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You are here: Frontpage > News > Ignoring threats, the Pastors for Peace return from Cuba into many welcoming arms, both warm and cold.

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23-Jul-2004

Ignoring threats, the Pastors for Peace return from Cuba into many welcoming arms, both warm and cold.

by: Ellen Bernstein and Lucia Bruno

North America: Protesting the travel ban and economic sanctions against Cuba that are designed to control and limit the movement of goods to and from Cuba, the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan is returning from a ten-day stay in Cuba, where they delivered over 100 tons of humanitarian aid and visited schools and hospitals. They are bringing with them symbolic quantities of Cuban honey and coffee representing some of the trade possibilities that exist with Cuba.

Ellen Bernstein, IFCO's associate director accepted that they "don't know what awaits us when we attempt to cross back into the US from Mexico on July 19th," adding that "the US government may try to harass or intimidate us, but we are determined to continue to express our good will to Cuba and our moral right to travel there. Cuba is not our enemy."

Unfortunately, the 100 or so officers from various American departments, such as Homeland security, Treasury, Customs, Immigration and Border Patrol, disagreed and were on hand at the Hidalgo/Reynosa border crossing to welcome them back. The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Treasury Department has threatened the group with fines and imprisonment for defying the Bush administration's tough new sanctions against Cuba.

In the words of Rev. Lucius Walker, "these 120 people have taken the responsibility to be goodwill ambassadors to Cuba. We represent ourselves and millions of people in the U.S. who don't agree with the immoral and unjust US policy. We challenge the U.S. law. We base ourselves on love and not on hate. We don't represent Bush, we don't represent the right-wing Cuban-Americans in southern Florida. We represent the millions of people in the U.S. who want a better relationship with Cuba."

Once they arrived into the arms of the agents awaiting them, they were submitted to three hours of meticulous searching that went through each item in every participants’ piece of luggage resulting in the confiscation of about a dozen items, such as a book of Cuban poetry, a paper flag on a stick, a bag made in China that had the name Cuba on it, maracas, and a tambourine made in Mexico. Many of the items that they were bringing back were gifts from the people of Cuba and included 65 one-pound bags of Cuban coffee and 91 plastic teddy bears jars of Cuban honey, but sadly these were not spared confiscation.

Shocked at their reception, Rev. Lucius Walker commented that they "were astonished by the number of agents made available this morning. At a time when our nation is in economic crisis and supposedly fighting a war on terrorism, it is immoral that our government wasted a days salary of more than 100 officers to monitor a group of peaceful US citizens who are exercising their constitutional right to travel.”

There were descriptions of heavy-handed treatment as an underage minor was separated from her guardian and coerced into signing a form, while young girls were brought to tears by insistent questioning and elderly women were forced to answer questions about where they bought each individual item of clothing in their suitcase.

To emphasize their point, the Pastors for Peace coordinated their crossing with that of the Venceremos Brigade and the African Awareness Association who returned to the United States by foot over the International Peace Bridge into Buffalo, NY after also spending two weeks in Cuba without securing a "license" to travel from the Bush Administration

Source: IFCO/Pastors for Peace