By GAIL KOCH

MUNCIE - Stepping foot into Cuba was a bit like stepping back in time for Taylor University professor Jim Coe.

"It was weird to get used to the cars Cubans drove," Coe said, referring to the pristine, '50s-style American and Russian cars that shuttled him and his wife to and from places on their recent trip to the country's capital of Havana.

"You felt old, like you were in a Jimmy Dean movie from the '50s or something," he said, noting many of the cars were in perfect condition courtesy of Cuba's lack of cruel winter weather.

Those vintage cars, Coe said, were extensions of what he considered to be the communist country's "classic Caribbean culture."

"I think Cubans like those '50s lines - the chrome on the car, the extended fins," he said. "To me, that really is what Cuba is all about. It's a country that lives somewhat in the past but its culture is very energetic, lively and upbeat. "

Coe, Taylor's associate dean and business department chair, was in Havana this month for an international conference attended by educators from as far away as Australia, Singapore and the Ukraine. He was invited to the conference, sponsored by the Learning Conference International Committee, to present a paper on the role of curiosity in the learning and discovery process.

Because his wife, Linda, is also an educator - she teaches English at Blackford High School - she was able to attend the conference with her husband.

The U.S. government permits only a small group of Americans - a group that includes journalists, government officials, athletes and educators - into the country every year. All other American citizens are restricted from traveling to Cuba because of U.S. sanctions that seek to deny the Cuban government income generated from tourist trips into the country.

According to the Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, an American caught visiting Cuba illegally can be fined up to $7,500 for a trip to the country and more if caught again.

'So much control'

Coe said he knew the process he and his wife would have to go through to get travel permits would be a tedious one, but concedes "there was an awful lot of red tape."

Upon entering the country, Coe was also surprised to find $200 had been stolen from him en route to Cuba from a backpack he had checked at the airport.

"I had it tucked away, but because you're told to bring a lot of ones and fives [dollar bills] with you, which they use a lot of there, I guess someone found it," he said.

Once in Cuba, Coe said he and his wife had an idea of the role communism would play in the country. Both have made numerous trips over the years to Russia because of Coe's position as director of the master of business administration program between Taylor and Nizhni-Novgorod University in Russia.

But Linda said she was still shocked at the level of security found on every Havana street corner.

"There is so much control," she said. "A soldier or policeman every 100 yards, no matter where you go. With informants and cameras everywhere, the native citizens have very few personal freedoms."

The Cubans Coe talked with told him they feel disillusioned by the former Soviet Russia, as if they have been "left high and dry in the big communist Cuban experiment."

They also fear what will happen when communist ruler Fidel Castro dies, Coe said.

"There's a real fear that the Mafia movement in Miami will come and take over the island," he said. "They're more afraid of that then Castro dying, I think."

'Felt like an outsider'

Coe was also struck at the level of the poverty in the country and its lack of a middle class.

"I would say 98 percent of the population is extremely poor and the two percent or so that is rich is incredibly, incredibly rich," he said, speaking of the lush European resorts and communities that could be found in certain parts of the city.

Though he said he definitely "felt like an outsider" in Cuba because of an anti-American vibe he picked up from the natives, Coe was able to make several Cuban friends during the visit.

One of the men he met, a fellow educator working on his Ph.D., Coe still maintains contact with via e-mail. Upon leaving Cuba, he said he and his wife gave the man everything they had in their suitcase save a change of clothes.

"He was so thrilled he was crying," Cole said of his friend. "He knew there were things we were giving him, like my suit jacket, that he would have never been able to afford otherwise."

Contact news reporter Gail Koch at 213-5827.