3 Counter Summits Called on Public to Stand Against Biden Administration’s ‘Failed’ Summit of the Americas

Carlos Lazo and a small band of Cubans are on a 1,300-mile pilgrimage from Miami to Washington, D.C., to end the U.S. blockade of Cuba. Despite the blistering summer heat and occasional death threats (including a trucker who tried to run them off the road), the marchers persist. Lazo’s group is called Puentes de Amor, Bridges of Love, and this grueling walkathon is certainly a labor of love. 

While right-wing Cubans in Miami call him “comunista,” Lazo has no time for ideology. He is neither for or against the Cuban government; he is for the Cuban people, the Cuban families. And he is disgusted by the cruelty of the U.S. blockade and by politicians who use the Cuban people as a political football—especially during this pandemic.

Lazo portrays Cuba and the U.S. as his parents—Cuba is his mother, the United States his father. He sees his job as trying to stop them from fighting and instead to embrace each other. “We try to unite people, whatever their ideology, religion, race or nationality,” Lazo told me. “The important thing is to take down walls that separate us and build bridges between our people.” 

Lazo and the marchers set off from Miami on June 27 and will arrive in Washington, D.C., on July 25. All along the journey, they have been meeting with community groups—black farmers, veterans, students—explaining their purpose and their demands. They are calling for a lifting of all restrictions on sending remittances to their families back home; the resumption of flights from the U.S., not only to Havana but to all major Cuban cities (right now U.S. planes can only land in Havana); the reopening of a fully staffed U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Havana instead of the skeletal staff that exists now; a restart to the program of family reunification that Trump suspended in 2017; the granting to U.S. citizens of the right to travel freely to Cuba; and robust economic relations, as well as scientific and cultural exchanges. Despite candidate Biden’s campaign promises to revert to Obama’s openings, the Biden administration insists that its Cuba policy is still “under review.” In practice, it has continued the brutal Trump agenda.

You couldn’t invent a better person than Carlos Lazo—a gregarious high school teacher/veteran who also plays guitar, sings and dances like a Cuban rock star—to lead a movement to change U.S.-Cuba policy. His trajectory reads like a movie script. The son of a cigar maker and a housewife, Lazo grew up in the small fishing village of Jaimanitas, west of Havana, and spent the first 28 years of his life there. After his mother emigrated to the United States, Lazo dreamed of following her. He first tried to leave in 1988 when he and his friend rigged up a makeshift raft. After two days adrift in the ocean, they were picked up by the Cuban Coast Guard. Lazo was thrown in jail, where he spent an entire year for illegally trying to leave the island. 

Undeterred, in 1991 he tried again. After four precarious days on a rickety raft with six others, this time they were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and allowed to enter the United States.

Lazo spent a few years in Miami working in restaurants, delivering pizzas and driving trucks, but moved to Seattle in 1998 to seek more economic opportunities. There he joined the Washington National Guard and studied nursing. When the United States invaded Iraq, he was sent as a combat medic. He participated in the battle of Fallujah and was awarded a bronze star for helping to save lives.

But in 2005, when this decorated veteran was on leave and tried to visit his two sons living in Cuba, he discovered that the Bush administration wouldn’t allow him to go. This was a turning point in his life, when Lazo realized that the U.S. blockade, which has existed in one form or another since the 1960s, was hurting both the Cuban people and Cubans in the United States who wanted to visit and help their families back home. 

So Lazo began speaking out. In 2007, he testified before the U.S. Senate and met with more than 100 members of Congress. He was featured on CNN and MSNBC and in national newspapers. 

When Obama became president and started normalizing relations with Cuba, Lazo thought his political work was over. He got a teaching degree, became a high school Spanish teacher, and threw himself into building a unique cultural exchange program that took his students to Cuba. The “profe,” as he is known, taught his students to sing Cuban love songs and dance salsa, winning the hearts of their Cuban hosts. He called this project the Factory of Dreams.  

These glorious exchanges, six in total, came to a crashing halt when Trump entered the White House. Trump tried to please right-wing Cubans in Miami by reversing Obama’s openings and adding 242 additional coercive measures designed to torpedo the Cuban economy. 

While the pandemic left a trail of pain and death around the world, Trump insisted on restricting family remittances to Cuba, stopping fuel shipments that supplied electricity to Cuban homes and hospitals, and sabotaging Cuban medical brigades that were helping to save lives around the world. “The planet cried out for solidarity and cooperation,” Lazo fumed, “but Trump responded by trying to suffocate the Cuban people.”

Lazo decided to take action. Despite the raging pandemic in the summer of 2020, he and four family members got on their bikes and rode more than 3,000 miles from Seattle to Washington, D.C., to urge Donald Trump and Congress to lift the blockade. Lazo livestreamed their voyage on Facebook, gaining an enormous following along the way.

Lazo’s cross-country trip inspired a group of Cubans in Miami to begin their own caravan of bicycles and cars on the last Sunday of every month. Starting with just 11 bicycles last July, the Miami caravan has grown to more than a hundred vehicles and bicycles going down Calle Ocho in Little Havana. Carlos teamed up with Miami YouTube personality Jorge Medina (El Proteston) to galvanize hundreds of Cubans in the United States. For the older generation of Miami Cubans who, at great personal risk, have been proposing normal relations and opposing the right-wing “haters” of the Cuban government since the 1959 revolution, this infusion of energy is a thrilling development.

Inspired by the success in Miami, there are now monthly caravans taking place in some 30 cities in the United States and scores more throughout the world, including in Cuba itself. Clearly, Lazo’s rejection of hatred and his commitment to building “bridges of love” reflect the sentiments of a growing number of U.S.-based Cubans and their allies.

When the marchers arrive in the nation’s capital, they will be greeted by hundreds of supporters, including U.S.-based Cubans flying all the way from Miami. Lazo plans to stay in Washington to meet with members of Congress and present the Biden administration with a petition signed by more than 25,000 people calling on him to build “bridges of love” between the two countries—just as President Obama started to do when he was in the White House.

Lazo’s pilgrimage shows his understanding that opponents of the blockade in the Cuban community need allies among broader layers of people–the farmers, students, church people, truck drivers, etc.—that he is meeting on the way. He believes the bridges of love go both ways because many groups, besides Cubans, have an interest in ending the blockade. These include farmers who want to sell their crops; tourists eager to enjoy Cuba’s nearby beauty, culture, and history; and scientists and public health officials seeking to collaborate with the island’s advanced medical system and biotech industries. In his pilgrimage, he wants to give a voice to these allies as well. 

The mushrooming of caravans across the country, the increasing number of city council resolutions against the blockade, the recent vote of the Longshore Union to condemn it, the $400,000 raised by groups sound the country to send syringes for Cuba’s COVID vaccinations—all show a growing feeling that it’s past time for the Biden administration to re-examine its cynical, electoral calculations in continuing Trump’s restrictions on Cuba. 

Lazo is not naive. He is under no illusions that his trek to Washington, D.C., will be enough to change Biden’s policies. But his philosophy is both simple and profound: “Everything you do to make the world better helps to make the world better,” he says. And whether it’s a cross-country bike trip or a 1,300-mile trek in the summer heat, Lazo takes these bold actions with so much joy, love and enthusiasm that others can’t help but follow his lead. 

Medea Benjamin, cofounder of CODEPINK, is author of several books on Cuba, including No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today. 

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), along with partner organizations, held events April 4 in three countries across the Americas to launch an effort to activate popular movements in the region in support of a call for a “Zone of Peace.”

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declared the Americas region a “Zone of Peace” in 2014. This came in response to centuries of oppression at the hands of Europe and, later, the United States. U.S. policy has related to Latin America and the Caribbean as the United States’ “backyard” ever since the Monroe Doctrine was announced in 1823.

“The U.S. declared the European states must stay out of the hemisphere, which meant the United States was claiming the entire region as its own,” said Margaret Kimberley, a BAP Coordinating Committee member, who spoke at a BAP press conference held April 4 in Washington, D.C. She added CELAC exists to counter the Organization of American States (OAS), a multilateral organization based in Washington, D.C., and known for backing U.S. policies in Latin America and the Caribbean.

After years of struggle and U.S. sanctions that have been linked to the deaths of 40,000 people in 2018, socialist-led Venezuela completed its withdrawal from the OAS in 2020. Meanwhile, another socialist country, Nicaragua, announced it was exiting in 2021.

“Biden says it is the ‘front yard’ in a clumsy attempt to be somewhat progressive,” Ajamu Baraka, chairperson of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, told Jacqueline Luqman and Sean Blackmon on the day after the launch, April 5, on “By Any Means Necessary,” an afternoon talk show on Radio Sputnik.

Launch events were held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Washington, D.C., USA; and in Havana, Cuba, where the call for a Zone of Peace was initially made in 2014. The event in Port-au-Prince involved eight hours of activities, ranging from performances, talks, exchanges, and graffiti and sign-making.

The launch took place on BAP’s 6th anniversary, which is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Exactly one year prior to his murder, King had publicly denounced the U.S. war on Vietnam, as well as what he identified as the three pillars of U.S. society: Materialism, militarism and racism.

“This campaign will be informed by the Black Radical Peace Tradition,” reads BAP’s press release. “With its focus on the structures and interests that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism and all forms of imperialism—the fight for a Zone of Peace is an attempt to expel all of these nefarious forces from our region.”

BAP describes the reason behind the use of “Our Americas” on its website:

Nuestra América is a term revolutionary forces in the Americas have used to assert themselves against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile for all of the historically oppressed peoples of the region. BAP has translated the singular Nuestra América (Our America) into the plural “Our Americas” to help bridge the gap between the U.S. usage, “America,” that describes the United States as the only “America” and the concept put forth by revolutionary forces.

However, Baraka distinguished the campaign’s target.

“We’re not talking about the people of the U.S.,” he told “By Any Means Necessary.” “We’re talking about this settler-colonial state. We know [the United States] cannot exist as a settler-colonial state if it gave up its militarism.”

BAP also issued six “initial core demands”:

1. Dismantle SOUTHCOM. Shut down the 76 U.S. military bases in the region
2. End U.S./NATO military exercises. Close foreign military bases, installations and enclaves, as well as withdraw foreign occupation troops
3. Disband U.S.-sponsored state terrorist training facilities. Shutter the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation” (WHINSEC)—formerly the School of the Americas—in Fort Benning, Georgia, United States, and terminate U.S.—as well as foreign—training of police forces
4. Oppose military intervention into Haiti. Support the people(s)-centered movement for democracy and self-determination
5. Return Guantánamo to Cuba. The United States must give back to the Cuban people and their government the territory it illegally occupies
6. Sanctions are war. End illegal sanctions and blockades of regional states, including all economic warfare and lawfare, and recognize their sovereignty

Yet, BAP is clear the method for going about this work must be different than what has emerged from predominantly-white organizations based in the United States.

“This work must be de-colonial, anti-imperialist, advance a People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework, and be conducted across at least five languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Haitian Creole,” BAP states on its website.

Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, said at the press conference that the United States uses multi-lateral organizations like the OAS to oppress the peoples of the Americas. And, so, of the initial approximately 25 organizations that had signed onto the campaign before it had been launched, more than half are based outside the United States and Canada. Some of the partner organizations that will help coordinate the effort include:

• MOLEGHAF (Haiti)
• REDH (Network In Defense of Humanity) (Cuba)
  
• Caribbean Organisation for People’s Empowerment
• African People’s Socialist Party (Bahamas, Jamaica, United States)
• Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) (Colombia)
• Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Nicaragua)

“Our homelands are not playgrounds for the U.S. to launch its wars of aggression,” said Nina Macapinlac, secretary general of BAYAN USA, an anti-imperialist alliance of 20 organizations dedicated to the liberation of the Philippines. Macapinlac spoke at the Washington, D.C., press conference as a member organization representative of the United National Antiwar Coalition, one of the organizations that BAP has partnered with for the Zone of Peace campaign.

BAP invites organizations and individuals to endorse the Zone of Peace campaign and activate the popular movement element in what they describe as a “multi-phase campaign that aims to build a united-front opposition to liberate our Americas from the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.” A U.S./NATO Out of the Americas Network will be launched as the mass-based structure of this campaign.

Julie Varughese is editor of Toward Freedom.

This presentation took place during a December 2, 2021 webinar called, “Why Does Independent Media Matter?” , where TF Editor Julie Varughese reported back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election.

New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also spoke about their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny touched on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline discussed the U.S. state’s influence on U.S. entertainment.

Watch the whole webinar here.