Jul 07 2008
Pastors for Peace Reach Cuba Despite Confiscation
GUEST: Lucia Bruno, Communications Director for Pastors for Peace
The 19th Pastors for Peace US-Cuba Friendship Caravan arrived in Havana over the weekend challenging the decades-long embargo on unlicensed trade and aid to the communist island. The delegation of more than a hundred pastors are delivering a hundred tons of donated humanitarian aid from US and Canadian cities over the course of several months. The aid includes medical, musical, and sports equipment as well as six school buses. The delegation, however, was not able to bring computer donations to the island as federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security seized them last week at the Texas-Mexico border. Customs officials took the 32 computers donated from a Japanese-American group in San Francisco on the grounds that they violated the embargo. Members of the delegation protested outside the customs office compound until their entry into Mexico was authorized. The seized computers will be returned to the group upon their arrival to the US, but they will not be in the 32 Cuban classrooms as intended.
For more information, visit www.pastorsforpeace.org or call 212-926-5757.
2 Responses to “Pastors for Peace Reach Cuba Despite Confiscation”
Hello,
My wife, Dana Lubow, also a volunteer on the Spanish language program on KPFK Saturday nights, and a librarian, is on the Pastors for Peace Caravan. We sent a donated bookmobile and about 2 tons of books, some 3,000 volumes with the caravan bound for Cuba. I have been trying to get information about the confiscated computers, and was told that only information could be give out if I had a case number and they won’t give the case number to me. Also, I can’t find out who took the computers, and why, and what law says that they can’t give me the information. I have spoken to the Border Patrol in Laredo, TX 956-523-7353, and to the Port of Entry, where the computers were taken in Hidalgo, TX 956-843-5700. I also either spoke to Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Congressperson Drier or sent them emails. Apparently Senator Boxer is having her representatives in San Francisco look into the issue. Any help in this matter is appreciated, calls etc can only help, best regards, Ben White
Thank you very much for covering this subject. I think it’s very important to support people/countries who actually have a clue (e.g., Cubans, indigenous people) in this otherwise backwards world. I donated books to the Caravan through Dana Lubow (see comment above), have donated other things in previous years, and will continue to help.
I, too, will contact my local politicians about the confiscated computers that Fatherland Security has taken.