• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 09 / 09 / 2010

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lchirino | September 8, 2010 at 6:07 pm. Lucius Walker never asked Cuba for anything but for keeping on with his solidarity efforts. Since he first came to the island heading a Friendship Humanitarian Caravan, in 1992, he strived to break the economic US blockade of Cuba.

“Anything we can do, in the first instance, is a response for the love Cuba has given the world,” said Walker who was the executive director of the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO), before passing away Tuesday, September 7, from a heart attack at the age of 80.

Working to break the blockade was a logical and natural decision for a man who,from his position as a Baptist reverend, had practiced solidarity with liberation movements in Angola, Guinea Bissau, Cape Verde and Nicaragua. It was in Nicaragua where Rev. Walker came up with the idea that gave birth to the Pastors for Peace humanitarian caravans.

Wounded by a bullet shot by the Nicaraguan contras in August 1988, Lucius understood that he had to do something to take humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan people, who were being the real target of the US hostile policy against the Sandinista Revolution.

Walker also met with the Cuban Reverend Raul Suarez, who proposed to launch a caravan to bring humanitarian assistance to Cuba, which began to feel the impact of a serious economic slump in the 1990s, following the fall of the Socialist Camp of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, plus the stiffening of the US economic, financial and commercial blockade.

It was the Rev. Suarez, director of the Havana-based Martin Luther King jr.Center who made Walker aware of the genocidal nature of the US anti-Cuba measure.

Their conversation resulted in the First US-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan, which used 45 vehicles to tour some 90 US cities and collected just 15 tons of medications, school items and food for the Cuban people.

Lucius and the caravanistas never denied their intentions to travel to Cuba though they never asked for any permission from US authorities. So they defied the American laws that threatened American citizens with up to 10 years in prison and up to 250 000-dollar fines if they travel to the island.

Upon arriving at Laredo on the US-Mexican border, the caravanistas were arrested during 10 hours. Carrying a wheelchair and a banner, which read: “Let Cuba Live. Lift the Embargo,” Lucius Walker crossed the border into Mexican territory in what was considered an unprecedented civil disobedience action in defiance of the US blockade.

“We breached the blockade,” he shouted some days later in Havana during a rally attended by Fidel Castro. Walker then said he would continue with that effort. He brought up to 20 caravans; sometimes the action was repeated in the same year.

Distinctive components of these caravans are the yellow school buses that came with each of them. It was precisely the seizure of a school bus in 1993 that made Walker stage a 22-day hunger strike on the border. He repeated his protest for over 90 days in 1996, until he was returned nearly 400 computers that had been confiscated by US authorities.

Last July, Lucius Walker was in Cuba for national July 26 National Celebrations and he met with Fidel Castro. The Reverend had already started a new struggle; he was able to bring nearly 100 American youths to study at the Havana-based Latin American School of Medicine.

Walker also cooperated with Cuba in providing Haiti with medical assistance after the earthquake that devastated that nation last January and he also maintained a flow of humanitarian caravans to the Mexican state of Chiapas,scenario of the uprising by the Zapatista National Liberation Movement.

As part of his Cuba experience, Lucius witnessed the main events that occurred in Cuba over the past two decades as he was convinced about the need to maintain the Cuban social project.

“Our solidarity is based on the significance of keeping Cuba´s example. I would not like to think of a world without Cuba,” he once said.

English version of Spanish article by Raul Mechaca, posted on Cubahora.

 URLhttp://wp.me/pLgvg-9V

Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/117584