Havana – A caravan organized by the Pastors for Peace to show solidarity with Cuba arrived here without experiencing any problems crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, local media reported Sunday.
“This time we arrived at the U.S. border with Mexico really early in the morning and the officials decided not to confront us,” said the head of the Protestant group, Lucius Walker, at the Havana airport, the daily Juventud Rebelde reported.
Walker said that the 97 members of the caravan from the United States, Canada, Mexico, Denmark, Sweden, England, Scotland and Germany made it to Cuba, in contrast to their attempt last year, when he and others remained at the U.S.-Mexican border to demand the return part of their Cuba-bound humanitarian cargo which U.S. authorities had seized.
Local media reported that the cargo the group is bringing to Cuba this year includes an ambulance, school buses, medicine, materials and equipment for children with special needs, bicycles and computers, all of which was shipped from Mexico’s Gulf port of Tampico.
“In contrast to last year, now we will not have to mount a 10-month campaign for the return of the aid the authorities confiscated,” Walker said.
He added that the group was coming to the communist island “at a time when new threats by the George W. Bush administration exist, which indicates how afraid they are of Cuba’s advances.”
The New York-based Pastors for Peace is a pacifist non-governmental religious organization that heads a project called the U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan to collect humanitarian aid in the United States to deliver to the island.
Since 1992, when the first caravan was staged, Pastors for Peace has delivered more than 2,500 tons of aid to Cuba in defiance of the economic and financial blockade that Washington has maintained against Havana for more than 40 years.
U.S. citizens are prohibited from traveling to Cuba without special permission from the U.S. Treasury Department.
