The Bookmobile and Pastors for Peace

  McAllen, Texas, United States
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Preface to the trip

This project started with two US librarians, Dana Lubow and Rhonda Neugebauer, who had organized librarian delegations to Cuba and who wanted to support Cuban librarians. They had sent many many books to Cuba and had encouraged travel by US librarians to see the country and the library system for themselves. They learned from Cuban librarians that a bookmobile would be very appreciated in the rural province of Granma to provide outreach services.. After purchasing one on e-Bay, it was driven to Los Angeles. A grant was given by the Christopher Reynolds Foundation to purchase books for this mobile library. Some very generous individuals and librarians sent additional books and monetary support. Mechanics worked to ensure to the best of their ability that it wouldn't fail on the road. Lots of repairs were done to the bookmobile to make sure it could travel from Los Angeles to Tampico Mexico, where it would be placed on a ship to Cuba-already full of 3000 books in boxes! You can see the complete list of titles at the Bookmobile to Cuba, from Gentry to Granma blog.

Gerardo Hernández, one of the Cuban Five U.S. political prisoners, designed the bookmobile's design and volunteer art students from L.A. Valley College painted it on the vehicle. It came out beautifully!

We determined that the best way to get the bookmobile to Cuba was to join the Pastors for Peace Caravan travel challenge. In doing so, we challenged the US Treasury Department travel restrictions that impinge upon our right to travel freely and that hinder the development of professional exchanges and interhemispheric relations between the U.S. and Cuba - including among librarians and scholars in the field.

We believe travel restrictions are unconstitutional and constitute a loss of our civil rights and academic freedoms. U.S. citizens should not be denied the right to move freely throughout the world. This project is most important in demonstrating the importance of travel to Cuba as critical to the free exchange of ideas. So, we filled the bookmobile with books and sent it with solidarity and friendship to the librarians and library users of Cuba! We have many people to thank for their generosity. Perhaps you are one of them. We thank you from the heart for helping us make this dream come true - to help readers in Cuba connect with information and books, the vessels of knowledge and understanding.

Thank you!!!
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Finally, June 24, 2008 arrives and that was the day we'd set to depart for Texas to meet up with the Pastors for Peace Caravan. Today was the day that we would attempt to take the bookmobile once again to Tampico, Mexico. Last year we drove the bookmobile as far as Phoenix before a brake cylinder failure put a halt to our travel plans.

After picking up Gerry Bill, the Bookmobile co-driver and a recently retired sociology professor at Fresno City College, at the Amtrak bus station in Glendale at 2:40 a.m., we went to my house for an early breakfast and get on the road before the desert got too hot. After two hours of driving, we pulled into rest stop and when I turned on the ignition again, there was no power. Not again! That was the second time this had happened in the past couple of weeks (once on a trial run with the mechanics)!

After getting a jump start at the rest stop and after two hours of driving early in the morning around Indio, CA, (in the desert) looking for a mechanic, we very fortunately found someone specialized in alternators and voltage regulators. After doing a little testing he realized there was a short circuit and it could take several hours to find out where it was. However, luckily for us, within 40 minutes, he installed a combined alternator/voltage regulator unit instead doing the tests and once again we were on the road. Relief!

It was a long and hot trip. And, the bookmobile engine was very loud, making the trip was an exercise in trying to talk loudly above the engine noise. Traveling through the California desert into Texas and Mexico during the summer is quite hot and the bookmobile's air conditioning, the old-fashioned kind, consisted of exactly two windows.

Along the road we met people curious about what we were doing and what Cuba was like. Truck drivers also showed their support with their honks. Four hot days later we arrived in McAllen Texas to meet up with the rest of the Pastors for Peace Caravan and the other caravanistas.

We congregated at the Our Savior Lutheran Church in McAllen Texas.

Our Savior Lutheran Church, McAllen TX

The church's physical setup adequately met the group's needs.

5-buses, Pastors for Peace 19th Caravan, 7-08

The parking lot was big enough for all the buses, there were enough dorms, the kitchen was large and well-equipped, and there was a gym large enough for tables and open space for dancing, live music or speakers.

dining hall, Pastors for Peace 19th Caravan

There were over 120 people of all ages-- the youngest turned eight while we were in Cuba and the oldest was 86 -- from all over the U.S. and Canada with a few individuals from Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, and Mexico as well as a few Cuban-Americans and 12 vehicles, eight of which were to be donated to Cuba.

Challenging the U.S. government's position banning travel to Cuba is a given for those for those traveling with the group. The ban on travel to Cuba has been established by the US government despite the fact that U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in an opinion in 1958: "the right to travel is a part of the 'liberty' of which the citizen cannot be deprived without due process of law under the Fifth Amendment." However, much more than intellectual support of an ideal is necessary in order to successfully travel with the Pastors for Peace Caravan. Participating and traveling with the Pastors for Peace is not for lazy people. It isn't easy. It's very demanding. It is not a vacation. It requires physical fortitude as well as commitment. It was a tremendous learning opportunity and an inspiring experience, however. The visit in Cuba was excellent, although too short, a very educational experience.

cooking, Pastors for Peace 19th Caravan, 7-08

Participants were expected to help in many ways. Helping with cooking three meals a day for almost a week is one way to contribute. I cooked the first day and every breakfast, being up at 5 am (and one morning at 4 am) to begin the meals for the day. Others helped with inventorying and labeling the material aid that was donated along the route. Some were dedicated to bus-painting tasks and mechanics were very-much appreciated.

There was 24 hour guard duty. We were told that Homeland Security was keeping a close eye on us. (Remember, Cuba is still such an evil, horrible, dangerous country. Gotta keep close check on those dirty, Commie loving pinkos supporting THAT country. Who knows what they are capable of? Medical aid? Books? Dangerous stuff. After all, books do contains ideas and medicine does help keep humans healthy and alive. Very dangerous stuff. Best to keep an eye on them.)

There were many meetings with Caravanistas in-between the other responsibilities. Meetings that included information about the history of IFCO and the Pastors for Peace, a political update about the blockade/embargo*; understanding daily life in Cuba under the embargo, cultural sensitivity, more details about the trip in Cuba, what to expect upon reentering the U.S. on July 14, and more.

The evenings after dinner were filled with various social, educational, and cultural activities. We heard a speaker talk about the Rio Grande Valley segment of the concrete block wall that is being built between the U.S. and Mexico to keep out poor, undocumented workers, many fleeing the effects of NAFTA in Mexico. She mentioned the ecological parks and sensitive areas that the wall would divide as well as the Brownsville campus of the University of Texas and other important aspects of the wall. Isn't it interesting how the wall will not be constructed through golf courses and upper-middle class resorts and those well connected to position, power or wealth.

Additionally, a variety of films were shown, Movement, a hip hop group from Sacramento traveling with the Pastors, performed as did two Native American dancers from Arizona.

We drivers even had our own special driver's meeting the night before our departure. The vehicles had already been joined through audio by Gary's installation of CB radios in each vehicle. There we discussed routes, (the "highway of death" through Mexico was eliminated by virtue of its name and past history), bus order (the bookmobile was second and set the pace since it couldn't go faster than 55 m.p.h.), Mexican highway laws, and other important items.

After the meeting the vehicles needing gas left to get it. Ellen Bernstein, one of the key people of Pastors for Peace got a frantic phone call when the buses were leaving the church from an employee of Homeland Security wanting to know "if we were leaving now." They obviously had us under a very close watch. Additionally, while on the return from getting gas,, the San Diego bus was rear-ended by a drunk SUV driver. The mechanics were up all night working on the bus to ensure it would make it to Tampico and later in Cuba. It did so in flying colors.


* The use of the word blockade or embargo depends who is on the receiving or giving end of the action.