Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Cuba Caravan Slays the US Customs Dragon Once Again

Cuba Caravan Slays the US Customs Dragon Once Again
by Gerry Bill

“If there is a law against loving your neighbor, I want to break it”
(Pastors for Peace slogan).

Is it legal or illegal for US citizens to take humanitarian aid to our neighbors in Cuba? That is the question Pastors for Peace puts to our government every year as it openly, some would say blatantly, defies the nearly fifty- year old blockade of Cuba.

In accordance with the best principles of civil disobedience, Pastors for Peace makes no secret of its intention to break through the virtual wall that the US has tried to construct around the island nation. Pastors considers the blockade to be both illegal under international law and immoral under the law of common human decency.

This summer was my second time to experience a Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba. Once again it was made abundantly clear to me that I would be breaking the law, and that I would be participating in collective civil disobedience. I don’t break many laws, but this is just the sort of law I want to break.

Every year Pastors for Peace successfully challenges the blockade, and in the process they expose the hypocrisy, futility, and outright silliness of the whole thing. This year was no exception.

To get to Cuba we go through Mexico. US exit customs knows we are coming - the date of the crossing, after all, is listed on the caravan website months in advance. The customs agents even have the cell phone numbers of the Pastors for Peace leadership, and they check in frequently in the days before the crossing to see how things are going. Pastors does not in any way try to hide what it is doing from the officials. When we arrive at the border we have “Cuba” plastered all over our trucks and buses in very large letters. We want them to see us coming. They are waiting for us, and they have special equipment and extra customs officers on hand to deal with the situation. This year the routine was the same as last year. They diverted us into a customs yard, x-rayed all of our vehicles with a portable machine mounted on a truck, and then went through the vehicles looking for contraband.

Sometimes it is a little hard to figure out just what constitutes contraband. After all, our government says we can’t take anything to Cuba, so maybe all 100 tons of the aid could be considered contraband. One year, oddly enough, the designation contraband was applied to several boxes of breast pumps. Go figure. Do breast pumps have some secret military use about which we have been told nothing? If anyone out there knows the answer to that one, please let me know. This year the focus seemed to be on computers. The computers were destined for hospitals and medical clinics in Cuba, but that makes no difference to customs officials. We had about 130 computers scattered amongst the twelve vehicles in the caravan. The customs agents spotted these on the x-rays and confiscated 32 of them. Why they stopped at 32 is anybody’s guess. Maybe they just got tired of searching. We refused to unload the aid for them, so they had to do all the hard physical labor themselves. It was starting to get pretty hot, so maybe they just decided enough was enough. This is a little dance we do with the customs people every year.

Meanwhile, there was something else going on at an entirely different level. People in 125 other cities across the country were busily calling the media and their members of Congress to protest the computer confiscation. My thanks go out to all of you in the Fresno area who participated in that effort. We call it the emergency response network, and it is very effective. Members of Congress, or their staff people, contact the Department of Commerce to find out what this is all about, and pretty soon the Commerce Department is on the phone to the customs people at the McAllen/Reynosa border crossing. The media start making inquiries as well. All of this lets the customs officials know that Washington and the media are watching them. In that situation the customs officials usually back off, because otherwise it will turn into a public relations battle that US Customs cannot win.

For whatever reason, after several hours in the customs yard the officials let us go across the border with all the rest of our aid sans the 32 computers. End of story, you might think. Wrong. The drivers did take the vehicles on into Mexico, but some of the caravanistas decided the confiscation of the computers was an outrage. They stayed behind in the customs yard and organized a spontaneous demonstration right there at the border crossing, blocking some of the lanes of traffic. The customs officials noticed, but did nothing. The demonstration lasted about 20 minutes, after which the protesting caravanistas went across the border also.

But even that does not end the saga of the 32 computers. Fast forward about two weeks as the caravan is crossing the border back into the US. We call this the reverse challenge. Once again, we do a little dance with the US officials. This year the dance had a new twist, and it involved the 32 computers. Thanks to the emergency response network (and all of you) a lot of pressure had been generated in Washington D.C. The word came down from somewhere to let the 32 computers go. So after we had cleared immigration with our passports and cleared US entry customs with our personal luggage, the officials returned the computers to us.

According to the customs officials the computers were not really confiscated; they were just “detained.” The computers were returned to us on US soil, and that was where customs thought they should stay. But Lucius Walker, the head of Pastors for Peace, had other ideas. He had received word in advance that the computers would likely be returned to us. He got several of us to volunteer for special duty that he warned could lead to us being arrested. What we were to do was take the 32 computers, one at a time, into our arms, and then walk them right across the bridge to Mexico. This was to be done in full view of the customs officials. The strategy worked quite well. The customs officials, who really did not want a confrontation, conveniently looked the other way as we walked across the bridge under their noses.

No one was arrested. Waiting on the Mexican side of the bridge were some of our supporters in Reynosa. They took over from there and sent the computers on their way to Cuba. The Mexicans, of course, are not breaking any Mexican law when they take things like that to Cuba.

So what did US Customs accomplish by all of their antics? They delayed by about two weeks the delivery of a handful of computers to Cuba. This is how it turns out every year. This was the 19th Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba, and Pastors has always gotten its aid through, one way or another. The best US Customs has ever been able to do is create some delays.

What did Pastors for Peace accomplish? They delivered 100 tons of aid to Cuba, including the 32 “detained” computers. They got the attention of the media and of some officials in Washington. They made the blockade look silly, anachronistic, and un-enforceable. They educated people in 125 cities across the US and Canada about Cuba, about the Cuban Five, and about the folly of the blockade. And everyone on the caravan had a blast doing it.

Next year will be the 20th Cuba caravan organized by Pastors for Peace. It will also be the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution. Coincidentally, it is also the 40th anniversary of the Venceremos Brigade, which coordinates certain activities with Pastors for Peace. Therefore, next year is being dubbed 20/40/50, and an extra effort will be made to double the size of the caravan.

These caravans are not for everyone. You have to be willing to engage in some civil disobedience. But if that doesn’t scare you off, I highly recommend the caravan experience. The dates for the 2009 caravan have not been set, but it will be in the summer, probably in July, perhaps involving the tail end of June. The cost this year was $1600, and that covered virtually everything. For more information go to pastorsforpeace.org.

This article was originally published in the Fresno Community Alliance Magazine (www.fresnoalliance.com/home/magazine), and reprinted with permission of the author.

Gerry Bill is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and American Studies atFresno City College, and is on the boards of directors of the Fresno Free College Foundation, radio station KFCF, and the Fresno Center for Nonviolence. He may be reached at gerry.bill@gmail.com.

editor’s note: Gerry and I were the two vegans on the Caravan this year and we’ve talked about collecting various soy products for the caravan next year (little soy milk tetrapacks, soy jerky, good organic soya seeds, maybe a vegan cookbook or two ....). If you’d like to help gather these or other earth friendly products to send on the 2009 caravan, please contact me at streetnewz@islandnet.com. Also ... I’ll be presenting a slide show story about my journey through America and Mexico and Cuba at Camas Bookstore on October 11th starting at 7:30 pm. If you’d like to help me organize other slide show presentations, or if you’d like me to present an account of my journey for your group or organization, please write to me at streetnewz@islandnet.com.

photo (by Janine Bandcroft) top: Gerry Bill carried about $3,000 worth of medicine which had to be kept at or near room temperature. Leni Reeves of Meadow Lakes donated the medicine. middle: Rev. Lucius Walker (front of the line) and other caravanistas picked up the returned computers and walked them across the bridge to our supporters in Mexico, who had agreed to send them on to Cuba. The people carrying the computers were risking arrest, but no one was arrested.