned. That particular day can be called "Prisoner of Conscience" day at Cubaexchnage. Make sure all your students bring their video cameras as the video for presentations taken that day will be of great value to your program and your website. Perhaps you can even sell those particular videos at $29.95 instead of $19.95.
Will there be time in your curriculum to visit with other Cuban teenagers? Teenagers forced into prostitution because, despite the fact that they have a 100% literacy rate and despite President Bush, they have no other recourse for survival but to sell their bodies to tourists?
I read in your website where there is an emphasis on Salsa dancing and cuban rythms. This is, as I see it, a very important and key part of your curriculum. This is where your American students will learn the most. They will, like you, know exactly how to dance around the true issues.
I would welcome any exchange with Cuba, as long as Cuba is able to share with us the true voice of her people and her culture, not the high-pitched ranting of one man and an ideology - which you seem fixated on promoting - based on oppression.
You state in your email that you are going to Cuba "despite Bush." I submit to you sir, that you are going to Cuba despite Castro. You are going to Cuba despite her people's lack of basic human rights and dignity. You are going to Cuba despite the tens of thousands of dead Cubans who died at the very hands of the government your money will be going to. You are going to Cuba despite the countless Cubans who died at sea in make shift rafts searching for the very freedom you have. You are going to Cuba despite what is right. You are going to Cuba despite the men and women who rot away in jails simply for expressing their opinions and thoughts.