From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: End the Cold War Against Cuba
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 21:59:30 GMT

/** reg.cuba: 288.0 **/
** Topic: Neumaier Column **
** Written  1:32 pm  Jan  3, 1993 by neuluther in cdp:reg.cuba **
Note: The following op-ed column by Dr. John J. Neumaier,
Poughkeepsie, NY, appeared January 3, 1993, in the Sunday Freeman,
Kingston, NY. Neumaier was president of State University of New
York College at New Paltz from 1968-72 and of Moorhead (Minnesota)
State University from 1958-68. He is philosophy professor emeritus
of Empire State College, NYC. His column appears in the Daily
Freeman on the first Sunday of each month and is broadcast by the
shortwave radio station Radio for Peace International, Box 88,
Santa Ana, Costa Rica. Responses are invited, either by
conferencing or e-mail (Peacenet e-mail address is neuluther). 

       "It's Time for Us to End the Cold War Against Cuba"

     On December 3, fifteen tons of bicycles, Bibles, powdered
milk, wheelchairs, medicines, and school supplies arrived in Cuba's
Havana harbor from Mexico. What was startling about this shipment
was that it originated in the United States and broke the U.S.
blockade of Cuba. The story was barely mentioned by the mass media,
in spite of yearly editorials about "peace on earth, good will
toward men".

     The "U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment", as it was called, was the
brainchild of the Minneapolis-based Pastors for Peace, an affiliate
of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO).
Supporters of the "Friendshipment" were not only Christian pastors,
but also members of Jewish, Muslim, Unitarian, and non-religious
communities. 

     It began in early November when forty-three vehicles and over
100 volunteer drivers set out from every part of the United States,
headed South. En route they stopped in some 90 U.S. cities to
collect donated goods and hold prayer meetings. On the eve of the
start-off, November 5, a prominent African American pastor and
Executive director of IFCO, Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr., spoke at a
support meeting at Christ Episcopal Church in Poughkeepsie. He
described how the Toricelli bill, signed into law on October 23 by
President Bush, was going to intensify the economic deprivation of
the Cuban people. The new law expands the 30-year reach of the
United States prohibition against trading with Cuba by applying it
to U.S. subsidiaries in other countries, by further limiting the
right of sovereign nations to trade with Cuba, and by tightening
the ban against travel of U.S. citizens there. 

     Incidentally, or perhaps not so incidentally, Rep. Robert
Torricelli (D-NJ) received generous campaign contributions from
right-wing Cuban Americans. The New York Times condemned the
Torricelli bill as "dubious in theory, cruel in its potential
practice and ignoble in its election year expediency." It's
interesting that, just a few years ago, Torricelli fought for the
right of a firm in his state to trade their product in Cuba.

     The U.S. embargo is in flagrant violation of international
law, Rev. Walker said. At the same time, he recognized the risks
involved in the Pastors for Peace decision to confront the
government. Despite possible penalties of a $100.000 fine and 10
years behind prison bars, they were determined to demonstrate their
opposition to the government's continuing interference in the
affairs of Cubans and the abrogation of U.S. citizens' right to
lend a helping hand to needy Cubans and to travel and make up their
own minds on the pluses and minuses of the state of Cuba.

     While Rev. Walker and his colleagues oppose the U.S.
government embargo, which is based on military might rather than
moral right, he made it clear that he was not defending or
evaluating Fidel Castro and his political ideology. The fact is
that U.S. government interference in Cuba predates Castro by more
than a century.

     Unwilling on principle to concede the right of the U.S.
government to forbid U.S. citizens to give Cubans medical,
religious, and basic survival assistance, the Pastors for Peace had
decided not to apply for an export license. When the caravan
arrived at the Mexican border, the U.S. Treasury and State
Department officials did not let it pass. There were some ugly
scenes with U.S. customs officials. Nevertheless, on November 22,
the caravan was allowed to proceed, in part, it is reported,
because of widespread citizen protests to the State Department.
Mexican government officials welcomed the American pastors and
drivers and provided them a police escort from Laredo to Tampico.
There Mexican dock workers donated their labor and loaded a ship
bound for Havana.

     For three decades Americans have been told about the perfidy
of the Cuban government. No doubt there has been suppression of
internal dissent which the government regarded as a threat to its
one-party system. Even Castro and his supporters acknowledge this
in the dictum "Freedom within the revolution, but no freedom
against the revolution." Though there is real social conflict in
Cuba, it is far more complex than the selective reporting of our
press lets us know. Even Cubans who oppose Castro are resentful of
the way the U.S. government and prominent Cuban emigres like Jorge
Mas Canosa pretend to speak for all Cuban dissidents. In fact,
human rights crusaders in Cuba have repeatedly spoken out against
the embargo.

     There has been all too little information in our media about
the extent to which U.S. propaganda broadcasts and the CIA have
sought to interfere in Cuba's internal affairs. The pretense of
objective reporting on the internal Cuban situation becomes even
more evident when one compares it with the coverage of Central
America. The U.S. press reports at length about oppression,
prisons, and living standards in Cuba but it underreports the far
more terrible social conditions and human rights violations in
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

     And what about our trade relations with China? It, like Cuba,
calls itself Communist. The difference is that China is a large and
powerful nation. Even Communist Vietnam is about to be given
economic opportunities that the U.S. government continues to deny
to the Cubans.

     International public opinion is not supporting the U.S. in its
rigid stance as the only government in the world with a trade
embargo against Cuba. The European Community appealed to President
Bush to veto the Torricelli bill because it contravened
international law. And then came the strong UN Assembly
condemnation of the U.S. embargo (November 24). The vote was 59 to
3, with 71 abstentions; only the United States, Rumania, and Israel
voted in the negative. Coincidentally, the vote took place only two
days after the Pastors for Peace broke the U.S. blockade.

     Even in the U.S. there is some mainstream opposition to
government policy. The Minneapolis Star and Tribune declared on
November 29 that "If President Bush won't seek an end to the
embargo, his successor should." A former head of the U.S. Interest
Section in Havana, Wayne Smith, wrote in the Miami Herald that the
Torricelli bill, "really authored by the Cuban American National
Foundation, (headed by Canosa) will cause serious problems between
the U.S. and our principal allies and trading partners." The Cuban-
American anthropologist Ruth Behar (no friend of Castro) called for
an end to the embargo in a Dec. 18 New York Times op-ed piece. She
urged the next President to take such action and thereby "end the
cold war for all Americans, north and south."

     It may be wishful thinking to hope that Clinton will rethink
his enthusiastic pre-election endorsement of the terrible
Torricelli bill, which he embraced when he was looking for votes in
Florida. But he is an intelligent politician and may yet be
persuaded not to repeat Kennedy's error in sticking with his
predecessor's Cuba policy and thereby ending up in a Bay of Pigs.
If he can't be persuaded to replace might with right, he may well
be swayed by some of the pragmatic arguments. If today's "free
trade" rallying cry has any real meaning, there is no reason to
block American business from mutually beneficial broad trade
relations. Many U.S. entrepreneurs are eager to compete in Cuba's
tourism market. There are manufacturers of agricultural and
communications equipment who would welcome access to Cuba.

          Cubans claim to have built one of the finest national
health systems in the world, to have dramatically reduced
illiteracy, racism, prostitution, and sexism, which were rampant
under Castro's predecessor, the corrupt Fulgencia Batista. Let's
trust Americans to find out for themselves what the truth is and
let's trust Cubans to find a way of solving their own political and
economic problems, without interference from Uncle Sam. 

** End of text from cdp:reg.cuba **
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