To guarantee the prevalence of solidarity and respect, a bill is urgently needed that would penalize acts of repudiation, and hold their perpetrators and accomplices criminally responsible.
Help me to promote this bill.
Act of Repudiation
A Bill to Penalize Acts of Repudiation in Cuba
By Juan Juan Almeida
To guarantee the prevalence of solidarity and respect, a bill is urgently needed that would penalize acts of repudiation, and demand their perpetrators and accomplices be held criminally responsible.
We Cubans are living through an unequivocal social collapse and loss of values that we should, for the benefit of all, reverse. The Government bears much blame for this phenomenon that underlies civic conduct. Perhaps it thought that it was doing enough by providing us the opportunity for suitable professional advancement, and upon decreeing that good manners were a petit bourgeois vestige, created the “anti-value.”
It is true, although somewhat belatedly, that the Catholic Church plays an important role in reversing the process of moral degradation, and as of a few months back, Cuban television has been insistently broadcasting messages related to social education. This is commendable, but not enough – and to carry out such a campaign seems cynical and ironic to when in fact stupidity and rudeness are promoted and rewarded.
It seems contradictory that in Cuba, where the levels of instruction are decidedly elevated, formal education should be absolutely fractured and undervalued by the authorities.
What type of good behavior can be imparted to a child who is party to the impunity of someone who, without any legitimate reason, inflicts violence on his equals, or attacks others’ dignity and physical integrity, causing injuries with anatomical, physical and/or mental consequences?
We are a passionate people. I understand the urge to earnestly defend certain convictions, and that, under current circumstances, the government needs to display its superiority and control. But the ignominious act of repudiation is a form a discrimination that seeks to persecute, harass and exert the domination of one social group over another. It is the vulgarization of discord and a daily erosion of social mechanisms.
How many times have we not seen how a group of persons – immune to the law, but operating outside the cases authorized by the law – by employing violence, force and even intimidation, enter others’ homes without spoken or unspoken permission of its residents? The Internet is full of examples.
At this point, it is impossible to achieve good forms of conduct, and incorporate social courtesy in the Cuban temperament, without first penalizing similar behaviors that endanger community stability and social relations.
Today, to guarantee the prevalence of solidarity and respect, a bill is urgently needed that would penalize acts of repudiation, holding their perpetrators and accomplices criminally responsible. Sanctions would extend from prohibiting the frequenting of certain locations; prohibiting the practice of a given profession, charge or office; warnings; fines; limitation of freedom; correctional work with or without internment; up to incarceration – depending on the level of social dangerousness of the committed act, its circumstances and consequences, as well as any prior criminal record, recidivism and/or multiple repeat acts of the “repudiators” implicated in such intolerable outbursts of rage and violence.
Society belongs to all of us, equally. To promote a bill of this nature is not to confront the State, it does not undermine any of its inefficient institutions, it does not inflame anybody. It is merely a civic and civilized way to encourage respectful coexistence among Cubans – because when social distress signals are so clearly seen, it is everyone’s responsibility to pay attention and act.
Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison
