Close to Home: My life as a smuggler for Cuban violinists

There have been articles and letters lately in The Press Democrat objecting to lifting the embargo on Cuba. None mentioned music students with bloody fingers. A motley group of people came together to respond to this problem, including David McCarroll, a young violinist who felt sorry for children cutting their fingers when they practiced the violin, Ben Treuhaft, a radical left-wing piano tuner, and myself, a monk/farmer/adoptive mom.

McCarroll grew up in rural Sonoma County and is now a world-traveling professional violinist. Treuhaft routinely defied U.S. travel bans and set up a project called Send a Piana to Havana, which could have landed him in prison for trading with the enemy, but somehow it didn’t.

And me. I’m a quiet olive grower and a member of a small, ecumenical monastic community. However, I have no qualms about ignoring senseless laws that hurt children. And so my amateur smuggling began.

Music is essential to Cuban life and culture. After the U.S. embargo, Cubans could not get proper strings for their instruments so they improvised. In the late ‘90s, McCarroll heard about students unraveling old telephone wire and putting it on their violins and guitars in an attempt to make music. The sounds were less than ideal, but the bigger problem was that they often hurt their fingers trying to practice.

McCarroll began saving his used violin strings and collecting them from friends and teachers.

He asked me to find a way to send them to music schools in Cuba. That seemed a reasonable request, but there was no legal way to mail a package to Cuba until I met Treuhaft.

The son of famed activist Jessica Mitford, Treuhaft had grown up in a household very familiar with civil disobedience.

And as luck would have it, he was on his way to Cuba with an old upright piano. I asked, could we put our strings inside?

No problem.

Soon I was corresponding with faculty at the National Music School in Havana. Besides violin strings, they desperately needed strings for violas, cellos, basses and guitars. Could we possibly help?

I contacted all sorts of musicians for contributions. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra came through. So did some music stores and string manufacturers. The project snowballed.

We packed several pianos full of strings and sent them off. The music students were delighted. Their instruments sounded beautiful again, and their fingers felt fine.

Eventually, Treuhaft moved on to other things, and I had to come up with other means of transporting strings to Cuba. I found a social worker going on a cultural exchange program, who was willing to cram strings in her socks. An art teacher who played Latin music on the side packed his guitar case full of strings.

As the Cuban government tightened its rules limiting what could be brought into the country, our operation got more complicated.

Here in Sonoma County, a young helper, now in the Peace Corps, sorted strings into small packets for a group of missionaries from Minnesota to carry discreetly.

Often, the director of the National Music School would rendezvous with our couriers outside the Havana airport. He’d drive up on a moped, his wife sitting behind. She’d reach out for the package of strings, and off they’d ride in true 007 style.

What will the thaw in relations mean for our strings project?

It’s too early to tell. Cuban music students continue to need strings.

Will it eventually be legal to mail them? Certainly that would be simpler. But when that happens, frankly I will miss the challenges and drama of smuggling and the amazing cast of characters I’ve met.

Sister Julie DeRossi is a member of the Starcross Monastic Community in Annapolis and is CEO of Starcross Kin Worldwide offering support for AIDS orphans in Uganda.