By Germán Piniella                                                           Read Spanish Version  
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An article signed by Rolando H. Castañeda and Lorenzo Cañizares, published in this issue of  Progreso Weekly (see “President Obama, His Latent Example and Inspiration for Cuba”) seems to pose an alternate position in regards to the relations of the island’s émigré.

It is convenient to remember similar perspectives in another moment in Cuban history. Halfway through the 19th century, when the country’s national conscience began to emerge, a roadway for the independence struggle was paved in the thoughts of the educator Felix Varela and the incendiary lyrics of Jose Maria Heredia. There were sectors of the bourgeoisie who feared that the “black danger” of the Haitian revolution would overpower Cuba, or that the “Jacobin” chaos would take the country towards the path of ruin. For these and other reasons two solutions arose: the autonomy linked to Spain and annexation to the United States. The first line of thought assured that a few concessions to the creoles would be enough to maintain the island under Spanish control (and also the existing status quo), and the second preferred to lose its nationality in exchange for belonging to a country that guaranteed the continuation of slavery. It was the exchange of a reactionary owner for a more “modern” one.   

I do not intend to tell you all the history. As many know, the Cubans fought for independence against one of the most potent colonial powers of its time, and after 30 years of battle their aspirations were frustrated, not because they had been defeated by the colonial enemy, but because of the intervention, based on its own interest, by the U.S. in a war already won by the mambises. The same as it is now, the U.S. government intervened to “free the Cubans.” Due to that, they occupied the island from 1898 until, on May 20, 1902, a date dear to some and shameful for others, the republic was born encumbered by the Platt Amendment (*) and U.S. rule. In 1959, the Cuban revolution gave the country its definitive independence. And so began its battle against the most powerful military and economic force on the planet. This is the history some would rather forget. Or simply erase.   

Now an apparently different position would like Cuba to also forget its history and follow the (latent) example of President Obama who, according to the words of Castañeda and Cañizares, “Is more interested in the future and what changes are necessary instead of becoming tangled in solving conflicts and mix-ups from the past.” This reference to the unfortunate declaration by President Obama in the Summit of the Americas, which he had to later retract, appears to be the ideal formula: forget the past and let’s start anew. But in reality, it is not like that. What is wanted is for Cuba to forget and give, another way of supporting the U.S. declarations that to achieve better relations, it is Cuba’s turn to cede.   

The authors claim that “The diaspora has taken definite conciliatory steps when they supported the repeal of the George W. Bush administration policies and has manifested its disposition for dialogue with the Cuban authorities over national reconciliation and reunification.”

Let us put aside the obvious question, which is, on what authority a certain social group can demand to sit at the negotiating table with another country’s government as if they were two powers discussing their differences. Let us also put aside the fact that many of the members of this social group are citizens of another country -- who for 50 years has attempted to overthrow that same government with which the group now wants to negotiate. And maybe this group harbors sentimental feelings toward the country where they were born (or the land of their forbearers) later abandoning it to swear allegiance to another flag, but as U.S. citizens they have as many rights to demand a dialogue, as a Cuban citizen might have in claiming the same against another country in order to change its system. In other words, none -- no rights. 

From another angle, what the authors of the article call “diaspora,” with its implications to the holocaust of the Jewish people, places the émigrés as persecuted victims, thrown out of their conquered Promised Land, but also, unites all émigrés in a monolithic block who demands a dialogue with the Cuban government. 

What diaspora or group of émigrés are they talking about? Of the torturers, assassins and thieves of the Fulgencio Batista government, who not only left behind 20,000 dead but also looted the country, doing away with the foreign currency that made up the reserve of the National Treasury? Or are they the ones who pretend to reclaim the figure of the dictator Batista as a progressive democrat, unequalled statesman and defender of the people? Or do they refer to those who have made war on Cuba by bombing and machine-gunning the civilian population and who have attempted to assassinate President Fidel Castro and other top leaders, and who have managed to murder commercial fishermen and diplomats? Are we talking about that same diaspora who has taken “concrete conciliatory steps backing the abolition of the policies of the George W. Bush Administration” (restrictions of travel to Cuba), like the Cuban American National Foundation, but who keep supporting the U.S. blockade and other policies of pressure on Cuba? A diaspora who celebrates the Cuba Nostalgia festival in Miami and proudly exhibits the Cuban Constitution of 1901, the same one that includes the disgraceful Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. the right to intervene at its will in the island and which gave us the legacy of a piece of our territory occupied by foreign armed forces? A diaspora that begs a foreign government for money to fund internal opposition in order to overthrow its own government and then calls those mercenaries “patriots”?  The same one that brands Cuba a terrorist state and praises those who bomb civilian planes and hotels as “freedom fighters”?

The authors assure us that they are not naïve. Actually, they seem to believe that those who defend the island are the ones who are naïve, for they claim that “the greatest enemy and danger faced by the Cuban government are not the government of the United States or the diaspora.” Well, if it is not the government of the United States, who is it then who has tried for 50 years to take the country back to the past, assassinate leaders, destroy what has been created during this time, organizing, funding, and training a military invasion, and introducing diseases such as hemorrhagic dengue fever and hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, besides the plagues to agriculture and cattle, while imposing extraterritorial laws in order to destroy the country? Who then thought-up and carried out the horrendous and terrifying freak act known as Operation Pedro Pan, the true and sad diaspora of more than 14,000 children torn away from their families by deceit and trickery?

But if by diaspora Mr. Castañeda and Mr. Cañizares mean émigrés who harbor no hate for their country of origin, those who truly want the unity of the nation and a future of peace in Cuba, those who do not attempt to impose, with the assistance of another country, a system which was discarded a long time ago, if those are the ones they are referring to, that dialogue has existed for some time and has borne the fruit of agreements and commitments, in an atmosphere of mutual respect in spite of divergence. And all this has been accomplished without renouncing what Cuba conquered once and for all in 1959: its independence.

Germán Piniella is a Cuban writer and journalist.  He is the assistant editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish version of Progreso Weekly.

(*) The Platt Amendment, proposed by U.S. Rep. Orville Platt, was approved by the U.S. Congress in 1901. The Amendment was annexed to the Cuban constitution as a condition of independence from the U.S. The Platt Amendment, which remained in the constitution until the 1930s, conceded to the United States, among many indignities, the right to intervene in Cuba at its whim and ceded territories for military bases (Guantanamo), for which the country in practice became a colony which ought to behave according to Washington’s dictates.