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More than 30 years ago after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the failed US backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the United States government imposed an economic embargo of that island. Trade and travel to Cuba were prohibited under most circumstances. Under the Trading With the Enemies Act, that policy has softened and then heartened over the years. Most recently, it was tightened under legislation sponsored by Representative Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, the Cuban Democracy Act. Now that policy is being challenged by a group led by several religious leaders. It's an effort known as Pastors for Peace.

I'm Sandra Levinson. I'm from New York, but I started on the Duluth route.

Joe Callahan from Minneapolis.

I’m Henry Garcia from Chicago.

Latino USA caught up with a group Pastors for Peace in Austin a few days before they defied US government policy by taking medicines, food, and other aid to the economically strapped island of Cuba.

We're taking such dangerous things as tons of powdered milk. We are taking pharmaceuticals because they are actually distilling their own pharmaceuticals out of the herbs and plants in the fields. I've seen that with my own eyes just in April. They don't even have sutures to close surgical wounds.

Like the Reverend George Hill, pastor of First Baptist Church in downtown Los Angeles. Every one of the approximately 300 people involved in the motley caravan of school buses, vans, and trucks that make up the Pastors for Peace eight caravan opposes the US economic embargo of Cuba. So much so that they refuse to obtain the license the Custom Bureau requires in order to ship anything to that island.

We refuse to ask for a license. We refuse to accept the license if the government extends one to us. Our license is really our command from God to feed the hungry, to give clothes to those who are naked, to visit those in prison, to give a cup of cold water. We must do this to the least and even to those with whom we may have differences.

The Reverend Lucius Walker of the Salvation Baptist Church in Brooklyn is the founder of Pastors for Peace. His stand on Cuba has not made him very popular among those opposed to the government of Fidel Castro. And he says he's received a number of threats.

Telephone calls to my office, threatening to come over with a pistol and take care of me.

Still. Walker insists he is not engaging in politics, only in the highest tradition of religious principles and civil disobedience.

Of Jesus Christ, of Martin Luther King, of Gandhi, and all of those who are the good examples of what it takes to make social progress in a world that if left to its own devices could be a very ugly place to live.

[Music] About 30 members of the Pastors for Peace Group sit around a television three days before they're set to rendezvous with more caravan members to cross the border at Laredo. They're watching a video about how the animosity between the governments of Cuba and this country have separated families for as long as 30 years.

No quiero vivir allá, no me gusta vivir allá. Pero me gusta vivir aquí, pero quiero ver a mi hermana, y a mis sobrinos que nacieron allá. Que son familia, que son sangre. [Translation: I don’t want to live there, I don’t like living there. I like living here, but I want to see my sister, and my nephews that were born over there. They are family, they are blood.]

I grew up myself with my family always saying, you know, that the only way to get out is to go to US to have a better life, to live like normal people, to wear jeans, to eat gum, chew gum. It's like very idiotic things to think of when I live here now, and you know, I have to learn the language.

Elisa Ruiz Zamora was born in Cuba. She came to this country with her family when she was 18. She's now a young mother and student making her life here in the States. But when she heard about the caravan of aid to Cuba, she brought her family down to meet with a group. Her mother, brother, and grandfather are still on the island and she hopes some of the caravan's aid gets to them. It's amazing, she says, to see Americans get together to help another nation, one their government has told them is a dangerous enemy.

Tell the opposite to their government. The government's like to me, it's like they want to be the judges of the world. Say, what should happen here? What shouldn't happen, how Cubans should live their lives. And we have a mind of our own and we always have. There's...

The Clinton administration has so far given little indication that it's ready to lift the blockade on Cuba. During his election campaign, Mr. Clinton received considerable support from anti-Castro organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation, but with the easing of telephone communications with the island, some now believe there might be a small window of possible change on other fronts. Sandra Levinson is the director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York.

They are looking, I think, in Washington for a way to change policy, which does not really give anything to Cuba. Of course, we will never do that, but will ease the tension somewhat, perhaps make it possible for more people to travel legally to Cuba. Make it possible for AT&T to put down some new telephone lines and perhaps give some of the 80 million dollars in escrow, which is accrued for Cuba to the nation, which so desperately needs that money. They don't care how much they have to pay for a telephone call. They want to talk to their mama.

As this program went to air, most of the Pastors for Peace caravan had been able to get across the border, except for two school buses and a few other vehicles. Among the drivers of those vehicles was the delegation leader, the Reverend Lucius Walker, who in the non-violent tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, began a hunger strike in protest. For Latino USA, I'm Maria Martin reporting.