wfn.org | Cuban church leaders seek PC(USA) support

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Note #6222 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

19-October-2000
00362

Cuban church leaders seek PC(USA) support

Fund would promote visitor exchanges, oppose trade embargo

by Alexa Smith
	
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- In a recent series of meetings here, leaders of the Cuban
Council of Churches (CCC) urged the Presbyterian Church (USA) to send more
strategic groups of North Americans to Cuba to help change U.S. public
opinion about the island.

	As part of that effort, the CCC and the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the USA (NCC) are establishing a fund to finance exchanges of U.S.
and Cuban citizens to "change attitudes," in the words of an NCC statement,
so that the practical problems separating the neighboring countries can be
solved.

	In the joint statement, issued on Sept. 12, the two groups say the new
effort will "encourage us to explore our human richness, share knowledge,
experience and dreams ... and it will also serve as an appropriate context
for intercessory prayer for each other in the Spirit of the Gospel. It will
seek to establish that respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of
nations, which are crucial to harmonious relationships between neighbors."

	The CCC's president, the Rev. Reinerio Arce Valentin, put it more bluntly:
"We need to go beyond the declarations between our two countries. Churches
can play a more important role than that."

	Arce cited the highly visible role the NCC played in securing the return of
young Elian Gonzalez to his family in Cardenas. Elian, who had been orphaned
at sea while defecting from Cuba with his mother, was returned to his family
after a bitter and protracted legal battle between his father and expatriate
relatives in Miami.

	It is not as if teams of U.S. church-goers don't already visit Cuba. Plenty
do.

	In the PC(USA) alone, eight presbyteries (Cascades, Chicago, Long Island,
Monmouth, Santa Fe, South Louisiana, Southwest in Puerto Rico and West
Jersey) have partnerships with Cuba's three presbyteries and the CCC.
Officials and church-goers pass back and forth on mission trips, conferences
and study seminars.

	Arce told PC(USA) staff members that such visits are useful, but the CCC
would prefer that visitors were chosen more strategically. It would like to
welcome more doctors who could talk to the powerful lobby of the American
Medical Association about the effects of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuban
health care and more teachers who could do likewise with their own unions
and lobbyists.

	 In Arce's view, strategically choosing opinion-leaders to make such trips
is wise politics at a time when the U.S. embargo against Cuba is up for
debate in the Congress.

	He also called upon churches to begin talking about how to influence the
nature of the United States' eventual re-entry to the Cuban marketplace when
the embargo is lifted.

	Cuba's church leaders have long protested the human cost of the embargo, as
have their U.S. partners, including the PC(USA), whose General Assemblies
have consistently called for a lifting of the embargo.

	CCC leaders said it would be politically advantageous now to strengthen
public opinion opposing the embargo.

	The U.S. government stopped all trade with Cuba, including shipments of
food and medicine, after the 1959 revolution, when the Soviet Union
politically and economically backed the Castro government. The embargo has
been one of the most stringent ever enforced by the U.S. Treasury
Department, in that it forbids even sales of food and medicine and restricts
how other nations that trade with the United States may deal with Cuba.

	"We need to deepen the exchange," said Arce, a member of the Presbyterian
Reformed Church in Cuba and of the theological faculty at Cuba's Protestant
seminary in Matanzas.  "We know the PC(USA) has this kind of exchange ...
but we need to increase it, and we need to do it more ecumenically."

	Arce stressed that the CCC wants the support of the NCC's member churches.

	Julia Ann Moffett, the PC(USA)'s liaison to Cuba, told CCC leaders that the
denomination is committed to getting "a mass of people" educated about Cuba
and the U.S.-Cuba political conflict, so that they "can play a role in our
country."

	Moffett affirmed the notion of bringing Cubans to the United States as
well. She has qualms about overwhelming the smaller Cuban church's capacity
to host so many Americans.

	The Rev. Vernon Broyles, the PC(USA)'s associate for corporate witness,
told the Cubans that the denomination looks upon such visits as an
opportunity to send targeted delegations of opinion-leaders, and an
opportunity to educate ordinary Presbyterians as well.

	"The groups that went to Central America in the 1980s created a huge
constituency of average Presbyterians who were on fire to do something
(about brutal military dictatorships there and about the U.S. government's
role in Central American politics)," he pointed out.

	Arce said that the NCC's relief arm, Church World Service (CWS), has a
license to ship food and medicine to Cuba in spite of the embargo, and is
exploring ways to get developmental aid into the country.

	He suggested CWS might send raw materials needed to manufacture medicine,
rather than the finished products, to help create jobs.  He said European
churches are using a more developmental model, establishing working farms to
produce milk, rather than shipping powdered milk.

	CWS director, the Rev. John L. McCullough, issued a statement saying that
CWS has made the transition from relief to development in its service to
people around the globe.  "We maintain and hope to strengthen our
partnership with the CCC and our support to the people of Cuba," he said,
explaining that CWS has begun exploring providing assistance there that will
build sustainable livelihoods in communities.

	Moffett told the Presbyterian News Service that Congressional voting
patterns and the Gonzalez case do signal a softening of public opinion
toward Cuba.

	 "It might be time," she said, "to deepen that conversation."

	Arce was accompanied to the United States by one of the CCC's vice
presidents, Ormara Nolla Cao, a Baptist, and its executive secretary, the
Rev. Marcial Miguel Hernandez of the Free Evangelical Church.

	PC(USA) representatives at the dialogue included the Rev. Tony Aja, a
Cuban-American who is associate for immigrant groups in the U.S.A.; the Rev.
Homer Rickabaugh, associate for presbytery/international partnerships; and
the Rev. Marian McClure, director of the Worldwide Ministries Division.

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