Another reason Cuba is important is because my friend Zaida lives there. I'd like to perform a virtual introduction. My friend Zaida Navarro Fernandez is in her early 70s, and her auburn hair is pretty obviously dyed. She is timid about going outside at night even though she lives in a beautifully safe town called Yaguajay where she knows almost everyone, and she prefers bicycle taxis to the horse-drawn variety because a horse might get startled and run away. When I say, But Zaida, you used to ride all over the mountains, and in very dangerous circumstances, she answers, "When we're young we're not afraid of anything."
When Zaida was in her teens she joined the Young Socialists and during the Revolution she was part of the Clandestine Struggle - "La Clandestina" - taking arms, medicine, money and documents to the fighters in the Sierra under pretext of going visiting friends on other sugar plantations. They also took word back to the families, "Mami, I'm alive and so is Emilio. We're in the mountains with the Revolution." It was desperately dangerous. Had they been caught they would have been tortured and killed, as indeed happened to many. Shortly before the triumph of the revolution she was at the Central Narcisa - sugar plantation offices and processing plant - which had been captured by the revolutionary forces and was under attack by the Batista forces. Many people had taken refuge there. Because of the gunfire people told her "Come, hide in the clarifier," a huge metal vat, but she was afraid of being trapped inside and didn't get in there. Then a plane from the Batista forces began to circle for a bombing run. The pilot made two passes and then dropped the bomb not on the Central but on a field where there were no people. It made an enormous crater, and would have killed them all. After the Revolution, the pilot was found and questioned. He said that he had seen children's clothing on the clothesline strung outside by the people sheltering in the Central and he just couldn't bomb it. This shows, says Zaida, that you can find good people in every situation of life. When the Revolution was won she was not quite 21 years old.
When I write to say I'm coming to Cuba and what should I bring, she writes back that in Cuba they are used to doing without and she doesn't need anything. When I was there she and her friend Magali were joking about it, "If there's no shampoo, we wash with soap. If there's no soap we wash with shampoo." She washes out pots and pans with a rag because pot scrubbers are luxury goods not found in Cuba. There is water from 9PM to 9AM. There is electricity. There is food on the rations though it's not varied or interesting. She owns her home. She has had the experience of helping create a revolutionary transformation of her country, which I regret not having, but in terms of consumer goods and food choices, her life is incredibly sparse compared to mine. A substantial part of this is due to the US economic blockade of Cuba. I think it is inappropriate and wrong and wicked for your government and mine to try to force my friend Zaida to give up the Revolution she helped make and of which she is so proud by trying to starve and deprive her. This is why the Pastors for Peace Caravan is important. Not so much because of the aid we take, though that is significant and needed. But because it is a clear act of civil disobedience against an immoral law. It is a statement, " I'm sorry that my government is trying to strangle you to force you to give up your struggle for a better society. I disagree and I'm trying to change that policy."
When I asked Zaida and other veterans of the revolution from Yaguajay why they risked so much, they said, "Things were terrible here before the Revolution. The plantation owned all the land and they could just kick you out anytime. There were no schools; there were just a few doctors for the rich and people died all the time from diseases which could have been cured." Now what used to be the military barracks is a hospital which does all kinds of care but also specializes in dialysis. When we visited a year ago, a doctor there was talking about the problems of the blockade. His dialysis machines are old, kept going by ingenuity like the famous old cars. He can't get current medical books. I sent him a current edition of Handbook of Dialysis. Well, actually, I didn't send it. I bought it and had a friend send it from Canada. What kind of policy do we have toward Cuba which could forbid sending a medical book? Or a pacemaker? or surgical tool for eye operations? or medicine for treatment of leukemia?
The blockade is deeply immoral and wrong. It's time to end it.
(And for anyone not interested in morality, it's also stupid. The Cubans have been through the worst already and they have not given up. There's enough food now but there wasn't in the early 90's and that is precisely when the restrictions of the blockade were tightened. That the US tried to starve the Cubans into submission is not a figure of speech. It didn't work. We might as well trade with them and allow other countries to do so. We might as well act ethically, since coercion failed...) 