c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ On July 5, some 60 vehicles carrying about 500 tons of humanitarian supplies destined for Cuba are scheduled to leave 14 cities across the northern United States enroute to Texas and the Mexican border.

The caravans are the latest effort by Pastors for Peace, a New York-based offshoot of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), to confront the nearly four decades-old U.S. economic blockade of Cuba _ a blockade it views as immoral as well as illegal.

Enroute to the Mexican border at Laredo _ where the caravans are scheduled to converge July 16 _ the 150 Americans and others taking part in the effort will speak at churches and other institutions along the way, seeking to drum up additional support for ending the embargo.

Pastors for Peace _ which is supported by Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran and Presbyterian groups _ believes the embargo has devastated the island-nation’s economy with dire health and social consequences for Cuba’s 11 million people.”This is primarily an action-education process,”the Rev. Lucius Walker, a Baptist minister who is IFCO’s executive director, said Thursday (June 11).”We feel compelled to continue to get out the word until this immoral embargo is ended.” This will be the group’s eighth delivery in 10 years of providing medical and educational supplies to Cuba. Privately donated anti-cancer and asthma medicines, fetal heart monitors, wheelchairs, crutches, cloth diapers, dietary supplements, school buses and ambulances are among the items that will be be shipped by boat from the Mexican port of Tampico to Havana on about July 23.

Past efforts by Pastors for Peace have encountered problems with U.S. officials, who have kept supplies from crossing into Mexico for months on end because the group refuses to seek legal clearance for the aid items, in accordance with U.S. laws connected to the embargo. Members of the group have also been arrested.

But the current effort comes at a time when once-solid political support in the United States for the embargo has weakened, leaving Walker hopeful this time Pastors for Peace will encounter fewer problems. Again, though, it will not seek government approval for the items it plans to deliver to Cuba, where it works with local church groups.”We will not ask the government for permission to take our aid to Cuba because we refuse on moral grounds to participate in the U.S. blockade against Cuba,”Walker said.”We do not feel it is appropriate for those of us in Christ’s church to ask Caesar to provide aid to God’s children.” Congress is considering bills that would lift sanctions on the sale or donation of food and medical supplies to Cuba; U.S. business groups have joined the call to end the embargo; and President Clinton has lifted the ban on some direct flights from the United States to Cuba.

There have even been signs the Cuban-American community’s traditional hardline opposition toward ending the embargo, growing out of its dislike for Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, is slowly withering away.

All of this leaves Walker hopeful for the future _ and that this time, Pastors for Peace will encounter fewer problems at the Mexican border.

But he’s not about to say the end of the embargo is in sight, no matter how encouraged he’s become by events jumpstarted by the January visit to Cuba of Pope John Paul II.

The pope has been a harsh critic of the embargo because of what he says is its devastating impact on society’s poorest elements _ the young, the elderly, the sick. While in Cuba, he repeatedly called for an end to the economic sanctions, just as he repeatedly urged Castro to broaden his nation’s limited political and religious freedoms.

In line with the pope, the United States Catholic Conference last week again called for the end of all restrictions on the sale of food and medicines to Cuba.”We pledge to do all we can to encourage private contributions of medicines and other needed goods to Catholic Relief Services for distribution (in Cuba) to help lessen some of the suffering brought on in recent years”by the embargo, the bishops said in a June 6 statement.

Despite the signs of progress toward the embargo’s end, Pastors for Peace is not about to let up. “The religious and political pressure to lift the embargo is at an all-time high,”he said.”However, more pressure is needed to give the (Clinton) administration a political rationalization to end the embargo. Sufficient pressure is not there as of yet.”Our work is designed to contribute to that.”

END RNS RIFKIN