[NYTr] Cuba-US Academic Exchange Continues... Outside the US
 
Date: Thu, 6 Sep 2007 17:52:49 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
IPS - Sep 6, 2007
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=39168

CUBA-US:  Academic Exchange Continues, Despite Embargo

By Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Sep 6 (IPS) - Relocating the 27th Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) International Congress from the United States to
Canada has meant that 138 Cuban academics have been able to take part
in the event, which promotes dialogue and academic exchange in the
region.

"This year marks the biggest Cuban presence at LASA for three decades,"
Milagros MartC-nez, an economist at the University of Havana and a
regular participant at these meetings, which are held every 18 months,
told IPS.

However, in recent years she had been prevented from attending by the
restrictions imposed on Cuba by the U.S. administration of President
George W. Bush.

The congress, on "After the Washington Consensus: Collaborative
Scholarship for a New America", is running Wednesday to Saturday in
Montreal, Canada. The two previous editions had no Cuban participants
because Washington denied them visas.

In 2004, in the western U.S. city of Las Vegas, Nevada, one of the LASA
congress panel discussions which Cubans were prevented from attending
set up 64 empty chairs with the names of the academics subjected to
this discrimination, and devoted the session to discussing the denial
of the visas.

That congress approved a resolution calling for the waiving of all
restrictions "on legitimate interchange between academics from the
United States and Cuba," MartC-nez said.

Washington also refused entry to some 60 Cuban speakers who had
registered for the congress in the associated free state of Puerto
Rico, held Mar. 14-18, 2006. Several academics said at the time that
the decision was "arbitrary" and prevented LASA, a U.S. organisation,
from fulfilling its international remit.

According to MartC-nez, in most cases U.S. authorities applied Section
212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which authorises the
U.S. president to deny entry to "any class of aliens into the United
States (that) would be detrimental to the interests of the United
States."

LASA was founded in 1966 and its headquarters are in the northeastern
city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is the worldbs largest
professional association devoted to the study of Latin American and
Caribbean affairs. One-quarter of its more than 5,000 members live
outside the United States.

It has subdivisions devoted to the study of different fields, one of
which is the Cuba Section.

LASAbs main purpose is to promote training, teaching and research in
Latin American studies, and to provide a forum for addressing questions
of common interest. This yearbs congress is the largest in the history
of the organisation, with some 6,000 people attending.

Items on the agenda include agrarian and rural life, cultural, economic
and development studies, environmental problems, gender issues,
contemporary literature and arts, historical processes, international
relations, migration, racial and ethnic inequalities, social movements,
social justice and human rights.

According to economist Armando Nova, a professor at the University of
Havana, the wide range of topics addressed is one of the principal
virtues of LASA congresses, which allow Cuban academics to present
their ideas and "confront" those of researchers from other countries,
including some from Europe.

MartC-nez said that these assemblies are a forum for presenting results
of past and present research. Sharing this knowledge permits the
attainment of "a more objective and realistic vision of what is
happening" in Cuba and the rest of the region.

This process of exchange involves a learning curve. "Learning how to
discuss, how to argue in the presence of different views, is vital.
Dialogue is more difficult than repeating a fixed mindset," MartC-nez
said.

Italian political scientist Paolo Spadoni, a visiting professor at
Rollins College in the state of Florida, said he believed it was
incorrect to assume, "as many people in Washington do," that the Cuban
researchers only contribute their countrybs official point of view.

"This assumption demonstrates a certain lack of knowledge of Cuban
reality, and limits the possibilities of expanding the debate about
possible changes" on the Caribbean island, Spadoni told IPS by e-mail.
He is participating in a panel discussion on Cuba at the Montreal
congress.

Cuban participation in the LASA congresses dates from 1977 and
continued almost without interruption until March 2003, in spite of the
tense relations between Washington and Havana for more than four
decades.

MartC-nez and other researchers agree that the Bush administrationbs
stance towards Cuba has become more rigid even than that of the Ronald
Reagan administration (1981-1989), and has had a profoundly negative
impact on cultural contacts. (END/2007) 

 
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