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month, as they have for a dozen years now, an obscure organization
known as the Pastors for Peace will travel south to Texas, cross
the border with Mexico, and then take ship for Cuba. They will be
carrying with them medical supplies, computers, athletic equipment,
school supplies, and monetary donations, in what is billed as the
12th Annual U.S.-Cuba "Friendshipment."
The whole business sounds very above-board and humanitarian. In
fact, it is nothing of the sort. The motto of the Pastors, and of
their umbrella group, the Interreligious Foundation for Community
Organization (IFCO), is "Let us love not in word: but in deed and
in truth" (I John 3:18). Since their founding, in 1988, the Pastors'
principle activity has been to spread the love to Fidel Castro's
regime, in word and deed alike.
When six members of the Congressional Black Caucus, led by Maxine
Waters of California, took a junket to Cuba in 1999, the Pastors
helped organize the trip. When Castro visited New York City in 1994
and again in 2000, IFCO and the Pastors were there, welcoming him
to the United States and setting up meetings between the Cuban dictator
and "progressive" religious leaders. And during last year's Elian
Gonzalez controversy, the Pastors were among the American groups
lobbying fiercely for his return to Cuba.
Meanwhile, the Pastors' founder and executive director, the Reverend
Lucius Walker, has been a reliable defender of the Castro regime's
policies — and, predictably, a reliable critic of his native
United States. Although "critic" might be too weak a word for a
man who regularly blasts America for its "despicable evil policies,"
its "immoral and cowardly abuse of power," its willingness to turn
black men into "an endangered species," and its "gross violations
of human rights in its own country and in countries throughout this
globe." All that is within a single speech — delivered to the
"Second World Solidarity with Cuba Conference," held in Havana in
December 2000, and attended by Castro himself.
To enter the world of Lucius Walker and his organization is to enter
a place where the Cold War never ended — where the battle with
the capitalist, racist, crypto-fascist United States is still being
fought, one case of Yanqui imperialism at a time. The Pastors
for Peace are not exactly "useful idiots," naïvely believing in
some sort of moral equivalence between America and Cuba. Rather,
they seem to be out-and-out Communists, trumpeting the moral superiority
of Castro's regime while eagerly awaiting the coming of worldwide
revolution.
This is unsurprising, given the history of the group. The IFCO was
founded, according to its promotional literature, in 1967 with the
aim of "advanc[ing] the struggles of oppressed people for justice
and self-determination." What this meant, predictably, was backing
every left-wing cause that came down the pike, from the Sandinista
revolution in Nicaragua (which the group judged "a powerful model
for the struggle within the US against US militarism, racism, and
economic exploitation") to Marxist insurrections in African nations
— and including, of course, strong support for the continued
"success" of the Cuban revolution.
Lucius Walker (his church, Salvation Baptist, is located in Brooklyn)
was IFCO's founding director, but he left the organization in the
1970s to become Associate General Secretary of the National Council
of Churches. He was fired from this position in 1978 — a turn
of events that he attributed to the NCC's "'drifting to the right"
— and returned to IFCO shortly thereafter. In 1988, he conceived
of Pastors for Peace, now IFCO's most visible arm, as a group that
would organize "humanitarian aid caravans as a way to assist the
victims of US foreign policy." At first, the Pastors focused their
attention on Central America, but as the Reagan-era struggles in
the region began to fade (with embarrassing consequences for the
Left, like the Sandinistas defeat at the polls in 1990), Walker
turned the group's attention to Cuba.
And Cuba, more than anything else, has enabled IFCO and the Pastors
for Peace to survive and even thrive in the post-Cold War world.
Instead of having to reevaluate their politics in the wake of the
Soviet Union's collapse, Walker and Co. point to Castro's island
as the real victory for Communism, the one place where the revolution
has succeeded — which explains why the hegemonic, imperialist,
capitalist United States will do anything to crush the Cuban people.
As Walker put it memorably in his 2000 Havana address: "Why is the
United States government so pathologically obsessed with the destruction
of Cuba? I thing the answer is simple…. Cuba is a good example
which capitalism cannot tolerate. What would happen if the Cuban
model of development, of health care, of education, and of using
its resources for the development of its own people rather than
the repaying of massive, unpayable debt to the World Bank and the
IMF, what if the Cuban model were copied, modified and adapted in
Haiti, in Jamaica, throughout the Caribbean, Central America, South
America, throughout Africa and Asia?" Why, then "the fruits of this
revolution [would] flower in nation after nation until the kingdom
and the imperialist powers of this world give way."
The Lord's Prayer-esque overtones of the last line remind one that
Pastors for Peace is supposed to be a religious organization —
and it is, sort of. The group nods to the "Judeo-Christian ethic,"
and over the years its backers have included left-leaning Protestant
groups like the NCC and the United Methodist Church. But the Pastors
acknowledge that, while they are "based in the religious community,"
they include "activists from all sectors of society…anyone
who works with peace for justice is a 'pastor' for peace." As for
their brand of Christianity, one wonders where in the New Testament
the Pastors discovered that, as their mission statement puts it,
one's responsibility to the community "does not mean a responsibility
to charity, which can create unhealthy relationships of dependence.
It means a responsibility to justice — political, social and
economic." Blessed are the poor, in other words, for they shall
rise up in revolution.
As they already have, if you believe the Pastors, in the worker's
paradise known as Cuba. Castro's island has problems, Walker's organization
admits, but they are, without exception, the result of the U.S.
blockade. All else, apparently, is sweetness and light. Cuba, seen
through the Red-colored glasses of this group, is actually a thriving
democracy, one whose civic life would put America's to shame. As
Ellen Bernstein of IFCO has insisted, "I know of no more democratic
country in the world than Cuba." The Reverend Walker said the same
thing in a 1999 interview, adding that "I would be honored to have
a person like Fidel as President of my own country." And of course,
the Florida election fiasco only added fuel to Walker's fire, as
he echoed Castro in calling for Cuban "observers" to monitor American
elections.
This fiction of a Cuban democracy is sustained through a naïveté
that would be touching, if it weren't so horrifying. The IFCO website
trumpets a 1997 book called Democracy in Cuba, by a Canadian
named Arnold August, as evidence of how "the Cuban Revolution…heralded
the realization of true democracy." According to August, not only
does Cuba have free elections, in which one can be a candidate without
even joining the Communist Party, but it also has campaign-finance-reform
laws tight enough to make John McCain proud. Meanwhile, the citizenry
is remarkably engaged in political life — for instance, even
though voting isn't mandatory, a whopping 98 percent of the voting-age
public cast ballots in the last election! And of course, the notion
of Fidel Castro as a dictator is arrant nonsense — he was voted
into office by the 601-member National Assembly, which in 1997-98
gave him a remarkable 100 percent of the vote!
All of this is reported without a trace of irony. So it is no surprise
that Cuban dissidents receive short shrift from the Pastors for
Peace — after all, how could one dissent from such a marvelously
vibrant democratic society? While the Pastors have kind words for
countless "political prisoners," like cop-killing radio journalist
Mumia Abu-Jamal and Shining Path abettor Lori Berenson, they make
no mention of people like Rene Montes de Oca, or Dr. Oscar Biscet,
or Jose Orlando Gonzalez Bridon--all of whom languish in Castro's
jail for daring to ask for a political system in which a candidate
might receive slightly less than 100 percent of the vote.
But at least, one might argue, the Pastors are doing some much-needed
charity work, lugging medical supplies to needy Cubans. Here again,
though, the reality is murkier. Even if one discounts the (all too
believable) reports that many of the medical supplies turn up later
in Castro's government-run "foreigners-only" stores, the "Friendshipment"
caravans still smack of political opportunism. After all, one wonders,
why lug the supplies through Mexico, when all such purely humanitarian
aid can be shipped directly to Cuba simply by acquiring a Treasury
Department license?
The answer, according to IFCO, is that they refuse to "participate
in [the] immoral laws and regulations" associated with the U.S.
embargo. More to the point, repeatedly violating U.S. customs law
by crossing the Mexican border with unlicensed supplies for Cuba
provokes confrontations with the government — which in turn
leads to publicity for the Pastors.
As Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy reported
in April 1999, Walker's group got just the reaction they were looking
for during their '96 pilgrimage, when "a 30-vehicle caravan carrying
200 activists and 300 computers was blocked at the Mexican border
south of San Diego by U.S. Customs officers." In response, Tooley
wrote, "Pastors for Peace activists dismounted from their vehicles
and began running their computers towards the border, trying to
ram through Customs officials and police officers…. The melee
injured one protester and four Customs inspectors, three of whom
required hospital treatment. According to Pastors for Peace, their
activists had been trained in 'non-violent techniques.' Walker later
said he had never seen law enforcement behave so brutally."
In the end, the computers were confiscated by Customs, which prompted
Walker to begin a hunger strike — which, in turn, brought Walker's
congressman, Charlie Rangel, into the fray. According to Tooley's
report, Rangel, accompanied by several other Democratic House members
and Joan Brown Campbell of the NCC, praised the Pastors as "dedicated
Americans…working to ease the suffering of the Cuban people,"
and announced the support of 60 members of the House for the return
of the computers to the Pastors. Eventually, the Treasury Department
gave in, and since then there have been no further attempts to halt
Walker's caravans — much to his disappointment, no doubt.
Still, there are other avenues for publicity. The Pastors and IFCO
made hay out of the Elian affair, for instance, organizing a conference
at New York's Hunter College and causing a stir by barring anti-Castro
speakers from attending. While Cuban émigrés were kept out by the
campus police, the Pastors' panelists held forth: Cuban diplomats
testified to Castro's beneficence, fellow travelers like ex-attorney
general Ramsay Clark blasted U.S. policy, and Walker attacked the
Cuban-American exiles protesting outside as gusanos, or worms,
a term favored by Castro to describe political dissenters.
By this point, the Pastors are a well-established cog in the left-of-left
political machine — they have funding from left-wing philanthropies
like the Arca Foundation (which supplied the cash for the Black
Caucus trip to Cuba), backing from an array of left-wing Democrats,
and ties to all sorts of New New Left organizations. More importantly,
they have self-righteous zeal to spare — and whenever someone
dares to suggest that all might not be well in Communist Cuba, the
Pastors are there to provide the "other side" of the story.
In many ways, the Pastors for Peace resemble their great idol, Fidel
Castro. Both are relics of the Cold War, both are out of touch with
Cuban reality — and both show no signs of going away.
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