Join the Travel Challenge to Cuba

While the U.S. government crafts new restrictions on travel to Cuba, especially for “academics and religious groups,” according to the May 19 Miami Herald, preparations are under way across North America to challenge the travel ban by spending a week or two seeing Cuba first hand.

For the past four years, since the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the U.S. Treasury Department virtually eliminated any avenue for legal travel, organizers have mobilized every summer to apply the methods used by the African American communities in the U.S. Civil Rights movement.

As the Rev. Lucius Walker, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, said at a conference on Cuba travel in New York in March 2005, “Nothing has been gained without a struggle.” Things would be so different today, he stated, if Rosa Parks had continued to sit in the back of the bus. “If people refuse to obey the law, it cannot be enforced,”

The 17th Pastors for Peace Friendshipment caravan will begin in Canada on June 17. Through 14 separate routes, the caravans will traverse all 48 contiguous states, stopping in 120 cities gathering humanitarian aid and support.

The 37th Venceremos Brigade leaves July 2 for two weeks of work in Cuba. Over the years, Brigadistas have harvested sugar cane, citrus and corn, built housing, painted and repaired buildings—working side by side with Cuban workers and students.

The U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange, as guest of the Cuban labor unions, visits work places and exchanges views with Cuban workers for a week.

On July 17, the VB and Labor Exchange will return from Cuba, marching across the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, N.Y., while Pastors for Peace crosses the Rio Grande border from Mexico into Texas. Supporters are encouraged to come to Buffalo to greet, support and celebrate with the returning traveler challengers.

Although Cuba travelers have received a variety of threatening letters from OFAC, the organized travel challenges fight back collectively. No one who has stood firm against OFAC’s letters and gone through the civil process has received a court date.

The U.S. government’s ban on travel to Cuba is part of the 47-year-long blockade of that small island nation. In a secret report dated April 6, 1960, and declassified in 1991, a U.S. State Department official put the aim plainly: “Through frustration and discouragement based on dissatisfaction and economic difficulties … to withhold funds and supplies to Cuba in order to cut real income thereby causing starvation, desperation and the overthrow of the government.” (www.cubavsbloqueo.cu)

This imperialist intent to retake Cuba and destroy the socialist gains that have made Cuba the healthiest, best educated and most politically involved working class in the Americas is also outlined in great detail in the first report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, submitted in 2004.

But increased U.S. governmental restrictions gave birth to their opposite: a broader demand to travel to Cuba. On May 20 Cuban Americans joined the travel challenge movement in a Miami demonstration, protesting restrictions that limit visits to once every three years by family mem bers designated by the U.S. government.

The Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel, with co-plaintiffs including 450 academics and students in 45 states, is suing the U.S. Treasury Department for impeding academic freedom. (http://insidehighered.com/news/ 2006/05/26/cuba)

The U.S. government has canceled licenses permitting churches to organize travel to Cuba. The bodies affected include the National Council of Churches, the American Baptist Churches USA and the Alliance of Baptists, and organizations such as the Presbyterian Church (USA), which now has a more restrictive license.

For more information on this year’s travel challenges, visit Pastors for Peace at www.pastorsforpeace.org, email the Venceremos Bridade at vbrigade@ yahoo.com, and email the U.S./Cuba Labor Exchange at [email protected].