ELCA'S Anti-Embargo Stance Applauded in Cuba

ELCA'S ANTI-EMBARGO STANCE APPLAUDED IN CUBA
by David L. Miller*

When officials from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) delivered an anti-embargo resolution to the headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Havana, Cuba, last month, they aligned themselves with the deep aspirations of the Cuban people and its government. The 37-year-old embargo continues to wreck the island's economy and wreak suffering especially upon the most vulnerable Cubans.
The ELCA officials also witnessed a historical irony: The U.S. government's trade embargo, intended to bring down the Castro government, has long been counter-productive, according to Cuban church leaders. The embargo is used by the government of Fidel Castro as "the El Nino of excuses," an all-purpose justification for its failure to afford greater freedom to its people or open its doors to influences outside the country.
The ELCA resolution was greeted warmly by Silvio Platero Irola, associate director of the central committee's religious affairs department. It was delivered by a delegation from the ELCA's Division for Global Mission, which included the Rev. Will L. Herzfeld, associate director, the Rev. Rafael Malpica-Padilla, director for Latin American ministries, and the Rev. Karl H. Reko, director for planning.
"This is very good news," Irola said after Herzfeld presented the document. "It affirms the solidarity that exists between our countries and churches."
The resolution, which the global mission board adopted unanimously in March, calls ELCA members "to advocate for an end to the embargo against Cuba through legislative and administrative measures, including a relaxation of regulatory provisions" which hinder humanitarian aid. It also asked ELCA Presiding Bishop H. George Anderson to communicate this to President Clinton and members of Congress.
The board's action is consistent with a statement adopted by the 1995 ELCA Churchwide Assembly, which called the church to "work actively toward the goal of ending the U.S. embargo against Cuba ... [and to work toward] the establishment of normal relations" between the two countries.
Cuban Lutherans applauded the board for its firm stance. " The position of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Cuba has always been to be on the side of the people," said Miguel Ebanks, the church's bishop. " As such, we have been against the embargo from the beginning, since it is inhumane to the people. It hurts them even before they are born. Parents don't have the proper care or medicine, and children are born sick."
Despite its size -- only 805 members -- the Cuban Lutheran church has been a leader among the island's religious groups. The Council of Churches in Cuba, an ecumenical body, has spoken against the embargo, "but only the Lutheran church has spoken against it individually," Ebanks said. That changed in February when Pope John Paul II put the Roman Catholic Church on record against the embargo and the ravages it inflicts on Cuba.
Signs of economic stagnation are ubiquitous across the island -- ancient cars; food rationing; crumbling highway, electrical, water, telephone and sewage systems; an almost total absence of consumer goods; poorly equipped clinics with acute shortages of everything from X-ray film and anesthetics to garden-variety antibiotics.
In 1997 medical investigators from the American Association for World Health completed a well-documented survey of medical care in Cuba. The organization concluded that the embargo is "taking a tragic human toll. ... [It] has closed so many windows that physicians have found it impossible to obtain lifesaving machines from any source." The AAWH report said that the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, in which the U.S. Congress threatened to punish non-U.S. corporations doing business in Cuba, multiplied the hardship of average Cubans.
The "human toll" of the embargo has faces like that of Maria Jesus Labrador Sanchez. She lives in three small rooms -- 200 square feet total -- in La Lisa, a suburb of Havana. Sanchez shares her tiny house with eight chickens, a sow with two piglets and her 32-year-old daughter who has Downs syndrome. She survives on her monthly pension -- 42 pesos, about two dollars -- which she supplements by sewing.
For Sanchez the deepest suffering of the embargo is revealed by a framed photo of a young woman. The frame on the wall is draped by a white, plastic rosary. "That's my oldest daughter," she says, motioning toward the photo." She died. There was no medicine."
On the streets of Havana, one encounters many highly critical remarks of the Castro government's economic policies. But even those most critical of its poor planning and inefficiency acknowledge that if Cuba is to prosper and become more free, the embargo must go. On that point, Cubans seem to agree fully with their government.
"Eleven million people are affected by this inhumane, cruel and unchristian embargo," said Irola. "For us, the embargo is a terrible violation of human rights. We are a socialist country like China or Vietnam. Yet China receives most-favored nation status for trade. So why not a better relationship between the U.S. government and our government?
"You don't know how much we appreciate that you have spoken against the embargo," Irola concluded after reading the ELCA resolution.
Cubans and their government are encouraged by gathering international opposition to the embargo. The United Nations continues to condemn the U.S. policy, and in March the Clinton administration adopted a policy allowing direct humanitarian relief flights from the United States.
Cuban Christian leaders remain skeptical. "I fear the U.S. government is using humanitarian aid as a way to avoid the larger questions of opening trade and ending the embargo," said Pablo Oden Marichal Rodriguez, executive secretary of the Council of Churches in Cuba.
Rodriguez wondered aloud why the U.S. government doesn't realize that its policy doesn't serve American interests, an insight also voiced by United Nations human rights observers early this year. A U.N. report suggested that Cuban officials use the embargo as the universal explanation of why there cannot be a free press or liberalized social and economic policies.
"The government holds that, as long as there is the hostility of the North American government, current policies need to continue," Rodriguez said.
Cuba's Lutherans pray regularly for the end of that hostility and for the dawn of a brighter, more hopeful era.
[David L. Miller is a senior editor for "The Lutheran" magazine]

For information contact:
Ann Hafften, Director (773) 380-2958 or NEWS@ELCA.ORG
http://www.elca.org/co/news/current.html