Five buses full of humanitarian aid and 60-plus
caravanistas
crossed into Mexico on Thursday morning, shrugging off the risks of the
Tamaulipas roads amid their 23rd annual defiance of the U.S. trade
embargo on Cuba.
This year’s aid journey began last week, when
caravanistas
departing from Canada decided to challenge the U.S. policy and bring the
aid through the United States instead of sending it from Canada, which
has no embargo on Cuba.
“We chose to collect that aid and send it with the Pastors for Peace
caravan to Cuba through the United States as an act of civil
disobedience,” said Tamara Hansen, coordinator of Vancouver Communities
in Solidarity with Cuba.
The embargo “is stopping educational supply, medicines and sports
equipment from arriving to the hands of Cuban people,” she said.
The U.S. State Department declined to comment for this story, referring to an online outline of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
“I encourage people to get involved next year in the 2013 caravan to
Cuba because we are going to be doing this every year until the U.S.
ends this inhuman and criminal policy,” Hansen said.
The
caravanistas experienced difficulties at the British
Columbia-Washington border. But verbal persuasion from Pastors for Peace
lawyers and the group’s co-director, Gail Walker, convinced border
agents that the majority of their cargo was humanitarian aid, rather
than commercial goods. And as for the rest of the cargo — the sports
equipment — agents relented and let it pass after a 24-hour protest by
the
caravanistas at the border.
On Monday the group gathered in the First Christian Church in McAllen
while they worked with Mexican customs to cross into Mexico.
GEOPOLITICS
In October, the United Nations General Assembly condemned the
decades-old U.S. embargo on Cuba, with Canada and 185 other countries in
opposition.
Only the U.S. and Israel backed “this inhuman and immoral” embargo,
Hansen said. “So we are standing together not only as a group of
caravanistas and our supporters in Texas, but as a worldwide movement demanding to end this cruel policy against Cuba.
The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization, the parent
company of the project of Pastors for Peace, was expecting more progress
from the Obama administration on ending the embargo.
“We were hopeful; that has not happened,” Walker said. “We continue to push and hope in the near future in can happen.”
But the group has no expectation of seeing the embargo lifted should
presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama
on Election Day, Walker said.
“I suspect (Romney) will hold the line of his predecessors on the
Republican ticket,” Walker said. “I don’t see him actually making things
easier.”
The group opposes the licensing policy to travel to Cuba that has been eased for Cuban-Americans.
Because people must apply for a license and get the permission of the
government, “that means they can dictate who can go, when they go, what
they take,” Walker said. “Our position is licensing is never
appropriate because you can’t license love. You can’t license solidarity
with people.
“That is why we maintain this very strict policy against licensing,” Walker said.
EMBARGO SUPPORT
Mario Jorge, 49, a Rio Grande Valley engineer who left Cuba when he
was 8, thinks the embargo “probably outlived its usefulness” but
understands the reason the U.S. had to establish it.
“The Cuban government is very oppressive,” Jorge said. “There is no freedom of religion, there is no political freedom.”
There is not financial freedom, either, Jorge said.
The European companies that are doing business in Cuba pay the
government for the labor, and then “the Cuban government subcontracts
the labor and they pay them measly wages,” Jorge said.
“I suppose the U.S. position is not allowing U.S. companies to go and use the Cuban people as slaves,” Jorge said.
The embargo isn’t very effective anymore because European companies
and other countries do business with Cuba, Jorge said. The policy is “an
excuse for the Cuban government to blame their own inadequacies on” the
U.S.
But “from a philosophical stand point, I support the U.S. position,”
Jorge said. “We don’t want to be part of that oppression of the Cuban
people,”
The
caravanistas were welcomed in the Mexican side of the
bridge by members of the Communist Youth of Mexico and the Communist
Party, which is not registered as a political party with Mexico’s
Federal Electoral Institute.
ROAD RISKS
En route to the coastal city of Tampico, Tamps., the group must pass
by San Fernando, the area some 90 miles south of McAllen where the
bodies of 72 migrants were found in the summer of 2010. In the spring of
2011, more than 190 more bodies were found there in shallow graves. The
Zetas were blamed.
But “we are not afraid because we are going to be with our Mexican
brothers,” Manolo de los Santos, national coordinator of the caravan,
said in Spanish.
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Martha L. Hernández covers health, business and general assignments for The Monitor and El Nuevo Heraldo. She can be reached at mlhernandez@themonitor.com and (956) 683-4846.
