Laura Pollán Ladies in White Civic Movement Letter to President Obama

Laura Labrada Pollán, Laura Pollán's daughter
Laura Labrada Pollán, Laura Pollán’s daughter

10 March 2016

His Excellency Mr. Barack Obama
President of the United States of America

I extend to you the most cordial welcome to our country and wish you a happy stay in this land, which you can now feel as your own.

Cuba and the United States of America share a long history of friendship which has not been erased throughout more than 57 years of dictatorship in my country. It is time now that our citizens to meet at the middle of the bridge, and what they feel cannot be separated by any government or group.

We, as members of the Laura Pollán Ladies in White Civic Movement, an NGO dedicated to the liberation of political prisoners and aid to our people in general, thank you for the courage you have shown in changing an approach that has not been effective for more than five decades in transforming the current state of affairs in my country. The dictatorship gains strength from confrontation, and not from negotiation and compromise.

Our nation needs a change. Civil society has been growing, stimulated by so many decades of hardships and attempts to destroy it. You can do much for our people. Empowering our population is among the first steps to achieve several of our objectives: freedom of expression, of the press, a multi-party system, and a dignified future for our children.

We know that it is still too soon to appreciate the results of these policy changes, but we are confident that subsequent US administrations will know how to build upon this first rock that you bravely dedicated to the liberty of our people. Cuba is grateful for it, and needs it.

We believe in your sincerity when you say that your efforts are to empower our civil society and not to support a government that has visited great afflictions on its populace. The politics of compromise is vital to achieve peaceful and lasting changes, as you said on 17 December 2014. Perhaps you have been able, as none of your predecessors, to convince the Cuban government that it is time for a change.

My mother, Laura Pollán, who died under circumstances that lead to suspicions she was assassinated, was always very clear about the role her government, as well as others of the free world, would play in the changes that necessarily needed to come. For her labor in defense of the rights of Cubans and the promotion of democracy, she was honored, during your administration, by the National Endowment for Democracy.

We hope that during this very short visit you will plan on the possibility of hearing from the lips of our people and our civil society the reality that we live in Cuba. We would like for you to meet with us as part of that opposition with which you said you would consult during your visit. From our women you will hear firsthand all that is happening in our nation, and the sentiments of the Cuban woman who, like Michelle, love freedom.

When you depart from our country on 22 March, I assure you that you will carry Cuba in your heart, and you will hold in your hand one of your greatest achievements.

You will know how to represent the free world, and you will be the voice for those of us who cannot speak.

Laura María Labrada Pollán
Laura Pollán Ladies in White Civic Movement

Source: Along the Malecon (Tracey Eaton)

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison