What Nonsense! / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

Reforms by Raul Castro: self-employment, immigration reform, with abolition of the so-called “white card or exit permit. Every time I listen to some analysts and wise guy lecture on that topic, I think they have lost their sense of reality of what a Communist style totalitarian dictatorship is.

To exercise the legitimate and sacred right to travel freely, in other words to leave and return freely from one’s own country is a right. If the regime in Havana allows citizens to freely leave and return, it immediately stops having at its disposal one of the most important tools of repression. If they eliminate the travel permit — the “white card” — the political police lose a sophisticated weapon of political pressure and blackmail.

If Cubans were allowed to leave and enter freely it would cost the regime their campaign of demonising capitalist society.

Sometimes I think some have truly believed in those economic and social manoevres implemented by Raulato (Raul Castro) to buy time and divert attention from true reforms. It bothers me that our compatriots, inside and out, with sufficient information and experience with Castro, believe that the beginning of a real liberalisation programme can wait for a meeting or a party congress.

I do not understand how they expect a general, stained with the blood of thousands and thousands of Cubans, who encourages sinister mobs and is the instigator of so much crime, to cause what amounts to the collapse of the one thing in what he is most interested: total power.

And if so, it is good to know that we are thousands and thousands of Cubans who for reasons of principle, common sense, and above all in honour and respect for our martyrs, do not want changes with the Castros, nor do we accept mediated solutions that would mean continuity, succession and exemption of blame for those criminals. For reconciliation without justice first, is as unacceptable as it is ignominious.

Translated by: Hank Hardisty

February 13 2012