SECTION: LOCAL;Pg. B-3

LENGTH: 610 words

HEADLINE: 2 San Diegans join test of trade ban; Group to return with Cuban goods

BYLINE: David E. Graham; STAFF WRITER

BODY:
In a visit intended to defy the U.S. ban on trade with Cuba, two San Diegans are among dozens of Americans traveling to the Caribbean nation this week to take solar power panels for remote schools and clinics, bicycle repair equipment and medicines.

But this trip has an additional aim from earlier, similar ones, said San Diegan Betty Fry. The caravan of people now assembling from across the United States not only will take goods to Cuba but will attempt to bring Cuban goods back to the United States, most likely pharmaceuticals, Fry said.

"This is a reverse challenge to the embargo," said Fry, a member of San Diego Friends of Cuba. "We hope it will focus the need to change the embargo." The trip is organized by Pastors for Peace, a New York organization that periodically makes such visits to draw attention to the four-decades-old embargo that it says deprives Cubans of affordable food, medicine and technology.

The embargo in most cases forbids Americans from trading with Cuba and limits travel there as part of a policy to pressure and change the communist government of Fidel Castro. People risk prosecution under the Trading With the Enemy Act.

For days now, buses have been traveling from several cities, including Boston, Chicago, Tampa, Fla., and Boulder, Colo., to collect people and supplies on their way to San Antonio. From there, the group expects to leave the United States through Texas today and continue into Mexico, where the people will fly to Havana. The goods will continue by ship.

About 90 people will go in this 12th caravan that Pastors for Peace has organized since 1992, Fry said. Also going from San Diego is Chuck Drury, who, like Fry, has for many years been active in San Diego Friends of Cuba.

Members of the U.S. Customs Service and officials of the U.S. Treasury Department, which administers embargo regulations, plan to inspect the cargo bound for Cuba, a Customs spokesman said.

But the most dramatic moment of their journey this year could come as they re-enter the United States in Texas on July 12 and declare they are bringing goods from Cuba. The group does not know exactly what goods the Cubans will provide them. But pharmaceuticals, including meningitis and hepatitis vaccines developed on the island, are under consideration, Fry said.

"We're aware of the trip, and we're discussing how to proceed," said Customs spokesman Dean Boyd.

U.S. officials typically work with the caravan groups to reach some understanding about any restrictions they will attempt to put on the trips, Boyd said. Some humanitarian aid can qualify to be transported between the two countries.

Fry held out the possibility, for example, that the Cuban goods in fact may be legal for entry if they are donated by the Cuban government and not paid for by the Americans, meaning no trade took place.

Pastors for Peace estimates that its caravans to Cuba have taken 260 tons of material, including ambulances, school buses, books, school supplies, sporting goods, medicines and about 800 computers for clinics, hospitals and medical schools, Fry said.

In January 1996, Customs agents at the San Ysidro border crossing turned back a Pastors for Peace caravan carrying 350 computers destined for Cuban hospitals. The chaotic episode shut down southbound traffic for almost five hours.

The computers were finally trucked across the border several months later and flown to Cuba under a carefully crafted accord between the Treasury Department and the United Methodist Church.

Fry said she knows of no American on any of the Pastors for Peace caravans who has been prosecuted for violating the embargo.



LOAD-DATE: July 5, 2001