A Recap of the trip from IFCO Board member and delegation organizer, Dr. Rosemari Mealy:
23 intergenerational women of color: Black, Dominican, Haitian, Indigenous, Palestinian, LGBTQ+ women from New York, California, New Jersey, North Carolina, Atlanta and Boston–with the exception of two of our brothers who went along, an African American and Puerto Rican activist brother, joined a special interest IFCO delegation in July 2024.
The delegation comported with the legal travel restrictions of the United States Government blockade against Cuba that are based on categories of who can travel as US citizens to the country. We traveled under the “support for the Cuban people” category.
We went on what we like to call the journey, which was for 10 days, from July 20 to the 30th and our first main event for participation in the third international colloquium of Afro descendant women. The three-day colloquium, was organized by Cuba’s Afro descendants, or Afro feministas, and it was hosted by the philosophy department at the University of Havana. Clearly, this was a very important introduction for the delegation, because we were able to participate in some very scholarly sessions, and we gained some very practical knowledge from Cuban scholars and activists who explained for us, not just from a theoretical point of view, how Cuban people under this 60 year old embargo are tackling questions, some of the practical questions relative to the historic presence of Afro descendants in Cuba and we heard testimonies. There were discussions confined both within the struggles against colonialism, Neo colonialism and imperialism.
We visited community centers where we able to speak and exchange ideas with Cubans from all walks of life, on their thinking and their ways of organizing and creating new communities to sustain themselves in a wholesome way economically, again, all within the realities of the embargo. We also participated in some of the vibrant art and cultural expressions, and we were met with such warm hospitality everywhere that we went. We participated in vibrant exchanges, despite the heat and a full program, we walked the cobblestone streets of Trinidad. We were guests of the president Diaz Canel at Sancti Spiritus. On July 26, we participated in a national holiday celebration marking the 71st anniversary of the rebel assault led by Fidel Castro on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes garrisons in 1953. And in Havana, we met with popular educators and activists at the Martin Luther King Center. We also laid a memorial flowers in the only park of its kind in the world, with a bust on each side displaying images of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. We visited Cuba’s literacy Museum, and had a lot of free time walking in communities and talking to people.
Our journey culminated with attending the graduation dinner of five of the US students who graduated from the ELAM medical school program where they received a full six year scholarship and are returning to the United States with no debt.
IFCO always reiterates to our delegates that you travel to Cuba to see for yourselves the reality, and when you return, all that we ask, and the Cubans ask as well, is just to tell the truth about your experiences. We always do an evaluation of the delegation, and for almost 99% of this group, respondents are offering that in many ways, it was a life changing experience, and they want to return in one way or the other.
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 
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