In Vol. 28 No. 2, June 2000, Kathryn Holt, Joel Bennett, and Catherine Merrill wrote about ceramics and art in Cuba (pages 96-101). In her article, "Art in Cuba - Then and Now," Holt writes, 

In 1965, yearning for adventure, I joined a trip being organized from New York City to Havana, protesting the ban on travel to Cuba. Eighty-five "Heroic Students and Artists," as we came to be known in Cuba, flew on El Al Airlines to Paris, where we walked down long corridors and through a forbidden doorway to board a plane for Czechoslovakia. Retracing our route over New York, we landed thirty hours later at Jose Marti Airport, where crowds of cheering, uniformed youth bearing flowers greeted us. For the next two months we were guests of the Cuban government, visit­ing every place of interest from Havana to Santiago.