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Letter from The Cuban
Coalition for the Constitution of 1940 in response to the letter of the
President of the conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States to
president George W. Bush of May 18th, 2004.
The Cuban Coalition for the Constitution of 1940, on its legal and
constitutional capacity for the Republic of Cuba, considers necessary to
issue this communiqué and our opinion may reach the President of the
United States, in response to the recent letter of the President of the
Conference of Catholic Bishops of the United States, Reverend Wilton
Gregory, to the President George W. Bush, on which Reverend Gregory asks
for the recommendations of the Commission to strengthen the economic
embargo to Cuba and to restrain even more traveling to Cuba, may not be
accepted. Consequently, Reverend Gregory’s letter expresses that in full
agreement with the Pope, John Paul II, and the Cuban bishops, the Agency
that he presides considers the economic embargo morally unacceptable and
politically counterproductive.
We consider important to say that the opinion expressed by Reverend
Gregory, which in his letter he states to be the same as the one Pope
John Paul II and the Cuban bishops have, is not the same as the one of
the immense majority of the CUBAN Catholic people, including Cuban
priests and deacons in and out of Cuba, who consider the embargo
subject, as ethical and a matter of principles. Trading with the enemy
and helping to economically sustain him with the fruit of the effort and
work of those who live in the United States (a nation that Castro
considers his worst enemy) receiving and making use of the implied
benefits that grants the condition of political refugees, that escape
from the repressive Castro-Communist system, is really an injustice and
a lack of ethics and fundamental moral values.
The Cuban Adjustment Act, issued for the only benefit of those who
escape from the persecution and the repressive Castro-Communist system
of Cuba, is practically a subterfuge by the Cubans who take advantage
from it, going out of Cuba in a definitive manner, to reside in the
United States and go back to Cuba on vacation in less than a year,
several times a year, even to do illicit businesses, as in many cases
that we all know.
The Cuban Catholic people expects a greater commitment from it’s Church,
and an official protest to join its people’s pain, in front of the
multiple imprisonments and the death threats that at this precise moment
many men suffer, as Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet who is about to perish of
starvation in the inhuman Cuban jails.
-2-
The huge capital flow originated from traveling to Cuba and the
unlimited remissions sent by “refugees” from the United States, help to
keep Castro in power, and for him to continue exporting terrorism,
feeding the Latin American guerrillas, for many years trained in Cuba.
As Venezuelan Cardinal José Castillo Lara has just said: “…to be able to
buy votes and deceive democracy in the nations that still keep a
democratic system of elections in the hemisphere, as recently done in
Venezuela.”
By the same token, sending free oil to Cuba by Chavez’ government in
Venezuela, does not result in a benefit for the people of Cuba, who do
not see one only drop of that oil; neither they receives it, nor this
helps the general consumer to enjoy a higher quote of gas. Black outs
and shortages of water are of daily occurrence. The Venezuelan oil is
only good to fatten Castro’s and his agents bank accounts abroad, as
well as Chávez’ own accounts, robbing from the national resources, while
burying in poverty the sister nation of Venezuela since the arrival of
Chavez to power.
The economic embargo of the United States to Cuba should not represent a
major problem to Castro, who can freely trade with the rest of the
world. Had Castro loved his people more and had he left power earlier,
the embargo would not exist today.
The Cuban Catholic people, in a great majority, approved the measures
recommended by the Commission for a Free Cuba to President George W.
Bush, and respectfully requests to the bishops of the United States and
to Pope John Paul II to join their voices of condemnation to the people
who suffer persecution and exile for over 45 long years.
It is necessary that Bishop Gregory asks Fidel Castro and his
totalitarian government to allow free elections and not to continue any
longer usurping the power that he acquired illegitimately and
unconstitutionally. Enough Cubans, by the way, many of them Catholic,
have died in Cuban jails while the world and some members of the Church
close their mouths.
When Castro leaves power, there will be no need for embargo or any other
restrictions. It is precisely Castro who has imposed an embargo on his
own people, at the form of an Apartheid, by not allowing them to enjoy
hotels, beaches and restaurants which, are only for the use and access
of foreigners and tourists with access to foreign currency.
It is necessary to condemn and eradicate the prostitution of minors and
the traffic of human beings that Castro now exploits in Cuba, with a
very high rate of AIDS and venereal diseases. It is a matter of honor to
condemn abortion in the country with the highest per capita figure of
death by abortion in all the Americas.
It is time to apply the measures recommended and even other stronger in
order to condemn with a loud voice the long list of crimes commited for
45 long years under the Communist and obsolete regime of Fidel Castro.
-3-
High rank officials of the Cuban government have emphatically said that
the ones who send remissions of money are the labor force abroad, and
that the same correspond to the tax that they have to pay for the
education they received, to which the fiscal exemption joins by
collections of permits. Cubans, even after banished still continue with
the shackles of slavery.
In the Message of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Cuba, “Love
Expects it All”, issued in Havana, in the symbolic date of September 8th
of 1993, on its third points says:
- “ More than occasional measures of emergency, an economic project of
defined limits is necessary, capable of inspiring and move the energies
of the whole people.”
Among other comments, in response to these demands, almost ten years
after the emission of the Pastoral of the Bishops, it is evident:
Communists, to say it in formal terms, have created a dual economy, as
follows:
- One scoped abroad that they call “solvent”,
- And another one to survive.
In the process, they squander the national patrimony, appropriating the
means of production, all with the complicity of foreign interests,
making corruption more acute in its broadest sense.
We may conclude that the crisis in Cuba was and continues to be
structural, which demands therefore, for changes in the political
organization and in the so called relations of production, radically
eliminating the economic “patches” for partial or temporary solutions.
The document “The Fatherland is for All” declares with sobriety and
transparency:
1. The philosophy of the government is not the one to serve the people,
but the one of being its dictator.
2. The main objective is not to guarantee the citizens a quality for
life with a decorous minimum.
3. The power, through a totalitarian control is the end that politics
pursues.
4. We can conclude that there is no program either to give a solution to
the economic and social crisis.
-4-
At the end of the document we can read:
1. On January 28th, the government of the United Sates published a Plan
of Support to the Transition, there was no alternative response by the
Cuban government. Bill Clinton’s Administration offered 11 Billion
dollars, without any condition, without obtaining any response from
Cuba.)
2. There is no doubt that we have to re-state and re-design the
socio-economic policy to improve the outcome.
3. Both, the society and the economy have to stop being used to exercise
control, in order to get inserted in the context of the intense
international competition and the dynamic technological change.
4. What is stated by the Party (Communist) is not that, but maintaining
the “status quo” of a totalitarian system that is obsolete.
5. They want to get us trapped in the social and economic
underdevelopment, in the middle of a very dynamic and competitive world.
Mr. President George W. Bush, Reverend Wilton Gregory that is the true
feeling of the majority of our Cuban Catholic people.
(We respectfully ask the Ideal magazine and La Voz Católica to publish
this Comuniqué with the same transparency that the letter of Rev. Wilton
Gregory was published.)
Miami, August 16 of 2004
CUBAN COALITION FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF 1940
CC President George W. Bush
Pope John Paul II
Rev. Wilton Gregory
Mons. Louis Thoreau
Mons. Agustin Roman
La Voz Católica
Revista Ideal
Source:
www.NetforCuba.org
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