Students from over 20 colleges and universities met at Harvard this weekend to encourage communication between Cuban expatriates and the dissident community within the island.

The student-run conference, entitled “Raíces de Esperanza,” or “Roots of Hope,” was jointly organized by the Harvard University Cuban American Undergraduate Association and the Georgetown University Cuban-American Students Association. Around 100 students joined academics and activists in attendance.

The event opened with a teleconference featuring two dissidents opposed to the government of Fidel Castro who are currently living in Cuba: Vladimiro Roca and Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas. Both spoke of the need for Cubans to work with expatriates to plan for the island’s post-Castro future.

“We have to stop thinking about it as two communities, but as one community that has been long divided, but now needs to unite,” Roca said.

Others speakers at the conference encouraged the students to build solidarity with the island nation by visiting Cuba, interacting with Cuban students and bringing their parents to the island, as well.

These speeches marked a departure from what has historically been the mainstream stance taken by Cuban-Americans, said Carlos E. Diaz, a second year Ph.D student at Graduate School of Arts and Sciences who attended the conference.

“It used to be that the great majority of Cuban-Americans were adamantly against visiting Cuba, mainly for idelogical reasons, whereas now there are more Cuban-Americans who advocate actively engaging the Cubans on the island on more pragmatic grounds,” he said.

Diaz noted that the speakers were not supporting Castro’s regime, but merely trying to “bring democracy to the island.”

Despite the speakers’ call to visit Cuba, the conference’s delegates did not vote to endorse a resolution calling for the exiled community to return to the island. The majority of delegates felt the conference had convened to bring awareness to the issue and not to take a policy stance.

Those who attended this weekend’s conference said they agreed that greater efforts need to be made to rebuild Cuban-Americans’ connection to their roots, even if the process will be painful.

Helen Jimenez, a second-year law student at American University, said she was pleased with the speakers’ call to return to Cuba.

“By going back, we can arm ourselves with the facts, we can show the rest of the world the conditions in Cuba and that’s what Castro fears most,” she said.

But when asked whether or not she would visit Cuba, Jimenez, who said her father was tortured by the Castro regime following the Bay of Pigs in 1961, said she was uncertain.

“I won’t go back without my father’s blessing, out of respect for what he went through,” she said. “But I really need to talk him into going.”

But Cristina M. Mendoza, a first-year graduate student at Tufts University, said she was disillusioned by her visit to Cuba. She said her access to native Cubans was limited and that she was shocked by the way the island’s residents were treated by the government in tourist destinations.