Pope’s Visit to Cuba Raises Hopes of Relief Groups and Other Charities

The historic visit to Cuba last week by Pope John Paul II has produced a new wave of hope among humanitarian relief groups, foundations, and other non-profit organizations that want to establish or expand programs in the Communist island nation.

In Washington and Miami, foundations and non-profit organizations have stepped up their efforts to encourage a thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba, which were frozen during the Cold War. Non-profit policy groups such as the Washington Office on Latin America and the Center for International Policy have crafted a public-relations campaign around the papal visit that is intended to focus attention on humanitarian needs in Cuba. A handful of liberal foundations, including the Christopher Reynolds Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, support their efforts.

And earlier this month, a powerful and diverse group of religious, political, and business leaders announced the formation of a coalition, based at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, called Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, whose aim is to push for passage of legislation that would weaken the current U.S. trade embargo. Participants include the American Jewish Congress, the National Council of Churches, and the Presbyterian Church (USA).

The coalition is pressing for passage of legislation in both houses of Congress that is designed to ease trade restrictions and to permit companies in the United States to sell food and medicine in Cuba. In a statement, coalition members noted that “Forty years of the strongest embargo in our history has resulted in increased misery for the people of Cuba while making no change whatsoever in the political makeup of the Cuban government.”

On the other hand, proponents of the embargo argue that current law permits ample room for relief activities. According to the Cuban American National Fund, U.S. policy “is expressly designed to guarantee as best we can that humanitarian donations to Cuba reach those who need it most: the Cuban people.”

Humanitarian groups currently are granted exemptions from the trade restrictions as long as they obtain licenses that are designed to insure that supplies are not diverted by the Castro regime. But relief and development experts say that the licensing process is costly and time-consuming. What’s more, they argue, since direct flights between the United States and Cuba are banned, the charities must ship aid through third countries, which can be prohibitively expensive.

Despite the inconveniences, many organizations are currently delivering humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people. Among the relief efforts, one of the largest programs is run by the Roman Catholic Church. Since 1993, Catholic Relief Services, the international relief arm of the Catholic Church in the United States, has sent over $14-million worth of food, medicine, and other relief materials to the Cuban people through Caritas, the church’s relief agency in Cuba.

Still, Catholic relief officials are hopeful that the U.S. government will relax trade restrictions with Cuba. “We would certainly like to see direct humanitarian flights permitted, because it would let us do even more,” says Thomas M. Garofalo, a spokesman for Catholic Relief Services.

Optimism about a shift in United States-Cuba relations is at its highest level in many years, largely as a result of recent developments in both nations. In the months leading up to the Pope’s visit, the Cuban government granted its citizens significantly more religious freedom than in previous years. Last month, for example, Cubans were permitted to celebrate Christmas Day as an official holiday for the first time since 1969.

At the same time, the death late last year of Jorge Mas Canosa, the outspoken chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation, meant that Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s harshest critics in the United States lost their most powerful voice.

Sylvia Wilhelm, executive director of the Cuban Committee for Democracy, says that she had great respect for Mr. Mas Canosa and that she “agreed with his passion for Cuba.” Even so, she says, his death has left a vacuum, “and now other voices that may not have been heard as strongly before may be heard.”

Other Cuban-American activists share Ms. Wilhelm’s view. “The extreme positions are losing more and more power,” says Rafael Fornes, a Cuban-born academic who is on the Board of Directors of Cuban National Heritage, a Miami-based organization that seeks to preserve Cuba’s fading architectural riches.

Says Andrea Panaritis, executive director of the Christopher Reynolds Foundation in New York: “The confluence of forces moving toward a re-examination of U.S. policy is tremendous, and the papal visit is really bringing things to a head.”

The Reynolds fund has provided grants to challenge U.S. policy toward Cuba for just two years. Before that, it was devoted primarily to pushing for changes in U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia. But after the U.S. government agreed to normalize relations with Vietnam in 1995, the foundation pulled out of the region and shifted its focus to Cuba.

Indeed, there are many similarities between what foundations are doing with regard to Cuba and what they did with regard to Vietnam, says Stanley Katz, a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University and former president of the American Council of Learned Societies. “Foundations can take a lot of credit for the work they sponsored around Vietnam,” says Mr. Katz, who is participating in an exchange program for Cuban and American scholars that is being financed by the Reynolds Foundation. “Foundations can create an opening, and that is what they are trying to do in Cuba.”

Before the Reynolds fund arrived on the scene, the Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had each made grants to support academic-exchange programs with Cuban scholars and other programs designed to stimulate policy debates in the United States. Since 1991, the MacArthur Foundation has spent over $3.6-million, with most of the money supporting policy groups and university programs in Miami and Washington.

But American foundations have barely scratched the surface of the work they might be doing in Cuba. “Cuba is wall-to-wall needs,” says Mr. Katz. And while the country is poor, its people are relatively well educated, he says, “so it is possible to get things done.”

Legislation pending in the House of Representatives would make it legal for U.S. companies to sell food and medicine directly to Cuba. And Senate legislation would give the President the ability to relax elements of the embargo as he sees fit.

Currently, under the controversial Helms-Burton law, the executive branch of government is prohibited from acting unilaterally to ease trade restrictions with Cuba. The Helms-Burton measure, which tightened the embargo against Cuba, was enacted in March 1996, a month after Cuban fighter planes shot down two civilian airplanes just outside Cuban airspace, where the small planes were conducting a controversial mission, ostensibly searching the waters off the Cuban coastline for refugees escaping on rafts.

To be sure, government leaders in Washington and Havana remain implacable foes. President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright have each firmly restated their opposition to relaxing trade restrictions with Cuba in recent weeks. Nevertheless, pressure is building to soften the embargo.

For some charities with programs in Cuba, however, a softening of the embargo would not be enough. “The legislation would loosen things up a bit, but it is very far from what I would like to see,” says Peter Rosset, executive director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, based in Oakland, Cal. Mr. Rosset contends that the United States should end its embargo outright.

In March 1996, the institute, commonly known by the name Food First, received a license from the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control — the government office charged with enforcing the embargo — to open an office in Havana to help Cubans learn organic-farming techniques. Between its office in Havana and educational seminars that the organization runs in the United States, Food First spends nearly one-sixth of its $600,000 budget on its Cuba programs, says Mr. Rosset.

The need for organic farming is particularly acute in Cuba, he says, because of the collapse of Cuba’s principal benefactor, the Soviet Union. Today, the small island nation imports just 20 percent of the pesticide and fertilizer that it was able to obtain during the Soviet era. With help from Food First and other international organic-farming groups, Cuban farmers have been able to adjust their agricultural practices, quickly adopting organic farming techniques on a wide scale, says Mr. Rosset. “I believe that, together with our Cuban partner organization, we have played a significant role in helping them overcome their food crisis,” he says.

For other non-profit leaders, relaxing the embargo is a necessary step toward eliminating it altogether. “This is a high wall that was built over time,” says Kathleen Donahue, a co-director of Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, who also coordinates advocacy efforts for the non-profit Center for International Policy. If the pending legislation were to pass, she says, “That would be a major crack in the wall, and that’s when you start wedging in and breaking it down, brick by brick.”