As the United States began sending its Al Qaeda captives to Cuba in January, the UW sent a delegation of 41 women.

Both groups got Fidel Castro’s attention. On January 16, the Cuban president met for three hours with the UW delegates, whose visit to Cuba was organized by the UW’s Center for Women & Democracy. Castro proclaimed the meeting—which was interrupted just once, by a phone call from the U.N. secretary general—a harbinger of warming between the peoples of two longtime adversarial nations.

	Delegates on the UW's mission to Cuba gather in the Havana hotel where they stayed during their visit. Photo by Christine Di Stefano.

“The president of Cuba’s National Assembly told us he had never seen Castro so moved by a visit,” said UW delegate Susan Jeffords, divisional dean for the social sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences.

The Center for Women & Democracy, a new program based in Arts and Sciences, fosters female participation in local and global affairs through workshops, research, and international missions like the one to Cuba.

The meeting with Castro was a surprise twist in the eight-day mission to Havana, which already was crammed with visits to high-ranking women in Cuban politics, health, trade, and education—even some critics of the regime. Castro’s invitation came while the UW group attended a Havana baseball game the night before.

Fidel Castro and Senator Maria Cantwell exchanged wine from their respective regions. Photo by Christine Di Stefano.

Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, who joined the UW group for three days, led the delegation into the Presidential Palace and presented the Cuban leader with a bottle of Washington sparkling wine and an All-Star baseball signed by Mariners’ slugger Edgar Martinez. Castro chatted with each of the visitors, several of them prominent in business, agriculture, health care, education, and the environment.

“He seemed genuinely engaged by what each of us had to say,” said Christine Di Stefano, director of the Center for Women & Democracy and associate professor of political science.

The UW visit came during a period of heightened Cuban-American contacts, featuring a flurry of recent visits by American politicians, tourists, and even pop stars. The UW is one of the limited number of U.S. schools to hold a federal license that permits educational missions to Cuba.

Reacting to the current U.S. imprisonment of captives from Afghanistan at its Guantanemo Bay base on the island, Castro told the UW delegation that he intends to cooperate in the battle against global terrorism. But many ordinary Cubans told the UW visitors during the week that they considered it an insult for the United States to use their island to hold such prisoners, Jeffords said.

The UW delegates also were told in several places that the barriers between the two nations don’t harm Cubans solely. The group visited a research institute that produces advanced vaccines for maladies—such as one strain of meningitis—that also plague the U.S., Di Stefano said. And Cantwell is attempting to give Washington apples, wheat, lentils, and other crops an eventual market in Cuba.

As to the benefits of the trip to the UW, Jeffords said it helped set the stage for future faculty and student exchanges, in fields ranging from Latin American studies to biotechnology.

In addition, she said, it helped many of the delegates gain a firmer connection to the University. Several who made the trip already serve on the Center for Women & Democracy’s board, which Jeffords characterized as among the most active and engaged boards at the University.

Only time will tell what happens to U.S.-Cuban relations. The fact that this delegation was made up of women, Di Stefano said, made it perhaps more approachable and less threatening to the Cuban hosts.

There was one man along on the trip: Cantwell aide Travis Sullivan. At the end of the meeting with Castro, the women visitors were given flowers. Sullivan got a box of cigars.

This is an abbreviated version of an article written by Steve Goldsmith for University Week.

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