Untitled - Convivencia

The government faced one first dilemma:1. To stay still letting the internalpressure and the internationalsolidarity campaign lead to an out-ofcontrolsituation, or2. To move the domino and grantfreedom to some of the almost 200political prisoners imprisoned at thatmoment in the Cuban jails; more thantwo dozens of them were seriously ill.It seems that they measured the seriousnessof the crisis of the country and they decidedto choose the second alternative.But there was still a second dilemma:1. To acknowledge the trueprotagonists: Zapata, Ladies in White,Fariñas and with them the greatestagreement and solidarity everachieved in the rest of the civilsociety, or2. Not to acknowledge these validinterlocutors and palm theirprominence so that the undeniablefact of the existence of an internalopposition is not accepted.An opposition which is militant and open,really small but visible and active; it’s a signand a voice of the immense mass which isdissatisfied, frustrated and increasinglyviolent. Small, yes, but where has thepolitical opposition been a majority from thebeginning, in the transition processes of thetotalitarian systems to democracy? We areextremists here in Cuba, a country which isan island with a leadership. Some times weare extremists by doing too much and sometimes by doing too little. Máximo Gómezstated: “We Cubans either go beyond thingsor we never make it”.The power clearly chose the secondalternative: it disregarded the interlocutorsand looked for a mediator. The twointerlocutors have never been sitting at atable: the State and the opposition, with thehelp of the mediator: The Church. It wasrather an oral mediation some distance awayuntil the mediation became negotiation andexclusive spokesperson for this process ofreleasing the prisoners from prison. Werecognize this meritorious humanitarian task bythe Church and we are glad together with theprisoners who have been released from prisonthough the majority of them have been sentinto exile.The negotiation has gone beyond the nationalboundaries and what used to be and is aproblem between the people and itsgovernment was superseded by the eternalconflict between the governments of the UnitedStates and Cuba. And once more, the internalconflict was superseded by the relationsbetween the European Union and the Cubangovernment. Once more, the internal situationin Cuba is intended to be negotiated abroad.The same thing that happened at the end of thewar of 1895 could happen now: the fighters forfreedom in Cuba, the mambises and CalixtoGarcía were left out of Santiago at that time.Now it’s the pacific fighters from the civilsociety.The Cuban government prefers to acknowledgeand negotiate with its “bitter enemies” abroadand at the same time ignores and disregardsone part of its own citizens. The same as whathappened with the mambises at the end of thewar of independence in 1898. The differencenow is that this is not the metropolis and theUnited States excluding the fighters forfreedom but the totalitarianism indecomposition which negotiates abroad anduses disregard and repression inside.It is necessary to continue analyzing and goinginto these strategies in high politics and notparalyze ourselves in the details that could endin an humanitarian operation but that could aswell have a possibility to advance into structural,gradual and inclusive changes. In this kind ofsystem and in the middle of the accumulatedcrisis, every movement can help to open thedoor to the change or just maneuver in order todecrease the pressure and gain time. For boththings it is necessary to be alert, to analyzedeeply, to include all the scenarios and acceptthe call of the responsibility that each citizenfeels.It would be good to find some morals orlessons up to now in this very recent historyuntil History has the distance and all thenecessary elements to judge:Ediciones ConvivenciaPinar del Río. 201268