Sometimes, and only now and again I find myself in a situation where
I can say: I have finally seen it all. I've gone there, been there,
done that, nothing can surprise me now; but every time I've been
proved mistaken. I feel the same thing is happening right now under
our very eyes, without us realizing of it. It's my thinking, and by
all account I'm not politician, statesman or even economist, that our
government have absolutely no disposition to negotiate with the US
authorities. Let me state the facts that have driven me to such
pessimist forecast.
It cannot come as a surprise the rather poorly state of Human Rights
in Cuba, in fact every NGOs that conducts research and advocacy on
human rights that I know of, manage to score Cuba with the lowest in
the Americas and one of the worst in the world. Freedom, in my
opinion cannot be subject to any bendings, let alone political
interpretation. You have it or you don't, this is one of those few
things that can be seen in a black and white spectrum. It doesn't
change when you cross a border, speak a foreign language or profess
certain faith.
Raul Castro said on the CLACS summit this week that Cuba will not
negotiate on the principles ruling the national policy or internal
affairs in many different topics. In other words we will not be
opening legal and independent newspapers because we believe and is
stated in the constitution, that there is not such a thing as freedom
of speech when it falls out the communist idealism. There won't be
any legalization of existing political parties because there can be
only one party fully committed with our independence and dignity, and
that's the communist party, as stated in the constitution. We don't
need a fair and direct voting system, with state of the art
technology that guarantee security, because ours is the best, more
democratic one. All these matters and many more are matters of
internal affairs and national policy that need to be addressed. How
can there be a meaningful negotiation when the illness that afflicts
our nation in left untouched.
A number of indispensable aspects were pointed out by our president
in order to be able to move forward to the normalization of relations
between our countries. The first one is the need to end the Embargo
that has been for so many years the perfect excuse of our government
to all the misery of regular folk. Steps has been already taken to
begin a Congress debate on whether to remove the embargo and strip
out the Cuban government's excuse for the hardships of the country or
to let it continue and not give in to the new approach of the current
administration. I believe the embargo will not be lifted, the
Republican Party has a supremacy now in both the chambers of the
Senate and the House of Representatives, which make up the US
Congress. There are also other subjects concerning votes and
political interests, but no matter the chances of actually doing
something about it, this outcome has yet to be determined.
It was also said the US need to return the southern part of
Guantanamo Bay, and these certainly won't happen. Today the White
House have stated they won't return control of this territory to
Cuba. Don't get me wrong, I think we should get
Guantanamo back, or at least decide in a referendum whether to keep
leasing it to the
US, or to finally put an end to it. I think our government has a big
part in this mess, have you ever wonder why haven't been a petition
such as the meetings yearly held at the UN to put an end to the
embargo, but demanding the return of Guantanamo Bay? Have you
wondered why the regular citizen thinks
this place as a
US territory and not Cuba's? We haven't
been raised to think it is ours, we haven't had it at the schools,
not at home. And I'm not meaning occasional allusions by our
authorities, I mean to really create a strong sense of ownership.
Maybe this matter must be dealt as Manuel Sanguily once did when
presented with an indefinite
intervened country or a Republic with Platt's
amendment, he choose
the latter. For now, we should discuss
this in the future if we want to get somewhere, or just draw
it quits, everyone pack their bags and pretend nothing happened,
after all that is what Castro wants. The current US government is the
one interested in normalizing relations with Cuba, the big majority
of their legislative body doesn't want this, they need any excuse to
end this historical moment and say: this was a terrible idea. In fact
I'm not sure why they are giving in anyway, when no substantial
change have happened since it was made into law. Castro is giving
them exactly what they want, impossible requests such as paying back
to Cuba money for the moral and economic damage caused by the
embargo, when in fact Cuba is hold account for losses of nationalized
US companies that were not paid, worth 7000 millions of dollars. Did
you know this is the reason why a Cuban aeroplane
can not land in US soil? Because
they would be confiscated to pay for these.
There can't be any freedom and independence in
Cuba while there is a single person wrongful imprisoned by his
political convictions. Nor there can be
while there is still arbitrary arrests and social constrain. There
won't be, not until the government, the public servants and the
authorities are made accounts for their actions, to the people, where
all the power resides. No one, not a single one,
not even the ones oppressing us can be ever free, until the very last
of us is free.
