Querido Raul, Dear Obama, Querido Pope Francis - English

Querido Raul, Dear Obama, Querido Pope Francis
Vatican City | Diciembre 19, 2014

First of all I congratulate you because a historic moment is what is
always expected of political men and this moment has been 17 December
2014. You have entered into history by arguing that the embargo/blockade
is an apparently empty word, by changing – with the reestablishment of
diplomatic relations – the meaning to 53 years of politics defined by
one side (U.S.) and used by the other (Cuba), to politicize Cubans'
daily lives, wherever they may be. I wonder if this gesture is also a
proposal to kill ideology. Cuba is now defined starting not from death,
but finally starting from life, but I wonder, what life and who has the
right to these new lives?

Now, querido Raúl:

Today as a Cuban I demand that you let us know what your plans are for
our lives, that you establish as a part of this new stage a process of
political transparency were we all have a space to participate and the
right to have a different opinion without being punished. That when we
have to deny many of the things that defined us, this process doesn't
come with the same intolerance and indifference which, up to now, has
accompanied the changes in Cuba, where acceptance is the only option.

Today as a Cuban I demand that there be no privileges or social
inequality The Cuban Revolution has distributed privilege as a reward
for a sense of trustworthiness, which is synonymous with fidelity to
those who are in the Government, or on its side. This has not changed.
Privileges have defined the social inequality that we have experience
since forever, an inequality that was clothed in Revolutionary
meritocracy and that today is transformed into loyal entrepreneurship. I
demand that the material and emotional rights of survival of those who
may not want to be part of this new stage be defended.

Today as a Cuban I demand that we not be defined by the markets, or the
use that the leaders can make of us. I ask for equality for that Cuban
who, due to the blockade/embargo gave his life, for example, working in
a factory to proudly arrive home with the title of Labor Hero, and who
today has no place in the world of foreign investments and can only
aspire to a retirement defined in socialist times and not in these times
of the market economy. What is the plan to not reproduce the mistakes of
the other countries of the former socialist camp? To not turn us into
the Cuba of 1958? To repair the emotional abuse that the Cuban people
have been subjected to under the politics of recent years. To ensure
that there will be social and material justice? To ensure that we will
not be a colony nor that we will have to unquestionably accept these
benefactors as it happened before with the Soviet Union and with Venezuela?

Today as a Cuban I demand to be able to demonstrate peacefully in the
street for or against a government decision and to be able to reclaim
political and social rights, without fear of reprisals. That
associations and political parties with points of view different from
the official be recognized. That civic activism, civil society and those
who have a different point of view be decriminalized. That political
parties born from popular desire be legalized. That direct elections be
established where all parties can participate and that ideological
differences be resolved with arguments and not with acts of repudiation.

Today as a Cuban I reclaim the right to be political beings, not just
economic entities or tokens of symbolic exchanges to make history.

Today as a Cuban I want to know what is the idea behind the nation we
are building.

Today as an artist I propose that Raul put the work Tatlin's Whisper #6
in the Plaza of the Revolution. Let's open all the microphones and let
all voices be heard; that it not be just the clatter of the coins we are
offered to fill our lives. That the microphones not be kept off. That we
learn to do something with our dreams.

Today I would like to propose to Cubans wherever you are that you take
to the streets this coming December 30 to celebrate, not the end of the
blockade/embargo, but the principal of your civil rights.


Let us make sure that it is the people who benefit from this new
historical moment. The motherland is what we grieve.

Source: Querido Raul, Dear Obama, Querido Pope Francis -
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