Untitled - Convivencia

conscience universally assumed. The onlyway to prevent forever the unjustpersecution or imprisonment of hundreds ofbrothers for reasons of conscience orpolitical option is enjoying freedom andresponsibility on the part of all citizens,having an absolute respect for all of theirrights and duties and all of them under theguarantee of a legal framework. It’s a matterof democratic governance. If not, the prisonswill be filled again as long as there is aCuban, man or woman, who tries to exercisepacifically his civic, political, economic,cultural or social rights and duties, which areinalienable and inseparable from pacificcohabitation in its highest degree. To ratifythe Covenants is therefore to fulfil a debt tothe political mission of the State which is tocreate and safeguard a framework of Lawthat protects the citizens and makes easy forthem their full and democratic participationin the institutions and in the independentassociations of the civil society.Economic and Social ReasonsThere is another reason why Cuba mustratify the Covenants on Human Rights:because it would be in correspondence withthe wish of progress and welfare of thepresent and future generations of Cubans,men and women. All the respectedeconomists and sociologists of our timecoincide in the criterion of linking deeply theeconomic welfare with the holistic humandevelopment and linking the civil andpolitical liberties with the development of thepeoples. Let’s remember the anthologicaltreatise by Amartya Sen who is a Nobelprizewinner on Economics. The name of thetreatise is “Freedom and Development”. Thetwo Covenants therefore complement eachother inseparably. Without economic, socialand cultural rights the civic and politicalrights cannot be properly exercised and viceversa. The economic independence promotesand demands the liberties of the citizen.Without respect to the inherent laws ofmarket, even when they are properlyregulated, there is no economic right ormaterial autonomy to exercise the politicalrights. The same way, without respect to therights of the peoples it won’t be possible thefair distribution of the created richness. Toratify the Covenants is, therefore, to fulfil adebt to the Cuban vocation for the economicprogress, for social justice, and for a holistichuman development.Civic and Patriotic ReasonAnother reason to ratify the two Covenants onHuman Rights is because it corresponds to themost genuine and deeply-rooted inheritanceleft by the founding fathers of the nation: sinceFr. Varela to Luz y Caballero, from Céspedes toIgnacio Agramonte, from Antonio Maceo to JoséMartí; they not only fought for the freedom andthe rights of all Cubans but they wereeducators of those rights and duties in each ofthe epochs they lived. The Apostle of ourIndependence proposed precisely the following:“the first law of the Republic should be the cultof the Cubans to the full dignity oh man”. Toratify the Covenants that represent today themaximum endeavour of humankind to reachsuch dignity for all men equally, is therefore, tofulfil a debt to the roots of our Fatherland.Cultural ReasonCuba must ratify the two Covenants on HumanRights, besides, because that corresponds tothe essence of our national identity. Even whenthey did not have the political liberty, the firstCubans who thought with their own brains andtaught us how to think, wrote constitutionalprecepts that guaranteed the fundamentalrights: Starting by that kind of constitutionalessay written by Joaquín Infante in 1810; alsothe proposal made by Fr. José AgustínCaballero in 1811; the one by Claudio GabrielZequeira in 1811 up to the one presented by Fr.Félix Varela in the Spanish ConstituentAssembly in 1820: he had been democraticallyappointed to be a deputy. Then, at the verybeginning of the first wars of Independence theCubans, women and men wanted to define andguarantee the rights of the free citizens:Starting by the original Constitution ofGüáimaro (1869), also the one of Jimagüayú(1895) and the one of La Yaya (1897). From theConstitution of the Republic of 1901 up to theConstitution of 1940: the most democratic,progressive and inclusive one of all of theConstitutions in the Cuban nation, includingthe Socialist Constitution of 1976 whichestablished the dictatorship of one class overthe rest of the nation. We can say that in theCuban culture there is an indelible influence ofEdiciones ConvivenciaPinar del Río. 201273