[Jose Novoa] I was really I didn't have time to feel fear at that moment because my big concern was get out of the country....

[Bill Kelly] With grain piled on the ground, a farmer in Gibbon, Nebraska worries if selling his corn to Cuba hurts the human rights of another farmer.

[Tom Reiber] At the same time we are selling food to them, selling whatever it is we need to expect democracy to grow at the same time we supply this food.

[Bill Kelly] In Havana an aging priest gives hope to those with AIDS while a doctor in North Platte hopes politics won't get in the way of helping the sick and the persecuted.

[Byron Barksdale] We have not yet had any problems with violation of US policy and guidelines and policy towards Cuba and we certainly don't want to be on the radar screen now…

[Bill Kelly] The country is Cuba… an American enemy for nearly fifty years.

These are the surprising stories of how a country so very different from our own can connect with the lives of Nebraskans.

Cuba is back in the news. It's never really been out of the headlines since Fidel Castro set up a Communist outpost just ninety miles off the coast of America. Now he's once again putting his opponents in jail. Three others who tried to escape died in front of a firing squad. The United States government has our entire Cuba policy back under review. We traveled to Cuba just before this all blew up. It's part of a special joint project with the University of Nebraska College of Journalism.

What we all discovered was how often foreign policy directed at a country like Cuba can effect the lives of everyday Nebraskans. We'll share the background and personal stories of how trade policy may open markets for our farmers, how human rights issues may complicate our best of intentions to help others, and, in our first story, the political decisions from 40 years ago that shape the lives of our neighbors today. Once a month they get together in Omaha. Tonight, Jorge Rodreguiz is the host to a few friends with an understanding of one another that goes a lot deeper than a shared language. The language is Spanish. The flag is Cuban.

[man in mask] What are you guys doing here?

[laughter] When a guy in his Fidel Castro mask shows up nobody's surprised that it's Jose Novoa.

[Jose Novoa] We're like a chain. We're together. We're Cubans and we love each other. We are all very thankful we are in this country.

[Bill Kelly] The game, the reason they are here, is dominos… like it's played on side streets every evening in Havana.

[Novoa] It's almost like a religion, okay? It's like a religion. That is something that the only thing I can tell you is that when I was a kid I would fall asleep listening to the noise of the dominos.

[Bill Kelly] They only have one thing in common, but it's a powerful bond. They all fled a dictator, Communism, a revolution. They all hate Fidel Castro. The only question: should America do business with him and end the embargo.

[Player #1] If they do lift the embargo the only one who'd going to get fat is the big dog. The little dog is going to get screwed even worse than it is now.

[Jorge Rodreguiz] Castro's going to be the only one's who's going to make the money and the problem with lifting the embargo is that the bill is going to go to us. The taxpayers. Not to Castro. Because he's not going to pay for it. He'll just use credit.

[Bill Kelly] They are opinions of Americans familiar with the effect of a government's foreign policy…how they can unexpectedly ricochet through the lives of everyday people.

[Novoa] Diplomacy is the only thing we have not tried yet and I think it's about time we do that.

[Armando] I think the best way to get rid of Castro is to let the influx of American influence over there.

[Player #2] It will still be socialism for another generation. That will be hard to release.

[Novoa] I don't agree. I think it will go faster than that. The people in Miami will…. Yeah, it's your turn. Will you play so I can talk? Thank you. (laugh)

The other reason I would like to have the gates open is that I would like to visit my country before I go up or down. [Voice] Amen! [Jose] I would like to visit at least once.

[Voice] I would like to visit my family.

[Jose] And with that note, I am out. So you girls count!

[Bill Kelly] Today, the life they share in Omaha, Nebraska could scarcely be imagined decades earlier as young men on Caribbean island. Cuba's history and its relationship with the United States sharpened the beliefs of every Cuban American. It's a history lesson worth repeating.

[Singing]

[Bill Kelly] Along every highway and street in Cuba, the only advertising boasts of the triumph of the revolution that swept the Socialists into power.

All over Havana, the images of martyred deity Che Guevera keep watch.

[Singing]

[Bill Kelly] Street musicians sing passionately of the Commandante's vision and strength in bringing to pass a people's revolution against a corrupt dictator.

[Singing]

[Bill Kelly] Fulgencio Batista ran Cuba at the end of the 1950's, a dictator in partnership with American organized crime.

Cubans got sick of the corruption. In the closing weeks of 1958, an anti-capitalist revolution overwhelmed the government. LIFE magazine reported Castro arrived in Havana "ecstatically acclaimed by the people he liberated." Newsweek hailed Castro as "a hero," while photographs documented the on-the-spot executions of Batista's loyal officials.

By the time U.S. backed forces made a mess of a coup attempt at the Bay of Pigs, LIFE reported on "a new and nightmarsish threat for the United States."

Castro turned to a sympathetic friend in the Communist Soviet Union.

[News reel Announcer] He promises his people freedom. Instead he gives them bondage as Russia's first satellite in the Caribbean.

[Bill Kelly] Cuba was not just a Russian alley, but also a new base for Soviet nuclear missiles.

[Newsreel Announcer] In one giant step, Russia is giving Cuba an offensive nuclear capability that can strike at the heart of the United States.

[Bill Kelly] Tense diplomacy and a navel blockade convinced Russia to back down from the start of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis became the defining moment of The Cold War.

Castro remained and over the next four decades Cubans lost their property, their freedoms, and often their hope. Thousands fled to America. In Miami, Florida, monuments line the streets honoring those who stayed to fight Communism and those who died trying to escape.

Some of the survivors would find their way to the Midwest.

So it's no accident that the small number of Cubans in Omaha find one another. And when they on a chilly January night, there was so much more going on than just a game of dominos. Foreign policy of another generation changed the lives of Jorge Rodreguiz and Jose Nova.

Cuba today tries re-create the feel of the island all those refugees escaped. European and Canadian tourists flock to see Old Havana. In the 1950's this place was like nowhere else in the world. It became a playground for Americans in love with Havana's exotic image. But the shows for the tourists don't even hint at what Cuba used to be like for the Cubans.

[Novoa] What I remember are the palm trees. The typical icon of my country and the beautiful sunny sandy beaches we had over there. And the temperature was great too.

[Bill Kelly] Jose Novoa was a young man excited about the future and newly married to his childhood sweetheart, Carmen. They lived in a big tri-cornered building along a major boulevard. Jose worked across town at the family printing business.

At the same time, Jorge Rodreguiz live across Havana Bay. A teenager with a passion for science grew up a tiny home with a red tile roof in the town of Regla.

[Jorge Rodreguiz] The people, particularly the kids used to walk up and down the main Marti road which is the main road in the town and this is how you got to the girls and the rest of the guys would promenade back and forth.

It was not unlike some of the small towns in Nebraska and Iowa.

[Bill Kelly] In a matter of days the lives of Jose Novoa and Jorge Rodriguiz would be blown apart by the politics and policy of Cuba and America. It is what led them to Omaha, Nebraska where they now work just eight blocks apart. Jorge still the scientist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Jose, still the master printer, with his own successful business.

[Novoa] I am so blessed with being here and to me this was the last place in the world that I can go that what happened in Cuba will not happen to me again.

[Bill Kelly] In 1958 everyone in Cuba knew something was about to happen. Under President Batista street crime had become common, so much so that even 12 year old Jorge knew of it in quiet little Regla.

[Rodreguiz] There was a lot of killings and stuff like that. I remember the jeweler down the street was shot. We don't know who killed him he was found on the street. I remember coming back on one of those Sundays from the movies. The guy was lying in the gutter next to the sidewalk and he was bleeding they had shot him. We didn't know whether it was the secret police who shot him or rebel group.

[Bill Kelly] So when Fidel Castro arrived in Havana with his militia, and Batista fled from the island Jorge was excited.

[Rodreguiz] I remember when the police station in our town was taken over by a group of the rebels and they put a bunch of the cops in jail. That was pretty exciting for most young people to see.

[Novoa] Yes, we thought Batista was bad. Until we had Castro. Batista was a baby compared to Castro.

[Novoa] "…And we spent our honeymoon in Florida."

[Bill Kelly] Castro's Revolution spoiled Jose and Carmen's Christmas time wedding in 1958.

[Novoa] When I got a phone call during our honeymoon that it was happening and he took over Havana and we saw it on the news and we decided to go home.

[Bill Kelly] Photographs show one of the last times all sixty people on the family's payroll gathered for a celebration. In the days that followed there were dark hints that the party was over.

[Novoa] They took over the business in June 8 of 1961. What they did was they arrived on June 7 at night when we arrived in the morning, they had all the papers ready. We had to go into the office sign and walk out. No compensation or nothing. The reason they said they had to take it over was because the employees did not want to work on the private enterprise. And they said we could stay there and work if we feel like it, if we wanted to. Of course we didn't.

[Rodreguiz] Life was pretty miserable. We had to contend with the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution which would spy on us constantly. They would come in our house whether we invited them or not and rifle through our stuff. We had no privacy.

[Bill Kelly] For Jose Novoa, it was time to get out.

[Novoa] I didn't have time to feel fear at that moment because my big concern was get out of the country because my wife was expecting and I did not want my child to be born under that type of regime.

[Bill Kelly] Carmen already fled Cuba. Through her job at the French Embassy, she got visas for Jose to more that one country. He bought plane tickets to three separate destinations to cover his bets and still nearly lost his chance to board a flight to Miami.

[Novoa] I never thought that the silence could hurt so much. There was no body talking or saying anything on that plane. When the people announced that we were about to land in Miami, that plane exploded. People were crying they were laughing it was unreal.

[Bill Kelly] Back in Regla, young Jorge Rodriguiz would stay behind for while. Snooping around the harbor, he became a teenaged intelligence source for the counter-revolution stealing letters from sailors at the port.

[Rodreguiz] I would translate this stuff and pass it on to my contact, someone I assume with the American government. I didn't know and didn't ask.

[Bill Kelly] Jorge Rodriguiz left Cuba when his mother made arrangements. Eventually his work as a cellular biologist would bring him to Omaha and the Medical Center.

Jose and Carmen Novoa chose Omaha because she had once attended the Duschene Academy Catholic girl's school in the '50's. She became a school teacher. Jose returned to printing.

[Novoa] I really cannot forget him what he has done to my country and I cannot forgive him to what he has done to millions of Cubans still on the island suffering.

[Bill Kelly] If Jose and Jorge and so many others can not forget and forgive Castro, how should the United States government respond? The debate often boils down to a single policy: The Embargo.

It's all so quaint. Vintage cars of the 1950's chug along side streets lined with buildings that seem frozen in the early 1900's. Look closer and you see it's all decaying… held together by necessity and Cuban ingenuity.

There are political roots in the ragged theme park look of Havana. American cars…or goods of any kind…stopped arriving in Cuba after 1961.

President Kennedy put the trade embargo in place not because of the Cuban missile crisis, or even because Castro was a tyrant but to punish him for seizing of American owned land and businesses.

[Jaime Suchlicki, Center for Cuban American Studies] The objective of the Kennedy administration was not to over throw the Cuban regime but to say 'look this is unacceptable. You have taken American property without paying for it and we will maintain the embargo until that happens.'"

[Bill Kelly] At the Institute for Cuban American Studies in Miami, Jaime Suchlicki claims that for years the embargo made little impact, while the Russians pumped up to a million dollars a day into Castro's economy.

[Suchlicki] Once the Soviet Union collapsed, Cuba became obviously a bankrupt economy so the embargo added to that bankruptcy and showed that this system of communism or socialism or whatever you call it only works when it is subsidized by a foreign power."

[Bill Kelly] Politics have changed the embargo. Instead of insisting on paying us back for property, the United States now wants a regime change in Cuba. The embargo stays until Fidel Castro goes.

The reason can be found on Calle Oche… 8th Street… the main street in Little Havana, Miami Florida, USA. These 28 square blocks fuel the passionate debate that keeps Fidel Castro isolated.

[Joe Garcia, Cuban American National Foundation] This is an evil that is beyond what is conceivable for most Americans. That is why we believe it must be obliterated.

[Bill Kelly] Joe Garcia, of the Cuban American National Foundation gives voice to the most active opposition to lifting the trade embargo.

[Garcia] This is a regime that is dominating and controlling. This as bad as we thought about the Soviet Union and it's ninety miles from the United States.

[Congressman Tom Osborne (Rep.) Nebraska] They have their agenda and… there is a deep-seated hatred of Castro and… so these people have a political agenda; they want him removed.

[Bill Kelly] Nebraska Congressman Tom Osborne joined conservatives and liberals on Capitol Hill on the Cuba Working Group pushing to open trade.

[Osborne] Because for forty years we've had a policy that has banned trade, banned travel and it certainly hasn't worked. And I guess I've drawn the analogy from time to time that if you were running a certain football play and you ran it for forty years and it didn't work, you'd probably try something different.

[Senator Chuck Hagel, (Rep) Nebraska] This is a toothless old Tiger sitting down there and everybody in the world trades with him, has a relationship with him except essentially one of his closest neighbors. Senator Chuck Hagel broke ranks with President Bush's hard line on Cuba. He helped open new trade with Cuba with legislation allowing shipments of food and farm products as "humanitarian aid."

[Hagel] When you open societies that is the best course of action for people who are being abused and who have lost their human rights.

[Bill Kelly] Goods from the countries that deal with Cuba line the docks in Havana. This flour heading inland started as wheat grown in France and Italy. Critics point out Cuba stiffed many of its trading partners, piling up 11 billion dollars in debt.

[Trade Show Participant] We're going to have to sharpen our pencils to do deals with the Cuban people because they don't have a lot of economic resources but you know what, it's another market."

[Bill Kelly] American corporations stormed Havana to take advantage of the potential market. At a first of its kind trade show in 2002 over 200 trade associations and American companies set up shop including Nebraska's ConAgra. All deals had to be in cash. By law, Cuba gets no credit in America.

[Trade Show Participant] This event this week, when we look back at history will be looked at as a major event in a new chapter in trade with Cuba."

[Bill Kelly] Fidel Castro got rock star treatment at the Trade Show, feeding American calves and drinking a milk shake. Some mock using the phrase "humanitarian aid" to help a dictator. Critics include Antonio Jorge, formerly Fidel's chief economist.

[Antonio Jorge, Center for Cuban American Studies] So why all of a sudden are senators and congressmen and businessmen are so interested in a few dollars more as Clint Eastwood would put it? Why this amazing degree of greediness?

[Bill Kelly] At Cuba's state-owned restaurant there is plenty of food available for the tourists. At this meal diners were treated to seven courses of meat served on swords. The government rations of milk, bread, and meat for Cuban citizens have not increased.

The curious claim of Cuba's socialist elite: if people are hungry here they only have themselves to blame. Cuba's top trade official Jose Alvarez made that argument to the Nebraska student journalists.

[Jose Alvarez, Cuban trade official] Those who want to purchase additional commodities should go to work, make more money and go to the store.

[Jorge] So don't tell me anymore about how the Nebraska farmers lose their sleep over the Cuban children being under nourished.

[Bill Kelly] At the trade show in Havana the politics of human rights did not seem to be an issue. Organizers claim 93 million dollars worth contracts were signed for American goods. That may open a new market for Nebraska farmers. That may open new questions of what's right and wrong for Nebraska farmers.

Gibbon, Nebraska sits on the Great Plains, just 1546 miles from Havana, Cuba. That includes half a continent and 90 miles of salt water.

There are certain times of year when the second tallest thing in town is the pile of corn fresh from harvest. It sits out in front of the Cargill elevator. From here it's shipped out and the final destination could be anywhere in country…and almost anywhere in the world. There are some countries with which the United States will not do business. Until recently, that included Cuba.

Tom Reiber has been a pretty successful farmer on the 2000 acres he shares with family near Gibbon. When he'd haul the harvest to the Cargill elevator foreign trade was all in the abstract.

[Tom Reiber, farmer, Gibbon, Neb.] Here we are farmers out here and we haul our grain to Cargill and they give us a check for it. Never worrying about where else it went because we don't have the ability to go anywhere else with it.

[Bill Kelly] Then Cargill, the country's largest agri-business conglomerate, asked Tom to join the CEO and a small delegation to promote Midwestern grain in Cuba, a market that had not been open for forty years. They visited a poultry farm run by the socialist government outside of Havana. There was a real kinship between the producers from different countries.

[Reiber] Those people recognized the quality of American grain. They wanted us to smell it. They wanted us to taste it.

And they recognized that good quality and that makes you proud."

[Bill Kelly] For Tom Reiber this was foreign policy in the first person.

[Reiber] They need the food. They need something to eat.

We feed the people and make them comfortable and then they on their own will want to step up. Its just human nature I think.

They are human beings just like we are. They laugh and cry and get hungry. They are just like we are. What sets us apart is the philosophy of our governments.

[Bill Kelly] The large farms and cooperatives run by the Cuban government begin to crop up just outside the city limits of Havana… rows of tomatoes and groves of papaya and mango. Castro's government controls eight out of every ten acres of farm land. Most are worker managed cooperatives.

A few family farms survive. The government makes certain they stay small. For the Ramoe family it is still a rewarding life on the land.

[Felipe Ramoe, Cuban farmer] My father was the one working on the farm and he died at age 70-something while he was working and I am 65 and I have been working on the farm since I was 12.

[Bill Kelly] Felipe Ramoe welcomed Castro's revolution. The Socialists divided and redistributed the land of bigger operations. The early days of the revolution helped the family.

[Felipe] No doubt, of course.

What we do on the farms now is for our own good. We no longer had to work for others like we did before. It is more or less the same type of work, but we had a very small tract of land. After the Revolution we were given a bigger one.

[Bill Kelly] Today the Ramoe farm occupies two and a half acres. Garlic, onions, tomatoes, and the local potatoes called malanga thrive in the rich, red soil. Research and technology not available here could make it even more productive.

[Eliah Ramoe] We are too backward. I have heard that in America and Europe the farms have many implements, and we have to do it by hand.

[Bill Kelly] Eliah Ramoe, at age 20, will likely take over the farm from his father.

[Eliah] We are doing our best working with the resources that we have. Of course it is not easy to work under such conditions. We do it because if we don't, what's left? To just sit around? No way.

This work I only do for my self on my own terms. If I had to work for the state, I would look for something that is not as hard as farming. There are some other jobs, not as hard. I do this because I see the profits.

[Bill Kelly] The government promises to supply farmers with free or affordable supplies like fuel and chemicals. That hasn't happened for years. Elia buys much of what he needs illegally.

[Eliah] The state system, which controls everything, has people responsible for certain types of farm equipment. Those specialists recommend buying a certain amount of a chemical but they only spray one half of it in the field. The rest goes to the black market.

[Bill Kelly] The black market doesn't always work. Felipe Ramoe could lose half of his onion crop this season because they can not get a supply of a spray to stop a killer plant disease. The produce that survives must be shared with the government.

[Eliah] When it comes to the state we never fulfill our part of the agreement. We don't even give them one half of what we are supposed to supply. But they cannot demand anything, because the state is not giving us anything. They are not providing anything to our farm.

[Bill Kelly] The Ramoe's don't get a break at the farmer's market either. The subsidized prices for goods off the government farms are noticeably lower. Customers still buy the higher priced pork because everyone knows the private farms have higher quality meat and vegetables.

[Eliah] Now the situation has gotten worse. Because there are no sprays, no fuels, the state can't demand their share of our products from the farms. As a result, you give to the state what you see fit. In short, they get the worst of our crop.

[Bill Kelly] A 72 year old retired bus driver who grew up near by helps the family almost daily.

[Field hand] Yes I knew I would have to work past my retirement. You always have to do something. When you work, you have to go on working. The old person who stays at home is going to die.

[Bill Kelly] A dedicated Socialist who believes the state should control much of agriculture, he would never consider working on a government farm. The Ramoe family pays him 25 pesos, or about one dollar, a day.

[Field hand] Of course if I work here, I get ten times the salary than I do at the state farm.

[Eliah] Whether it is a factory or hospital or a farm the private property will always provide the incentives for those working in it. If you profit, that's great. If you lose that's your problem. In my personal opinion it is private property that provides the drive to work.

[Bill Kelly] Felipe Ramoe had one more thing to share. He wanted to show off his proudest possession. His 1956 Dodge Kingsway hardly ever leaves the garage. Four years after he bought it, there would be no more American cars for sale in Cuba.

Cuba's tiny and poor private farms were not on the official tour the government arranged for Cargill. Tom Reiber never met the field workers. They did have an unexpected dinner with Fidel Castro.

[Reiber] I kind of stood back in awe of all this because it was a historic moment. We were some of the first to go down there and met with him face to face.

[Bill Kelly] Dinner began at 8:00 o'clock at night and did not end until four in the morning. Fidel spoke the entire time. His message was clear.

[Reiber] The tourists. He wants the tourist trade. He mentioned that probably more than any single thing. We'd like to have those tourists here. And of course the reason being they want those dollars that they are going to bring. Then when they get those dollars, then they can buy food more grain more pharmaceuticals or whatever.

[Bill Kelly] When dinner ended, just before dawn, a special gift from their host.

[Reiber] This was a personal gift to us from Castro … Which is how Tom Reiber came to possess some of the world's best cigars…and a much deeper understanding of how …for better or worse…a load of grain from Gibbon may tip the balance in one of America's most enduring foreign policy challenges.

[Reiber] When I first came back I was pretty gung ho about the opportunity to export to Cuba until you sit back and you think and you read a little more about what's going on. You wonder who would get the advantage of that. I am quite sure the average person would not get the advantage of it.

You don't see a lot of happiness in the people who work in the hotel and the restaurants or the ladies who work at the poultry far. That was not a happy place.

[Bill Kelly] The embargo blocks American goods. It also bans American travel. Europeans vacation here all the time. An American who comes to Cuba just for fun may hit with a 15 thousand dollar fine by the United States Treasury Department.

Humanitarian missions are allowed. So some causes here benefit from the fascination with travel to forbidden island.

The Monserette Church does not stand out in Central Havana. Mass with Father Fernando draws a modest sized group of the faithful…mostly women…mostly older.

No sooner has mass ended then the cooking begins. Twice a week the Church ministers to a younger group. Many are not Catholic. Everyone here is HIV positive, or has a family member who's tested positive.

[Luis Ernesto, HIV+ Cuban] Every week I look forward to coming here on Wednesdays. It's like they are a gift.

[Bill Kelly] Luis Ernesto 35 years old and married, finds support, and understanding and laughter at least once a week here at dinners sponsored by the Church.

[Luis] Here I can get away from reality, and talk to people suffering and feeling the same way I do.

[Fr. Fernando, Church of the Monserette] They have understood that they are in the same boat. The HIV positive diagnosis is not the last of life. They must make the most of their lives.

[Bill Kelly] Father Fernando de la Vega provided a home for Havana's only AIDS support group. The aging cleric marvels that God called on him and this little church for this mission.

[Fr. Fernando] I'm not so much surprised as I am gratified. Phone calls never stop from Cubans seeking advice and comfort. It is a Catholic ministry that serves all denominations.

[Fr. Fernando] There are those who are ill and dying who choose suicide. Others seek redemption. When the final time is coming, my personal experience is, a lot of them choose Christ.

[Bill Kelly]There are volunteers in Havana who help with the cooking and chores. The director of the Cuban AIDS Project couldn't make it tonight. In fact, he's 1500 miles away, in a place most Cubans would be hard pressed to find on a map. North Platte, Nebraska. The Father's unlikely partner is known only as Dr. Byron.

[Dr. Byron Barksdale, Cuban AIDS Project] I think Cuba recognized earlier than the United States that there was more to controlling HIV/AIDS than prevention.

[Bill Kelly] Dr. Byron Barksdale grew up in Florida, fascinated with Cuba. He began an email friendship with health professionals in Cuba and the man who founded the islands AIDS Project.

[Barksdale] Cuba actively intervened therapeutically as well as they could. They understood the social support structures better than the United States. They provided people with food, housing, shelter. They basically gave people hope sooner, that people cared.

[Bill Kelly] After visiting Cuba, Barksdale got a call from Father Fernando. Since the founder of the AIDS group had died, would he take over.

[Barksdale] Well it wasn't by choice initially. I was just on the advisory council and the founding member of the AIDS project unfortunately passed away prematurely and so it fell into my lap. I don't think people in the Midwest aren't fearful of a difficult task. If it were easy it probably wouldn't be quite as challenging.

[Bill Kelly] Barksdale manages western Nebraska's biggest pathology lab. Taking on AIDS in a Socialist country seems like an unusual cause for a conservative Republican. It makes sense to Dr. Byron, combining a physician's professional responsibility with his high regard for Father Fernando.

[Barksdale] He has brought in people who are homeless, sick, hungry and suffering from despair and provides them an opportunity to affiliate with one another. He feeds them and provides them with educational material and support.

[Bill Kelly] Dr. Barksdale provided Father Fernando with an invaluable American connection.

[Fr. Fernando] Four years after the group started we received a visit from Dr. Byron. He explained he could help with setting up a web site in the United States to promote us. Soon every time people came to Cuba they brought a small bag of medicine or personal items for our group.

[Bill Kelly] The web site Dr. Barksdale set up is a magnet for anyone win an interest for people helping people with AIDS. The opportunity to travel to Cuba may be an added incentive to help.

[Barksdale] Well, it's a balance. There's always tension between those with hidden agendas and those who want to go there and really be tourists and those who have a bona fide interest in helping out down there.

[Bill Kelly] If someone want to help, the Cuban AIDS Project can provide the paperwork in exchange for doing work on the groups behalf. The night we visited a diamond wholesaler from Fort Myers, Florida stopped by Monserette Church with a delivery of supplies.

[Ron Hansen, Supply Courier] I'm legal by the Treasury Department. I'm a humanitarian. I have my license.

[Bill Kelly] A receipt would prove to customs that he was more than a tourist.

[Hansen] Everybody needs Santa Claus and without Santa Claus there is no hope. And in this day and time when Americans are looked down upon, it could be Cuba it could be anywhere, I'm just doing my part. Because everyone needs a little help now and then.

[Fr. Fernando] I have seen more tourists bringing more medications than ever before. I do not know if that is the result of a change in government policy or just a reflection of the sensibility of the American people.

[Bill Kelly] Gay men make up the second support group that gathers at the Church every week. They both struggle with their disease and with attitudes towards a lifestyle not always accepted or understood in a macho, Latin culture.

[Fr. Fernando] The congregation that belongs to the Church did not understand the people with AIDS and did not want them. Either did the people in the neighborhood. There is a horrible lack of understanding about AIDS in Cuba.

[Bill Kelly] Some of the regulars were given recently donated asthma inhalers. Magazines were given out as door prizes. At the Monserette Church, a virus in the blood stream is no reason to turn you away.

[Fr. Fernando] The only difference between them and us is that they are in a searching calculation of the meaning of the last years of their lives. And the rest of us are not.

[Barksdale] The majority of HIV/AIDS in Cuba is homosexual or heterosexual transmitted. It's a sexual disease in Cuba. It is not an IV drug disease or a blood products disease as it is in other parts of the world.

[Bill Kelly] This is a passionate and sexually open culture. While Castro's regime drives the gay community underground, heterosexuals are open, flirtatious, even boastful. Luis spoke openly about how both his wife and his girlfriends deal with his diagnosis.

[Luis] My wife, she is healthy. She helps me and supports me with how I am now. After I got out of the sanatorium, all of the girlfriends I hooked up with were healthy. These girls they ask you, do you have condoms, and if you do, they go to bed with you. That depends on the personal attitudes of the person.

[Bill Kelly] Condoms are readily available and government campaigns urge couple to use them. They are even made available by Father Fernando.

[Barksdale] He recognizes the importance of sexual transmission of AIDS in Cuba so he allows the group to have access to condoms, which in the Catholic Church is something greatly frowned upon.

[Fr. Fernando] We need more Spanish language literature about the need to use condoms, but also the message must be that sex needs to be something that happens for love and not just for pleasure.

[Bill Kelly] The Cuban government also gets good marks for the health care it provides those with AIDS…even if the approach seems radical in America.

The health officials established Sanitariums… isolation wards for those who have AIDS.

[Barksdale] Well it was time machine travel. Because I saw facilities and beds and equipment and supplies that were of nine forties and fifties vintage. Certainly not a modern hospital. It was quite an eye opener to me to see things that ordinarily medical students today only hear about or see in old medical textbooks.

[Bill Kelly] Dr. Barksdale toured the Sanitariums. There was a time when the government all but quarantined anyone diagnosed with AIDS in these facilities.

[Barksdale] Since 1994, for the past eight or nine years, the sanatoriums are places where people come for an initial evaluation for about six weeks about the disease. Then they are allowed to leave if they want to. Many people like to stay in the sanatoriums because they provide good care and privacy and fellowship and they are nice places to live.

[Bill Kelly] After Luis received a blood transfusion tainted with HIV, he spent time in an AIDS sanatorium outside of Havana.

[Luis] You can get all your medicines. They feed me. There are always doctors available. Everything I expected in good care was provided. It is good.

[Bill Kelly] Even as the Cuban government treats the gay community harshly, the AIDS Project has not been a target of Castro so far. It may be American policy that's a problem. Cuba's human rights record lead to new restrictions on American travel. The future of the humanitarian supply runs are in doubt. The Bush Administration wants visitors to promote American values.

[Barksdale] Basically he wants to continue to decrease the number of thinly disguised tourists who go to Cuba and simply have no contact with the ordinary Cuban people and put a lot of money into the Castro regime treasury. At the same time I think he wants to expand the good American image of travelers from the United states going to Cuba having direct contact with ordinary Cuban citizens and engaging them if possible to discuss values of the American people.

[Bill Kelly] When visitors log on the Cuban AIDS Project web site they still find opportunities for travel. Now more than ever the group makes sure those who take the trip are not using their group as a cover for leisure trips.

[Barksdale] We have not yet had any problems with violation of US policy and guidelines and policy towards Cuba and we certainly don't want to be on the radar screen now with the tightening of guidelines towards travel in Cuba.

[Bill Kelly] The strangers who arrive at the Church's back door to help bolster Father Fernando's faith. He remembers one of the first... the one he calls the wingless angel.

[Fr. Fernando] When I was alone in the Church one evening I came down here to this place in the dark. I say to Him "you are the owner of this business and I am only your employee. If you don't place your hand on this business there is no way to pay the electricity. Then a wingless angel appears at the door. She says here is 20 American Dollars for the sick persons. So we can pay the electricity. I am a very faithful man.

[Barksdale] I've learned there are people better than myself and that he's someone I can aspire to as far as altruism.

[Bill Kelly] Jose Novoa escaped Cuba along with his new bride in 1959 when Castro came to power and seized the family printing business. It was safe in Omaha, and the couple figured they'd be back in Havana in a year or two.

Jorge Rodreguiz always thought he'd return to live in Cuba. As a teenager who helped the anti-Socialist rebels, Jorge believed man that evil as Castro wouldn't last long in charge of Cuba.

And there's Fidel Castro sipping milkshakes for cameras on the news. It's been over 40 years.

When we told Jose Novoa we would be traveling to Cuba, he wondered if the family printing business could be found in Havana. We found it at the address Jose had on an old business card: Vista Hormosa. When we showed he and his wife Carmen the tape, he recognized the little café just up the street, but the plant itself wasn't easy to recognize.

[Jose Novoa] I know it wasn't painted green.

[Bill Kelly] We couldn't get too close. An armed government security guard stopped us from taking pictures. Neighbors along the street watched everything we did. Jose heard once back in seventies the printing presses there turned out textbooks for the Russians.

We also went to Regla, the little town where Jorge Rodriquez grew up and eventually fled.

[Rodreguiz] Yeah, that's it! (laugh)

[Bill Kelly] Forty years later Jorge immediately recognized the harbor docks where he played and the church of the black Madonna where he took first Communion.

[Rodreguiz] Yeah, I remember my mother taking me there when I was little. That's exactly how I remember it. It seemed so much bigger when I was little.

[Bill Kelly] Just off the busy main road is Enlace street where his family lived.

[Rodreguiz] That's it. That's my house right there. That is my house. Wow. Yeah… with the tile roof.

[Bill Kelly] The fresh green paint faded long ago on Number 14 Enlace. Sometime the door had been replaced and metal bars added on the windows.

[Rodreguiz] That's my house right there. That one.

[Bill Kelly] The campaign posters displayed on the porch listed the candidates for office hand picked by President Castro and made clear the woman who lives there now is a good Socialist.

[Rodreguiz] They are probably part of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution watching you guys. See, they are always outside watching who comes who goes and they tell the government. You know it brings memories, but I don't recognize some of these things. I think things have changed.

[Bill Kelly] In Havana today, you can still find the tri-cornered building where Jose and Carmen Novoa had planned to start their life together.

[Novoa] That's sad. That's it. That's the apartment. Is that it, where we used to live? No. Wow… that has changed.

[Bill Kelly] Jose and Carmen recognized the distinctive triangle shape and the balconies. The video tape was the first time they'd seen their home in over forty years.

[Carmen Novoa] Look at the windows!

[Jose Novoa] Well if you don't take care of the building that's what happens.

[Bill Kelly] Up a set of winding marble stairs, there were only the ghosts of the warm neighborhood that Jose and Carmen Novoa fled. Two or three apartments fit in the same space where one family lived before the Revolution.

[Novoa] That's sad. It's sad. [Carmen] It's sad to see and selfishly we thank God we're not there. They are really suffering there. [Carmen] That is what's unfair.

[Novoa] I miss everything about Cuba. That is my country that I was born there, and I cannot forget that. The most beautiful moments in my life were in Cuba with my wife when we were friends and when we were sweethearts and when we were married. And I love everything about Cuba. Everything is just a great memory.

[Bill Kelly] The Cuba Jose and Jorge long for no longer exists. Even if Castro left tomorrow, those days, those times, are gone. Daily life for the poor in Havana…and most of the country is poor… saddens any who escaped. Some call the especially poor neighborhoods "The Caves."

We met Nurka and her sons asking for soap and dollars on the street. She invited us to the home she shares with her boys and two other relatives.

[Singing]

[Bill Kelly] The children show visitors everything in the three rooms. There are just a couple pieces of furniture. Most of the money the family gets they beg from tourists.

[Nurka, Havana, Cuba] …dollar, dollar, dollar, dollar…

[Bill Kelly] Dakarai Aarons, a journalism student from the University of Nebraska, helped us translate.

[Nurka, translated] First of all they are very excited when they get a dollar from a tourist. They use that money to go buy meat or clothes or whatever they need.

[Bill Kelly] Nurka happily showed us how she uses each of her kitchen utensils. The kitchen and shower share the same space. The ration book issued by the state records the food provided her family. This was all the bread they will receive this week.

[Nurka] One, two, three, four.

[Bill Kelly] The refrigerator held the rest of the week's food.

[Nurka, translated] She says in this country everyone is always hungry and they do not get enough food.

[Nurka] I am hungry. Baby hungry. Cuba hungry.

[Marco, Havana Cuba] "United States our friend!"

[Bill Kelly] Her friend Marco showed us where the family sleeps upstairs.

[Marco, translated] This the result of being poor, and represents the plight of the Cuban people. Marco makes five dollars a month.

[Bill Kelly] The only other space upstairs is the open shaft where the family hangs their clothes to dry.

[Children] "America! America!"

[Bill Kelly] Marco painted USA on the bedroom wall.

[Marco, translated] He's looking for a world where everyone will be equal. And he is saying on 21st Street, close to hotel, you will see a lot of propaganda from the Cuban government saying don't go to America., America is evil. But he knows everyone in the world, we're all human, so in that respect we're all equal.

I like you and the people. Mundo.

[Nurka, translated] More or less it seems like a fantasy these days with the United States and Cuba being friends because Fidel Castro always says because Fidel Castro is our enemy.

[Bill Kelly] Nothing here is quite as it seems.

As we traveled with journalism students from University of Nebraska Lincoln, so many Cubans knew about our state. The place in the middle of the country. A place where it's cold. A place where they play football.

It's a joyous place to visit. You will never feel any safer. That of course is because of the same police keeping watch on every block who often terrify the people who live here.

Cubans boast about the success of their society and how this Caribbean brand of Socialism has outlived the collapse of all others. Minutes later, in a whisper, they tell you its all a lie.

The students marveled at how freely so many people expressed their opinions. A few weeks later they learned dissidents and journalists they interviewed were thrown in jail for their politics.

But the most important lesson was the same one already learned how Nebraska connects with Cuba. Tom Reiber in Gibbon…with a load of corn he'd like to sell… Byron Barksdale in North Platte…with medical supplies he'd like to deliver… and certainly Jose Novoa in Omaha…and once a resident of, and still homesick for, Havana.