 Rev. Lucius Walker Photo: Bill Hackwell |
On June 9, Socialism and Liberation’s Alicia Jrapko interviewed Rev. Lucius Walker, Executive Director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace.
Can you tell us about the upcoming Pastors for Peace caravan to Cuba?
The upcoming caravan to Cuba is in the planning stage and is looking very encouraging. We have more than a hundred people signed up already, and it’s conceivable that we will have as many as 150. We have six buses that are ready and properly painted. Five buses will be dedicated to the Cuban Five, the political prisoners unjustly held in U.S. prisons.
In this caravan, we are focusing our attention on providing aid for people with special abilities or disabilities, people with special needs. We have a very good program planned for our time there—we are very excited about that. We have a great diverse group, a good number of young people as well as older people and a good mixture of Black and Latino participants. Things are looking very encouraging. And due to all the special pressures Cuba faces at the moment, it is a great time to show our solidarity.
I just returned from Cuba and the word there is that this caravan is probably more important than ever before. We therefore want to encourage people to join who might be thinking they are not needed, since we have been going for so many years.
 Travel challenge, 1995 Photo: Bill Hackwell |
Of course, we will be taking all forms of aid, but the special theme is aid for people with special needs. We hope to have a lot of education around what Cuba does to help its citizens with special needs.
What stands out about this caravan is the political implications of its timing. The caravan will take place at the very time the United States has exposed its contradictory and hypocritical ways. The Bush administration continues to hold the anti-terrorist Cuban Five in U.S. prisons while it protects Luis Posada Carriles, himself a major terrorist.
The Cuban people feel deeply offended by the U.S. refusal to turn Posada over. He has been involved with the planting of a bomb that destroyed a civilian Cuban airplane in 1976. He was also involved in the effort to bomb the stage where Fidel was going to speak in Panama in 1990. And he has bragged about his role in the bombing of hotels in Havana during the 1990s.
Our caravan comes at a time when Cuba is very concerned that its sovereignty, its dignity and self-respect have been offended. That is why it is extremely important to have a strong show of solidarity from people in the U.S.
There are other issues besides Posada that Cuba feels acutely. Bush promulgated new regulations last year designed to tighten the blockade. Tourism is down, and even the solidarity community in the United States is afraid. A lot of people who are friends of Cuba have seen their licenses revoked or not renewed.
Now, just as Cuba feels the needs for their solidarity forces, fewer Cuban friends are visiting. We need to go in order to counter the chilling effects of the new regulation. That is another political battle beside the issue of Posada Carriles. This caravan is highly political, and very important.
Tell us more about the role of the solidarity movement with Cuba in the United States.
The role of the Cuba solidarity community has always been to defend the sovereignty and dignity of Cuba and to strongly oppose the aggressive U.S. policies. We have worked to change that policy, to challenge the U.S. government, and to show to the rest of the U.S. population that Cuba is not the isolated country. The United States has isolated itself from the rest of the world because of its hostility toward Cuba.
In light of the Bush Administration’s aims to turn back the clock on U.S.-Cuba relations, we have renewed energy. We feel it’s particularly urgent for us to play that important role. Administration after administration has hoped to make life uncomfortable inside of Cuba in order to provoke an uprising against the government. The current U.S. government is no different, and that’s why it is tightening the screws economically.
While I do not see any possibility for an uprising of that sort, it is still important for the solidarity community to stay motivated and show support for Cuba.
From the beginning, I have had the position that the solidarity community should totally reject any complicity or cooperation with the U.S. policy of requiring travel licenses. They use this policy to dictate who receives a license, when and where they can go, which activities the traveling groups can engage in.
We think that the solidarity community must go as a challenge to U.S. policy, not with an issued license. We know some people have to go with licenses but for those of us who claim solidarity with Cuba, we have to be willing to take the risk.
Do you expect the U.S. government to try to prevent your trip?
We always have to expect them to obstruct our caravan, but what they will do this time, I do not know. We are posing a challenge to them and we won’t allow them to dictate the terms of our travel. They have tried everything possible to stop us and we always resisted. We’ve always won and have ended up going without the license. We will do the same this time, although we don’t know which exact tactics they will try to use to intimidate and threaten us.
One of these days they will run out of their little games. They are in a position where they have to either tolerate our challenges to the government’s illegal and immoral policy or take us to court.
We are looking forward to a day in court because we believe we can expose through the legal process the unjust U.S. policies. In terms of what the government will do to make our lives difficult, we prepare for the worst. We are confident we will persevere regardless of what they try to do to us.
What is the role of Pastors for Peace within the U.S. solidarity movement?
We in Pastors for Peace think it’s extremely important to educate the U.S. public about Cuba. Part of our responsibilities, therefore, is to counter the misinformation provided by the Bush administration. The caravan is designed to travel through cities all around the country—this year the caravan will visit every one of the continental 48 states—and we will reach millions of people with our message of solidarity. They will hear about our opposition to the blockade, the need to normalize relations with Cuba and all the wonderful ways Cuba serves the needs of its own people and people around the world. That educational function is a very important part of what Pastors for Peace does.
Another one of our projects is to recruit U.S. students to study on scholarship at Cuban medical schools. We recruit and support the students and we collaborate with the Cuban minister of health, as well as the Latin America School of Medicine, to make sure the program is operating smoothly for them.
We also participate with the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. We co-sponsor their activities and raise the case of the Five whenever and wherever possible. We don’t only deliver humanitarian aid to Cuba—we involve ourselves in a broad range of Cuba solidarity and educational activities in the United States.
