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SANTIAGO DE CUBA, CUBA
{02-09-2009}
OPEN LETTER TO
GENERAL OF THE ARMY RAÚL CASTRO RUZ, THE NEW CUBAN DICTATOR
5 FEBRUARY 2009
DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO I dared to write to the then head of the
Cuban State, Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, who was then President of
our country. The gravity of that hour imposed a duty on me
for the good of the fatherland. The seriousness of this time
impels me to write to you to share my present concerns. How
can I describe the situation of our country? The economic
crisis affects every household and makes people live
agonizingly, asking themselves: what I will eat or what
I’m going to wear? How to get the most elemental
things for my family? The difficulties of everyday life
become so overwhelming that it keep us mired in sadness and
despair. Insecurity and widespread feelings of helplessness
lead to amorality, hypocrisy and double dealing. Everything
is worth it because nothing has value, except survival at
all cost, which we later discover is “at any
cost.” Hence the dream of Cubans, especially the
youngest, to abandon the country.
It would seem that our country is at an impasse. As a man of
faith, however, I believe that God never puts us in
absolutely desperate situations. I firmly believe that our
journey as a nation and a people, will not end in an
inevitable precipice, in a reality of irreversible
misfortune. There is always a solution, but it takes courage
to seek and to find it. In your recent appeals and urgent
calls to work with tireless tenacity, I believe I recognize
a peculiar and accurate perception of the gravity of the
moment, but also, that you think that the solution depends
on us. But as that slogan turned into a joke said…
“It’s not enough to say let’s go, we need
to know where.”
We have lived our reality by blaming the enemy, or even our
friends: the fall of the communist bloc countries in Eastern
Europe, together with the United States trade embargo, have
become the goat that carries all our faults. And that is a
convenient but misleading exit to the problem. As Miguel de
Unamuno said, “We tend to entertain ourselves in
counting hairs in the Sphinx’s tail, because we are
afraid to look in his eyes.”
It is not enough, General, to solve the problems, certainly
serious and urgent, of food, or of shelter, that in the
recent hurricanes so many compatriots have just lost
“with their poor chattels: fear, grief.” We are
at such a critical time we must consider a profound review
of our standards and our practices, our aspirations and our
goals. And here we might, with all due respect, remember
those words that our national apostle José Martí wrote to
Generalissimo Gomez in a somewhat similar situation:
“One cannot establish a people, general, as one
commands an encampment.”
The world is changing. The recent election of a black
citizen to hold the presidency of a country formerly known
as racist and a violator of the civil rights of blacks, says
that something is changing in this world. The laudable and
fraternal concern of our brothers in exile before the
weather phenomena that have recently beaten our people, and
their generous assistance, selfless and immediate, is the
sign that something is changing here. The Cuban government
that you lead today must have the courage to face these
changes with new approaches and new attitudes.
Our country has responded with courage when a foreign
government has sought to meddle in our national problems.
However, when it comes to the violation of Human Rights, not
only governments but even individuals, ordinary citizens,
within or outside the country, have something to say. In his
Letter from Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King said:
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied
in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly, affects all indirectly.” We have to have
enormous courage to recognize that in our homeland there is
a constant and not justifiable violation of Human Rights,
which is reflected in the existence of dozens of prisoners
of conscience and the battered exercise of the most basic
freedoms: speech, information, press and opinion, and
serious restrictions on freedom of religion and politics.
Failure to recognize these realities does no favors for our
national life and makes us lose respect for ourselves, in
our eyes and in the eyes of others, friends or enemies.
The cause of peace, both internally and externally, and the
prosperity of the nation itself, are grounded in the
unconditional respect for these rights that express the
supreme dignity of the human being as a child of God. And to
keep quiet about this, puts a weight on my conscience that I
am not able to bear. And this is for me, my way of serving
the truth and of being consistent with the love I feel for
my people.
I confess, general, the disgust and sadness it has caused me
to know that our government has rejected, apparently for
reasons of ideological or political differences, the help
that the U.S. and several European nations wanted to send
for the victims of the cyclones that hit our land. When one
falls into misfortune, (and that can happen to anyone,
including the powerful), it’s time to accept the help
that is offered, because this aid reveals a fount of
goodwill in the face of the pain, of human solidarity, even
from those we considered our enemies. Giving the opponent
the opportunity to be good and to do what is just, can bring
out the best in ourselves and in others, making us change
old attitudes and heal damaging resentments. Nothing
contributes more to peace and reconciliation among peoples
than to give and to receive. The phrase of St. Francis de
Sales is valid in interpersonal relationships, as well as
between countries, “More flies are caught with a drop
of honey than a barrel of vinegar.” As stated by His
Holiness John Paul II during his visit to our country,
“Let Cuba open to the world and the world will open to
Cuba.” But if we keep the door closed no one can
enter, no matter how much they want to. A sign of hope for
me is the participation and the greater space which has been
given to Caritas to help our people. That deserves a special
recognition and is a positive and hopeful change.
Believe me, Mr. President, I do not write to submit a list
of complaints and grievances about the national situation,
but if I were to do so this list could be very, very long.
In truth, I have wanted to talk to you Cuban to Cuban, heart
to heart. A priest who was a great friend of mine, now
deceased, used to say: “A man’s worth is the
worth of his heart.” At the funeral of your wife,
seeing you surrounded by your children and grandchildren,
moved to tears, I noticed that you are a sensitive man. And
I think there is more wisdom in the heart of a good man than
in all the books and libraries in this world, as the song
goes: “that which sense can accomplish, knowledge has
not been able to do, nor the highest conduct, nor the
broadest thought.…” Therefore I appeal to your
sense of responsibility, to your goodness, to say do not be
afraid, be bold in taking a new and different path in the
world that is showing so many signs of change for the
better. As I said to your brother 15 years ago, all Cubans
are responsible for the future of the fatherland, but
because of the office you occupy, because of the power you
now have, that responsibility falls on you in a special way.
If you decide to embark on this journey of hope, count on
me, general. I will be in the first row, to give to Cuba,
once again, the only thing I have: my heart; and to you my
honest hand and my unselfish collaboration. So we can make
Martí’s dream a reality, to have a fatherland,
“with all and for the good of all.”
I want to end with the words said by our current Pope,
Benedict XVI in 1968: “Even above the Pope as an
expression of the binding ecclesiastic authority, is
one’s own conscience which must be obeyed first, if it
were necessary even against what the ecclesiastical
authority says.” If that applies to ecclesiastical
authority whose origin I consider divine, it applies to all
other human authority, however powerful it may be. With my
best wishes,
José Conrado Rodríguez Alegre, Fr.
Pastor of Santa Teresita del Niño Jesús.
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