Month: December 2010

When the high creole hierarchy enjoyed the arrival of the 51st anniversary of the insurrection which elevated them to power on 1 January 1959, a violent cold front was ravaging the west of the country.

In Mazorra, a psychiatric hospital located on the highway that leads to the principal airport, a major scandal was uncorking itself.

The pathetic photos that circulated by the Internet and the reports of bloggers and independent journalists obligated the regime to publish a little note. Weeks later, noiselessly, those words got the Minister of Health, José Ramón Balaguer, fired.

It was the start in a chain of bad news that marked 2010 in Cuba. In February, the political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo heated up the path. After 86 days on a hunger strike claiming a handful of rights, he died in a hospital in the capital. His death provoked an avalanche of criticism towards the Castro brothers across the entire planet.

The death of Zapata launched a series of widely publicised marches by the Ladies in White, a group of women, wives, mothers, and daughters of opposition members condemned to long sentences in March 2003.

The government didn’t take the blow well. Little accustomed to those who annoy, concealed violence was used against the Ladies, by means of supposedly spontaneous mobs who were admirers of the Revolution. Aggressions against these women, who carried gladioli in their hands through Havana streets demanding freedom for their family members, threw more wood on the fire in the agitated Spring of 2010.

Civilized nations hit the roof and a series of economic restrictions were brought down to pressure the government of Raúl Castro. The General took note. This oven wasn’t for baking cakes.

Cuba lives on the edge of bankruptcy. The economy is shipwrecked. The country is taking on water on all sides. For the first time in 51 years, the government threw in the towel before the street marches of the Ladies in White and a new hunger strike, started in Villa Clara by the opposition member Guillermo Fariñas, who was demanding the release of 26 dissidents.

In a rare diplomatic pirouette, the regime obtained the help of the forgotten Catholic Church. In a hurry, Raúl Castro asked Cardinal Jaime Ortega to intercede with the bothersome women. He designed a three-phase plan. From Madrid, the ex-chancellor Miguel Ángel Moratinos dressed it up well. The agreement was made public on June 8, and it was made known that 52 political prisoners would be liberated.

The governors’ strategy was to build a gold-plated bridge for the freed opposition members so they’d fly to Madrid. They thought that a friendly telephone call from the Cardinal to each prisoner, inviting him to leave headed for exile, would be accepted by all the prisoners. It didn’t work out that way. As a weapon of coercion, the regime still has not freed 11 dissidents who refuse exile.

While the news of liberation of political prisoners made a trip around the world, Fidel Castro, historic leader of the Revolution, rose from his sickbed. A recuperated Castro. With a distinct look, with Adidas or Nike sporting overalls. Or a collection of shirts. He did what he knew best: Spoke and predicted. He unleashed on the world a red alert; a nuclear war was just around the corner.

Besides prophesying chaos, the ancient guerrilla is one of those convinced that capitalism’s days are numbered. He chatted about everything happening on the Earth. But he did not delve into local issues; that was a matter for his brother.

They started to play in different leagues. Raúl, hand to the grindstone, seeing exactly how 12 million Cubans bring their meals to the table. And the visionary Fidel, in charge of international affairs. One suspects disagreements, but in 2010 each stuck to his own area. For the time being.

In July, summer arrived. School vacations, beach, and fans celebrating the victory of Spain in the World Cup in South Africa. Earlier, Habeneros had celebrated that their team, the Industriales, was crowned champions in the national baseball series.

In the offices, in full heat, the technocrats worked at full throttle on a unique, new, dedicated plan to reform the disastrous economic situation. Recipes with a raft of shock therapies, similar to those applied by countries in bankruptcy.

When their vacations ended, Cubans were awaiting the news that 1.3 million people would be laid off in three phases. The first one already started in October. It was not the only one. State subsidies have to be cut back. Open the tap for self-employment. And apply a tax rate that sometimes reaches 40% of income to alleviate the terrible State budget deficit.

People aren’t expecting miracles with the opening-up of private initiative. It smells bad. The elevated taxes are disheartening. The insufficient guarantees offered by a government that openly rejects people who succeed in making money are strong elements that generate mistrust.

In different provinces there were attempted protests and the streets have become dangerous. as if the police didn’t have enough to do going after crimes and drugs. Urban transport — like housing — gets worse as time goes on. The ration book stays the same and the scarcity of products — in pesos or in cash — continues to be a source of alarm. When rice isn’t lacking, there are no beans. If there is salt, there is no sugar.

In the year that just ended, we see more beggars, drunks, prostitutes and thieves in the streets. Domestic and school violence just skyrocketed. And courtesy has continued to be something from another planet.

Despite the black panorama with its grey backstitches, Cubans continue to dance, sing, make fun of the governors and make love wherever. Television viewers were still hooked on Brazilian soap operas and little girls were dazzled by Hannah Montana.

In 2010, among others, there were three “round” anniversaries: the centennial of the birth of the actress and singer Rita Montaner, and of the writer José Lezama Lima, the 90th of the ballerina Alicia Alonzo, and the 80th of the singer Omara Portuondo. Four compatriots were honored with Grammy Latino prizes: Chucho Valdéz and Leo Brower — residents of the island — and Arturo Sandoval and Alex Cuba, settled in the United States and Canada.

The good news was that we weren’t lashed by any tropical storm or hurricane of great power. And one bit of bad news, that the hoped-for increase in tourists from the United States didn’t materialize. A consolation prize was that friends and family from the United States, once again and despite the crisis, haven’t stopped helping their families on the other side of the puddle. With money or with packages of food, clothing, medicines, and toys.

Cubans are wishing that 2011 might bring good omens. They think things probably can’t get any worse. Things have been scraping bottom for too long. Living at the edge of the abyss.

December 30 2010

THE FUTURE WILL BE TODAY

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The night in Cuba is long and damp. A light drizzle snows on the abandoned neighborhoods. The facades soften, trace their inconceivable masterpieces at the point of bursting. Everything is plastic in the middle of the debacle, remotely and very humanly textured. Everyone speaks, there is hope at the end of the disease. The past does not weigh, so passé. The present is technically simple procedure. The future does not happen today at ten o’clock or five o’clock in the afternoon. The happiness was real.

My mother breathes her cardiopathic aerosols. The wooden house is too cold for her emphysema, that sooner or later will also be mine. She always missed a fireplace here in Lawton. To burn wood civilizes. Fire is something that is always strange at dawn. My kitty baby falls asleep after talking by phone with the broken heart of Europe. He withstands much less than me, insomniac tiger.  No creature could withstand more than I do now. After several centuries, I’m finally alive again. History is today.

The music saved me, healed me, seduced me, accelerated me.  I would give a hug to the Minister of Culture Abel Prieto and tell him the best joke in the world on his unnecessary censorship of my voice in “Trocadero 162, lower,” Tomás Piard’s documentary to be released on December 19 without me. I would ride in State Security’s Geely again as I did a year ago and with less fuss, would take advantage of the crisis to look at the oppressors in the eyes, to give them a chance to breathe better. Like me. In peace. Free. I would ask the President of UNEAC Miguel Barnet if Reinaldo Arenas was a good boy, if he was beautiful naked, if he was ardent or awkward in bed, if he was not sorry for all the pain and despair that kills and pampers us and makes us a blessed race in the ladinoamericano pasture which Cuba should never seek, if not the  if not to be surprised by the young man in the nights. Like me, I’ve never slept with a man but just the same have loved him in body and text until his suicide yesterday. I would go disguised in the Cuban street. Disguised, for example, as Orlando. Wolf. Light. Angel (no doubt that I am, better to doubt it: it will more credible then.) I will give money. I’ve always wanted to give money to poor people around me. Buy the newspaper Granma for a dollar. Cones of peanuts for a dollar. See those eyelids lifted to heaven and believe that this is a mistake, but no, it’s a gift: for my birthday the most beautiful is that I give you something. I would randomly make a phone call to a remote country, unknown and exact, and I’m sure I would connect with the steely and sweet voice of a girl, a girl about to throw herself from a bridge under the snow to avoid her birthday that hopefully would be today. Today everything happens among the Cubans of the world, we are all awake and aware of each other. We want better. We are, in the end, far from a people. And, though that call to an unknown number would be very awkward, at least the two of us could laugh for a minute, and then   we already know we won the life, that there is more time than Revolution, that Cuba lost, that this is the Friday of truth.

Come on. Don’t become. Don’t cross. Click here. We are everyone. We survive. The damage didn’t work. Duty was green and a cow ate it. Let’s take advantage of the cold front. If you reach out your hand, I’ll give you a magic card. The castle was supposedly a house of cards. I love you. And you know it. Don’t hide. Don’t stare into the emptiness. The emptiness of my gaze is much better. Tonight we will assemble the first fireplace in the neighborhood.

And breathe to say goodbye. Give me a tin of your oxygen molecules. Call me by telephone without knowing me. I’m serious. +53-53340187. You’ll be able to talk with my cat named Diez, like today. I could give you the embrace that generations of generations didn’t have the courage nor the decency to share. Cuba became corrupt among all. It was not a question of government. Cuba is of no government. What a concept. Cuba is you, bobo. I am Cuba. Breathe. This bottomless night I’d also like to chew a big mouthful of your CO2.

Until now. May it not threaten. May illusion be a little vampiric. May the mists ennoble everything. As if there were no more birthdays. As if today were unique. As if the discipline of death is running out. As if the honeycomb were just about to produce royal jelly, juice of all good. Winter is a balm. Like those speedy clouds, like those rare trees that we never learned how to pronounce, like infancy, like your voice.

Revenge is shame. Evil is barely material. Because of this, the spirit will always erase it. Because of this, we talk about it without speaking between you and I. Because of this, we remember that it was still possible to love among Cubans. Because of this, the ministerial embrace and my curiosity about UNEAC. Because of this, the hug that I give to my mother’s artful asthma (her electric nebulizer was ordered for her by another Cuban from another remote country). My mother grows sadder each birthday: I know she thinks that each will be the last of hers and mine. My mother who has loved so much and how much work it cost her to love.

Let’s do it easier soon. There. Now. How lucky you are. Congratulations.

December 10 2010

It could pass for a joke in bad taste. It could pass for the invention of a playful spirit. Unfortunately, horribly unfortunately, it is neither: The place where the 34-year-old young man named Alexander Otero is standing in these photos is nothing more nor less than the ground that the People’s Housing Authority in Granma province gave him on which to build his home. Look closely. It’s worth analyzing this depressing and cruel image.

This is about the pater familias whose desperate action — planting a den of shame in the middle of the city of Bayamo to call attention to his case — was reported in his blog, in the previous entry. I promised to continue the story, as some readers requested, following the practice of serious journalism and its demanding readers.This is the required continuation.

“The day after I spent the night in that makeshift hut with my wife and baby, the leaders of the government and the Housing Authority came to see me with the paper signed, sealed and delivered. They gave me the authorization to build on the land they assigned to me, with the condition that I immediately dismantle the shack which, they said, was creating political chaos among the population.”

For a man who spent 11 years waiting for a simple rectangular space, a fragment of ground to erect his poor dwelling, such a proposition was the light at the end of the tunnel.

“First they took my wife and baby, and took them to her father’s house, temporarily, they said, and they summoned me in the afternoon to officially show me the area where I could build a house for me and my family.”

When, hours later, an official followed orders to take him to the far outskirts of the city, in a semi-depopulated area of open fields, and showed him, “this was the place that had been assigned, Alexander Otero thought, essentially, that is was some kind of macabre joke.

“I felt an indignation that I can’t describe,” he told me in a voice filled with anger. “It was humiliation. Look what they gave me to build a house for my son: a place where there is no running water, no electricity. Look what they gave me to make me agree that I could no longer say they wouldn’t let me build a house in my city.”

But the implied malice against the humble nonconformist could go even farther. Although it didn’t seem like it, they could do even more.

“That same Friday afternoon, and I am here on the ground, looking at the outrage committed me and thinking what the hell was going to do with this, came a police patrol and took me prisoner without any explanation. ”

I listen and I think I can confirm his version: that same Friday I had agreed to meet with him a second time to see with my own eyes — and the lens of my camera — the site our officials had reserved for him. I waited a long time in my house and he never showed up.

“I was imprisoned for seventy-two hours. As that is the legal time they can detain you, they put me behind bars and exactly ten minutes before the end of precisely three days they took me out and levied a thirty peso fine for public disorder. So that’s what they considered my action of raising the rafters in that other place and spending the night there with my family.

Alexander and I talked while standing among the weeds at three in the afternoon. All around us, only the whisper of the grass, distant horses, solitude. The only house in the whole place was a few meters from the site where this young man was supposed to erect his, taught me what would also be his home: an obvious complaint against the socialist paradise that I’ve been told, since I first opened my eyes, was my country. I think of the cold, the insects, I think of his baby, and feel an overwhelming shame for the house that — with enormous sacrifices — my parents managed to build for me thirty years ago.

I look at this pestilent place and can’t drive from my memory the image of the residential neighborhoods, the areas reserved for the military and party leaders in my area, with manicured gardens and spacious parking spaces, their solar panels for hot water, their savoir faire. For the incredulous: if there are not images of those house in this blog, it’s because it’s impossible. If I just took out my camera, it would be confiscated before I ever pressed the shutter. No one is allowed to take photos outside official residences.

I know that right now, while I am listening to this poor man talk, I’m lousy company, I would like to say have faith, fight for your rights, that one day there could be a better future for you and yours. I would like to wish him a Happy New Year. But the words won’t come. So we retrace our steps like zombies, searching blindly for the way back to town.

December 28, 2010

On December 24 I woke up typing into my cell phone some wishes and short predictions of what 2011 could bring those of us who live on this Island. After sending some 140 character texts via Twitter, it occurred to me to ask my friends and acquaintances to send me their own hopes and I promised to catapult them into cyberspace. Within a few hours my Motorola inbox collapsed under the weight of so many forecasts and expectations for the coming months. Curiously, one word was repeated in the majority of those messages, the eight letters of the elusive libertad filled a good part of the text messages that came to me on Christmas Eve.

So I would like, in these final days of 2010, to post my own concept of freedom on Generation Y. In these images, filmed by a couple of young German filmmakers, I sum up my relationship with this concept absent from our lives, but not from our aspirations.

* The video is a fragment of the film “I’m Free,” by Andrea Roggan of Germany, which is still being edited.

Yoani’s comments from the video:

For me, freedom, although I don’t fully know it, signifies a goal, an objective to go toward, and I fundamentally believe that freedom is the possibility of standing on a street corner and shouting “There is no freedom here!” I believe it is a space where you can get more and more freedom.

Well, freedom begins within you. The day you wake up and say I will not to pretend anymore, I will not wear the mask anymore, I will not allow them to continue stealing pieces of my opinion, pieces of my freedom of movement… well, in my case it started when I began this adventure that is Generation Y, my blog on the internet, which is a long process of internal liberation. It is like a therapy, above all to shake off years and years of apathy, years and years of silence.

December 30, 2010

My wishes for 2011, for you and my loved ones:

Good health.

May we not lack work.

To love and be loved.

And above all, freedom so we may enjoy these gifts.

December 29, 2010

Marta Lopez has wanted to emigrate to the United States of American for some years now. She signed up for the 1998 American visa drawing, but was not lucky. In 2001, her mother went to visit in the United States and stayed. The monthly remittance she sent Marta allowed her to build her house. Exit from the country was no longer her only option.

Nonetheless, her mother — after becoming an American citizen — insists on claiming her. Mrs. Lopez did not resign herself to losing everything: time, sweat, and money invested in building her house and her mother’s sacrifice, who at age 75 was working in a foreign country just to help her.

Hopes resurged for Marta after reading the planned guidelines for economic and social policy, expected to be adopted at the 6th congress of the Cuban Communist Party, in April of next year. According to point 278, the government will apply flexible formulas for the exchange, purchase, sales, and leasing of housing.

The government clarified that the guidelines only deal with the economy, but it is impossible to separate that from the issue of human rights on the island, principally relations with the island’s emigrants.

Despite the fact that the government made a list of the policy guidelines for the next five years, no one will explain how they will be applied and how far they will reach. Nevertheless, they are raising expectations among a good part of the citizenry, principally that which has plans to emigrate, with respect to the possibility of selling their houses, until now a legally prohibited act in the country.

Marta wonders if they will eliminate the administrative sanction of the confiscation of goods for those who decide to emigrate. Principally, the rules that impede those who wish to permanently leave the country of disposing freely of their goods, including their housing.

The Cuban State, which, last June was elected vice president of the United Nations’ Council on Human Rights, from the beginning of the decade of the 1960s has restricted its citizens’ freedom of movement, by means of requiring permission to enter and exit the country. It also enacted legal dispositions which impede emigrants from keeping their property on the island.

Law 989 of December 6, 1961 — in effect in the legal system — establishes the measures to take against furniture or buildings or any other possessions of value, etc, of those who unforgivably and with disdain abandon the national territory. The regulation nationalizes the goods of emigrants by means of confiscation — without right to indemnification — as if leaving the country were a crime.

The Ministers of the Interior, and of Justice and the National Housing Institute synchronise maneuvers to prevent people who aspire to emigrate from evading the confiscating actions of law 989. They do not authorize the person’s exit from the country until the goods of their emigrating owners belong to the State.

These regulations also affect the ability to dispose of personal property and regulations on family rights. The authorities declare donations and exchanges of housing units null when, within 4 years from having authorized the act, one of those involved asks for permanent exit from the country.

If the emigrant is married, the State liquidates the community property so that the part belonging to the one leaving can be confiscated. Nonetheless, the Family Code in effect since 1975 does not recognize permanent exit from the country as a cause for extinguishing the joint nature of property between married persons.

None of these subjects are dealt with in the guidelines of governmental policy, however,

The possibilities for changes in this approach are few, however, since the elimination of these provisions would mean a net revenue loss to the State. Marta Lopez also knows this, but she hasn’t lost hope.

December 29 2010

A young lawyer who sometimes invited me to his trials told me a few days ago about something unusual that happened in the Territorial Military Court in San Jose de las Lajas, to the south of Havana, where some Santeros filled the judges’ stand with dust, seeking a favorable result for their relatives, implicated in serious crimes. His client didn’t contract for the services of any witch, but received an unexpected penalty just like the other defendants.

The criminal attorney assumed that the decision was influenced by the discomfort of the judges before the trail of dust and other signs of witchcraft. On noticing “the work” the Head of the Chamber ordered the Registrar to find a cloth to “sweep away the trash.” The tension of the oral hearing with the interventions of the prosecutor, witnesses, the accused, the defense and the arbitration by the judge were warmed by the challenge of the alleged curse.

A friend notes that this is more common than many assume. Some believe that the engagement of a palero, a Santeria practitioner, can reverse the outcome of the trial and “soften the prosecutor’s proposal, tie the tongue of the attorney if his client is on the opposite side, or put into the mouth of the judge the orders of the “pot,” linked to the dead who assist the practitioner, who speaks with them through a complex system of divination that passes through the interpretation of the snails and the feeding of animals like a rooster, goat or sheep.

Although there are naive and opportunistic, the “godchildren” of paleros, santeros and babalawos believe in the power of those called on, the strength of the dead and the details of their own magical religious conception, which leads them to “throw the judges, the lawyer or the prosecutor” after exploring the possible sentence, so that sometimes, when passing by a ceiba tree or at the door of their houses, these powers of the law face signs of witchcraft.

The defense attorney doesn’t worry about “the mess in the pot” because he believes that every trial is a theatrical performance under pressure from above, through money or the police they invoke “secret operational tests” that complicate things for the accused, leaving the defense at a disadvantage, unless the Head Judge, committed to fairness, disregards the testimony of those in uniform.

He says that a few weeks back, a babalawo who got someone accused of molesting his stepdaughter out of jail, went through his house and instead of thanking him, told him he owed his freedom to Orula and Olofi, gods from the Yoruba pantheon, who advised him what to do during his confinement.

The faces of error of such a peculiar way of influencing justice are evident also in the Havana Provincial Court, where sometimes they have to dust off the stands and remove “other gifts” intended to appease judges, prosecutors and lawyers. According to the defense attorney friend, if anyone benefits it’s the family of the victim since the judges are not impressed and issue judgments without thinking about the anger of the dead or the power of Oshun, Yemaya and Orula.

December 16 2010

Our official press, the only one authorized, has been characterized by a triumphalist approach to national events and friendly governments, and a catastrophic one toward all others, mainly the United States and the European Union. This narrow political and ideological prism determines what information is selected and written about, and even establishes its degree of importance. Thus we find headlines which in any normal country, would have no significance.

Another striking feature is the profusion of news related to problems in the country to the north and in Europe, to the detriment of the treatment of national affairs which should be the priority, since most readers are Cuban citizens. This situation forces us to seek national information outside the official media.

In recent years some space and time has been devoted to criticizing the national reality, of course, properly balanced and diluted among adverse weather conditions, the embargo (called the blockade), difficulties with supplies, transportation, etc., and without going too high up the scale of responsibilities, reaching only to the category of functionaries. These appear as those primarily to blame for the numerous political, economic and social setbacks, almost always because the didn’t comply with, or properly implement, directives from higher authorities.

Also, with a press that hides from reality, it is very difficult to clear the way to solve problems. If the reality is not known by the citizens, if there is not an open inquiry into its causes, if there is a continued insistence on hiding to not give the game away to the enemy, there is little that can be accomplished, despite all the calls-to-action and propaganda, with regards to civic responsibility.

Political, economic and social changes are needed. It is a national desire. A responsible press could facilitate it, without straightjackets, with journalists who exercise their profession honestly and are not mere functionaries, following orders, incapable of finding independent sources of news. These professionals have existed in our history. In this way a single press could be credible and respected.

December 28 2010

Every day brings us closer to the new year and, with it, the growing alarm over the job cuts and reductions in subsidies we face in the coming months. A phrase from Raul Castro’s latest speech — “continuing on the edge of the precipice” — is not a metaphor but our painful reality. Among the social assistance that will be eliminated is the so-called ration market, which distributes a small monthly quota of products to each citizen. No one can survive eating only what is recorded in his “ration book,” a document more important here than even the identity card. But the extremely low wages in the high prices in the country’s other markets make the abolition of this subsidy dramatic and highly controversial.

It is not only a basic, though meager, support, but it is like the birdseed that justifies the cage. Whenever the tone of criticism rises, and dissenters began to point to the system, officials emerge to remind us that the government spends millions each year to provide us a few beans, a packet of coffee every thirty days, and that slice of bologna that feeds popular humor more than stomachs. So it has been for more than forty years, since the establishment of the regulated market at a time when my parents thought it would be a temporary, a transitional measure until the planned and centralized economy began to bear fruit. Within a few days of my birth, my name was inscribed in the register of consumers, and twenty years later I had to enter the name of my son in the same list. Rationing has become so ingrained in our lives many do not know whether to laugh or cry at the news of its end.

We are all aware that keeping the “booklet” is unsustainable for the national economy, but few can imagine life without it. In our house, we have decided to put the little book of graph paper we’ve been given for 2011 in a safe place, because if it really is the last one, surely it will become an historic document. Those who defend its immediately elimination are sure that it will mean the automatic placement of tons of goods on the free market, and they assume this will cause prices to drop in the market not regulated by the state. But the biggest change, perhaps, may be in the minds of the people, when they sense that the tiny portion of seed is no longer being placed inside the cage, they may begin to feel the real pressure of each one of the bars.

December 29, 2010

We invite you to participate in this platform because we have the profound conviction that life is something sacred and should be an indispensable value in the Republic we desire.

We understand that respect for life as a supreme value is a moral principle that can be assumed by believers and non-believers. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in its Article 3, is energetic and affirms that “Every individual has the right to life”.

The abolition of the death penalty in Cuba, now, tomorrow, and forever can be our first commitment as a nation. A commitment that — assumed by Cubans on the island and those in exile — demands of the Cuban Government its immediate suppression and stimulates transition toward an authentic democracy.

Capital punishment remains in effect in the Cuban Penal Code. It is true that at present the regime maintains a de facto moratorium on the application of said sanction, but we all know that it’s due to tactical conveniences and not due to a questioning of the moral nature of the same. For this reason, it was sadly applied in 2003 after several years of not having been used. All Cubans, especially those condemned to death, know that the regime keeps this terrifying resource intact and that it can be applied at any moment.

In the free world the death penalty tends to disappear from legislation or has been overruled by moratoria that make its application a de facto impossibility. Besides defense of human life, there exist different reasons that have motivated these important advances.

The reality is that no judicial system can guarantee the absence of errors that can lead to the execution of an innocent person. It’s a fact that in recent times, thanks to DNA tests, many convicts have been freed, victims of errors or judicial omissions.

Another argument to consider is in the case of a murder, the punishment doesn’t serve as retribution for the crime committed, as it cannot repair the loss of a dear one with the execution of the murderer; on another count, how many times can we execute someone who has killed many? We have one life alone and one death alone.

Also arguable is the example of the death penalty, the crime rate is no lower in countries that apply it and the executions of Nazi leaders in Nuremberg haven’t dissuaded genocide, to cite recent cases alone, such as those of Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein.

On the other hand, the experience of many democratic countries demonstrates that, if adequate legislation is established and social and political pacts are observed that enable its systematic application, social peace can be guaranteed without the violent physical elimination of its enemies being necessary in a State of Law.

In Cuba’s case, the usual subordination of judicial to political power and the present deteriorating material, moral, and civic conditions make us doubt that Cuban justice, now and in the near-term future, will be able to guarantee due process to anyone condemned to death.

We share the conviction that Cuba’s future has an urgent need of justice and perhaps now is the time to ask ourselves if it is desirable that in this future, the application of the death penalty should continue in effect; if the justice we seek requires the spilling of other Cubans’ blood.

We do not believe that the death penalty serves as retribution for harm committed in our Motherland and, much less, that it contributes to guarantee a social peace that can be fully attained with the restoration of a State of Law and the citizen compromise with adequate legislation, and with social pacts that emanate from democracy.

To proclaim the necessity of the death penalty in Cuba’s future contributes to that our children and grandchildren, parents and siblings of those who might be judged shall be less disposed to accept a justice that might include capital punishment. Eliminating capital punishment from whichever Cuban penal code will bring safety in the process of the transition toward democracy, guaranteeing that said sanction shall not be used as revenge or as a method of eliminating one’s enemy.

We believe that those who wish for and manage change in Cuba — whatever be its level of compromise — would appreciate an agreement of this nature, especially those inside the regime who might wish to move in a direction toward authentic democracy.

This agreement for the abolition of the death penalty in Cuba shares some values that are defended by the chancelleries around the world, especially those of Europe, where the death penalty provokes great rejection; this citizen’s platform will plant an important moral and diplomatic challenge for those who govern in Havana.

Cuban society, for decades, has been doomed to depreciate life and render worship to death: “The Motherland or Death”, “Socialism or Death” have been the slogans par excellence. We have gained nothing on that road, let us allow life — not death — to be the cornerstone of our future.

We invite you to sign this proposal for the abolition of the death penalty in Cuba now, tomorrow, and always.

December 9, 2010