Chernobyl children in Cuba.

• Author: Tehrani, Alex
• Position: Radiation victims are treated

Tarara, Cuba

This beach-front town twenty kilometers east of downtown Havana was once a resort area for the wealthy. After the Cuban revolution, it became a recreational summer camp for Cuban children. In the past four years, the ethnic makeup of Tarara has become heavily Ukrainian, as Soviet children arrive by the thousands to receive treatment for illnesses related to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

The idea of this solidarity project is to provide the young victims of Chernobyl not only with medical assistance but also with a playful, stress-free atmosphere that encourages rehabilitation. The result is a peculiar scene: blond-haired, blue-eyed youngsters with various radiation-related illnesses running and laughing in the surf of the Caribbean island. They arrive on Air Ukraine wearing long jackets, ski hats, and boots, and anxiously begin adapting to their new surroundings, trading warm clothes for bathing suits and taking on a tanned, relaxed appearance.

In 1990, in response to an international plea for assistance for the victims of Chernobyl, two countries immediately stepped forward. Israel committed to taking in fifty Jewish victims, and Cuba offered to host an initial 10,000 children, and as many as 50,000 by the year 2000. The only cost the Cuban government would not cover was the air fare. News of the gesture confused analysts. Cuba was already suffering shortages of food, electricity, oil, and paper. Many wondered how the government could justify offering aid on such a grand scale to another country--particularly the Soviet Union, which was in the process of cutting back financial and material aid to Cuba from 85 per cent of everything the island nation received from the outside to next to nothing. The project is partly a show of solidarity toward Cuba's former benefactors, and partly a shrewd political calculation inlcuding the expectation that the gesture might be returned.

The Soviets have not been bashful about creating homes for themselves at Tarara, decorating their airy, high-ceilinged beach houses with posters from their towns and appropriating the food Cuba provides to cook tasty yogurt desserts and blintzes.

Tarara itself is an impressive town. It is eleven square kilometers, complete with two kilometers of beach and 521 homes, a cultural center with a movie theater, two enormous playing fields, an amusement park, and a small zoo. There is a central hospital with 350 beds, and several smaller treatment centers and...