We recently returned home from a 5-day follow-up trade mission to Cuba, nearly 18 months after we first set the trade wheels in motion in April of 2004. This time, I went to Havana to see 74 Vermont dairy heifers arrive in Cuba, to help build a foundation herd for the island nation.

Arriving on Friday, August 5, we met with James Cason, who as Chief of the US Interests Section in Havana is the highest-ranking US diplomat in Cuba. I asked for his help in arranging a meeting with noted pro-democracy Cuban dissident and former political prisoner, Vladimir Roca, whom I first met on our April 2004 mission. During that meeting, I asked Roca if Vermont should trade with Cuba. He answered, “I believe in democracy. If the people of Vermont think you should trade, so do I.” Vermonters continue to express strong support for the legal export of food and medical supplies to Cuba.

At Roca’s home on Sunday evening, the 62 year-old former government economist and Russian MiG fighter pilot briefed us on current political and living conditions in Cuba. I told Roca about a toast I had made on our previous trip.
“I was seated at a banquet between Cuba National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon and Central Bank President Francisco Soberon,” I told Roca. “At one point, Ricardo sat back and said to me, ‘So Brian, why have you come to visit Cuba?’ He and Francisco both leaned forward as I answered:

“In February of 1996, Cuban air force fighters shot down two US civilian aircraft flown by Brothers to the Rescue” (the Cuban Americans who conduct search and rescue missions for Cuban refugees adrift at sea between Florida and Cuba). “I was an F-16 pilot with the Vermont Air National Guard at that time.” The former MiG pilot was listening intently.

“I told Francisco and Ricardo how, minutes after those planes were shot down in 1996, I received orders to get into my F-16, loaded with live missiles, and be ready at a moment’s notice to take off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. I sat in that jet for most of that long night. ‘I was never given orders to launch that night,’ I told Francisco and Ricardo. ‘But I vowed then and there that if I ever did have a chance to go to Cuba, I would. Now, eight years later, I’m the Lieutenant Governor of my state, and I am glad to be here.’”

Vladimir laughed, and I went on, “Francisco the banker looked at me closely, and smiled. Then he spoke. ‘In October 1962, I was a young Cuban anti-aircraft gunner during the missile crisis with your country. Every night, I would pray for a chance to shoot down an American fighter aircraft.’ We both smiled.”

“At that moment,” I told Vladimir, “a chorus of Cuban children was singing on the stage where the evening’s entertainment was taking place. I turned to Francisco and proposed a toast that we both work together to make a better world, and a better life for the children of Cuba and the children of my country.”

I asked Vladimir what we could do that would be helpful to the Cuban people. Roca encouraged me to work for youth exchange, farmer exchange, student and teacher exchange, sports exchange -- he said that any kind of people-to-people exchange between Vermont and Cuba would be beneficial for Cuba.

Meeting with Cuban Minister of International Trade Raul de la Nuez Ramirez on Tuesday morning, the minister was supportive when I suggested exchange programs to him. Later that day, we also received support for the idea from Pedro Alvarez, Chairman of the government-run import firm, Alimport.

Now it’s up to me to work on my end, to enlist support in Washington for the exchanges. We each do what we can do. There are significant challenges to overcome. But I am hopeful about working to help people in opposite corners find a piece of common ground in the middle.

I told Vladimir what Cuban Roman Catholic Cardinal Ortega told me when we met with him in 2004. I told the Cardinal how I’d heard the words of Isaiah 50 in church the previous Sunday: “Lord, grant me a learned tongue that I may speak to the weary.” I asked him, “How do you speak to the weary?” He told me “Between the two poles -- on one side, the energy around the U.S. embargo, on the other, the energy around human rights problems in Cuba -- I try to steer a path down the middle, guided by love.” Vladimir smiled in agreement.

On the afternoon of our arrival in Havana, I visited with Cardinal Ortega again, receiving his blessing, and carrying greetings from Burlington’s new Bishop Salvatore Matano, with whom I had just met the day before.

On Tuesday, we saw a group of Vermont dairy heifers in a pasture at Nina Bonita Ranch, just outside of Havana. The heifers were in excellent condition, and comfortable in their new surroundings. Vermont farmers can be proud to know that their generations of careful herdsmanship will make a big difference for generations of Cuban people. The Cuban ranchers prize the high genetic quality of the Vermont herd.

Their milk will be processed and distributed throughout Cuba as liquid milk, cheese, butter, yogurt and ice cream. But these cows will primarily serve as breeding stock, to rebuild the Cuban dairy herd, which was decimated in the early 1990s. The Jersey heifer named Debbie, a gift from students at the Putney School in Putney, Vermont, was among the cows we saw on Tuesday.

On Monday, we visited a breeding ranch in Pinar del Rio province, where the Cuban cowboys tend their herds on horseback. On the white wall of the milking parlor was a cartoon drawing of a cow. In Spanish, she was saying “If you like me, you must take care of me.” I said to the ranch hands, “We know you will take care of Vermont’s cows. I look forward to telling the farmers of Vermont that their cows are in good hands.”

I told them, “Debbie the Cow, a gift from students in Vermont to the children of Cuba, will live through years of change here in her new country and in my country as well. Debbie will also produce a lot of milk for Cubans in her lifetime, and many strong offspring. The children in Cuba who will drink that milk, and the children in Putney, Vermont who sent Debbie to Cuba look to all of us to make this world a better place.”