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DIÁLOGO (ANÁLISIS Y DEBATE) - Junio-Julio 2003
- Date:
- 22 Jun 2003
- Time:
- 00:10:15
Comments
Estamos de acuerdo en esta ocasion no es rl pueblo de Cuba el que se ha distanciado de la Revolucion Cubana, es el actual gobierno el que se ha distanciado de la Revolucion Cubana.
No escribo usalmente para mostrar mis coincidencia con ustedes, esta vez lo hago porque creo importsnte reiterar este concepto.
Orlando Garcia.
New York
- Date:
- 22 Jun 2003
- Time:
- 19:22:08
Comments
Dear Maribel C. Nora,.
1. From which "revolution" has the Cuban state distanced itself during the period of emergency that followed the collapse of the COMECON?
2 In the United States of America and in some Canadian cities, a revolution has overtaken the sport of baseball.
Does the Cuban state attempt to distance Cuban baseball fans from their enjoyment?
Last year, in Parque Centrale, we confused a group of men who were talking about baseball with a demonstration by Cuban dissidents
3. In the United States of America and elsewhere, high quality cigars are almost unobtainable by the people.
Although my knowledge of cigars is limited, on several occasions my friends have given me good cigars that are
available on "ration" to Cubans.
4. In the United States of America and elsewhere, the police make few efforts to protect foreign visitors from pimps and 'black market' vendors.
Last year, in Parque Centrale, we saw plain clothes policemen arresting two social parasites
5. In the United States of America, the President does not work closely with the people.
On the last occasion when I saw the President of your country, I was waiting to cross the street at traffic lights in Miramar while a
Landrover in which Fidel was seated passed by.
6. We realize that this information is not dramatically newsworthy. It is the truth.
Yours sincerely,
Professor David Whitefield, Calgary, Canada
- Date:
- 05 Jul 2003
- Time:
- 16:34:35
Comments
Dear Maribel C. Noda,
Despite my request for anonomity following intensified "security" difficulties, my letters (of relevance only to translators) are still displayed in your Analysis and Debate section..
The 'passive' form of "democracy" and approach to honoured concepts such as "solidarity", "comradeship" and " friendship" espoused by militants in your Party do not correspond with ours.
Yours sincerely,
Professor David Whitefield, Calgary, Canada.
- Date:
- 08 Jul 2003
- Time:
- 01:10:29
Comments
DEBEN OBSEQUIAR GOLOSINAS AL PUEBLO.
- Date:
- 08 Jul 2003
- Time:
- 14:08:21
Comments
Dear Maribel C. Noda,
You ask readers to offer "Treasures" to the people of Cuba who, long before the period of emergency, suffered so much.
In the city of Santa Maria del Rosario, we watched a wonderful dramatic ballet in honour of the African women who were sold into slavery
Like President Fidel Castro, we do not believe that the problems of the Cuban people will be solved by philanthropists.
Young people should and must collaborate with each other and apply the lessons acquired from study of their own traditional culture.
In 1999, in Vedado, I received a book containing poems by Nicolas Guillen,from a Cuban woman, "La Golondrina".
That book has been shared with about one hundred others.
Last year, we were deeply disappointed because we were unable to meet her again.
Yours sincerely,
Professor David Whitefield, Calgary, Canada
- Date:
- 25 Jul 2003
- Time:
- 16:03:51
Comments
La Bronca entre la Fundación y Díaz-Balart
Leo con interés sobre la bronca entre la Fundación y los Díaz-Balart. Según se informa, la cosa es caliente y se ha llegado a los insultos personales:
Por la Fundación, Joe García llama a Lincoln “políticamente ‘impotente’” por no poder influir al Presidente Bush en particular, y a los Republicanos –que también controlan el Congreso-- en general, sobre Cuba.
Lincoln por su parte acusa a la Fundación de pintarle monos a los comunistas, diciendo que su “jefecito” (Jorge Mas Santos) está loco por hacer negocios con la Isla.
García, que es Demócrata, ripostó al congresista calificando sus comentarios de “McCarthyismo” y añadiendo que su liderazgo no se toma en serio. Pepe Hernández puso su piedra, dándole un “Suspenso” a la actuación de Bush sobre Cuba. En el proceso se la compara con los miles de millones vertidos en Irak y Afganistán.
Todo comenzó con motivo de la reciente deportación de 12 balseros a Cuba.
Paradójicamente, unos meses atrás fueron precisamente los representantes cubanos del sur de la Florida quienes abrieron el fuego del espinoso tema cuando se quejaron que no se les hacía caso en el gobierno actual, llegándose al extremo descortés de que se ignoraban sus llamadas a los departamentos y la Casa Blanca, citando como excepción al también cubano Otto Reich.
Ahora, señala García: “Han sido tres anos de mentira, y lo que muestra aún más es la impotencia de nuestros congresistas republicanos dentro de esta administración republicana”.
En meses recientes la Fundación ha hecho público su cambio de política sobre Cuba, volcando más sus actividades hacia el interior de la Isla y dando apoyo a los disidentes. Ejemplo de esto fue su fuerte respaldo a Payá Sardiñas con motivo de los premios que recibiera en Europa y Estados Unidos.
Por su parte, con ocasión de la festividad del 20 de mayo en Miami, Bush puso su propia piedra cuando paseó a los Díaz-Balart en la limosina presidencial, a quienes llamó “aliados políticos firmes”.
Les envío esta información que procede mayormente del Miami Herald, en inglés y en español porque sé que alguno de los editores de esta revista electrónica, como pomposamente la llaman, presume de no leer ese periódico. Comprendo que muchos de los lectores, acorde con el lugar que residen, no tengan acceso a ese importante periódico. Además, que siempre veo a los “social-revolucionarios” rehuyendo los temas que más motivan a la emigración cubana. Aparte que no los veo muy claros en relación con la política de los partidos de Estados Unidos: Demócratas y Republicanos. Y quiero saber si es cierto que ellos de verdad aplican el principio del derecho a la libertad de prensa. No los he visto pronunciarse sobre la política del gobierno americano en cuanto a la Ley de Piés Mojados, así como la deportación de los cubanos que comenzó bajo Clinton y se intensificó bajo Bush.
Espero que para huirle al tema no borren mi intervención en esta Sección.
Ernesto Bustamante Ortega
Miami, Florida
- Date:
- 26 Jul 2003
- Time:
- 01:11:14
Comments
On the Cuban Revolution
By Cesar Anderson
The Cuban Revolution is an ongoing historical process that dates back to
the 19th Century in the Cubans’ struggle for independence from the Spanish Government’s power.
This process was both politico-philosophical and insurrectional. It
espoused full independence of Cuba from Spain or any other colonial power, such as the United States and England at the time, rejecting both a modified Autonomy relationship with Spain and a link with the U.S. that would be either a tutelary one (see the later Platt Amendment, the Philippines and Puerto Rico) or as a state of the Union –most likely as a Slavery Southern state-- as often proposed in the U.S. throughout the 19th Century.
The names of Félix Varela, Luz y Caballero, José Martí are at the head of Cuba’s politico-philosophical foundation.
Early Cuban victims of the Spaniards can be found in Aguero and the Camaguey early martyrs at mid-century. Other civilians would follow, among them innocent ones, such as the poet Plácido, the 1871 Students.
The insurrectional spirit became a reality in the Ten-Year and Independence Wars. The name of the patriots’ party was Partido Revolucionario Cubano, of which Martí was its inspirational founder and early leader, having brought together all the prominent pro-independence figures, especially the veteran military officers and officials of the Ten-Year War.
Thus, Cuba’s independence efforts of nearly a century were made in the name of the Cuban Revolution.
Please note that during this period of over one hundred years, almost all of America had become independent from the colonial powers of England, France and Spain, beginning with the U.S. War of Independence and continuing with the Independence movement that swept from Mexico to Patagonia.
The independence they all achieved did not extend to Cuba. There were no Washingtons, Bolívars, San Martíns, Hidalgos extending their efforts to aid the Cubans in their struggles for independence. Probably their horses could not swim. Ironically, in the case of the United States, the Cubans gave several substantial forms of help to their independence efforts.
Adding insult to injury, the displaced defeated escaping from the former colonies went to Cuba: those Spaniards, French, English became the Spanish Colonial government’s new allies to prevent a Cuban Cuba.
Please note here that, in their final sick effort to keep Cuba, Spain stationed there more soldiers than it had anywhere earlier in the American wars. In spite of it, Cubans carried the independence torch from one end of the island to the other, from Oriente to Pinar del Río/Havana –by their own lone effort.
The facts about how the war ended are well known. As well as how the Republic of Cuba was declared in 1902.
The foundation and seeds had been planted, though. Thinkers and fighters kept the flame alive in spite of huge obstacles in the political and economic areas.
Let us keep in mind that every state with empire schemes since Cuba’s “discovery” in 1492 has coveted the island one way or another. Some actions were more coverts, such as the “maritime guerrilla” type: the “illegal” pirates and the “legal” corsairs. Their protection came from monarchs such as Elizabeth in England, or the French, or the Dutch. Names such as Francis Drake, Henry Morgan, Jacques De Sores fill many pages of Cuban history.
To Cubans they wrought havoc and misery in human lives and property.
In fact, several early towns were moved inland from their original seaside locations, such as Puerto Príncipe (Camaguey) and Trinidad. Perhaps modern air pirates and other terrorists read, and learned from, their exploits.
Other efforts were more in the open, such as the British occupation of Havana in 1762 that netted them Spanish Florida for a while.
During the 19th Century they would continue coveting the island, but were thwarted by the United States with the result of a stalemate until the “Spanish-American War” through which the U.S. got all of Spain’s marbles and Spain became a former colonial power.
For over two decades the nascent Republic of Cuba began setting itself up, vastly destroyed by a state of war of three decades. No Marshall Plans at that time, so Cubans sucked it up and did it by themselves. In economic power, the Spanish were substituted by the U.S. interests in banking and the then major industries of sugar, tobacco and mining in less than 20 years. The Cubans’ properties confiscated by Spain during the war were never returned to their rightful owners, as sanctioned by the U.S. government. A world war and several major imported recessions/depressions inflicted major damage.
While the world was under the convulsion of Bolshevism, Fascism and the U.S. Stock Market Crash and Depression for over one decade, the Cubans’ Revolutionary spirit stayed alive. It survived much stronger giving birth to the 1940 Constitution and the democratic governments of the Auténticos, the Partido Revolucionario Cubano reborn. There were giant steps made with full guarantees of human and social rights in accord with the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.
The Cuban people had become overconfident in their democratic society And there came the Batista coup d’etat in 1952 –the second Batista dictatorship. The dark forces again took advantage of the situation.
Immediately, the Cuban revolutionary forces began their struggle against the dictatorship: the university students of FEU, the major parties, Auténticos and Ortodoxos –both social revolutionary and very Cuban-- the intellectuals.
The new struggle lasted nearly seven years under the revolutionary flag.
Many were to fight, many were to die, be imprisoned. The fight was carried out in the cities and in the mountains of Oriente and Las Villas.
January 1st, 1959, Batista, “El Hombre”, fled, like rats from a burning ship. The latest chapter of the Cuban Revolution had triumphed.
Among the Revolutionaries, no one spoke of communism, quite the contrary, it was denied by those who would later declare themselves “Marxist-leninists of many years”.
The Cuban Revolution was that, Cuban. And a true Revolution born free and meant to be always free, from the first to the last Cuban. It belonged to the Cubans, from Varela to Martí, from Agramonte and Céspedes to Maceo, Gómez and García.
And that was what Cubans thought they had in January 1959 –finally—
putting themselves and their political institutions back together after years of underground, after major damage by the Batista dictatorship.
But there was a group with other ideas. Extremely well organized and with the support and guidance of a foreign superpower, they had a strategic master plan which they carried with high efficiency and very speedily. After a series of well performed blows to the other revolutionary organizations, and under the banner of the Revolution, they were able to cancel them out and even kick them out of the new Revolutionary government, from the new President down to key ministers. The main university student leaders were bought out or cowed into submission. Any discrepancy or opposition was equaled to betrayal of the Revolution.
And the newest form of a dictatorship imposed on the Cuban people was inaugurated.
A major ready-made new “enemy” was conveniently declared in the United States, the other super-power and the geopolitical next door giant not very well liked throughout Latin America, especially by Mexico having lost to it half its territory.
The nationalistic conditions were thus framed to inflame and tale advantage of the Cubans’ spirit of independence and national sovereignty.
As in lock-step, the U.S. obliged with the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis Kennedy-Khruschev Pact.
Castro’s lock on power was guaranteed.
His mask of “Cuban Revolution” would not be recognized by the Old Patriots, or the newer ones like Guiteras, Echeverría, País, Cuervo, or the tens of thousands of Revolutionary fighters that would be imprisoned, exiled or killed.
But something happened, again. The spirit of the Cuban Revolution refused to die. Apparently no one took into account that spirits don’t die. Or even fade away.
They remain. In the hearts and minds of many, in the old and new
generations. In the revered memory of the many previous generations whose blood fertilized the land for centuries, from the Native Indian or African slave to the children of the Europeans, perhaps alchemically transformed into Cubans, perhaps reincarnated old souls.
They could have other names, but they chose being Cuban and Revolutionaries. With ideals of decency required by every human being towards their fellow, their neighbors in Christian parlance. With an undying and deeply rooted sense of nation and of national sovereignty in their homeland. With fierce independence from everyone, oppressors and “friends” alike.
That is the Cuban Revolution. For five centuries it has survived, first, in seminal form, later as a reality always taking more and better shape. Others may betray it, deviate from it. Their loss. The Cuban Revolution lives and will flourish again, stronger than ever.
Legend speaks of the Mexican Eagle symbol on a tree with a snake in its beak.
Perhaps legend does not know of the Phoenix symbol on the sacred Cuban Ceiba.
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