Berta Antunez delivered a letter from her brother protesting a recent trip by Congressional Black Caucus members to Cuba. She is shown here with a photo of her brother.

BY LESLEY CLARK

The sister of a prominent black Cuban activist delivered a sharply worded letter from her brother Wednesday to three members of the Congressional Black Caucus who met last month in Cuba with Fidel and Raúl Castro -- but no dissidents.

Berta Antúnez's visit comes as efforts to open Cuba to travel and trade heat up on Capitol Hill, and Antúnez said through an interpreter she didn't want Cuban democracy activists to be overlooked.

''They were indifferent to the suffering of the Cuban people, but now the world gets to know who these people are,'' said Antúnez, who was accompanied to the Capitol by Anolan Ponce, a Miami board member of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action Committee, the leading lobby in support of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Antúnez met with staffers for California Reps. Barbara Lee and Laura Richardson and Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush -- all of whom met with the Castro brothers. She said aides told her the caucus trip was aimed at opening a line of dialogue between the Obama administration -- which has relaxed some restrictions on Cuban Americans -- and the Castro government.

''But I told them the dialogue has to be between the regime and the people of Cuba,'' she said.

At least one of the caucus members plans to go further than the administration in reaching out to Havana. Rush, who chairs the House Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection subcommittee, plans Thursday to introduce legislation that would lift restrictions on trade with Cuba.

It also calls for normalizing banking relationships and removing Cuba from the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism.

''The congressman is certainly not insensitive to human rights abuses. It's something he wants to address, but at the same time, the embargo hasn't worked,'' said a spokeswoman, Sharon Jenkins. ``He believes we've got to try to go about it in a different way.''

Antúnez said her brother, Jorge Luis ''Antúnez'' Garcia Perez, who has been on a hunger strike since February to protest conditions in Cuba, considered the meeting with Fidel and Raúl Castro ``a slap in the face.

''While you were meeting with the Castro brothers,'' he wrote to the members of Congress, ``only 300 kilometers away from the capital, our home and the five protesters who remain within it were subject to a brutal siege by the combined forces of the national and political police.''

Antúnez said Rush's staffers gave her cellphone numbers to contact the congressman if her brother needs assistance.