Until reality shows something else, with enough evidence, we are experiencing in Cuba a time of realities.
Opportunity is the moment in which we do what corresponds; it is the door to possibility. It is the logical occasion to do what was needed maybe since a long time ago…but this occasion was paralyzed, because circumstances had not appeared. We had not been through the cross-road between conditions and consequences.
Opportunity is not opportunism but a sense of the historical moment; it is discernment of the qualities which surround a time and a place that need to be changed.
We have listened to many persons thinking very diverse ways and having diverse beliefs, and holding diverse positions in society, who coincide that this could be a time of opportunities for Cuba. Attention, we say: opportunity for Cuba. That is, for all and each one of the Cubans, women or men, who live here or in any place in the Diaspora.
Such opinions are very different from the ones we have heard during decades coming from some of the sharp points of this history called Cuba during the second half of the past 20th century. These opinions seem to be very calmed, deep, serene, moderate, some of them scholars and others intuitive, with much love towards the Nation they belong to, as a right and because of this very love and sense of belonging, sustained in spite of “hurricanes and droughts”.
We have got the impression that if so many and so diverse voices and hearts coincide about the situation of the possibility, the assessment is somehow correct and the time is getting proper to open the door to the transformations seen as necessary, thought as urgent and sought as support to progress as Cubans, staying in Cuban land and culture.
It is time to leave mistakes behind, some times very serious and irremediable mistakes. It’s time to decide consciously and in a responsible way, not to open the door to revenge or violence or vengeance. It is time to choose the truth without hatred; to choose justice without tormenting anyone, being magnanimous; to choose reconciliation, not hiding scars but without digging into them, that is, reconciliation which means to start over and turn the page.
It’s time to make decisions we consider better for Cuba and its future, with no impertinence but with no pause, because, for many persons, due to their age and their capacity to resist, this is the time of opportunity…and the Fatherland should not continue losing a relevant number of its Children due to lack of opportunities.
It’s time to leave behind the anachronism which as we know, means to cling to a time that has passed. This means here to stop clinging to a style of organizing society which has passed, to stop clinging to some ideologies that have passed, to some styles of work which are outdated; to a way of cohabitation which has passed; to a way of making debate or dialogue which is
over; to a way of disagreeing which attacks persons and does not take into account their ideas; to a way of participation which belongs to the age of authoritarianisms and paternalisms which are typical of civic adolescence and not of citizenship maturity which knows that the way to get to democracy is the effective, efficient, plural, transparent, tolerant and daily participation. Some times being participation of support and others as dissenting participation, but always with the same validity, respect and spaces for the public debate and the negotiated agreement.
It’s time to leave behind anachronisms and foreign interferences, coming from the South or from the North, from the East or from the West. This time of opportunities for Cuba should also mean a great respect in international relationships for the primacy of Cubans as protagonists: the Cubans, who live, work and stay here. But this requires, at the same time, a great respect here for the primacy of all the human rights of all Cubans, women or men who live, work and stay here, apart from politics, economy, ideologies and the rest.
Other anachronisms which hinder this time of opportunities for all Cubans can be the following:
Anachronisms are the economic measures imposed on the citizens. These measures are ethically unacceptable, because they are aimed at the wrong addressees; they justify the real responsible ones and the consequences become unpredictable. Such situation hinders the time of opportunity for the free interchange among persons, families and peoples and helps the “isolation of the Island”.
Anachronisms are the economic investments which don’t acknowledge and violate the rights of the Cuban workers here, the same rights that they have to respect and acknowledge in their own countries, not only because their laws demand it there and forbid it here, but because the good conscience and the prime rights of the Cuban workers demand it too. And all those investors know that the Rights have to go first than unfair laws. To accept the arguing that: business is business and that the market is the market above the human person is an anachronism which is hindering and distorting the future of Cuba.
Anachronism is also the fact of manipulating, through political utilitarian procedures, the needs and miseries of the peoples, in order to get political influences from one side or the other, instead of getting things that are so much needed for social justice.
Populism eliminates the opportunities of peoples to grow as citizens empowered with their inalienable sovereignty.
Anachronism is to isolate the Country from inside or from outside and forbid the free movement of citizens inside and out the provincial and national boundaries, because today’s world knows that such “walls” belong to the past in any place they intend to “build” them today against time and against the rights of the peoples. Isolation is the strength of anachronism and aperture is the beginning of the end of anachronism.
But let us not renounce to solve these challenges. We should listen to the intimate and persevering intuition that the time of opportunities is coming in Cuba. Let’s forget about pessimism and opportunism. Time of opportunities for Cuba must be synonym of time of responsibility for each Cuban who lives here or in any place where the indivisible Nation has migrated.
Time of opportunities is time for responsibility. This is the time to share freedom and responsibility. Indeed, to give opportunity to the peoples to exercise their full sovereignty from below is to give more spaces of freedom but this freedom will not be well used if at the same time we don’t give way to personal and social responsibility.
Schools to learn responsibility is what Cuba needs in this moment of opportunity. Such schools are spaces for true participation and not spaces for unconscious repetition. Such schools mean to facilitate opportunities to be ourselves and not a mask of opportunism. Schools to exercise participation and responsibility mean to train ourselves for democracy and to guarantee not to turn freedom into anarchy or opportunity into opportunism.
If Cubans, women or men, come to the agreement of not closing the door to opportunity in this time for Cuba, then each person, the civil society and the State will be able to feel and think how hope works. Hope is a virtue that leads to confidence and determination. Its new name is opportunity for every Cuban to create his own life project and be his protagonist; to get together, organize ourselves freely and in a pacific way in order to look for equal opportunities for the community and the opportunity for a change in Cuba for the better.
Let’s be even more precise in this time for Cuba:
-It might be the time when each Cuban starts to think with his own brains and to speak and act without hypocrisy. And nothing and no one is to take away from him this opportunity to be.
-It might be the time when each Cuban family starts to decide its own destiny, the education of their children, the respect for life, the moral environment and the atmosphere of participation in the core of the family which is the first school of citizen participation. Nothing and no one is to hinder this opportunity of loving themselves and grow in humanity.
-It might be the opportunity when natural groups get closer in friendship and reciprocity, get together to think and work in community of interests and solidarity without forced ideological, political or religious divisions. And nothing or no one is to deny this opportunity to feel and love together.
-It might be the time when each group of Cubans who have a common project (social, cultural, economical, political or religious) learns how to get together, to organize themselves in a pacific way, respecting the rights of others and the fair laws so that the fabric of a new and more autochthonous civil society can be built. The civil society which could be more creative and with more participation. And nothing or no one is to hinder this opportunity of association or deny the space to reciprocal confidence, the only way that leads to opportunity.
-This might be the time when every Cuban enterprise can have the opportunity to be the protagonist of its self-management and the time when each Cuban entrepreneur does not have to “feel” or “pretend” that the enterprise is his. He should have the opportunity of being the real owner of the enterprise. And nothing or no one is to have the hegemony or the monopoly of the enterprise or the capital. Nothing or no one from outside or from inside.
-It might be the time when every Cuban worker can have the opportunity to work independently, to become a small entrepreneur, to have access to micro-credit, to unfold his capacity of tenacious enterprising which is typical of the immense majority of Cubans. Or at least, the employees should have real and effective participation in the management and the profits of enterprises because they have devoted themselves to those enterprises during their whole lives. And never again should be the persons consulted about matters that are already approved, but the matters approved should only be the ones that have been consulted and all should be for the common good.
-It might be the time when the Cuban Workers stop “pretending” that we work and the Cuban State stops “pretending that it pays us”. And the salaries and other social services should be enough to really live on the jobs.
-It might be the time when (and we are witnessing it), Cuban intellectuals and artists give way by themselves, and with their styles and codes, to a culture of open debate, of fertile and purifying discrepancy which belong to the historic memory and intellectual work. And nothing or no one should eliminate the space for debate or close the door to the opportunity of critical and plural consciences to be the protagonists.
-It might be the time when Churches in Cuba have the opportunity to be themselves, with equal conditions among all churches from inside and outside. Maybe we don’t have to explain our brothers and superiors of the world anymore that Cuba has “different conditions” from the rest of the world and that we have “special restrictions” different from the rest of persons. That is, nothing or no one should ever confuse freedom of worship with the entire religious freedom. No one should confuse anymore the social dimension of the service of the Church with one way of doing partisan politics.
-It might be the time when Cuban international relationships have the chance to become normal, that is, that our country have a daily and persevering practice of the concept of international relationships which places the citizens, their dignity and their rights (civil, political, cultural, economical and social), above political, ideological, religious or economical reasons. Not only between Cuba and the United States, but also in Latin America and the European Union; in Asia and Africa; in all regions of this planet which needs to give a chance to diplomacy. A diplomacy of solidarity which shows a comprehensive humanism. A diplomacy which abandons the anachronism of the ideological blocs, which abandons commercial or economical interests above human rights and internal or external hegemonies above cultures and sovereignties.
-This might be the time when the ones that have the top responsibilities in the government open more and more, in a gradual and pacific way, the opportunities of participation for all Cubans, so that the legal level adjust more to greater spaces of democratic responsibility. And we all know that many of the opportunities mentioned before depend on the legal aperture and on the plural and inclusive wide range.We’ve got the impression that a relevant number of Cubans are aware of this historical moment and more over they might wish that everything would flow orderly, with great participation and an agile way (as much as possible). The prosperous, happy and democratic future of Cuba will depend on the attitudes and decisions we make: each citizen and everyone who serves the country from the top positions.
If we all let this decisive and calmed hour pass; this uncertain but hopeful hour, maybe we will regret it for a long time.
We say it once more, with all confidence and hope: we believe that the Cuban people by itself can and should be the protagonist of its own history. We believe that our strength in this historical moment that might be of great opportunities for all, is the human capital, the enterprising potential, the capacity for recovering and the fraternal character of the Cuban Nation and its vocation for solidarity. Our Nation is of mixed race and it’s plural and united in the very diversity and with the rest of peoples and States and also in a respectful relationship with the sovereignties and cultures of such peoples and States.
We also have got the impression that by this moment of history, no people on earth, not one, wish to violate or even injure our sovereignty and our national integrity. Nobody who is responsible wishes it, and we would not tolerate it. Other peoples would not tolerate it either, included, of course the brother people of the United States.
Then it would be enough with the political will and the civic responsibility and the participation of Cubans in order to open the door and respond to the historical challenge of this hour of opportunities for Cuba.
We won’t disappoint Cuba.Pinar del Río, 25th February 2007.
Anniversary of Fr. Félix Varela’s death.
IMPORTANT NOTE BY THE EDITORIAL STAFF:
DUE TO LACK OF FINANCING THE EDITORIAL TEAM OF “VITRAL” INFORMS ITS READERS THAT IT WON’T BE POSSIBLE TO GUARANTEE ANY OTHER ISSUE OF THE MAGAZINE.APRIL 8TH 2007
EASTER SUNDAY.
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