August 12, 2004
BlogCuba - Caribpundit
This next great entry is from Helen over at CaribPundit, the best source for news and commentary on anything and everything in the Caribbean (and some excellent stuff from around the globe as well). In this BlogCuba entry, some of my fellow Cubanos exiliados are taken to task.
La libertad no es gratis - Freedom Isn't Free
Some Cubanos today have forgotten the tugboat massacre. Some have forgotten why they fled Cuba at great risk to their lives. Some have forgotten the brave Cubanos who have died for freedom's cause because they could not conceive of life without it.
Some Cubanos seem to have forgotten the political prisoners who are abused unbearably and who will likely die in Castro's prisons, like Combina o de Guantanamo, which the world hears little about because Americans don't run it. These prisoners have families of their own. They have sons, daughters, grandchildren. They are husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, and aunts. Yet, knowing the price to be paid for standing up against Castro, they count not the personal cost to themselves but soldier on. Like Rene Montes de Oca Martija, they ask from America this: "I would like them to remember their principles:their sense of unity, justice, and liberty, maintained over so many years."
Today, the Bush administration is remembering America's principles and insisting on freedom for all Cubans. Not just for those who risk their lives by rickety boats, but for all, including those who languish, oppressed, in the prison Castro has made of beautiful Cuba. With the presidential elections looming, GWB has implemented a very stringent Cuban policy which aims to break Castro's hold on Cuba by restricting Americans' travel and Cubanos' remittances to the island. As President Bush said, "We're not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of Cuban freedom."
Yet, the ones who object most vigorously to this policy are those Cubanos who cannot look beyond their own personal circumstance to see the policy's benefit for Cuba as a whole. These are content with the status quo, with the continued oppression of their countrymen in Cuba, and don't care if Castro is removed because they don't seem to see the relationship between Castro's dictatorship and the imprisonment of a nation. For these Cubanos "like to go back for weddings, for when someone gets sick, for the birthdays, for the graduations. They send remittances...." They like to live in freedom here in the States and be able to visit their brethren who are in bondage. The chains they fled no longer bother them because they, themselves, are free.
One, Carlos F. Lazo, a military medic on duty in Iraq, blames President Bush because under the new policy, he won't be able to go to Cuba to see his sons. It is magnificently ironic that Lazo, who is serving freedom's cause in Iraq, and who because his personal desires must be temporarily unrealized, objects to the policy of a president who would bring God's gift of freedom to Lazo's own countrymen.
Lazo is right; he might die in Iraq and never see his sons again. However, he is wrong to blame the Bush administration for that. That Cubans are not free to travel, in the way that everyone else in the Caribbean does, is not because of President Bush but because of Fidel Castro, who denies the God-given right of liberty to every Cuban except himself and his minions. Lazo, like many Cubans suffering inCuba, must be willing to pay the price of freedom for all.
Lazo's reluctance to pay is shared by many Cubanos living in the freedom of Florida and elsewhere in the U.S., and who complain that the Bush administration policy is inhumane. They blame the U.S. for keeping families apart. Truly, these Cubanos have forgotten much. They have forgotten the freedom fighters of the tugboat massacre; the ones like Montes de Oca, Biscet, and others whose lives serve as testimony to the truly inhumane policies of Castro's regime.
When these forgetful Cubanos in the U.S. remember that freedom is not free, they will abandon their appeasing support of Castro. Then the liberation of Cuba will come because they will join other Cubans and the U.S. government in doing what is necessary to bring it about.
Posted by Val Prieto at August 12, 2004 06:15 AM
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference BlogCuba - Caribpundit:
» Blog Cuba! from The Laughing Wolf
Cuba Libre! Val at Babalu Blog is not letting a couple of hurricanes keep him from doing the second Blog Cuba with a day of posts from a number of bloggers and others on memories of Cuba. I was honored... [Read More]
Tracked on August 12, 2004 07:57 AM
» US - Cuba: Babalu Blogs Cuba from CaribPundit
I'm on the better side of late but be sure to check out Val Prieto's Babalu Blog to catch his excellent Blog Cuba roundup series.
He's scoured the net and shared the informational wealth to post a wide range of interesting Cuba related articles, ... [Read More]
Tracked on August 12, 2004 04:13 PM
Comments
Wow!
Posted by: Rtfm at August 12, 2004 04:21 PM
