Source: FEMCAI (Spanish)
Author: Pablo González Casanova
On June 17th, 2014
Translation: Patricia Barba Avila
ALAI AMLATINA, 17/06/2014
TO MR. JOHN D. ROCKEFELER, HONORARY DIRECTOR OF THE SOCIETY OF THE AMERICAS AND DISTINGUISHED MEMBERS OF THE PRIVATE SECTOR, FOUNDATIONS, AND GOVERNMENTAL OFFICES THAT ADDRESSED A LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA IN SUPPORT OF CUBAN CIVIL SOCIETY:
We have read very carefully your request to President Obama, which surprised us for the undeniable change of policy towards the small island and its great people. For more than fifty years, you have done everything, openly and covertly, to obstruct their freedom and independence. Today you see the possibility to achieve, through different means, the same goals arguing with excitement that you seek to “defend your principles and interests”
The dealings you acclaim reveal, nonetheless, many mistakes and self-deceptions in maintaining (and some of you really believe) that you are going to foster “the economic independence in Cuba”, their “individual rights” and their “human rights”, when in truth, you are speaking of a country you haven’t been able to defeat despite the tremendous pressures and open and hidden attacks, along with the unspeakable embargo you have enforced for more than half a century.
You have eyes and yet don’t see? Have ears and yet don’t listen? It is a well known fact that in Cuba all children and youth have schools, universities, and institutes; all the sick benefit from free medical attention, hospitals and medicines; all workers have a job, and all the elderly are protected and well cared for…I admit that I use the word “all” as defined by Garcia Marquez: around 80% or more of the population, or even more despite the limitations which would be solved by the Cubans if you had let them, in accordance with your good wishes. Notwithstanding, amidst great economic pressures and embargos, they have achieved a lot: top research centers at international level and advanced medical care offered in solidarity to all those who need it, including the North American people and the firemen injured on September 11, rejected by your own medical institutions and thus taken to the Cuban public hospitals by Michael Moore.
Furthermore, if you do the math, you will see that in that country of our America, Cubans enjoy their rights in higher proportions than citizens in USA, Canada, England, and the European Union. Their great accomplishments are achieved with modest resources, but always seeking to do more…and much more they have done.Your offers of “humanitarian aid”, “national security”, “drug prohibition” “environment”, as you are very much aware, have translated into inhumane failures in entire countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Southern Sudan, Nigeria, Libya, among others or in whole continents such as Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America where populations are immersed in their majority or completely, in the so called “full spectrum wars” designed by your specialists to increase hatred, confrontation and suffering of people stripped of their human rights, living and dying worse than animals, starving, sick, in the bones; children with sunken, lifeless eyes and wrinkled skin. The heart cringes at the televised images of such depauperation, just imagining their day-to-day struggle amid hunger and terror, with no drinking water nor a roof over their heads, in enslaving and risky working conditions under heartless foremen, vicious white guards, soldiers and paramilitary fully armed by the weaponry industry…all victims of the genocidal policies fostered and sponsored by the extreme right and neo-conservatives in the xenophobic and racist world you lead.
In the midst of such inhumane deeds, forecasted by the mainstream media and witnessed by your own children, you incur in the additional error of believing that in the invincible Cuba, after more than fifty years of abuse, you can separate and confront the civil society with their government. You are unable to conceive governments outside the corporations and bureaucrats. In Cuba, you know, people and government are merged so tightly and in such degree that no rogue “contras” ever succeeded in their terrorist activities.
The “people-government” in Cuba is a democratic phenomenon that would horrify all of you if you would only understood the concept; in fact, as David Brooks has stated, true democracy is what you fear the most as it embodies the deep meaning of the Greek etymology, namely the people as the source of the great decisions; a practice where they organize into various structures, some hierarchic and some coordinated, to accomplish every task and every goal.
The development of democratic practices in Cuba is diametrically different to those of corporate governments, as in both, small and big Cuban structures, values and interests are profoundly linked to Freedom and Independence. This, of course, amid contradictions and weaknesses that you oversize pretending to be concerned for the failures you sponsor and applaud. Think carefully and you may understand with clarity why your big triumphs around the world have been unsuccessful in Cuba. You will see, in the depth of your political conscience that Cubans have fulfilled their emancipating project precisely because of the kind of democracy they have redefined. Creation and practice are encompassed by an entire population of hundreds of thousands of citizens whose conscience, willpower, and courage include the discipline stemmed from the conviction of those who never surrender nor sell their soul.Such an effort by that small but great country is not free of the contradictions and circumstances so desirable to you, in consonance with what the third USA millionaire, Warren Buffet claimed: “Undoubtedly, there is a war of social classes, and it is my class –the class of the wealthy—the one winning”.
The struggle continues and you –as signatories of the letter to President Obama –and I confess that you are succeeding to a certain extent– want to change your ways and win the war with a light-touch approach after the violent one failed. You ask the President to end the embargo, the sanctions and prohibitions that the United States has applied against Cuba along fifty years. You state that “the United States can help the Cuban people determine their own destiny…” that you can “empower” the people; that you can “strengthen the wide spectrum of independent society” and “the organizations created to foster individual economy and social needs, regardless their political inclination…”
In your proposal to President Obama you mention “a radical change” in the customary USA policy towards Cuba, which has increasingly isolated the United States in the international arena. “This is the opportunity for change –you claim– …to help Cuban people; the opportunity to widen commercial relations with “independent businesses” and “facilitate and legalize the use of credit cards”, to promote “import and export of goods and services; to have the NGO’s (nongovernmental organizations) support “small farms” and, of course, the small and micro businesses).
On several occasions –I wonder why that many—you insist on the need of promoting several telecommunication projects, namely, diverse ways of cooperation between NGO’s and Cuban academic institutions by means of educational funds, scholarships to outstanding students, and for such purpose, you offer to enable all those who visit Cuba to use credit cards and other North American banking services such as opening accounts and money transferences, or give “professional aid” to “independent entrepreneurs”…
Of course, at the same time, you insist that “the United States government should increase its commitment towards the Cuban people and, simultaneously, continue pressuring the Cuban government on the human rights issue”. You maintain that “the government must prioritize” its dedication to “mutual interest areas” and “serious talks in matters of security and humanitarian duties”, mainly, the release of a certain prisoner dear to you.To any well informed reader such as Mr. Warren Buffet, the abovementioned message seeks to continue winning the social class struggle. Your undeniable shrewdness consists in privileging individual and class interests over national and common ones in a country where the people-government is building the transition to a viable world, since the one we are currently living in is already in the path of destruction in the hands of the 1% some of you belong to; a path whose outcome is to be suffered by the North American and the world youth, threatened in their immediate future by the sick and hegemonic project of accumulation of power and wealth you lead at the expense of the impoverishment of mankind’s immense majority and the increasing danger to all living things in our planet. A peril already confirmed by the same think tanks from Harvard, MIT, Santa Fe Institute, and by numerous scientific bodies world-wide, among them the United Nations, the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, and many more, who rigorously and responsibly warn about the widening of the ozone layer hole, contained only momentarily, and several more dangers including sea and lake pollution, soil, subsoil, forests and fauna destruction, along with the entire biosphere.
Like experts say, many of those harms are irreversible and they increase by the day. The more time passes the more it becomes difficult to control them. The most prestigious scientific magazines in USA and the world support these claims which have nothing to do with mere apocalyptic fears or alleged mistaken opinions by some specialists, much less with data manipulations by “dishonest” scientists wrongfully accused by a group of English academics because of the allegedly anthropogenic nature of such warnings. Such bold accusation has been already refuted by the best science journals of your own country and the world. The mentioned dangers and others threatening our Earth are, in fact, anthropogenic in nature. For the first time in the history of the Solar System, men have proven capable of destroying the planet. Let’s just consider the perfecting of nuclear bombs and exceeding amount of missiles and launching systems, whose lethal capability, range, and precision are aggravated by the irresponsible way the great powers play the warfare game.
Well…it is possible that you win the social class struggle, but your victory will be a Pyrrhic one if you destroy the movements which strive to construct life, such as the Cuban government-people and many others, like the agricultural communities and the “lost” cities are doing to facilitate the transition to a much better and self-sustainable world.
With my best wishes and good faith I tell you: stop the barrage of Freudian disparaging and denials; instead, support scientists who voice the truth and reflect on the fact that democracy by corporations and big businesses is already unsustainable; that the organization of our world by the entrepreneurial-military-political-media complex whose most powerful “allure” is the “maximization of profit and wealth” is already in a terminal “transition stage”, an “entropic stage”. Now it is indispensable to drive the path towards a system where the main “appeals” are freedom and life.
True respect for Cuba and its people implies to know and recognize them; to begin honoring your word, something we have requested from Mrs. Hilary Clinton, currently organizing her presidential campaign. She could start proving hers and the government’s good will by demanding the immediate release of the three still imprisoned young Cubans –Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, and Antonio Guerrero— members of the Cuba-USA task force convened with ex president Clinton to unveil the numerous Miami-based terrorist attacks against the island.
The social class struggle goes on; the fight for independence and autonomy continues along with the factual redefinition of freedom, justice, and democracy which will never stop. In today’s world human beings must start recovering the speech towards our transition to peace and life.
I exhort you to make sure that your words are echoed by deeds; for starters, do something which may seem small but will end up to be a great gesture. Request from President Obama the liberation of the three Cuban heroes. Begin a new story of your verbal commitment with actions like this under the moral obligation spurred by the changes in a world where social class struggle goes together with the fight for life, the life of both, the 99% and the 1% of mankind and all of our descendants.
Think that once more, at the beginning of the world will be the word.
Long live freedom and life
Long live the people of the United States and the people of Cuba
Long live Mankind and the transition to a viable, possible, and necessary world.
Thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Pablo González Casanova
Professor and former Rector of the National Autonomous University of Mexico
