BY ANDY BUCHANAN
BOSTON - Dania Murgado and Rolando González, two youth leaders from Cuba, were informed on March 7 by the U.S. Interests Section in Havana that their applications for visas to travel to the United States were denied. Their applications were returned stamped "rejected," without an explanation. Murgado, a leader of the Federation of University Students, and González, a researcher at the Center for the Studies of José Martí, were scheduled to start an 11-city academic visit to the United States on March 21. They had been invited to present lectures by over 70 professors and student organizations at 56 educational institutions.

The Boston-based Faculty-Student Cuban Youth Lectures Committee, the body coordinating the projected tour, responded to this attack on academic freedom by launching a protest campaign demanding that the State Department reverse its decision. A letter mailed by the committee to over 250 academics and student groups around the country urging them to send protest messages.

In the letter, Faculty-Student Committee board member Tom Reeves, a professor who heads the Caribbean Focus Program at Roxbury Community College, noted, "This is the second time in a year that the State Department has denied visas to Cuban youth leaders we hoped to bring to the U.S. It follows stepped-up attempts to intimidate and threaten academics and others who wish to travel to Cuba. This blockade of ideas and exchange goes against the democratic values we cherish and safeguard. It goes against freedom of speech that the U.S. Constitution itself protects."

Previous speaking tours of Cuban youth leaders in the United States "have helped establish a direct dialogue with Cuban students and researchers in a climate of open discussion of views and ideas," Reeves continued. "We all know how essential intellectual freedom and exchange is to the process of learning and ideas. The State Department's action deprives us, in a fundamental way, of that freedom."

Supporters of the Faculty-Student Committee plan to work with Cuba solidarity activists in the July 26 Coalition to organize other protest activities. A day-long educational conference to be held at Roxbury Community College on the theme "Cuba Today," which was to have been the first public engagement for the young Cubans will go ahead as planned March 22. Johana Tablada, Third Secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., will be the featured speaker. Reeves will present a workshop on fighting against government restrictions on the right to travel to Cuba.

The Lectures Committee is urging academics, politicians, and other prominent individuals to send protest messages to: Michael Ranneberger

Coordinator for Cuban Affairs

U.S. State Department

2201 C Street NW

ARA/CCA Room 3234

Washington, DC 20520

Tel: (202) 647-9273

Fax: (202) 736-4476 Madeleine Albright

Secretary of State

U.S. State Department

2201 C Street NW

Washington, DC 20520

Copies of protest letters should be faxed to the committee at (617) 566-2861, or mailed to Faculty-Student Cuban Youth Lectures Committee, c/o Caribbean Focus Program, Tom Reeves, Room 3-353, Roxbury Community College, 1234 Columbus Ave., Boston, MA 02120.

Andy Buchanan is a member of the United Auto Workers.  
 
 
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