Vol. 79/No. 14      April 20, 2015

The four panelists were Hendrik van den Berg, an economist and professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Frances Mendenhall, an Omaha dentist who recently visited Cuba on a tour organized by Code Pink; Dan Schlitt, a Quaker and longtime advocate for fair treatment for Cuba; and Rebecca Williamson, a leader of the Socialist Workers Party who participated in the Havana International Book Fair in February. Paul Olson, a veteran leader of Nebraskans for Peace, chaired.

“I have been watching the U.S. negotiations with Cuba closely and I have to say that I am highly suspicious of our intentions,” van den Berg said.

He described working with U.S. government agencies in Latin America for several years in the 1970s. “Every country we ‘helped’ there ended up with a military dictatorship promoting the interests of U.S. businesses.”

“Capitalism is a very powerful system,” van den Berg said. “It creates the idea that you can get rich, which of course is only true for the very few, at the expense of the lives of millions.”

“But I am worried. I hope Cuba negotiates very carefully, to protect what they have accomplished over the past half century,” he said.

Cuba’s revolutionary leaders “are well aware that 11 U.S. administrations — from Eisenhower to Obama — have tried every means they could to wipe out the revolution made by Cuban workers and peasants in 1959 and defended by them ever since,” Williamson said.

“We should demand an end to the economic embargo against Cuba, the return of the Guantánamo Naval Base to Cuba, and oppose any attacks on Cuban sovereignty,” she said. She added that Nebraskans for Peace can be proud of its participation in the fight against the U.S. government frame-up and imprisonment of the Cuban Five, who are now free and working in Cuba to defend their revolution.

“Attacks against Cuba of various kinds have been going on for decades,” said Schlitt, who got involved in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in Chicago in the 1960s. “This country organized an invasion of Cuba in 1961 in an attempt to overthrow the revolution.”

“As a Quaker I have followed the question of religious freedom in Cuba,” he said. “I think it is worth noting they don’t seem to have a policy of interfering in religious questions, but that not all the churches have always had a reciprocal policy.”

“I think we should concentrate on working with the religious communities here to help improve conditions for the people in Cuba,” Schlitt said.

Visiting Cuba was like “walking into a different kind of world where medical care is treated as something everyone is entitled to, where treatment is not related to the amount of money you have,” Mendenhall said. “This is something everyone in Cuba took for granted. They explain it has been this way since the beginning of the revolution.”

She pointed to the severe shortages of medical and other supplies and joined other speakers in demanding an end to Washington’s economic embargo.

“I don’t have enough time to tell you about the impact of Cuba’s medical aid throughout major parts of the world,” Mendenhall said in response to a question on Cuba’s international role. “Even before they sent hundreds of doctors and nurses to fight the Ebola epidemic, they already had doctors working throughout Africa. And not for financial gain, to help those most in need.”

“This is something that I agree with Rebecca on, this is selfless internationalism,” she said. “But the government in Cuba has much too much control. They have kept the Internet out of Cuba, and that is a problem.”

“The Cuban government is for Internet access,” Williamson replied. “Cuba has never acted in isolation from the world. It was the U.S. companies and government that cut off Cuba’s means of communications — cutting the phone cables, denying the right to travel to and from Cuba, cutting Internet access, putting Cuba on a ‘terrorist state’ list, trying to isolate them.”

Joel Gajardo, a Presbyterian minister, spoke in the discussion on how Cuba wiped out illiteracy. Commenting on several questions on religious freedom in Cuba, he said Fidel Castro’s government never aimed to limit religious or other freedoms, but only to prevent acts against the people carried out in the name of religion.

Matthew Gregory, a member of the Nebraska Farmers Union, asked what could be done to help farmers who are having difficulties selling their crops get more of a chance to work with Cubans in need of food products. Mark Welsch from the Omaha chapter of Nebraskans for Peace said that lifting the embargo would help farmers here and in Cuba.

The lively discussion continued for almost an hour after the meeting ended. The Grand Island chapter of Nebraskans for Peace has set April 26 to have a similar panel on Cuba.
 
 
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