Area man builds playgrounds in impoverished Cuba

BY DAVID GRAHAM Staff Writer for the San Diego Union Tribune
October 03, 2005

A Del Mar Heights businessman has led a group of 49 Americans to Havana where they erected modern playground equipment last week in the city that is forbidden to most Americans.

It was the second round of playground projects that Bill Hauf has undertaken in Cuba through the nonprofit charity he founded, It's Just the Kids. The American volunteers built four playgrounds that include multicolored metal and plastic slides, swings, bars and tunnels. In 2003, he led a group that built three playgrounds.

"The objective is simply to provide equipment to kids so they can enjoy themselves," Hauf said.

The project comes at a time of diminishing contacts between Americans and Cubans as the Bush administration seeks to increase financial and economic pressure on Fidel Castro's government, which has been subject to a U.S. trade embargo for 42 years, almost its entire existence.

The embargo prohibits most Americans from traveling to Cuba, but the U.S. Treasury Department authorized the group's trip as a humanitarian effort, one of the few types of visits that are legal. The department considers giving travel licenses for humanitarian projects designed to benefit Cuban citizens directly and not the Castro government, Treasury spokesman Taylor Griffin said.

The Clinton administration had encouraged and approved more educational and cultural trips by Americans as a way to increase contacts and promote democratic ideas on the communist island. The Bush administration has scrutinized travel requests more closely to try to limit the flow of money to Cuba in hopes of ending Castro's rule of 46 years. Even visits by Cuban-Americans to see relatives have been restricted to one trip every three years.

Hauf said the Cuban government welcomed the playground project.

Hauf, a real estate investor, said he steers clear of the political machinations, declining even to offer a critique of the contentious relationship between the neighboring nations. He said his purpose is helping children by providing new playground equipment at parks where it may be old and battered, if there is any at all.

The group of Americans from across the country, including four San Diegans, left Sept. 24 from Miami for Havana and went to work that day building a playground. The equipment had been shipped there in advance. Daily, they worked from morning to late afternoon assembling the equipment and cementing it into the ground. They returned Saturday to Miami.

Each volunteer was asked to contribute $1,600, usually garnered through fundraising, to help defray costs of the flights, lodging and ground transportation. Hauf, through his foundation, paid for the bulk of the $200,000 project.

He said he considers it money well spent. Cuba came to his attention several years ago through some Cuban-American friends, he said, and he gained more knowledge about the island and its people.

Hauf sponsored the second round of playgrounds, he said, "because Havana is quite a large community." He said he is considering more sites for next year, including one in the Habana Vieja, or the old section of Havana, which is filled with beautiful, ornate, but sometimes decaying buildings and houses dating to the 19th century.

Leaders in Havana offered some assistance from city workers and provided lunches and some materials, such as concrete.

Though Hauf avoids the politics, he does acknowledge that the trips can build personal relationships among people from the two countries as they mingle in what he called "people-to-people diplomacy."

"The results are pretty significant in terms of the tremendous amount of friendships formed by Americans and Cubans working side by side," Hauf said.

Many come to realize they share common values, too, he said, in a love of family, hard work and sense of responsibility toward their children.

Hauf said the volunteers were astonished at a meeting to commemorate a playground in the Cotorro neighborhood. The mayor played the Cuban national anthem from a cassette recording over creaky speakers, then played the American national anthem. That brought tears to the eyes of several volunteers who never thought they would hear "The Star-Spangled Banner" played in their honor in Cuba.