FOREIGN RELATIONS

Group to hold protest against Cuban trade embargo

By Noah Bruce

Let Cuba Live, the Brunswick-based group seeking to end the US comprehensive economic embargo of Cuba, is holding a protest July 21 in Portland to respond to the US Customs seizing of medical supplies bound for Cuba from Maine. Protesters will march from Monument Square to the US Customs House on Fore Street. Let Cuba Live organizer Renee Cote says she expects 50 to 100 protesters.

Speaking at the protest will be Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., leader of the New York-based Pastors for Peace, a group that delivers humanitarian aid to Latin America and the Caribbean including Cuba. Walker gained publicity in 1996 when he was arrested by US authorities for attempting to deliver computers to Cuban hospitals. To persuade the government to allow the shipment, Walker, with four other activists, went on a 94-day hunger strike.

On July 2, Pastors for Peace successfully crossed the Texas-Mexico border with its twelfth caravan of medical supplies bound for Cuba. On the very same day, Let Cuba Live tried to cross the Maine-Canada border at Coburn Gore, but their medical caravan was detained by US officials. The group had failed to obtain the necessary permit for sending humanitarian aid to Cuba, which led to the detention of the goods. Let Cuba Live, like Pastors for Peace, refuses to apply for or to accept the permit.

According to a statement from Pastors for Peace, the group refuses to apply for the permit “because we refuse to cooperate with the immoral US blockade . . . We choose instead to act according to a higher mandate expressed in Matthew 25:35. To send ‘a cup of cold water’ to our neighbors in need, we should not have to ask permission of their enemy.”

When it became clear US officials were going to detain the shipment, Let Cuba Live members engaged in an act of civil disobedience, spiriting almost half of the shipment across the border to Canadian allies. However, officials managed to seize 39 boxes of supplies, two trucks, and a U-Haul trailer. The trucks and the U-Haul have since been returned, but boxes containing supplies including anesthesia machines, computers, an infant warming station, a newborn resuscitator, diapers, blankets, and gloves remain in US government control.

“It was incredible that a bunch of books for doctors headed for Cuba provoked this kind of response from the authorities,” says Todd Ricker, a Let Cuba Live volunteer. Ricker says that, during the stand-off over the last box of supplies, over 20 law enforcement officials showed up, including the national guard, customs officials, border patrol, the Franklin County sheriff’s office, state police, and a game warden.

Let Cuba Live and Pastors for Peace endorse a full lifting of the trade embargo. While Maine’s elected officials haven’t gone that far, Congressmen Allen and Baldacci, along with Senator Collins, have issued public statements that endorse softening the embargo to the point where medical supplies and humanitarian aid can be sent directly to Cuba.

“Cuba has a population of 11 million,” says Cote. “They need normal trade relations. They need the ability to buy medical supplies. Sending dribbles of aid [by having people apply for permits] doesn’t work. We want laws repealed by Congress. At the very least we want to send food and medical supplies if not overturn the entire embargo.”