CRAWFORD — In the name of family values, an international humanitarian aid group tested perhaps the last artifact of the Cold War as they crossed the U.S./Mexican border from McAllen last Friday on their way to deliver medical supplies to Cuba without federal permission.
The members of the Pastors for Peace Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba say that their mission is to raise awareness on the U.S. sanctions on Cuba that have made it harder in the last year for Cuban-American families here to travel and send aid back to their loved ones in the communist island country.
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For the last 14 years, the Pastors for Peace’s Friendshipment caravans have faced an assortment of problems challenging the 40-year-old trade blockade. In the Friendshipment’s first year, CNN television cameras filmed U.S. Treasury officers assaulting a Catholic priest carrying Bibles into Cuba. On at least two other occasions, PFP participants held hunger strikes when stopped from completing delivery of school buses and computers intended for medical applications.
“As people of faith and conscience, it is our duty to resist and condemn this cruel U.S. policy,” declared Rev. Lucius Walker, Jr. executive director and founder of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFC), a 36-year-old ecumenical agency. IFCO/Pastors for Peace rejects this licencing system as both immoral and illegal.
“It is immoral because it endangers the lives of millions of Cubans and inflicts suffering on innocent children, as well as adults. It is illegal under international law because it uses medicine and food as weapons of war to force another nation to change its government,” Rev. Walker continued.
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