I can’t tell you what to do, but I can remind you that you have every right to protest.
14ymedio, Ariel Hidalgo, Miami, 10 June 2025 — I, a former professor of Philosophy and History at the High School level of Education in Cuba (Pre-university and Workers’ Faculty), who was in jail for writing a manuscript warning the authorities that the model established in Cuba would lead the country to complete disaster, support the Cuban university students on strike and have already signed the petition in favor of their non-repression.
From a distance, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can remind you that you have every right to protest, as long as you do so without violence, either in actions or words. It’s more effective when you demand your rights forcefully, but without offending anyone, and that way you will have the support of international public opinion.
“It’s more effective when rights are demanded forcefully, but without offending anyone.”
It is clear that the highest authorities have maintained an incomprehensible stubbornness in the face of the misery suffered by the population, denying a profound reform that many intelligent and well-intentioned people have been proposing for many years within Cuba, such as the intellectuals of the CEA [Center for American Studies], who were responded to by labeling them as colluding with imperialism.
But what needs to be done has nothing to do with ideological positions, as the Vietnamese and Chinese have demonstrated. All Cubans, regardless of their beliefs, should put aside political positions in the face of the humanitarian tragedy the population is suffering and unite to help Cuban families, to seek the best for our people, and to lift up our country.
All Cubans are brothers.
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