IFCO/Pastors for Peace 2005 Caravan to Cuba

Update and Action Alert- August 2, 2005

UPDATE AND ACTION ALERT FROM HIDALGO 8/2/05

Our caravan has come home from Cuba! We are celebrating a great victory: yesterday afternoon our 16th Friendshipment caravan, after returning from Cuba to Mexico, successfully crossed the International Bridge from Reynosa, MX into Hidalgo, TX. But there is still no word about the release of the computers seized from the caravan's cargo last week.

The campaign to free the computers continues this week, with the added energy of all the caravanistas who have just come home from Cuba.

The energy and motivation of the caravanistas were very high when they returned from Cuba to Tampico, MX, and traveled to the border town of Reynosa, and again as they assembled early Monday morning to prepare for their reverse challenge against the blockade.

As the caravanistas crossed the International Bridge in two school buses, supporters of the caravan in Reynosa accompanied them across the bridge, chanting "Cuba si, bloqueo no!" And supporters and media waited on the US side for their return.

Homeland Security agents spent nearly three hours interrogating caravan participants about the details of their trip and two more hours searching every item of their personal luggage. In their interrogations, the Immigration agents were especially hard on our international participants.

As a part of its reverse challenge of US sanctions against Cuba, the caravan brought back these Cuban items:

Bibles, given as a gift from the Cuban Council of Churches;
copies of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba;

copies of a book entitled And You Will Be My Witnesses... about evangelization and mission in the Cuban churches; and

copies of a book about Operation Miracle: a project of the Cuban Ministry of Public Health through which Cuban doctors, working free of charge, have restored the sight of thousands of Venezuelans who had gone blind because of cataracts.

In the end, nothing was seized from the caravanistas, and all of them are back home in the US.

Given that the US government was committed to completely stopping us this year, we consider that the return of the caravan was a total victory for us. It is clear that public outrage over the seizure of the computers last week, as well as outrage over the items that were seized from the caravanistas last year (a paper flag on a stick! maracas! plastic honey bears!), forced the US government to back down when we met them at the border.

BUT THE COMPUTERS ARE STILL HERE IN HIDALGO; AND WE ARE STILL COMMITTED TO STAYING UNTIL THE 43 SEIZED BOXES ARE RELEASED AND ALL THE AID IS ABLE TO GO ON TO CUBA.

Several members of our Hidalgo team have had to head home; we are very grateful to them for their great work. Now several of the returning caravanistas are staying on with us in Hidalgo to join the team. And we are going to keep on organizing: national and local outreach, media work, congressional work, and all the rest. We are planning another Wednesday prayer vigil on the Hidalgo/Reynosa International Bridge. We have heard that new cities including Concord, NH, and Duluth and Minneapolis, MN are also planning vigils tomorrow. We call you to join us.

August 2 is the 17th anniversary of the contra attack on the passenger ferry Mission of Peace in Nicaragua in which Rev. Lucius Walker was wounded. August 3 is the 17th anniversary of the founding of our project Pastors for Peace. It is also the 75th birthday of our fearless (and prophetic) leader Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr. We remember the days when Pastors for Peace was new; it was conceived as a special ministry to the victims of US foreign policy. Look how far the project has come since its founding! Surely we have organized 50 caravans by now, to Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chiapas, and of course to Cuba.

Once an IFCO staff member asked Lucius whether our office would be open on Dr Martin Luther King Day. He responded, "If Dr King were alive, he would want us to be working on his birthday -- and to be doing just the kind of work we do." We ask you to help commemorate this anniversary/birthday in just that way: Let's redouble our efforts and get those computers to Cuba! Here's how you can help:"

Hold a vigil in your community to call for release of the seized aid! We are organizing vigils every Wednesday in Hidalgo on the International Bridge; let us know what public events you are planning.

Keep making phone calls to insist that the seized computer equipment be released and that all of the computer equipment in our caravan be allowed to go to Cuba:

PLEASE CALL the Cuba desk at the State Department, 202/647-9273. (They are going through a transition in staff; talk with whoever is available.)

PLEASE CALL Jayson Ahern, assistant commissioner for field operations at Customs, 202/344-1620.

PLEASE KEEP CALLING Michael Turner, director of export enforcement at the Commerce Department, 202/482-1208, ext. 3.

PLEASE KEEP CALLING CONGRESS. CALL YOUR SENATORS AS WELL AS YOUR REP. (Congressional switchboard: 202/225-3121) As you talk with sympathetic offices, let us know the names of the aides you are talking to, so we can put them on our email update list and get them more involved in our campaign! You can send their contact info to ellen bernstein at ellenb@igc.org.

Those of you who want to support this extraordinary and unplanned organizing campaign can also send your donations to IFCO, 402 W. 145th Street, NY, NY 10031.

There is tremendous excitement about this campaign! Thanks for everything you are doing to make it successful.

posted by caravanista @ 9:44 PM