Likened to Marriage : Sister Cities Boost Global Family Ties

Mayor Sam Caruso of Slidell, La., population 30,000, was expecting a nice little greeting, and maybe a key to the city, when he arrived at Slidell’s sister city of Panama City for his initial visit last year.

Instead, he and Councilwoman Pearl Williams got off the plane in Panama to find a red carpet, extravagant receptions and political pandemonium. The country’s chief of defense, Gen. Manuel Noriega, was being accused of drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and political assassinations. Yet, in the midst of the turmoil, municipal officials managed to welcome the visiting dignitaries.

“We were greeted as if we were heads of state,” Caruso said.

Councilwoman Williams nudged him as they walked down the red carpet.

“What do you want, Pearl?” he asked.

“Mayor,” she said quietly, “we’re going to have to rent New Orleans if they come to Slidell for our centennial next year.”

Treated Like Head of State

Throughout his visit, Caruso said, politicos kept taking him aside to explain their factions’ positions as if he were himself a head of state. Caruso, who has never had to cope with even one political assassination in Slidell, simply listened and passed the messages on to his congressman.

Such are the travails of modern-day sister cityhood, which often goes far beyond the cultural exchanges of students, choirs and pandas commonly associated with the program.

Launched 31 years ago by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Sister Cities International was nothing less than a bid by a general to take citizens busy building bomb shelters and turn them into personal emissaries of peace.

“Leap governments . . . evade governments if necessary,” to pursue peace, Ike told Americans when he set up his “People-to-People” programs in 1956.

Municipal Links

The best-known vestiges of that initiative are the municipal links overseen by Sister Cities International, based in a Washington suburb, which has brought together 800 U.S. cities with 1,200 foreign cities in 88 countries. Los Angeles, with 15 official sister cities from Athens to Auckland, leads the pack.

The program provides a small window on the world for Americans, who are geographically isolated and traditionally loathe to learn foreign languages. Thousands of students, many from small towns, have traveled abroad to sister cities in places they might otherwise have never seen.

Today, more American cities than ever before are wooing foreign mates in arrangements that enthusiasts often liken to marriages, despite the “sister” city label.

Many are heeding Eisenhower’s words and leaping governments in the process. Some, ironically, are even leaping the quasi-official Sister Cities International.

In recent years, for example, dozens of cities have created their own sororal links with Nicaraguan towns in spite of--and in some cases because of--the fact that the Reagan Administration is financing rebel armies intent upon toppling its leftist government. A thousand U.S. cities and towns have unilaterally offered sisterhood to Soviet cities.

Five U.S. cities working through a Bay-Area group called New El Salvador Today have linked up with Salvadoran hamlets in war zones in an 8-year-old civil war between leftist guerrillas and the U.S.-backed government. In some cases, the sister towns don’t even exist any more and the goal of the relationship for the American city is to help repopulate them.

Other cities are declaring sisterhood for economic reasons Eisenhower may not have foreseen.

In July, for example, Pittsburg, Calif., and Pohang, Korea, linked up because Pohang Iron & Steel Co. is a partner in a steel plant in Pittsburg. During the official Sister City inauguration ceremony in the Bay-Area city, however, the Koreans were booed by hundreds of striking steel workers outraged by a non-union contract at the plant.

‘Lot of Trends’

“A lot of trends are occurring here at once,” said Michael Shuman, president of the Center for Innovative Diplomacy, a rapidly growing Berkeley- and Irvine-based nonprofit organization that encourages cities to become involved in international issues.

“Cities are increasingly influenced by international affairs. No city can escape, say, Japanese economic policies, or Russian Chernobyls. The cost of international travel and communication has declined. At the same time, many people are dissatisfied with federal policies, so municipal governments empower themselves to act,” he said.

But politicization of sister cities programs remains the exception. And, even in those cities where programs have been established for political reasons, the programs themselves almost always involve strictly cultural, medical and trade exchanges in the tradition of Sister Cities International.

‘They Have Caused Confusion’

“We are aware of the other efforts and we are not necessarily opposed to them, but they have caused confusion for us,” said Thomas W. Gittens, executive vice president of Sister Cities International. “We are apolitical and we are determined to remain apolitical.”

Sister Cities International has a full-time, paid staff of 10, but thousands of volunteers, including Ethelda Singer, who has been active in the organization for nearly 30 years and whose title is vice president of the West Coast office. She estimates that she has arranged two dozen municipal marriages and witnessed hundreds of others.

One of her proudest accomplishments is the 1986 liaison between Cannes, France, and Beverly Hills. Cannes had asked for a sister city and, Singer said, it seemed appropriate to link the French Riviera town known for its beautiful people and its film festival with Beverly Hills, known for its beautiful people and resident film stars.

The liaison was not immediately welcomed in Beverly Hills.

Councilman Objected

One city councilman objected to the idea because France had just denied American jets use of its airspace on their way to bomb Libya. Then-Mayor Ed Brown noted that he had once found himself in the embarrassing position of hosting the Mayor of Acapulco without having been aware that Acapulco was a sister city. The sister city program, he said, probably belonged in the hands of the Chamber of Commerce.

As often happens, however, the times and the council changed. Last year, Beverly Hills and Cannes officially wed. A new mayor and a few council members traveled to Cannes last May, and an 80-member delegation is arriving here from Cannes next month.

Rodeo Drive merchants are to meet with their counterparts in Cannes. Symphonies are exchanging conductors. Students are meeting each other.

Not Always Easy

Sister Cities International tries to match up cities of similar size and cultural and industrial backgrounds, but it is not always easy. Gittens said he is having trouble finding a mate for Timbuktu, Mali. (Know anyone interested in an ancient African cultural and trade center? he asked an interviewer.)

Some cities match up for no other reason than their names: Toledo, Ohio, and Toledo, Spain, for example. Others link because immigrants in U.S. cities want to keep in touch with their homelands.

The sister city of Inglewood (population 100,000, many of them black) is the village of Pedavena, Italy (population 2,500, none of them black). The explanation: Inglewood Councilman Anthony Scardenzan immigrated from Pedavena 24 years ago.

Scardenzan came close to losing his pet program in March, however, when he reportedly commented at a City Council meeting that four black high school students he had taken with him on an exchange to Italy had “lived up to the standards of Italians.”

Controversial Comment

The intended compliment was considered racist by Mayor Edward Vincent, who is black, and he suggested reorganizing the sister city program. Scardenzan, in turn, accused the mayor of misconstruing his comment because he opposed a ballot measure that would have quadrupled the mayor’s salary. Pedavena remains a sister city.

Los Angeles nearly put its marriages with Guangzhou (Canton), in mainland China, and Taipei, Taiwan, on the rocks in 1980 during the city’s ill-fated “Two-China Policy” that featured the raising of Taiwan’s flag shortly after Washington officially recognized the People’s Republic of China.

But once established, sister city programs generally go on for years without major incidents, officials say.

Everyone involved can give you a heartwarming anecdote about the friendship he or she struck up with a foreigner who would otherwise have remained a stranger. Los Angeles City Councilman Bob Farrell, chairman of Los Angeles’ Sister Cities Committee, for example, will tell you about emotion-filled meetings between Israelis from the Eilat, Israel, sister city program, and Arabs from the Giza, Egypt, program.

Newest Sister City

Los Angeles’ sister city relationship with Eilat is one of its oldest, approved by the City Council in 1959. Giza is Los Angeles’ newest sister city.

“Cairo and Alexandria were taken,” Farrell said. “But Giza (the Cairo suburb where the Great Pyramid and Sphinx are located) represents the spirit of Egypt, and we are interested in increased trade between Los Angeles and Egypt. . . . And we wanted to carry forth an element of contemporary American policy here in Los Angeles: the Camp David Accords.”

Though policies vary, most city councils, including Los Angeles’, spend little taxpayer money on the exchanges. Expenses are underwritten generally by community fund-raisers, private and business donations and local governments in foreign countries where sister city programs are often taken far more seriously than in the United States.

Spent More Than $1 Million

Bee Canterbury Lavery, Mayor Tom Bradley’s chief of protocol, said that Berlin has spent more than $1 million on its sister city relationship with Los Angeles. When Bradley flew to Berlin on its 750th anniversary in April, the Los Angeles City Council budgeted an unusual $60,000 for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and a band to make the trip.

There have been occasional partings of the ways between sister cities. In 1979, Los Angeles unilaterally suspended its relationship with Tehran during the Iranian hostage crisis and didn’t bother to inform its sister City Council.

But Ethelda Singer, the municipal matchmaker, won’t call them divorces, “only trial separations.”

The most serious sister city disputes in recent years have broken out not between countries, but between Americans with differing views on the propriety of wooing certain foreign brides, particularly those in the Soviet Union and other leftist countries.

Began Crusade in ’82

Steven Kalishman, executive director of a nationwide group called Citizen Diplomacy Inc., began his crusade for sister cities in 1982.

His reasons were, at first, personal. A merchant seaman, he had met and married a Russian woman named Natasha from the port of Novorossiisk in 1976. In 1982, he and his wife were planning to visit her family and Kalishman convinced the Gainesville, Fla., City Commission to let him offer sister cityhood to Novorossiisk.

Kalishman called Sister Cities International for help, only to told that there were exactly five official pairings with the Soviet Union, all of which had been arranged during a 1973 summit. Only one, Seattle-Tashkent, had survived the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Olympic boycott and grain embargoes.

He and his wife met with the deputy mayor of Novorossiisk and were told a few days later that the community had received permission from Moscow to try a sister city relationship. Strictly nonpolitical, the relationship has flourished on cultural exchanges.

‘An Educational Project’

In 1983, a Portland, Ore., professor named Earl Molander started the Ground Zero Pairing Project.

“It was an educational project, an anti-nuclear war project but not an anti-nuclear project,” Molander said.

“I went to Sister Cities International and was told the (Soviet exchange) field was all (mine), that they’d given up on it,” he said. “The centerpiece was to be a pairing of U.S. and Soviet cities that would give each other an idea of how alike they were in everyday life.”

The campaign, called “Make the First Strike a Knock on the Door,” paired up more than 1,000 U.S. cities with Soviet cities--unilaterally. In 1984 alone, more than 800 Soviet cities received unsolicited letters of sisterhood (or brotherhood, as the programs are called in Russian) from Americans.

Closed to Foreigners

Molander admitted that problems ensued. Many of the Soviet cities whose names he gave to City Councils here are closed to foreigners. Some of them are considered key intelligence sites by the CIA. In short, he said, the Soviets grew highly suspicious of his motives.

He also nearly started a war between Williamstown and Amherst, Mass., when he inadvertently paired the two college towns, century-old football rivals, with the same Soviet community.

In the end, only 70 American cities even got a written response, and Molander wound up with an undeserved reputation in some circles, he said, as a CIA agent.

“I have friends who really think we have cracked the barriers and that sociologists and bird watchers will exchange visits and peace will come crashing down,” Molander said. “I guess I’m more pessimistic. It didn’t work out the way we hoped.”

National Conferences

Though Molander’s program collapsed, Kalishman’s Citizen Diplomacy Inc. grew to hold two national conferences and is now working closely with Sister Cities International.

The program was given a dramatic shot in the arm in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan signed a cultural exchange agreement with the Soviet Union that, among other things, set up Sister Cities International as the official maker of matches between Soviet and American cities. According to the agreement, an official U.S.S.R.-U.S. Sister Cities Conference will be held in Moscow in 1988.

Gittens of Sister Cities International said there are now 14 established sister city pairings and 10 on the way. An additional 29, he said, are in initial stages of development.

But the increase in activity hasn’t meant an end to controversy.

Sensitivity of Groups

Throughout the United States, such pairings have been proposed and rejected because of sensitivity of some anti-Communists, ethnic groups and Jewish organizations, which condemn the Soviet Union’s human rights record.

There is disagreement in the Jewish community over the issue. Singer, for example, is Jewish, has traveled to the Soviet Union and would love to see more Soviet sister cities.

“But I don’t bring up Jewish dissidents or any religion,” she said. “That’s not to say I think it is inappropriate to voice concerns about . . . I’ll call them ‘tensions.’ But this is essentially a nonpolitical program.”

One recent debate took place in the Long Beach City Council, where Councilman Edd Tuttle had proposed sister cityhood with Sochi in the Soviet Union. The move was supported by the Jewish Community Federation of Greater Long Beach and West Orange County as long as the city’s official resolution stipulated that certain issues, including human and religious rights, be high on the sister city agenda.

Would Kill Proposal

Since then, Tuttle said, he has learned that any such proviso in the resolution would kill the proposal with the Soviets and is generally considered inappropriate in relationships authorized by Sister Cities International. He said he will make a point of raising the issue in exchanges with Soviets, however.

Citizen committees in some cities have been trying for several years to set up programs with Soviet cities only to have the proposals rejected by their mayors.

A Cleveland World War II veteran named Dr. Donald W. Cole went to a 40th-anniversary celebration in Volgagrad last year that led to an unofficial “partner city” relationship between citizens of the two towns. Cole was authorized by the Cleveland City Council to set up the program, but Mayor George V. Voinovich has not signed the accord because of opposition from the city’s many Russian Jews as well as Slavic, Ukrainian and other immigrants. The mayor himself has relatives in Yugoslavia.

‘Very Important Issue’

“This is a very important issue here,” said Claire Rosacco, the mayor’s press secretary. “We commemorate ‘Captive Nations Day’ every year. Many people here have relatives living under the heel of the Soviet Union.”

The fastest-growing ties are between American and Nicaraguan cities.

Zelmira Garcia, a consular officer at the Nicaraguan Embassy, said there are now 57 pairs of U.S.-Nicaragua sister cities, and another 20 U.S. cities that have requested pairings. Many have donated technical and humanitarian aid ranging from bandages to fire engines. When Ann Arbor, Mich., inquired how it could help its sister city, Juigalpa, it was asked for--and then sent--a garbage truck.

“The sister cities are trying to show their support of the Nicaraguan people, that they don’t necessarily agree with the (U.S.) government policy,” Garcia said.

“But it’s not political, just people-to-people. The problems between Nicaragua and the United States are not between their peoples, but their governments.”

Opposed to U.S. Policy

Many of the pairings were initiated by community groups opposed to U.S. policy in the region. However, most city councils that approved the ties have done so on the condition that they remain apolitical.

Seattle’s long-standing programs with Soviet and Chinese sister cities have raised only a fraction of the controversy that has been brought about by its more recent affiliation with Managua, Nicaragua.

“I guess it’s still amazing to me that we have acceptable Communist countries and unacceptable ones,” said Norman Rice, who was president of the City Council when the tie with Managua was set up in 1985.

Managua was proposed by officials at El Centro de la Raza, a 15-year-old Latino cultural-political center in Seattle.

“We saw the struggle of the Nicaraguan people alongside our own struggle,” said Roberto Maestas, a former director of El Centro who now heads the sister city committee.

‘Relationship With Exiles’

“We organized a benefit for Nicaragua after their earthquake in 1972. We formed a relationship with exiles here and invited the resistance to Seattle during the revolution. Then, after the revolution, we started taking delegations down to Nicaragua. Finally by 1984 we thought we had enough diversity of people--black, Indian, Asian, white, rich, poor--to propose a formal sister city relationship.”

The proposal was approved unanimously. Last year, however, a County Court clerk who supports the Nicaraguan contras led an initiative that, among other things, ordered the sister city committee to be apolitical. The measure was supported by 55% of the voters.

“It’s very pro-Sandinista,” the clerk, Mitch Hughes, said of the local sister city program. “I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think most Americans think it’s right. That’s why it won.”

Rekindled by Revolution

Sister Cities International has established no new sister city ties with Nicaragua since revolution toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979, Gittens said. It had established more than a dozen under the old regime, some of which have now lapsed. Others have been rekindled by the revolution.

Gittens denied that politics play a role in Sister Cities International’s own match-making. But because the President of the United States is the honorary chairman of the organization and about one-quarter of its funding comes from the U.S. government, it is seen by some as a quasi-official body that generally reflects Administration policy.

Although Sister Cities International has had no contact with the Nicaraguan government, Gittens said, he did travel to Central America two years ago to stimulate sister city projects with Nicaragua’s two neighbors, Honduras and Costa Rica. Honduras is the principal base for the U.S.-backed rebels.

Revived Relationship

In Honduras, he said, he helped revive a moribund relationship between the capital city of Tegucigalpa and Gainesville, Fla., and arranged for two Honduran tailors in a labor cooperative to visit their sister city on a small grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Shortly afterward, he said, he traveled to Gainesville at the request of sister city officials there. Then-Mayor Jean Chalmers said in an interview that she and others welcomed the visit, but had not requested it.

Some citizen volunteers saw political overtones in the visit.

“It was curious to some of us who had been around Sister Cities for a while,” said Kalishman, the man who set up the Novorossiisk program for Gainesville.

“All of a sudden Sister Cities International was sending in its V.P. to revive us. He called a big meeting and brought in city fathers, publishers, community leaders, and other prominent citizens. . . . I was happy to see it (Gittens’ visit), but I figured the Reagan Administration thought it was important.”

LOS ANGELES’ SISTER CITIES: 1. Vancouver, Canada 2. Mexico City, Mexico 3. Salvador, Brazil 4. Bordeaux, France 5. West Berlin, Germany 6. Athens, Greece 7. Giza, Egypt 8. Lusaka, Zambia 9. Eilat, Israel 10. Bombay, India 11. Taipei, Taiwan 12. Guangzhou, China 13. Pusan, Korea 14. Nagoya, Japan 15. Auckland, New Zealand