A Freewheelin' Time (26 page)

Cuba

In February 1963,
the State Department instituted a ban on all travel to Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following summer a group of students accepted an invitation from the Cuban Federation of University Students to visit post-Batista Cuba. They wanted to see for themselves what life was like four years after the revolution, and to challenge the travel ban. The United States was not a Communist country, after all, where citizens didn’t have the right to a passport and free travel. Freedom of movement was embedded in the American way of life. Not only was a travel ban un-American, it was unconstitutional.

Travel bans had been issued and tested before. When I was in high school and a member of a current events discussion club, we invited a few college students who had defied the current prohibition on travel to China to come speak to us. This was in the late 1950s, when only “Reds” or “Commie sympathizers” would be the sort of people interested in traveling to or hearing about China. The school decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to let the students come.

The consensus of those in public life and in the media who questioned the validity of travel bans was that they made the United States look like East Berlin, with a wall around itself, which was hypocritical in the eyes of the free world. Many felt that the excuse for the ban on travel to Cuba was to prevent American citizens from finding out for themselves what things were like on the island since the overthrow of the Batista regime, which the United States had supported. Those who had taken the trip in the summer of 1963 returned home with enthusiasm about the revolution. The fact that illiteracy on the island had been wiped out in just a few years was an impressive accomplishment. As a result, many more wanted to join up for the following year.

My motivation for making the trip in 1964 had to do with my preoccupation with the censorship of writers and artists in the Soviet-bloc countries and the effect the blacklist had on artists. I would get to see how the Cuban revolution, and its romance with Communism, was dealing with artists and writers. Since I knew Albert Maher, one of the organizers, and was enrolled in an art class, I managed to fudge the “student” requirement and join the trip.

In Communist countries, and in the American Communist Party, an artist showed his or her commitment by making work that promoted the ideals of Communism. Artists were to be educators, propagandists, rallying the masses through their work to make sacrifices now for a better life for the next generation—no introspective or abstract work allowed. Growing up a red-diaper baby, I had accepted this idea though it made me uneasy. I had secret and serious doubts that continued to grow as I did.

T
here could be severe consequences for those who violated the travel ban. Though they included—in addition to an invalidated passport—the possibility of fines and prison, they didn’t really register in my twenty-year-old mind.

If the ban was unconstitutional, the threat of prison didn’t seem likely. I was committed to freedom of travel and I had profound respect for the U.S. Constitution. The only drag was the loss of our passports, but everyone in our group was confident that lawyers would find a way for us to get them back. And eventually—after close to two years—that was exactly what happened.

The process was more complicated for the second trip. Since there were over eighty students signed up, the organizers decided to divide us into two test groups. The majority would travel clandestinely to Cuba via Spain a week earlier than a second group of five, who would openly declare their intention to challenge the ban, without revealing when or how they would do it. They would also disclose that a group of eighty American students had already arrived in Cuba the previous week.

I volunteered to join the second group. Since I was the only female, I was made the leader: who would ever think the youngest, and the girl, would be in charge? I would handle all the money, instructions, and any problems that might arise between our departure from the United States and our arrival in Havana. At each stop I would get further instructions. I felt like an undercover agent.

The plan, once worked out, was simple. At a press conference at Kennedy Airport in New York we announced our intention to fly to Cuba that day but refused to give precise information about our travel plans. We informed the press that only five people would be making the trip; however, we did not say who in the group were the actual travelers—there were more than just the five of us present. After the press conference the others—acting as decoys—lined up for bogus flights to various destinations while we actually took ours. A graduate student from Columbia named Steve Newman and I were booked on a British Airways flight to London, in first class, no less, and the three others—Alan Lowe, Jeffrey Goldstein, and Robert Collier—were together on another carrier, also going to London. The flights would arrive within an hour of each other; we would go through customs and then meet up for the next leg of our circuitous route to Cuba. At the airport I was to buy tickets to Paris for all five of us together. Once in Paris, someone would take me to the Cuban embassy, where I’d pick up our visas for Prague. From there, we’d fly to Cuba on Cubana Airlines.

Each traveler was asked to pay one hundred dollars toward expenses. The Cuban mission to the United Nations paid for the air tickets and travel arrangements outside Cuba. In Cuba, hotels, meals, and other expenses were picked up by ICAP, the Institute for Friendship among the Peoples, the part of the Cuban government in charge of handling invited foreign guests. The money, all of it in cash, was handled by the Student Committee for Travel to Cuba, an offshoot of Progressive Labor, a left-wing organization. As the group leader I carried the money. I put the thick wad of bills in my handbag.

We had been thoroughly instructed by the organizers not to give our passports to anyone, except of course when we went through customs. Under no circumstances were we to get our passports stamped upon entering or leaving Cuba.

I’d never flown transatlantic before—I’d gone to Italy by ship—and here I was flying clandestinely to England in first class. In the past, clandestine travelers stowed away on ships, sharing quarters with rats after they had crossed a mountain range on foot in snowstorms with forged passports sewn into their clothes. Steve and I weren’t sure what to make of the grand style, but we had a sense of humor to go with our sense of purpose. We settled in with the champagne the cabin attendant offered, and too wired to sleep, we talked, drank, and ate our way into the night.

Once we landed at Heathrow and were inside the terminal, we saw two gates, one marked for “Aliens,” and one for British citizens. We chose a friendly face at the Aliens desk to stamp us into the country. When I handed the official my passport, he consulted a list of names in front of him. My heart raced. He looked at me and handed my passport back. He said he was sorry but he could not stamp me in.

There is someone here from your embassy to speak with you first.

He pointed to a man with a briefcase leaning against the opposite wall.

I looked the customs official in the eye and told him I was a U.S. citizen—one of the five names on his list—traveling to Cuba to test the legality of our government’s travel ban to Cuba. The U.S. embassy representative waiting for us was under orders from the FBI, who expected him to be party to their attempt to deny us entry into England.

The man blanched and said, They what?

I smiled. They want to prevent us from entering England, I said. They are interfering with our right to travel and intend to invalidate our passports. What they are attempting to do is illegal. What we are doing is not.

Indignant, he glared at the American official and said in a loud voice, The U.S. government cannot tell the British government what it can and cannot do. They have no jurisdiction here.

Then he grabbed our passports and stamped us in with a loud clunk. One. Two.

There were three more names on the list, I told him, and they’d be arriving soon on another flight. I looked at Steve for confirmation. He looked from me to the U.S. official to the British official, and nodded solemnly.

It was early morning and the representative from the U.S. embassy didn’t have a complete grasp of the situation. He looked sleepy and unsure of his mission. When he asked for our passports, I replied that they were our personal property and we had no intention of giving them to him. Steve took over at that point because he was levelheaded and rational, whereas I was all drama and instinct. Steve talked about the U.S. Constitution and the right to travel, while I went off to inquire about the flight the others were taking.

When I found out their flight had been delayed at takeoff for several hours, I got worried. Had something happened? The delay meant that as the day progressed, more information about our plans would be transmitted to the U.S. embassies in London and Paris. They would be better briefed than the sleepy-looking man Steve was educating.

It was a very long wait. When reinforcements arrived, they were the real thing, sporting hats and raincoats and briefcases. After they’d lined up directly behind the British customs agents, Steve and I could no longer go back into the customs area beyond the glass door that served as a partition. I wanted to get word to our fellow travelers before the federal agents got a hold of them.

Finally the flight arrived and we saw Alan, Jeffrey, and Robert walking right toward the U.S. officials. Steve and I signaled frantically through the glass, but they couldn’t see or hear us. They went to the first customs agent, who checked their names against the list just as the U.S. officials approached with their paperwork. Our fellow travelers looked worried and confused and unsure what to do. We saw them hesitate and begin to read the papers they’d been handed.

I pushed the glass door open and yelled: You don’t have to pay any attention to that shit!

A guard grabbed my arm, trying to pull me back. I regretted the “shit” immediately, but it did get everybody’s attention.

Your passport is your personal property, I continued. They have no jurisdiction over you!

The British customs agent who was our ally caught the ball. After he leaned over and said something to his fellow agent, the man immediately stamped in the three of them with an indignant look that said: They were once our colony. How dare they? Foiled, the feds walked away.

We were interviewed for the story that appeared in the British press the next day.

It was time to buy tickets to Paris. I managed to find a flight—only first class was available!—that left within the hour. I was tense, hoping I hadn’t been seen buying them by U.S. officials who would then alert their counterparts in Paris. The five of us separated, just in case.

I heard an announcement for a “Mr. Rotolo” to please come to the information desk. It was repeated in English and French several times. I panicked and went to the restroom, stuffed all the money I had into my bra, and changed my clothes. I was in a cold sweat as we boarded the plane. All went smoothly, though, and we landed in Paris without incident.

The English press takes note

It was late when we arrived and the stress had worn us down. The hotel was a nondescript place on a quiet side street with a winding staircase to our rooms on the upper floors. The man at the desk asked for our passports. In Europe this was standard procedure, but the others would have none of it. Our indoctrination had been never to surrender our passports. Steve had also been to Europe before, and we managed to convince them to part with their documents overnight.

The four wanted to see something of Paris, but I declined. I was worn out and I still had to telephone New York to let Albert Maher, as one of the organizers, know where we were. When I called down to the desk from my room to place an international call, the man who had checked us in said he’d call me back.

After a bit I heard a knock on my door. It was the deskman, smiling. In my limited high school French, I repeated my request to call New York. He smiled again and offered to show me around the room.

Thank you, I smiled back, but I must—
très important
—place a call to New York. Once he finally left my room, the call was made, and I was ready for some sleep. But soon he was back at my door again, asking if everything was all right. Short but built like a wrestler, he pushed his way into the room. What ensued was a chase around the bed. The whole day had felt like a suspense movie, and it was ending like a farce with scary overtones.

With impeccable timing, Steve knocked on the door, wanting to know if I had managed to get through to New York. The little hotel man made obsequious
pardon, pardon
noises and retreated from the room. After locking the door and sliding a chair under the knob, I fell into bed, exhausted.

T
he incident with the officials at London airport had unnerved us and we weren’t sure what to expect in Paris the next day. I had to go to the Cuban embassy to pick up our visas and tickets for Prague, the next stop on our roundabout journey. A young Frenchman came to drive me there, while the others waited in a café. After what seemed like a long drive in heavy traffic, the young man dropped me at the embassy building in the middle of a lovely park. A friendly woman at the desk asked me to wait. There was no one else around, and the wait seemed interminable. She offered coffee but no explanation.