[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 48 (Thursday, March 25, 2010)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E502-E503]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     AMISTAD SAILS TO HAVANA HARBOR

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. JOE COURTNEY

                             of connecticut

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 25, 2010

  Mr. COURTNEY. Mr. Speaker, today is a proud day for the Mystic 
Seaport Museum and the city of New London, as our freedom schooner 
Amistad prepares to sail into Havana Harbor as a floating goodwill 
ambassador. The Amistad's visit to Cuba culminates its current 
Caribbean Heritage Tour to help commemorate the United Nations-
designated date of March 25 as a Day of Remembrance for the victims of 
the Atlantic slave trade.
  The 19th century Amistad Incident ultimately led to a profoundly 
important U.S. Supreme Court decision that arguably turned the tide 
against slavery itself. The ship serves as a global icon of racial 
tolerance and a platform for serious examination of shared history 
across Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. Today, the 
world is watching as the Amistad sails into Havana Harbor to set new 
milestones for diplomacy and remembrance. Today, from New London to the 
Caribbean, we honor our common heritage and wish the Amistad fair winds 
and following seas.
  The following is a story from the New London Day:

            Amistad Is Sailing Back To Where Its Story Began

                           (By Ted Mann Day)

       Havana.--Over a breakfast of melon, eggs and thick, dark 
     Cuban coffee, Quentin Snediker, Maureen Hennessy and William 
     Pinkney seem barely able to stand the wait for the coasting 
     schooner Amistad and its crew to arrive in Cuba.
       It is a wait older than the ship itself, says Snediker, who 
     was the project coordinator of the design and construction of 
     the Amistad for Mystic Seaport.
       ``To complete the story, we always felt the vessel had to 
     return here,'' he said on Sunday morning, as he and Pinkney, 
     who was the first in command of the ship when it launched 
     nearly 10 years ago, prepared for a press conference at the 
     Museo Nacional de Bellas Ades to announce the Amistad's 
     impending historic visit to Cuba.
       ``Here'' means Havana, the Cuban capital and trading 
     center, where the African captives who would make the Amistad 
     famous were auctioned illegally in 1839 as slaves in 
     violation of the Spanish and English treaties banning the 
     international slave trade, and bound for the eastern 
     agricultural districts that made Cuba a power in the sugar 
     and coffee trade.
       Brought to Havana on a slave ship after being taken captive 
     in Sierra Leone, the 53 men and boys were transferred to the 
     Amistad, a modest vessel that transported goods and freight 
     along the Cuban coastline.
       In an ornate, wood-paneled room at the Museo Nacional, 
     Cuban historian Miguel Barnet, Pinkney and Snediker took 
     turns reviewing the subsequent twists of the Amistad story 
     for a crowd of about 45 journalists from the Cuban national 
     press, American TV networks and the BBC.
       Despite the 1807 passage of the Wilberforce Act--whose 
     anniversary, now the United Nations' international day of 
     commemoration for victims of the slave trade, the Amistad 
     will mark with its formal arrival in Havana on Thursday--
     Cuba's booming sugar and cattle businesses precipitated a 
     dependence on human slavery.
       It was a case of ``negocios sucios,'' or ``dirty 
     business,'' Barnet said, but one into which leaders in Cuba 
     and in its colonial patron, Spain, felt driven by necessity. 
     ``Both the Spaniards and the Cubans needed fresh hands,'' he 
     said.
       The Amistad never reached its destination. The leader of 
     the captives, known as Cinque to his Spanish-speaking 
     handlers, led a revolt that would change not just the history 
     of slavery in Cuba and the Spanish empire, but also in the 
     United States.
       Picking the locks of their shackles with a nail, the 
     captives seized the ship and killed most of the crew, 
     including Captain Ramon Ferrer, with machetes. The remaining 
     crew members were ordered to steer the Amistad back to 
     Africa--away from the setting sun.
       But as those crew members tried to sabotage Cinque and the 
     Africans, the Amistad zig-zagged up the east coast of the 
     United States until it was captured off Montauk and towed 
     into the Custom House in New London.
       The captives, initially put on trial for the killings, 
     would eventually be freed, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 
     that since they had been taken from Africa in contravention 
     of international treaties banning the slave trade, they could 
     not be property.
       Instead, the court ruled, Cinque and his countrymen were 
     necessarily men, with a right to defend themselves against 
     those who kept them captive.
       The Amistad's visit resonates not just with its historical 
     legacy; it is also, Hennessy noted, a rare opportunity for 
     open interchange between the Cuban and U.S. nations, at a 
     time when their respective governments remain at uneasy odds. 
     Hennessy, who, like Snediker, was taking time off from her 
     work at the Mystic Seaport to meet the Amistad and its crew 
     as they arrive in Matanzas today, said the group met over the 
     weekend with officials from the Cuban Ministry of Culture.
       The ministry plans to broadcast Steven Spielberg's 1997 
     film ``Amistad'' on one of the state-run television channels 
     Tuesday night, in an attempt to drum up popular interest in 
     the ship's visit.
       As the press conference concluded Saturday morning, 
     journalists descended on the Amistad representatives, 
     particularly Pinkney, wanting to know if this combined 
     diplomatic effort of the State Department, United Nations and 
     Cuban officials represented a new thawing in mutual 
     relations.
       The visit comes months after the incoming Obama 
     administration relaxed travel restrictions and other facets 
     of the nearly 50-year U.S. embargo of Cuba, but significant 
     tensions still persist. Billboards on the highway into Havana 
     from Jose Marti International Airport depict the mug shots of 
     Cuban prisoners held in the United States--without cause, 
     according to the Cuban government. And U.S. commentators 
     continue to raise questions about the Cuban government's 
     policies, including its economic system and approach to 
     dissidents.
       But the Amistad represents shared strands of history, said 
     Barnet, the Cuban historian and writer, and the American 
     visitors agreed.
       While interviewers continually asked him variations of the 
     question ``can this be a step'' toward normalization, Pinkney 
     said, this visit transcends the political considerations that 
     have divided the two countries.
       ``Now they're completing the Amistad story by coming into 
     Havana, where it all started,'' he said. ``Here, we have 
     nothing to express but the solidarity of humankind.''

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