Computers Bound for Cuba Halted

In a six-hour confrontation that clogged a heavily used entryway to Mexico, U.S. officials refused Wednesday to allow a protest caravan led by a Baptist minister to take 300 used computers to Mexico so they could be flown to Cuba.

The slogan-shouting group, led by the Rev. Lucius Walker of Brooklyn, N.Y., declined an offer from officials to apply for a humanitarian exemption to the U.S. embargo on Cuba.

“I do not need a license to do God’s work,” Walker said. “I don’t have to ask the government if I can help my neighbor who is suffering.”

The 300 computers and modems, packed into two rental trucks, are meant to be used in Cuban schools, hospitals and clinics, said Walker, founder of the Minneapolis-based Pastors for Peace. A plane had been chartered to take them from Tijuana to Havana on Saturday.

Except for a brief spell when several protesters tried to run into Mexico carrying boxes of computers, the impasse at the Otay Mesa port of entry was peaceful. They ran into the arms of federal officials and some minor scuffling took place.

U.S. law allows certain aid to Cuba, as long as it is not filtered through the government of dictator Fidel Castro. But because the computers were to be given to a government ministry for dispersal, they could not be allowed to leave the country, said U.S. Customs Service spokeswoman Bobbie Cassidy.

Pastors for Peace, whose goal is to persuade the U.S. government to lift its embargo on Cuba, has made other unsuccessful attempts to leave the United States with embargo-restricted goods for Cuba. Those attempts were at Laredo, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y.

For days, officials had tried to persuade Walker not to attempt to take the computers to Mexico en route to Havana. After several hours, agents seized the computers and ordered the 20-car caravan to leave or be arrested.

Twenty-three computers from Canada, which does not have a similar embargo against Cuba, were allowed to pass through the Otay Mesa entryway and will presumably be loaded onto the plane for Havana.