Photo credit: David Deriso

It’s true, you can travel to Cuba this summer with Global Exchange and the Center for Cuban Studies! From August 7 – August 14, 2012 anyone can  join this people-to-people licensed, educational trip to explore the ‘Greening of Cuba’. Sign up here!

Throughout the 20th Century, Cuban agricultural production mainly centered on large industrial farms producing crops (mostly sugar) for export while food has been imported.  Prior to the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the largest market for Cuban sugar was the United States. After the Revolution the Soviet Union became the primary purchaser. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990’s, imports plummeted as did the guaranteed market for Cuban sugar. Cuba began to transform its agricultural infrastructure out of necessity.

Photo credit: Laura Lee

One success of the Cuban Revolution was giving every Cuban the chance to have an education. For the first time children of farmers could aspire to a university education, but this has created unexpected challenges as well. With the movement from industrial, mostly mechanized, farms to organic small farms and cooperatives, there is a shortage of people who want to live and work in the countryside. This delegation will meet with Cuban farmers, experts, and policy makers who will provide an in depth view of the movement towards organic farming in Cuba, its successes, and the challenges it faces.

Program Highlights may include:

• Visit the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation
• Visit with a representative from the Ministry of Agriculture
• Visit to the UNESCO designated biosphere reserve of Las Terrazas
• Visit to the National Botanical Garden
• Visit to an organic farming cooperative in Alamar
• Visit a tobacco plantation in Viñales
• Meeting with National Urban Agriculture Group

Cost:
$2,900.00

Price Includes:

• RT flight:  Miami/Havana/Miami
• Cuban visa and required Cuban health insurance
• Double room accommodations
• Two meals per day
• Conference fee
• Site visits
• Translation
• Transportation (with group)

Global Exchange is thrilled to offer this unique, co-sponsored Reality Tour with the Center for Cuban Studies and hope that you will join us! Please call Carol Steele for more information at 415.255.7296. Sign up here!

Read more about traveling in Cuba and learn more about traveling on a Reality Tour.

Joe Perez of Cuba Travel Services, John Albrecht from Oakland International Airport, Carol Steele - Global Exchange, Mike Zucatto - Cuba Travel Services, Isaac Kos-Read - Port of Oakland

A direct flight from Oakland to Havana?  It’s closer than you think!

Yesterday, in partnership with U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, who has a long and progressive history of championing improved relations between the U.S. and Cuba, the Port of Oakland hosted a Community-based round table to discuss how to increase travel between the San Francisco Bay Area/Northern California region and Cuba via the Oakland international Airport. Oakland is the only approved regional gateway for direct flights to the island.

I was proud to be present at this inaugural meeting of the minds and want to report that it was a very productive discussion, in a room that was buzzing with passion and information about why operating these flights would be a great thing!

There were representatives there from many different parts of the community, from religious and community leaders to people representing the health and the medical community, to many of us, like Global Exchange, who have been operating Legal Delegations to Cuba for more than 20 years, offering a wide spectrum of cultural, educational and sustainability-focused trips, with many participants coming from all over Northern California that would jump at the chance to fly directly from the Oakland International Airport!  Also present at this meeting were Joe Perez and Michael Zucatto of Cuba Travel Services, tour specialists with Cuba for many years, that would be operating the charter flight.

This was an excellent opportunity to foster greater ties between our two countries and explore the possibility of history making flights and economic development! Who knows?  Maybe by the time some of our trips are leaving in the Fall, people will be able to fly directly to Havana from Oakland International Airport!  What has been a dream of many of us that work with Cuba, seems to be a very tangible reality in the not so distant future! Thank you Congresswoman Lee for inviting us, and thank you for all of the work that you do to to further develop our relations with Cuba, and untiring efforts to End The Embargo!!

I want to be on that first flight – who’s coming with me?

Photo from Inmagine

The following was written by Carol Steele, Global Exchange Director of Cuba Customized Reality Tours. She is an accomplished percussionist who has played with an eclectic range of musical acts, everything from Los Muñequitos de Matanzas, Joan Baez and Steve Winwood to Diana Ross and Tears for Fears.

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The 27th Annual International Jazz Festival in Havana is coming up– you wonder, should you go?  And I say to you emphatically, ABSOLUTELY SI !!!!!!

It is a great time to be in Havana!  Usually right on the heels of the International Film Festival, Havana is buzzing with energy.  There are so many concerts in different venues all over town, lots of Cuban Jazz, as well as invited guests from around the world, and BEST of all (says the musician) the late night jam sessions!  You never know who might stop by and sit in on one of these nightly jams.  Once you have your pass for the festival, you can get into all of the shows, afternoon lecture demonstrations, and although I think there may be a small fee to go to the jam sessions – it’s a fee that’s well worth it as far as I’m concerned.

I started going to Cuba in 1987, during a time when I was working as a professional recording musician/percussionist, and wanted to go to the root – or “la mata” as my Cuban friends in New York used to say. (The root of my technique as a percussionist)  I was recording and working with Steve Winwood, Eric Clapton, Bette Midler and Tears for Fears, to name a few, and going to Cuba during my time off.  I went to study, see, learn, absorb, breathe, play, dance, and see what it feels like to be in   “la mata” and what I can tell you is that it changed my life!

Carol Steele in action!

I am not a formally trained musician, I play by “ear” (and I would add, heart and soul.)  So for me, whether I get to play or not, just going to Cuba, and getting to be in the presence of the masters that are constantly taking modern Cuban music to new levels, or having the privilege of experiencing Afro-Cuban Folkloric music that is being played in the same way that it was handed down from Mother Africa – it inspires.  Whether I have ever put my hands on a drum or not, during any given visit over the past 25 years, I always come home playing something different, taking a different solo, and feeling my place in the music in just a very subtle and different way – inspired.

So, I have to say that the Jazz Festival is an incredibly unique time to be in Havana, with so much music happening in so many different places daily. Whether you are a musician or dancer, expert or novice, music aficionado or music critic………. You will come back changed in some way that you might not be able to put your finger on at first -  is it the music, the culture, the people, the food, the painting, the architecture, the history……………or is it just ALL of it!  Come with us and see – and by the way, let me know!

TRAVEL TO CUBA

The 27th International Jazz Festival of Havana is taking place on December 11, 2011 – December 21, 2011. Find out how to travel there with Global Exchange.

You can see Carol in action & on percussion in this video!