THEY are perhaps one of the largest groups of young people from the United States to visit Cuba this year. They are Chicano, Mexican, Puerto Rican, African-American, Asian, and white, many from working-class families. Coming from nine U.S. states, the 48 members of the Venceremos Brigade traveled to Toronto, Canada to fly together to Cuba, publicly stating their intention of violating the U.S. ban on travel to the island, a component of the imperialist blockade that has been intensified by the Bush administration. “I feel very strongly about the right to come here, because it’s such an amazing place,” said “brigadista” Priscilla Bassett, a 15-year-old high school student from New York. “I think it’s despicable that we call ourselves a democracy and have this blockade.”
| “... coming here would be a very strong act of civil disobedience against the U.S. government, which I do not believe in at all...” |
Steven Gustavo Emmons, 26, a waiter and radio journalist from New Mexico, commented, “I knew that this was the only way for me to understand Cuba’s reality, to see it with my own eyes, and that coming here would be a very strong act of civil disobedience against the U.S. government, which I do not believe in at all.”
The Venceremos (“We shall Overcome”) Brigade was created in 1969 when radical students in the United States “decided to support Cuba’s Revolution and travel to Cuba,” explains Kathe Karlson, 57. A social worker at a New York City public high school, Karlson herself has been on the brigade nine times, one of 9,000 people — most of them young — who have gone to the island with the group. “In the early years it was more about coming to see Cuba; now it’s about openly and publicly defying the blockade,” Karlson explained. Now, even though the government has taken away 90 percent of legal travel, there is increased opposition to the ban, she affirmed. |