By Gordon Bonin Of the NEWS Staff

The iron curtain that cut across Europe rusted and fell in 1989. The bamboo curtain that hid China began to be uprooted after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. But the palm-frond curtain that separates Cuba from America still stands, albeit with gaps blown open or closed depending on the prevailing political winds.

A group of 38 educators, the bulk of them from Maine, are stepping through the curtain, spending Easter vacation in Cuba on a trip organized by a Brunswick-based group called Let Cuba Live. The educators will visit an array of Cuban schools and cultural institutions. Some of the educators plan to practice their Spanish and bring back firsthand experiences to expose their students to another culture. Some want to observe the country firsthand without the political filters that mark the American view.

Others just want to see Cuba, one of the great mysteries of the late 20th century, cut off by the U.S. trade embargo for 40 years. Since 1990, the country has been in what President Fidel Castro calls a ‘‘special period in time of peace,’’ triggered by the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s other trading partners in the Eastern bloc.

That event caused the Cuban economy to contract by two-thirds, as its credits, subsidies and trade with the former communist countries evaporated. Sugar is king. In the 1980s, it was nearly three quarters of its exports, the bulk shipped to the Soviet Union, which paid above-market prices to buoy the lone bastion of communism in the Western Hemisphere.

The economy has begun to rebound since the mid 1990s as tourism has earned the country desperately needed hard currency. Also, making the U.S. dollar legal tender in 1993 permitted Cubans in exile to send millions a year to relatives still on the island. And President Bill Clinton has eased travel restrictions, opening the way for the Maine educators’ trip.

Let Cuba Live was formed in 1992 by three people who had traveled to the country to learn firsthand about the Cuban health system and the effects of the trade embargo.

‘‘Moved by the plight of their besieged neighbors,’’ according to a brochure, the group seeks to end what the Cubans call ‘‘the blockade,’’ and normalize relationships. There are two reasons for the educators’ trip, according to William T. Whitney Jr., a pediatrician in Norway who is affiliated with the group.

One is cultural exchange, he said. ‘‘We take U.S. citizens who are isolated from Cuba, especially by the barriers put up by the U.S. government.’’

The educational reason for the trip is to see how the much publicized literacy campaign of 1961 has matured, Whitney said. ‘‘The idea for this trip is to see what schools are like and what’s happened since ....’’

In the fall of 1960, Fidel Castro announced at the United Nations that ‘‘Cuba will be the first country in the Americas that, after a few months, will be able to say it does not have one person who remains illiterate.’’

A quarter of Cuba’s roughly 4 million inhabitants was illiterate. The literacy campaign mobilized more than 270,000 people, including middle and high school students, to teach. By the end of 1961, just over 700,000 people had been taught to read.

Today the literacy rate is more than 96 percent, on a par with developed countries. Carolyn Bennett is a middle school math and science teacher in the North Haven Community School. By going to other countries, ‘‘I can bring their culture back for my students. I can bring back diversity,’’ she said. She also intends to bring back cigars to show to her students because tobacco is a cash crop, and ‘‘it’s something kids hear about and relate to Cuba,’’ she said.

Her pupils are also interested in Cuban music. ‘‘I hope to record some live performance and bring it back,’’ she said. Marci Trains teaches kindergarten through third grade in a one-room schoolhouse on Long Island in Casco Bay.