Pastors for Peace Caravan to Cuba slated for this summer

By Dan Burgevin

Last year’s Caravan to Cuba saw a renewed determination to continue the people to people foreign policy and diplomacy of Pastors for Peace. We did not avoid harassment by the US customs. Thirty-one computers were confiscated at the border as we entered Mexico. Rather than allow for the entire caravan and the rest of the donations for Cuba to be halted by protest we elected to allow the US customs to keep them.

Roller blading in Havana. Photo by Dan Burgevin from 2007 Pastors for Peace Caravan

We continued the mission to Tampico, Mexico, where we packed several containers with the remaining computers, medical supplies and various donations from US citizens.
Pinar del Rio is a beautiful and friendly place. We visited cooperativos, health care clinics, community centers and retirement facilities. It was most hospitable and enjoyable.
Upon our return to Mexico the confiscated computers were returned to Pastors at the border. We promptly walked back across the border into Mexico carrying the 31 computers by hand to an awaiting truck which returned them to the awaiting container vessel in Tampico. This further illuminates the flawed policy of our Treasury department to effectively stop the moral mission of Pastors to undo this archaic policy toward Cuba.

In 2009 our plan for the Ithaca area is to purchase a school bus to take to Pinar Del Rio (if possible) and donate it to the Pinar region which has suffered from at least three Hurricanes in 2008.

Transportation, which already was difficult before the Hurricanes, was in worse shape after, and his has caused much undo suffering for the people of Pinar de Rio. To that end we, the concerned citizens of the Finger Lakes region, are working toward alleviating the undo suffering of the people of Pinar by donating one or more buses.

We will also be collecting aid. Specifically, we are looking for donated construction tools and materials, plumbing, electrical and regular construction and painting supplies. Theses we will be transported on the buses or Pastors for Peace caravan trucks. If you have materials or have a lead on where to get donations, or can help sponsor the local effort, please contact me.

If the ban on travel to Cuba actually is lifted in the Congress as it appears it may be, my guess is Americans will flock to Cuba to see for themselves what life in a state that puts people before profit looks like. If enough Americans go perhaps the Congress will think that that flood of “freedom loving Americans” will benignly topple the socialist regime. My guess and fervent hope is that the reverse will happen. Americans will return home and demand socialized medicine, education and the elimination of homelessness that Cubans currently enjoy and have for many decades.

However, a complete lifting of the travel ban is far from a done deal. Click here or more information on the travel issue and to take on-line action.

Viva la Revolution! Happy fiftieth Fidel!

Dan Burgevin can be reached at 607/387-7532 or danart19 AT hotmail DOT com