In the following segment of my interview with Anara Frank, she describes the main changes that have occurred over the course of time alongside the trips to Cuba she has organized and, in some cases, because of those trips.
Q: How have you seen aspects of Cuban life change since you've started these trips?
A: I guess I want to start by saying a lot of aspects of everyone's lives have changed since 2002. If we think about American life in 2002, it was really different than American life now. The world is changing so fast, particularly in the changes in technology that change the way we communicate, that change the way we do business, that change even the way we think, and the way we move around in the world. So first of all, I would say that there is there huge overarching change when you think about the number of years that we've been having programs (just the years that spans in human development). I mean, sometimes I think five years ago the United States didn't look the same.
I just want to start out with that overview that so many things have changed that it's hard to pick out just a few, but I thought of a few examples right off the top of my head. The first example I have is the difference that it makes to have access to internet and cell phones. So cell phone and internet use is still very expensive for every day Cubans. There are still a lot of challenges with connectivity. We go back the embargo. The majority of the fiber optic cables in the Caribbean surrounding Cuba are owned by the United States, which means that Cuba should not be using them for communication. I heard all sorts of different stories from different sources over the years about how Cuba has been able to access the internet and telecommunications, and they've ranged from satellites and ships in China, [also] Venezuela gave some fiber optic cable through some trade deal with Cuba. Little by little they've built the ability to have access. Under Obama, there were opportunities for US companies to get involved with Cuba being able to have access. But nothing can compare, in my memory, with the level of connectivity they have right now. Particularly in the big cities, but there has also been an effort in the country to bring more and more communication through cell phones and internet to rural areas as well.
For me personally, this type of difference has been specifically marked in the past few weeks. For most of my life, wherever I am between Cuba and the United States, I could only communicate with people there. It's been a challenge for me because there are times when I spent so much time communicating daily with them there and then I disappear when I leave the country. And it's been strange for people, especially here in the US, when they think we'll be able to stay connected through internet or telephone. But it has proven many times almost impossible from Cuba. When I think back, I remember I had a card that I wrote for my cousin when the laws changed in 2003 and people could no longer visit their families and no longer do the types of programs that had been happening previously. For me it had been visiting my family but also "People-to-People" programs in which professional research programs had been happening. And I wrote my cousin this very heartfelt letter about how I didn't know if we would ever see each other again. I didn't know if we would ever be able to be in touch. I wanted her to know how much I loved her. I think about it now, and I wasn't in touch with her for years! There were years that we really couldn't have communication! Then when the trips started, obviously things were better, but it was still a big black hole. When I was here I was here, and maybe there could be a few extremely expensive phone calls, maybe a few very challenging-to-get emails, but that's there when I was there. And then I was a black hole for the people who were here, so this has been an interesting feeling over the years.
Right now, it feels totally different, and it's building towards this place. But I am so thankful that at this start of what we have as a worldwide shutdown, where we're all in our houses, and we can't travel, and we can't be connected in so many ways, I've never felt more connected to my artists in Cuba. We are in a group chat where we can talk and share every day! Never has this been possible before! My cousin leaves me messages many times a day. It is almost like it's been working its way into reality. But because we didn't need it, and because we had the habit of not being in touch, we just weren't. But because we are working on a project together, it's just amazing! And the feeling that we have of connectedness, we're all still so surprised! We're surprised when a message shows up in our phone from the other person, so I feel that is a hugely dramatic change. Although, I know it didn't happen overnight. It has felt that way for me. I think it has had a longer existence. Had you traveled more, you probably would have felt it sooner. But when you only travel there once a year, you've used the communication systems so much and the ease has grown and grown and grown over the years that you've felt good probably about the past several years worth of communication. Whereas for me, since we were so in the habit, and I was going back and forth so much, I think we didn't lean into how much we could communicate until right now, and it's just been incredible.
Another really interesting change that I've watched a lot over the years and has been very impactful for me is how family, friends and families of friends that have stayed with me, and just every-day Cubans' life and well-being has been. It's been so different in different eras, and experiencing those changes has been very impactful for me. It's been impactful for me to see the struggle to get through daily life right now compared to what daily life looked like five years ago. It was an era hope. People in Cuba were really inspired that Cubans and Americans could have relationships again, [and] there were a lot of positive changes in the opinions of people on both sides of the straits. It was an incredible time to be visiting back and forth and to feel like a cultural ambassador. Watching this evolution happen before my eyes of that people who had negative opinions of each other opened the door to the possibility of first a civil relationship and then a real friendship. Though, along with that, came the ability for every-day Cubans, at least some of them, to earn a little more, and usually in families, for example, in the city where more money was needed to live, there could be in many families someone who was able to do work in tourism, or a mixed venture (which would be a venture that involved another country along with Cuba), maybe it was a restaurant, maybe some kind of hotel, but it was some place where they had access to earning hard currency, and the the whole living situation was much better for many people. I won't ever say that there is a situation where you can see an entire population without challenges. Definitely, it was a marked difference from what I am experiencing now. It's so interesting for me to mark the difference at different times in my life and notice these ups and downs in the relationship to how the majority of the population is living. Now is a really, really, really hard time for Cubans every day. I am grateful that we can be in touch, I am thankful that we are finding ways that we can be of support, but it's really stressful and challenging to see how much struggle they have after you could see the positive results of what happened under our last president.
Q: Do you feel that travelers' perceptions of Cuba have changed from going on these trips?
A: I think any time you have an experience in a place you've only heard about, whether on the news, or in books, or from other people, I always think there is this moment of shift when you're starting to experience the real thing. I think it's been very interesting with Cuba over the years that there have been in the United States access to very negative opinions about Cuba and we have access to very positive opinions about Cuba. So travelers are often predisposed, depending on where they live and who they've been in touch with, to have one or the other side. Coming to Cuba with an impression of how horrible it is, I've heard things like everything's gray, everyone's depressed, everyone is starving. Lots of, kind of, absolutes on that end. I've also heard a lot of absolutes on the other end by people who have pictured what's been achieved in Cuba that's been hard to achieve in the US as part of being like a utopia. "They have the most amazing public health system, they have the most amazing free education system, the most amazing ability to access arts and culture." But then the picture is so high that it might miss some of the challenges that are really there.
Back to: they're living under an embargo. It's the most extreme economic sanctions over the longest period of time for anyone in the world. It's been interesting on both sides, and I feel like the real thing is that no place is perfect. Every place has some really special unique qualities, and every place has challenges and things they need to improve. I would say that about my own country. There are so many things I love about my country, so many things that make me so proud to be from this country, so many things that make me want to be here and living here in this country in this moment in time, but also so many things that hurt me to the core. So many things that I think in our country are really wrong and unjust. There are things that I find to be somewhere in the middle like this keeps changing and I'm kind of neutral about this or others that I think are silly, and I think it's going to be like that for other places as well. The situation between Cubans and Americans is so politicized that people come in strongly believing a caricature in some way, shape, or form. I would like to open a space for them where they can have enough information from whatever's different from what they think that they can let themselves have a real experience. So for people who think that Cuba is a living hell, I want them to see some of the positives so that they can have a real experience. For those that think it is living in heaven, I want them to see some of the negatives so that they can have a real experience. So my goal is that people can experience a lot for their own selves. It's just helping us get out of black and white. There are amazing things happening there that we need to learn from, and there are other amazing things happening here that they can learn from. That type of exchange is really going to help everybody in both countries. I've had many many travelers tell me how surprised, how shocked they are about something. There's always something! Because everyone comes with a preconceived notion about Cuba compared to almost anywhere else.
I actually would say that it has happened in the other direction as well. A lot of Cubans who have participated in our program have really changed their impressions of Americans as well. Now the difference is that most Cubans change their impressions within the first few experiences with us. Because it's so repeated, now that expectation is there. The expectation is that Americans do come in different shapes, sizes, colors, economic backgrounds, and ways of life. If you experience that several times, you start to believe it even though that's not what you thought. If you thought that people in America looked like people on a sitcom the way you saw on TV, and only certain sitcoms, and only certain movies, more like a soap opera, then of course the first few are clashing with your opinion and reality, but then it becomes normal. So I think that every artist or every person who worked in a restaurant or in a casa particular [Spanish for private house, which could be a homestay or bed and breakfast] that we built a relationship with that we continue to work with, every organization changed their perceptions of Americans within the first few trips. Because of the amazing exchange and contact that we had in each trip, it would then last and continue to others where each new trip, especially because there'd be repeating members, our hosts were already so ready to receive us because of the experience they had before. So I think it felt like more of a revelation on the part of each American because it was their one experience as opposed to Cuban people who were working with us, it was like they were having repeated experiences. I've had many American travelers who had come with us on multiple trips, three trips, four trips. And then the same type of thing starts to happen that this becomes real, this becomes the reality they know is there. Then there's not as many changes of opinion.
SEE PREVIOUS POST FOR PART I OF THIS INTERVIEW.
STAY TUNED FOR PARTS III AND IV.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Interview Part I: Anara Frank on Cuban Travel
A year after traveling to Cuba last April, I've continued to stay in touch with the organizer, Anara Frank. As an American gymnast and dancer with strong familial and friend ties to Cuba, she blended all of her passions and her identity into creating these phenomenal trips. I had the pleasure of interviewing her to get a glimpse into the behind-the-scenes work of putting together not just an ordinary trip or vacation, but an unforgettable experience that stays with you and shapes your life thereafter. Here are her responses to my questions:
Q: How did the MetaMovements trip to Cuba come into being?
A: That's a great question! It kind of appeared organically, but to go back in time, when I was living in Cuba as a teenager, I lived in my sister city where I was a tour guide sometimes and I assisted a little bit. And in 2002, there was a request from members of the sister city that I assist with coordinating travelers between our sister cities. At the time, Cambridge and the city of Cienfuegos were sister cities. My responsibility was to develop meaningful programming from arts to education to local political involvement and learning how people from each country in those cities were able to interact in their daily lives when they were brought together. I was able to support the sister city program for two trips before President Bush cancelled our ability to travel. Because it was kind of floating out in the wilderness that it had happened and people had positive experiences on the trip, the agency that supported the travel for the sister city programs contacted me in 2009 after Obama became president. They asked if I could support people who were in my line of work to be able to travel to Cuba legally in the intersection of arts, education, and public health. This had been the areas that my non-profit organization had touched and delved into during the sister city program. So they were looking for people like myself who had connections with Cuba, had experience there, able to translate, and were in a line of work that allowed professionals to travel, and that gave people a really positive feeling about the opportunities for useful and meaningful exchange between Americans and Cubans in a certain line of work. So specifically, it was under a professional research license that I was able to help everyone from therapists who were using arts as a tool in their practice to school teachers, primarily people who were language teachers, social studies teachers, Caribbean studies teachers, to dancers, musicians and artists. I had that opportunity to be a guide and a link between all these different groups of people. I was asked to be a Contracted Program Consultant. That was the title at the time: to consult on programming for meaningful exchange between professionals from the areas that I focused on.
And when Obama opened "People-to-People" exchanges, it was open for everyone to be able to travel. So for the first few years, it was just for people who fit the "Professional Research" category of the time, and following that it opened for "People-to-People" for anyone who wanted to travel. At that point, MetaMovements qualified for a "People-to-People" license, and we were able to bring people on a fairly regular basis. The cost of getting the license had to be considered: all of the legal costs, all of the administrative costs, and so in order to be able to support that license, we made it a very regular ongoing program as opposed to before we were doing it upon interest of travelers. At that time, we started to do outreach and let people know about the trip so that we would be able to help people go on an ongoing basis. Between 2009 and the changes that Obama made and (I believe it was) 2014, during that period of time only professionals could travel, and so we helped professionals travel a few times a year. It was a great connection to the regular program we did. I did work with a lot of professionals in those fields and it was the type of thing where I could help people who were interested in that type of exchange to participate in a meaningful way and get to know our Cuban counterparts. When we made the change to "People-to-People," the ability to have this license was very much cost prohibitive for almost everyone. For that reason, only some of us decided that we were going to take the plunge and say, "OK, we're going to take a lot of trips to Cuba," because it would be the only way to cover the cost of being able to have that type of legal support and being able to purchase the license. This is what allowed people to regularly travel to Cuba and have the kind of cultural experience that you had!
The important underlying feature is that ever since I lived there, as a young person, and built relationships with friends and family there. I felt that there was always this feeling that there were very few people that had the ability to have a foot, let's say, in each country, who were able to make it possible to go back and forth. I'll never use the word easy. There were many times when it has been very very challenging, but I had the ability to, and I have been thankful for that for my whole life because many people in my family and that I know don't have the ability to, visit back and forth. I was told by many people that I had kind of a responsibility on my shoulders. If I was given this privilege, that I was able to get to know both countries so well, and have positive experiences in both countries, that I had this responsibility to serve as something like a cultural ambassador. Both sides were spreading a lot of stories in a form that we often refer to as propaganda. I don't know if everything was propaganda because sometimes people telling their true version of the story they'll feel like that is the truth, but they might be missing so many other pieces of the story that what comes out to us is an image that might not actually be what we would see if we were there in the other place. I would get asked questions from the Cuban side about what was happening here and from the Americans about what was happening there were so interesting for me because the vision that each had of the other country and the people of the other country was so formed by the media as opposed to personal experience or people talking to them, like family or friends, but not always family or friends who were living a complete or full experience. Most people who had family in the US who were Cuban had family living in a small area, let's say Miami, specifically, or maybe Union City in West New York, but mostly living in very Cuban communities and not having a lot of knowledge of what life in the US was like for non-Cuban immigrants and many American citizens. I did feel the weight of that and always tried my best to share music and dance between the two countries, to share differing opinions between the two countries, to help each country remember that the picture that they have been painted may not contain the full truth, it may contain a part of the truth, and that there might be more that they want to learn. So opening that door to communication has always been really important to me. So whenever the opportunity arose when someone asked for my support to do that, I was ready. Whether it was helping with American travelers or groups of Cubans coming to perform for a cultural exchange in the US, my goal was to always be able to assist with helping people from the different cultures view each other at least with an open mind to get started so that a relationship could be built. I think that one of the challenges is when you hear so many negative things about the other side or exaggerated positive things about the other side, how do you find the truth and decide that for yourself? As a person in the middle, I try to help people see the many versions of the story, and as a person who helped people travel in both directions, I try to help people see as broad a view possible that might not have matched with what they heard previously. That was always my goal. How can I help people see that there might be another part of the story? And I think that's why I always answered that call to support people in either direction trying to organize some type of exchange so that I can see how by being in the middle, I might make it be able to be a little more fruitful, a little more supportive to people having eye-opening experiences getting to know each other.
Q: What obstacles did you face when putting together and maintaining programming for this trip?
A: Almost everything is always clouded by what many call the blockade or the embargo. It's not exactly one thing. It's a whole series of laws that put together affect travel, exchange, sharing of information, to such an extent that everything can be traced back to that. Are there are other obstacles that come up along the way? Sure! But when you peel back the layers, it usually goes back to these specific situations that we find ourselves in based on a series of laws dating back to the 1960s, primarily, that maintained us apart for so many years.
So we may say that the finances are a challenge. But when you peel back the layers, you'll see that the finances are a challenge because they are related to this series of laws. If we could say that flights have been a challenge at many points in time, but when you peel back the layers, the issues of flights are related to this series of laws. So each time that you say what is a challenge you face, when you peel back the layers, you come to that at the bottom. So it's not to say that there aren't a lot of challenges that we are working on solutioning [sic] every day, it's just something that we have to do because this is something that hasn't moved since the 1950s and some pieces of it since the '80s. So we are solutioning around it, but I do feel that the root cause is this and that without the blockade, I believe we would still have had challenges as you have challenges in anything, but they would all be very different challenges. I would have to say that this is the root cause with helping people travel legally to Cuba is that there is an issue with traveling legally to Cuba. All of the ramifications -- the political issues, the financial issues, the freedom of speech issues -- that come into play with this series of laws.
STAY TUNED FOR PARTS II-IV OF THE INTERVIEW.
Edit: Previously, the following errors, which have now been corrected, were made:
- Anara was incorrectly identified as Cuban-American as opposed to American with Cuban connections.
- The request to start the programming was from members of the sister city, not her sister.
- The name of the sister city is not San Fuegos, but Cienfuegos.
Q: How did the MetaMovements trip to Cuba come into being?
A: That's a great question! It kind of appeared organically, but to go back in time, when I was living in Cuba as a teenager, I lived in my sister city where I was a tour guide sometimes and I assisted a little bit. And in 2002, there was a request from members of the sister city that I assist with coordinating travelers between our sister cities. At the time, Cambridge and the city of Cienfuegos were sister cities. My responsibility was to develop meaningful programming from arts to education to local political involvement and learning how people from each country in those cities were able to interact in their daily lives when they were brought together. I was able to support the sister city program for two trips before President Bush cancelled our ability to travel. Because it was kind of floating out in the wilderness that it had happened and people had positive experiences on the trip, the agency that supported the travel for the sister city programs contacted me in 2009 after Obama became president. They asked if I could support people who were in my line of work to be able to travel to Cuba legally in the intersection of arts, education, and public health. This had been the areas that my non-profit organization had touched and delved into during the sister city program. So they were looking for people like myself who had connections with Cuba, had experience there, able to translate, and were in a line of work that allowed professionals to travel, and that gave people a really positive feeling about the opportunities for useful and meaningful exchange between Americans and Cubans in a certain line of work. So specifically, it was under a professional research license that I was able to help everyone from therapists who were using arts as a tool in their practice to school teachers, primarily people who were language teachers, social studies teachers, Caribbean studies teachers, to dancers, musicians and artists. I had that opportunity to be a guide and a link between all these different groups of people. I was asked to be a Contracted Program Consultant. That was the title at the time: to consult on programming for meaningful exchange between professionals from the areas that I focused on.
And when Obama opened "People-to-People" exchanges, it was open for everyone to be able to travel. So for the first few years, it was just for people who fit the "Professional Research" category of the time, and following that it opened for "People-to-People" for anyone who wanted to travel. At that point, MetaMovements qualified for a "People-to-People" license, and we were able to bring people on a fairly regular basis. The cost of getting the license had to be considered: all of the legal costs, all of the administrative costs, and so in order to be able to support that license, we made it a very regular ongoing program as opposed to before we were doing it upon interest of travelers. At that time, we started to do outreach and let people know about the trip so that we would be able to help people go on an ongoing basis. Between 2009 and the changes that Obama made and (I believe it was) 2014, during that period of time only professionals could travel, and so we helped professionals travel a few times a year. It was a great connection to the regular program we did. I did work with a lot of professionals in those fields and it was the type of thing where I could help people who were interested in that type of exchange to participate in a meaningful way and get to know our Cuban counterparts. When we made the change to "People-to-People," the ability to have this license was very much cost prohibitive for almost everyone. For that reason, only some of us decided that we were going to take the plunge and say, "OK, we're going to take a lot of trips to Cuba," because it would be the only way to cover the cost of being able to have that type of legal support and being able to purchase the license. This is what allowed people to regularly travel to Cuba and have the kind of cultural experience that you had!
The important underlying feature is that ever since I lived there, as a young person, and built relationships with friends and family there. I felt that there was always this feeling that there were very few people that had the ability to have a foot, let's say, in each country, who were able to make it possible to go back and forth. I'll never use the word easy. There were many times when it has been very very challenging, but I had the ability to, and I have been thankful for that for my whole life because many people in my family and that I know don't have the ability to, visit back and forth. I was told by many people that I had kind of a responsibility on my shoulders. If I was given this privilege, that I was able to get to know both countries so well, and have positive experiences in both countries, that I had this responsibility to serve as something like a cultural ambassador. Both sides were spreading a lot of stories in a form that we often refer to as propaganda. I don't know if everything was propaganda because sometimes people telling their true version of the story they'll feel like that is the truth, but they might be missing so many other pieces of the story that what comes out to us is an image that might not actually be what we would see if we were there in the other place. I would get asked questions from the Cuban side about what was happening here and from the Americans about what was happening there were so interesting for me because the vision that each had of the other country and the people of the other country was so formed by the media as opposed to personal experience or people talking to them, like family or friends, but not always family or friends who were living a complete or full experience. Most people who had family in the US who were Cuban had family living in a small area, let's say Miami, specifically, or maybe Union City in West New York, but mostly living in very Cuban communities and not having a lot of knowledge of what life in the US was like for non-Cuban immigrants and many American citizens. I did feel the weight of that and always tried my best to share music and dance between the two countries, to share differing opinions between the two countries, to help each country remember that the picture that they have been painted may not contain the full truth, it may contain a part of the truth, and that there might be more that they want to learn. So opening that door to communication has always been really important to me. So whenever the opportunity arose when someone asked for my support to do that, I was ready. Whether it was helping with American travelers or groups of Cubans coming to perform for a cultural exchange in the US, my goal was to always be able to assist with helping people from the different cultures view each other at least with an open mind to get started so that a relationship could be built. I think that one of the challenges is when you hear so many negative things about the other side or exaggerated positive things about the other side, how do you find the truth and decide that for yourself? As a person in the middle, I try to help people see the many versions of the story, and as a person who helped people travel in both directions, I try to help people see as broad a view possible that might not have matched with what they heard previously. That was always my goal. How can I help people see that there might be another part of the story? And I think that's why I always answered that call to support people in either direction trying to organize some type of exchange so that I can see how by being in the middle, I might make it be able to be a little more fruitful, a little more supportive to people having eye-opening experiences getting to know each other.
Q: What obstacles did you face when putting together and maintaining programming for this trip?
A: Almost everything is always clouded by what many call the blockade or the embargo. It's not exactly one thing. It's a whole series of laws that put together affect travel, exchange, sharing of information, to such an extent that everything can be traced back to that. Are there are other obstacles that come up along the way? Sure! But when you peel back the layers, it usually goes back to these specific situations that we find ourselves in based on a series of laws dating back to the 1960s, primarily, that maintained us apart for so many years.
So we may say that the finances are a challenge. But when you peel back the layers, you'll see that the finances are a challenge because they are related to this series of laws. If we could say that flights have been a challenge at many points in time, but when you peel back the layers, the issues of flights are related to this series of laws. So each time that you say what is a challenge you face, when you peel back the layers, you come to that at the bottom. So it's not to say that there aren't a lot of challenges that we are working on solutioning [sic] every day, it's just something that we have to do because this is something that hasn't moved since the 1950s and some pieces of it since the '80s. So we are solutioning around it, but I do feel that the root cause is this and that without the blockade, I believe we would still have had challenges as you have challenges in anything, but they would all be very different challenges. I would have to say that this is the root cause with helping people travel legally to Cuba is that there is an issue with traveling legally to Cuba. All of the ramifications -- the political issues, the financial issues, the freedom of speech issues -- that come into play with this series of laws.
STAY TUNED FOR PARTS II-IV OF THE INTERVIEW.
Edit: Previously, the following errors, which have now been corrected, were made:
- Anara was incorrectly identified as Cuban-American as opposed to American with Cuban connections.
- The request to start the programming was from members of the sister city, not her sister.
- The name of the sister city is not San Fuegos, but Cienfuegos.
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