Buses with humanitarian aid cross into Mexico en route to Cuba

[Jimmy2]

McALLEN — A caravan of seven colorfully painted school buses will break a federal law this week, just as it has for the past 20 years.

The buses, two trucks and several smaller vehicles make up the 20th annual U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan. The caravan will carry 130 volunteers and 100 tons of aid across the U.S.-Mexico border from McAllen to Reynosa tomorrow.

It will then drive to Tampico and ship the aid to Cuba. The volunteers will fly to the island nation. Federal law forbids U.S. citizen from traveling to and trading with Cuba.

The aid includes construction equipment to help Cubans rebuild homes destroyed by three hurricanes last fall.

The caravan will also deliver medicine, books, clothes, wheelchairs and sports equipment. A Cuban organization called the Ecumenical Distribution Committee will distribute the donations.

Pastors for Peace has partnered with Cuban churches to make the caravan possible. The Interreligious Foundation for Community Organizing (IFCO), an interfaith group that serves the poor, founded Pastors for Peace in 1988 as a ministry designed to deliver humanitarian aid to Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Pastors for Peace wants to restore human connections between the U.S. and Cuba broken up by the embargo, said the Rev. Joseph Baker, a Lutheran pastor from California who sits on the board of directors for the IFCO.

“From the standpoint of the church you should work not just for Sunday salvation, but for justice and salvation in a very practical way in the world,” he added.

Louis Roberto, 74, of New Mexico will travel to Cuba for the first time with the caravan. He was in the Navy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that time he believed Cuba was a threat to the United States, but his perspective has since changed.

“It’s created a harsh situation for the Cubans,” Roberto said of the embargo.

The embargo was imposed by the Kennedy Administration in 1960 as a response to Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. Congress reinforced the embargo 32 years later with the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.

Sandino Gomez, a 29-year-old graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, will make his second trip to Cuba with the caravan. He looks forward to the day when the embargo will be repealed.

“It’s unconstitutional,” Gomez said. “We have a right to freedom of association, including with other nations.”

[lutharthegreat]

Interesting article. Nice find.

[GP012]

Federal law forbids U.S. citizen from traveling to and trading with Cuba.

One of the articles you posted recently mentioned that it's only illegal to spend money in Cuba. Different authors = different takes. What are your thoughts?