A Display of Groupthink

What do young Cubans think of their country's current political and military role in Africa? New York's Democratic Congressman Stephen Solarz, while on a fact-finding visit to Cuba, met with a group of 16 students at the University of Havana. The three-hour session, reports TIME Diplomatic Correspondent Strobe Talbott, taught Solarz a bit more about life in present-day Cuba than his hosts had intended.

One by one, the students delivered their set pieces for the benefit of their visitor. "I am an eternal lover of peace," proclaimed Victor Alvarez, a fourth-year economics major. "But as a human being I cannot aspire to live in peace while there are people throughout the world who do not have that privilege. Therefore I stand ready to fulfill my moral commitment to extend internationalist aid to any underdeveloped country that may need it and request it."

Rafael Ramirez said that when he completed his biochemistry course, he planned "to devote myself to the service of the revolution, wherever it might send me." The students were all talking about Africa, explained Elio Jimenez, a dark-skinned economist. "Because of the blood of our African ancestors, we cannot sit by idly and watch counterrevolutionary bandits snatch victory away from Comrade Agostinho Neto in Angola."

For the first half of the meeting, the carefully selected and well-prepared students put on an impressive display of Cuban groupthink. But then Congressman Solarz tried to inject some spontaneity into the discussion--and caught the students off guard. When he called for a show of hands by those who had friends fighting in Angola or Ethiopia, 16 were hesitantly raised. He asked how many of the students had friends who had been killed or wounded in Africa; by reflex, four students started to raise their hands. But University Vice Rector Fernando Rojas made an urgent, commanding gesture that caused all hands to drop. Cuban casualties in Africa is an extremely sensitive subject.

From then on, the students seemed less sure of themselves. Solarz shifted to questions about the Eritrean rebellion in Ethiopia and the civil war in Rhodesia. The students seemed confounded. "You are asking us to perform a great abstraction," complained Alvarez. "No, I'm not," said Solarz, "I'm just asking for your personal opinions." "Our opinion is free, open and democratic," explained Jimenez, "but it must coincide with the foreign policy of the revolutionary Cuban government."

Solarz pressed on: "Do you believe Cuba should send its troops into Rhodesia?" Jimenez answered lamely: "We are only modest students who have a certain level of information." Embarrassed silence greeted the Congressman when he asked if the Eritrean secessionists, whom Cuba used to support but now opposes, were counterrevolutionaries. Esteban Morales, one of the four professors present, tried to rescue his uncomfortable students with a little dialectical gobbledygook. "I consider that the analysis of this question," said Morales, "depends on a logical assessment of the concrete situation, and to evaluate, one must ask how to advance the cause of the revolution." As the session dragged on, it became more and more obvious that on subjects where the government's line was not yet clearly defined, students and teachers alike were intellectually incapacitated.

At the end, waiters passed out frozen daiquiris. Toasting his hosts, Solarz thanked them for a revealing demonstration of "democratic centralism" at work. The students seemed unaware of his irony.

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