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OPEN LETTER TO THE CUBAN
RESISTANCE
March 12, 2003
First Message
Brothers and sisters of the internal Cuban resistance:
Today we would like to address you – those of you who have decided to live
according to your values, to live in truth, assuming the high price that
this totalitarian regime imposes on those who dare to dream.
We want you to know that you are not alone, for we feel that we are part of
this great effort to bring freedom and peace to our country. Already we walk
the same streets with you, and we dream and work for the same dreams.
The seed of liberation, planted by those who founded the Cuban Committee for
Human Rights in the 1970s, is at this moment giving fruit. The ascending
process of struggle for the respect of each person’s unalienable rights has
resulted in an awakening of the living forces of Cuban society. Despite the
myth of an omnipotent system that the totalitarian regime tries to
perpetuate, the voices and actions have risen of those who have decided that
they are going to get to work.
While the government’s propaganda called the independent human rights, civil
and political organizations that were emerging in the early 1990s
“grupúsculos” (small, scattered groups), the nonviolent civic resistance
movement was encouraging the people and gaining new men and women in its
ranks. The idea of Concilio Cubano (or the Cuban Council), the meeting of
all the opposition groups planned for 1996, created a joining of wills at
the national level. The regime in Havana tried to silence that challenge,
assassinating four of our brothers in the Florida Straits and unleashing a
strong wave of repression and arrests, but it was not able to stop the
desire of Cubans to meet and exchange their experiences.
The fast begun in Havana in 1999, in a home at Tamarindo #34, became a
nationwide demonstration with 53 fasting centers all over the country where
these civic activists were able to reflect and strengthen the spirit of
their fight.
While the official propaganda pushed its distorted and
exclusive version of Cuba’s history, civic activists
wrote and made public the essay, “La Patria es de Todos” (“The Homeland
Belongs to All”), tearing down the main pillars of the government’s version
of history and re-positing a sense of our past.
The Ibero-American Summit held in Havana in 1999 clearly showed that the
totalitarian regime had lost its monopoly on the representation of the Cuban
nation at an international level. The prime ministers and heads of state of
the world for the first time gave a show of support for the opposition
movement.
Despite the regime’s efforts to shift the focus of the
Cuban situation, moving away from the internal situation
to the diatribe with the United States during the Elian
Gonzalez situation, the opposition gathered new forces
and went out into the streets in search of citizens who
would be willing to join a petition for a referendum. The
Varela Project has managed to expand the framework of the strategy of civic
nonviolent struggle, calling on citizens to break with their fear and take a
liberating step. The 11,020 Cubans, who have now become thousands more, have
managed to reply in an overwhelming manner to the so-called “battle of
ideas,” a term the regime coined in 2000. The government’s response of
declaring the socialist system “untouchable” is one more show of its
corroded immobility. Faced with this show, those who yearn for a democratic
change continue firmly on their path.
The facts speak for themselves. Our path of liberation is
a plural mosaic on which each step strengthens the next to demand those
fundamental rights of the Cuban people.
Brothers and sisters, it is always good to look back and
value how much we have advanced in our struggle, for this helps us to
understand what should be our next step. It is time to coincide in the
principles of civic, nonviolent struggle, to look for that which unites us
within the healthy plurality that the opposition has achieved. The regime
will always try to weaken us. For this reason, our foundation must be solid
and rooted in our dreams for freedom.
The year 2003 opens for us new possibilities for civic
challenge. We have begun this year with the solidarity of the international
community, which in 2002 was able to recognize the sacrifice and courage of
the internal struggle that Cubans undertake, honoring several of its
leaders. The regime faces its worst internal contradictions and a profound
political and economic crisis. Our efforts should be aimed at getting
citizens to feel that change is possible. We must inform the Cuban people
about the truth of what takes place around them and in the world, and we
must form the people with democratic ideals, because in these ideals lies a
new Cuba. We must encourage the men and women that desire change but do not
know how to realize it. The Cuban civic opposition extended throughout the
island and with thousands of persons supporting its projects, has today more
than ever a voice to offer solutions for Cuba’s current situation. Civic
action should not be focused only on the most outstanding factors
of the political crisis, but also on solving the social
problems that afflict our people on a daily basis. The
spaces of freedom that with so much courage have been won, need to be
expanded within the social fabric, gaining in this way greater popular
support and creating a fundamental precedent of public commitment that is
not only essential in the phase of liberation but also crucial during a
transition to democracy.
From this hard and long exile we tell you that we believe
in you, we believe in the Cuban people. True change must be forged at the
foundation, in the hearts and hands of each woman and man who believes in
the future of Cuba. We do not believe in military conspiracies or
negotiating with the governing elite. We believe in the free choice of a
people who have been subjected for too long and can no longer sit and wait.
You are the seed and the agents of democratic change. Do not doubt it for a
single moment. That faith we
have strengthens us and brings us closer to liberation.
With faith in victory,
Your brothers and sisters of the
Cuban Democratic Directorate
www.directorio.org
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