Fernando Damaso, 1 June 2015 — The reestablishment of relations of all types (not just diplomatic) is a reality being constructed step by step, in accordance with the situation at each moment of each party implicated in it. For some, the process is going very slowly, and for others, it is proceeding at the only pace it can. Getting Cubans to agree on anything has always been difficult. Regardless, this thing is happening, and to deny it would be absurd. Besides, I don’t believe that, even given aggressive statements and temporary hysterics, there is any going backward.
What is important now? To work at shaping the new civil society, unifying the dispersed remains of the one that was destroyed, transforming the totalitarian-governmental into the independent-democratic, and incorporating into it the new components that have arisen this century.
Only a true civil society, wherein all the nation’s subjects, without exclusions of any kind, will be able to ensure the establishment of a government “with all and for the good of all,” as José Martí* advised, and allow the development of productive forces and of the country, where everyone–regardless of how they think–contributes his/her best for the good of Cuba.
The task is not simple, for it demands sowing and cultivating our citizenry’s lost public-spiritidness, and uprooting our screaming fanaticism and double standard, as well as the dogmatisms and extremisms, which have so harmed us.
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
Translator’s Notes:
*The author is quoting from a speech by Jose Martí, “Con todos y para el bien de todos,” given on 26 November, 1891, in Tampa, Florida.
