License for Another Kind of Enterprise / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Proyecto Demócrata Cubano (“Cuban Democratic Project”) is an opposition association in Cuba that was founded in 1996 and is a member of the Organización Demócrata Cristiana de América (“Christian Democrat Organization of the Americas”), ODCA, since 1998. Now that the Cuban government brought back the fashion of permits for nationals to erect their own micro or medium enterprise, I ask myself why they don’t authorize as well the peaceful opposition organizations based in Cuba, as an initial step to recognize the democratic rights of all Cubans. It is fair and necessary that they grant license to these kinds of institutions of the emergent and independent civil society, so that from them they can try out openly and legally – under the rule of law – the democratic values that our foundational forebears bequeathed us, to exercise and savor democracy and give ourselves the banquet of working with political diversity based on ethics and “with all and for the good of all”, for the present and the future of our nation.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 27 2011