Pastors for Peace Caravan Reaches Cuba
HAVANA TIMES— The 25th Pastors for Peace US-Cuba Friendship Caravan arrived in Havana on Thursday, Cuba’s official media reported.
The welcoming speech at the Jose Marti International Airport was made by Kenia Serrano, president of the Cuban Institute for Friendship among Peoples, who thanked the caravan for their solidarity.
Pastors for Peace Co-Chair Gail Walker expressed her satisfaction over the caravan’s return to Cuba.
She underscored “the importance of having had young people join the 25th Caravan, an experience that will allow them to receive information about Cuba first hand and to share this information after they have returned to their communities.”
Walker explained that before arriving to Cuba, the group travelled to 65 cities in Canada, the United States and Mexico. They collected humanitarian aid for the island and informed people mainly about the US embargo and Cuban Five case.
Though most of the 40 members of the group who visit Cuba this year are from those three countries, she said there are also representatives of Denmark and Germany.
During the ceremony, the life and work of the late reverend Lucius Walker, founder of this movement that opposes the half-century US embargo on Cuba, were remembered.
Caravan members will attend on Saturday the main ceremony for the anniversary of the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Cespedes garrisons (July 26, 1953) in Artemisa. The date is the most important festivity on Cuba’s official calendar.
Next week, they will participate in a meeting with the relatives of the Cuban Five, Cuban agents convicted in the United States on charges of espionage. Two of these agents have served their sentences and returned to Cuba. The other three remain in US prisons.
Did the Pastors for Peace have any kind words for the Ladies in White? The Cuban women are attacked and beaten every Sunday for the crime of attending church and walking silently holding flowers.
The Pastors for Peace are moral idiots and propaganda puppets, protecting a corrupt dictatorship.
Dan, your comment is a perfect example of how lefties outside of Cuba somehow manage to turn a blind eye to all the many problems inside of Cuba in order to highlight a tiny positive. Didn’t you read how these buses are used to repress Cubans? Are you ignoring the FACT that these donated items end up being sold or given to party favorites? Worse yet, because you see the buses carrying students, you assume the whole program is honorable? To be clear, some good is probably done but for the most part, the Castros have corrupted this program like so many other programs started by well-intended liberals. Wake up, Dan.
Keep up the good work, Pastors for Peace! On my last trip I saw your buses everywhere I traveled in Cuba, including in Habana, La Lisa/San Agustin Sancti Spiritus (where they transported students every night into the city for classes), Ciego de Avila, Santiago and Guantanamo City. To those who donate to PFP, (including myself), know that your donations go to directly benefiting the Cuban people!
In Chicago, the Pastors for Peace organization held an event last fall and there were quite a few speakers who spoke about defending the rights of the poor and the powerless. They promoted voter registration and the right of all people to be represented by their government regardless of color, religion, sexual preference, gender and economic standing. It sounded great. This group’s hypocrisy kicks in when they arrive at Jose Marti Int’l Airport. Suddenly, these noble precepts are set aside in exchange for a relationship with the Castros. That’s the issue that I have with the progressives around the world who support the Castros. In their own countries, if you asked them if they would support a group of women who would like march from Sunday Mass carrying gladiolas, most progressives would stand in solidarity with this group. But in Cuba, when the Ladies in White do the very same thing, these progressives are nowhere to be found. Or worse, these leftists openly oppose the Ladies in White in solidarity with the Castro dictatorship. Hypocrites, one and all!
Check out the buses donated by Pastors for Peace used in repression against the Union Patriotica de Cuba (UNPACU) in Santiago de Cuba. You cant miss them, they are that bright yellow color!
Youtube: Brutal Repression against the march of UNPACU & Boitel-Zapata Vive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJlHSB–BpY
The political positions taken by the “Pastors for Peace” organization are hypocritical at best. But politics aside, they really do collect a lot of useful stuff for donation to the Cuban people. The problem is that the Castros don’t allow for direct donations. Instead, the truckloads of tools, clothes, medical equipment and other donated items are put up for resale by the Castros. The best stuff, including the never-used donated items, are pilfered off the top by the Castro elite before anyone else has had a chance to get at it. I challenge a pro-Castro reader here at HT to name one screwdriver, bath towel or wheelchair that was received by a regular Cuban without being picked over by Castros’ insiders. Shameful.
Buses donated by “Pastors for Peace” were used to transport Castro goons to acts of repudiation against dissidents. Where is the “peace” in that.