For 10 years the US-CUBA Friendshipment caravans have been taking humanitarian donations to Cuba in violation of U.S. government regulations. The two of us were at Hidalgo, at the Texas-Mexican border, on July 18 this year when the 13th Friendshipment rolled up to the U.S. Customs station there. The caravan of 15 buses, trucks and ambulances was carrying medical supplies for Cuba and was accompanied by 80 supporters.

No organization has fought the 42 -year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba with more intensity than Pastors for Peace of New York, the organizer of the Friendshipments. The purposes of the donation project are to challenge the laws that keep the embargo in place and to help the Cuban people. Because Pastors for Peace never seeks or secures the licensure required by embargo regulations for humanitarian donations, the Friendshipment caravans are deemed illegal. Under the law the Customs officials at Hidalgo ought to have blocked last month’s shipment. Instead they waved the caravan across the Rio Grande River Bridge into Mexico.

The next day, in Tampico, the vehicles, along with medicines, bed sheets, dressing materials, diapers, intensive care monitors and much more were loaded onto a ship bound for Cuba.

One year ago, on July 2 and Aug. 18, we took part in similar challenges closer to home. The Maine organization Let Cuba Live brought medical supplies intended for Cuba, similarly unlicensed, to the Maine-Quebec border at Coburn Gore. In Texas and Coburn Gore alike, the purpose of the challenges and the nature of the donated materials were the same. Nevertheless, U.S. officials at Coburn Gore confiscated 120 boxes of medical supplies.

For a year now, that material -infant incubators, newborn resuscitation stations, anesthesia machines, intensive-care monitors, hospital johnnies, baby scales, examining tables -has languished in storage. Donated at considerable sacrifice by Maine people protesting U.S. policy, the supplies ought to have been put to use in Cuba.

Pastors for Peace is well known to Washington officials. During the

early Friendshipments, government attempts to block the caravans were met with nonviolent resistance. In 1996, the Pastors for Peace leader, the Rev. Lucius Walker and four others began a fast that lasted for 94 days, thereby persuading the U.S. government to send 436 confiscated computers along to hospitals in Cuba. The story was beginning at the time to seep into the mainstream news. Since then, unlicensed and thus not legal, the Friendshipments have crossed U.S. borders unimpeded. The appearance is of the Treasury Department taking pains to avoid offering up a pretext for publicity about a cruel, fruitless, and embarrassing policy. Caution like that, however, seemed not to be a part of government calculations last summer at Coburn Gore.

Many participants in the now completed 13th Friendshipment are beginning to spread the word about what they and Let Cuba Live regard as “special treatment” meted out to a small group from a rural state that dared to meddle with an issue that plays big in Florida politics. Offers of support and solidarity are now being received by Let Cuba Live as the group agitates to secure the release of the material confiscated last summer.

Let Cuba Live, of which we are members, will be continuing an active, principled resistance to the U.S. government’s bullying of Cuba. The urgency of the situation has by no means lessened. Innocent people in Cuba suffer because companies all over the world connected to U.S. corporations are prevented by the 1992 Torricelli legislation (the “Cuban Democracy Act”) from providing Cuba with wheat, medicines, cardiac pacemakers, spare parts for mammogram equipment, and kidney dialysis machines. International law holds that non-combatant civilians are entitled to material they need for survival. Most U.S. citizens now oppose the embargo, according to public opinion polls. In the U.N. General Assembly, the majority of member nations have consistently voted for an end to the embargo. In November 2001, the vote was 167 to three (United States, Israel, Marshall Islands).

Is the matter of Cuba so trivial that a distracted nation entering upon global war can be unconcerned? We suggest that the essence of national security is respect for human life, not the casting aside by officials in Washington of human communities they regard as disposable. And surely, security officials at U.S. borders must these days have more pressing tasks than keeping diapers and hospital bed sheets out of Cuba.

Judy Robbins lives in Sedgwick, works in school administration, and is a member of Let Cuba Live and the Peninsular Peace and Justice Center. Tom Whitney, a pediatrician, lives in South Paris and is a member of Let Cuba Live.