Amherst College group sharpens their ideas during a week in Cuba

 By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff

 HAVANA -- All the ingredients for decadence were there: scantily clad beauties, 90-degree
 temperatures, and an endless supply of cheap mojitos, the Cuban rum drink flavored with mint and
 lime. But no impressive tan lines loomed in the future for these nine Amherst College students.
 Instead, their spring break last month featured 8 a.m. wake-up calls, hostel-style bunk beds, and a
 week of meetings with supporters of Cuba's Communist Party.

 As their friends slept off hangovers or soaked in the Caribbean, the Amherst group paid $1,400
 per person to talk in humid conference rooms with Marxist students and economists and leaf
 through books like ''The Truth About the United States.''

 ''You're late,'' Nicholas Wexler, a 21-year-old history major from Newton, was told as he and his
 friends crept in one morning, bleary-eyed after a long night on the town.

 Although the United States broke diplomatic ties with Cuba four decades ago and now bans most
 travel and trade to the country, ''alternative spring breaks'' and educational tours have mushroomed
 here in recent years under Clinton-era travel laws that sought to democratize the socialist island
 through social contact. But late last month Bush administration officials proposed sweeping new
 restrictions on such trips to Cuba.

 ''Tourist travel and open-ended `solidary visits' to Cuba do not reinforce US goals,'' said Charles
 Barclay, a US State Department Spokesman. ''The latest move is to tighten up procedures, so that
 people demonstrate that they are going down there for the kind of `focused people-to-people'
 contact that we want to promote.''

 The move is a setback for Cuba, which is eager to showcase the bright side of the Marxist island to
 idealistic young Americans and build the billion-dollar tourist industry that has been a lifeline since
 the fall of the Soviet Union.

 It is also a blow for US students, who swarmed into Havana by the hundreds in recent weeks on
 separate spring break trips.

 They came from Amherst, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and a host of other US colleges.

 ''It's not about being in 90-degree weather,'' said Nelly Almeida, 18, who regretfully returned to
 Amherst College without a tan. ''I wanted to see for myself what communism was like.''

 It wasn't most people's vision of an ideal vacation: a $100 shopping limit, free time restricted by
 law, more than 14 hours of mandatory discussion and reflection, and toilets that can't flush toilet
 paper. But they worked hard to get there, selling raffle tickets and doughnuts and braving the barbs
 of family and friends who fretted about them turning ''commy.'' Even at Amherst College, where the
 president's wife once spent a brief stint in a Cuban revolutionary brigade, they found themselves
 explaining why they opted to spend their spring break conversing about Castro.

 ''A lot of people at Amherst think this is the most radical group of kids,'' said Wexler. ''A lot of
 people assume it's just liberal brainwashing.''

 The label doesn't apply. Wexler says he is a ''commited skeptic'' about both Cuba and the United
 States. Ashley Bates, a senior majoring in political science, has a fondness for the conservative
 writer Ayn Rand and a deep reverence for theories of capitalism. And Almeida, a sophomore
 originally from Ecuador, wants to run an afterschool program, but after she gets rich.

 All three completed a class on Cuban politics that taught them to be wary of Cuban propaganda.
 All three were enthralled by Cuba when they arrived.

 Bused around on a tight schedule by Witness for Peace, a US-based human rights group that
 opposes the trade and travel embargo on Cuba, the students' schedule was tight: A lecture on the
 sugar-cane sector; a chance to ask a Cuban government official about the recent arrests of
 so-called counterrevolutionaries; a night of mandatory salsa lessons.

 At first, Cuba showed its charms. At the Museum of the Revolution gift shop, photos of Ernesto
 ''Che'' Guevara prompted the sophomores to swoon. Then came a visit to a clinic, with socialized
 health care nicely showcased when one sick member of the delegation received a shot in the
 buttocks, completely free of charge.

 And most impressive of all was the school, where Cuban youngsters sang patriotic songs and
 invited the Amherst group to participate. After a brief huddle to pick an appropriate song, ''The
 Star-Spangled Banner'' was ruled out, and the Americans settled on ''The Hokey-Pokey.''

 ''I thought that was so pathetic,'' Almeida said later. ''They sang this heart-filled song to us, their
 faces were just filled with passion, and all we could sing was `The Hokey-Pokey.' ''

 By the middle of the week -- after three disco nights, two lectures from Protestant pastors, and
 long reflection sessions -- people-to-people contact began to show Cuba's other face.

 At a disco, Travis Bristol, a senior, chatted with an 18-year-old prostitute who told him that
 government rations can't get her family through the month.

 Bates met a Cuban man who was dabbling in illegal self-employment, because he couldn't stand
 having the government looking over his shoulder, telling him how to do his job.

 ''I think it's great that you're trying to make it on your own,'' she told him. His eyes lit up, and the
 two talked for almost an hour.

 It's these kinds of interactions that US government officials had in mind when they loosened
 restrictions on some structured educational travel in 1992 and again in 1999.

 ''Hearing Americans describe how they go about their daily lives is a radical enough idea in this
 society to be of tremendous importance,'' said one American diplomat in Havana.

 But on March 25, the US government sought to eliminate most travel licenses for
 ''people-to-people'' educational exchanges, on which tens of thousands of Americans have traveled
 to Cuba.

 ''There are too many individuals and groups that are going down there for the sake of tourism,''
 Barclay said.

 It is unclear how the new policy will effect Witness for Peace, which operates on a religous license,
 or other groups that hold licenses for humanitarian or for-credit academic travel. What is clear is
 that alternative spring breaks to Cuba will be far harder to take next year, bad news for Marisa
 Parham, the Amherst assistant professor of English who helped organize and chaperon the college
 trip.

 ''We're being used by both sides, when the purpose of the trip is to get you to think and come to
 your own conclusions,'' she said.

 On a Friday afternoon, two days before they flew back to their old life in capitalist America, the
 Amherst students piled into their bus and rode to the US Interest Section, which handles American
 affairs in Havana. Outside, Cubans have erected a statue of a revolutionary hero pointing in disgust.

 The students, bubbling over with anger at the US government, sat down and peppered a State
 Department official with questions about why Cuba had been singled out for an embargo.

 Her answer, ''It's a matter of national security,'' left them looking skeptical.

 But the toilet there, the first they had used all week that flushed paper, left an even deeper
 impression.

 Deep into the night, they discussed the toilet's healthy, American-style flush, as they changed into
 sandals and shorts for an evening in Havana. Then they set off toward the crowds of Cuban
 revelers, searching for people-to-people contact.