Don’t tell us we’re not Cuban: The Real Havana Club

#ForeverCuban #TheRealHavanaClub

The Bacardi family is the antithesis of the Castro family in Cuban history through to the present day.

Consider for a moment that Angel Castro, Fidel and Raul Castro's father fought for the Spanish crown against Cuban independence. The Castro brothers emerged out of the worse elements of political gangsterism to impose a dictatorship that has lasted 58 years.

In contrast two generations of the Bacardi family fought for Cuban independence with one family member fighting alongside General Antonio Maceo. During the Republic the family not only had enlightened business practices but also engaged in civic activities that promoted a democratic culture. Each time that dictatorship arose in Cuba under Machado, Batista and Castro the Bacardis joined the democratic resistance. They have recognized the work of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and earlier this year that of his daughter, Rosa María Payá and they are supporting the Cuba Decide initiative to push for a democratic transition.



Now they are setting the record straight and defending the legacy of Havana Club with a challenge: Don’t tell us we’re not Cuban.

"The Arechabala Family started their rum-making business in 1878 in Cuba and first registered the original Havana Club trademark in 1934. It wasn’t long before Havana Club Rum became a beloved and iconic Cuban brand – becoming a favorite amongst locals as well as American and European tourists.

Then everything changed. On January 1st, 1960, at gunpoint, the Cuban regime unrightfully seized the company’s assets without compensation. The Arechabala family lost everything and was forced to flee the homeland they loved, with a scant few of their remaining possessions – the precious Havana Club recipe being one of them. Meanwhile, the Cuban Government started to sell their stolen version of Havana Club, and continues to do so to this day.

It wasn’t until 1995 – after decades of rebuilding, the Arechabala family finally joined forces with another Cuban family in exile: Bacardi. The latter acquired the Havana Club brand and began producing rum based on the original Havana Club recipe and selling it in the one country that didn’t recognise the Cuban Government’s 1960 illegal expropriation, the United States.

The Havana Club brand is an example of how, despite the circumstances, Cubans in exile have never accepted their fate. Havana Club rum holds onto its rich Cuban culture." 

Let us look forward to the day that both Bacardi and the real Havana Club can return to Cuba and make the rum on their home turf and not in exile. But that necessitates the return of freedom that also means private property rights, freedom of expression and freedom of association.
  

Cuban Dissident Antúnez Addresses Cuban Youth Leaders

Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" addressed the first U.S. - Cuba Democracy PAC Young Leaders Group Happy Hour on August 14, 2013. Below is a video excerpt of his remarks.

Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" addresses the Assembly of the Resistance

"Antúnez" addressing the Assembly of the Resistance

 Jorge Luis García Pérez "Antúnez" addressed the Assembly of the Resistance at a forum held at Florida International University Law School on August 10, 2013. In his address Antúnez described how the opposition movement is progressing towards a national stoppage and appealing for justice for the many fallen martyrs.

Arturo Sandoval: Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient

Arturo Sandoval: Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient

 Arturo Sandoval is a jazz trumpeter and pianist. He was born in Artemisa, in Havana Province, Cuba. Sandoval, while still in Cuba, was influenced by jazz legends Charlie Parker, Clifford Brown, and Dizzy Gillespie, finally meeting Dizzy later in 1977.



Gillespie promptly became a mentor and colleague, playing with Arturo in concerts in Europe and Cuba and later featuring him in The United Nations Orchestra. Sandoval defected to the United States of America while touring with Gillespie in 1990, and became a naturalized citizen in 1999. Because of his defection, his music was banned in his homeland. Many other prominent and important Cuban musicians like Arturo, have also been banned from the airwaves in Cuba.

On February 24, 2009 Arturo Sandoval played taps for Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario De La Peña, Carlos Costa, and Pablo Morales extrajudicially executed by the Cuban government on February 24, 1996 at 3:21 pm and 3:27 pm., respectively, in international airspace. Arturo has remained a steadfast advocate for Cuban freedom and human rights. He scored the soundtrack for the documentary Oscar's Cuba, about the life of a Cuban dissident and former prisoner of conscience.

On August 8, 2013 Arturo Sandoval was named one of 16 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor of the United States for those "who have made especially meritorious contributions to the U.S. and to world peace."

The Legacy of Bishop Agustin Roman

“Change Swords of Steel into Swords of Truth” – Bishop Agustin A. Roman, Oakdale Federal Detention Center , November 29, 1987

Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman

On Sunday, April 14, 2013 at 3:00pm at La Ermita de la Caridad we saw in action during Mass how Cubans are one people united by the Virgin of Charity or as she is affectionately known "Cachita." Several hundred Cubans came together to remember and pray for Bishop Agustin Roman at a Mass officiated by Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski to observe the one year of his passing.

Archbishop Wenski spoke about the life of Bishop Agustin Roman and how, like Peter, he was a fisher of men and then went onto explain how the late Bishop had planned to be fishing in Cuban waters but forced at gun point to board the Covadonga and go into exile to fish in Chilean and American waters. Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski spoke about the origins of La Ermita de la Caridad:

"As Jesus Himself told St. Peter that someone would take him where he did not want to go. Father Aleido had to allow himself to be guided by the hands of God who called him to be not only a disciple but missionary - first in Chile and then here in Miami where by the initiative of the bishop at the time, Archbishop Coleman Carroll, built this chapel to the glory of God and the Virgin Mother of Jesus, and for the spiritual good of the Cuban exile. It was built by the sea whose waters also wash the shores of Cuba. Thus, we see ourselves how God's ways are inscrutable but are providential paths."

One of the last projects  Bishop Agustin Roman presided over was the construction of a small malecón inspired by the one in Havana just behind the La Ermita.

A few days ago Yoani Sanchez made the pilgrimage there and today Rosa Maria Payá and her brother Oswaldo Payá Acevedo took part in the Mass for Bishop Agustin Roman presenting a Cuban flag while Rafael Peñalver presented the plaque of a shiv taken from the prison riot that Bishop Roman ended nonviolently.

"But for the Cuban people, here in exile and on the island, Bishop Agustin Roman occupies a place of grateful honor. And in these days I have received from the Bishops of Cuba solidarity messages on the occasion of the Mass, and a very special thank you to the children of the late Oswaldo Paya, Rosa Maria and Osvaldo, present here today in this Chapel.

Augustine Roman was a son of Cuba - that country that José Martí described as "agony and duty." And if it is true that - as Luz y Caballeros - Father Felix Varela taught the Cuban people how to think, Bishop Roman, the Felix Valera of our time, taught us to pray, and pray unceasingly for the freedom of Cuba.

Maria Rosa, I know that your dad and Bishop Roman mutually admired each other. The times I met your father in Cuba he always called on me to greet Bishop Roman in his name. (And he also told me how happy he was when Father Rumin was appointed rector of the chapel). I hope that when you go back to Cuba that you tell Cubans on the island that despite the bitter divisions Cubans remain one people. May we continue to pray that "To Jesus through Mary charity unites us."

Bishop Agustin Roman never forgot his Cuban roots and maintained contact with the island and with many families there such as the Payá family. He also continued to pray for the freedom of Cuba and of Cuba’s political prisoners.

Father Rumin, Oswaldo Payá Acevedo, ArchBishop Wenski, Rosa Maria Payá

 Bishop Roman confronted those who systematically violated human rights and promoted hatred for the love of power with the power of love found in the Gospel. Arch-Bishop Thomas Wenski explained it in his homily:

"It is true that the world lives threatened by weapons of mass destruction, we Catholics in the rosary have a weapon of mass conversion. The response of Bishop Roman to the ideologies of hatred was the gospel of love. To a people abused and badly led by men consumed by the love of power, Bishop Roman proposed another way, the path of the power of love."

 The best way to conclude this entry are with the thoughts of Agustin Roman on the subject of love and charity within the Cuban context as he expressed them back in 2006:

Charity, that is love of God and of our brothers, because we have already seen too much the fruits of hate in our people. Because charity is what God wanted for us, sent to us over the sea the image of the Mother of his beloved Son under the inspiring nickname: the Mother of Charity, Mother Love, Mother of the country. If what we do for Cuba, we do not do for love, better not do it.

If all of us who want the good of the nation, of the important internal dissident movement and the persevering of exile arm ourselves with these virtues, we will be effective. If we are committed to not let personalism, or the passions dilute them, we will have won. If we keep them and transmit them to all our people, we will have secured for Cuba a happy future.

A Call for Real Freedom in Cuba Now

The document below, Enough of deceptions, FREEDOM NOW, was authored by Oswaldo Payá who is based in Havana, Cuba and is a leader within the Christian Liberation Movement that authored the Varela Project and has had a huge impact both inside and outside of Cuba with the signatures of more than 25,000 Cubans inside of Cuba signing a petition for the restoration of human rights in Cuba.

In this essay he makes reference to the conference “A Dialogue between Cubans” which is the third part of a series of meetings organized by the Cuban Research Institute based out of Florida International University focused around the document: The Cuban Diaspora during the XXI century.

The first two meetings were held in Miami on October 10, 2011 and in Madrid on March 13, 2012. This third meeting was held in Havana beginning on Thursday, April 18, 2012. Listening to videos from the two first gatherings that places the Cuban problem first and foremost into a question of US/Cuba relations and the belligerence of the exile community towards the Cuban regime and the lack of rights of migrants is placed in second place. It seeks to look at changes made between totalitarian regimes in China and Vietnam and their respective Diasporas. This ignores what in reality is the great obstacle to normalized relations between Cubans on and off the island: a totalitarian dictatorship that represses all Cubans.

Monsignor Agustín Román and Oswaldo Payá (2003)

Enough of deceptions, FREEDOM NOW

by Oswaldo Payá

The government of the military regime has denied Cubans the universal right to freedom of travel for more than half a century and continues denying this right without any transparent prospects of change. With the greatest cruelty, it has torn millions of Cuban families apart and it still continues doing it.

Government spokesmen for months have speculated about possible migration changes and some, as Mr. Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly , justify the prison state in which they maintain Cuba, saying they cannot lose the “human capital”. This expression, characteristic of slavers, reflects the views of those who hold power in Cuba over the human beings, whom they consider their capital, their property and do not treat them as persons with dignity and rights. For the regime the people of Cuba are serfs and not citizens.

If it is true that the Government will make changes to immigration policies, why won’t they inform the people of what changes will take place and when? They despise the people so much that they don’t even respect their right to know. Or is it that the proposed changes are not the rights that we demand in The Heredia Project?

The Heredia Project or Law of National Reunification and for the end of discrimination against Cubans in Cuba, is a citizen proposal based in the Constitution that once and for all, through a legal, clear and transparent manner guarantees:

• The right for all Cubans, be they professionals or not or technicians, to freely enter and leave their country, without permission to exit or enter, for as long as the person decides, without taxes, or forfeitures, or the plundering of property, without paying for each month they live abroad a ransom to the government, paying all transactions in national currency and eliminating forever the punishment that is the “final departure” status assigned by the regime, which imposes banishment and exile for those choose to live outside of Cuba. An end to the humiliating letters of liberation as a condition to travel to doctors and other professionals.
• The restitution of all the rights of citizens to the Cuban Diaspora and their children as they are full Cubans, without exclusions and the end of all the restrictions and requirements to obtain permits, so that Cubans living outside Cuba can enter their country whenever they want and for as long as they want and live in their homeland if they choose.
• End to the humiliations, internal deportations and mistreatment against the Cubans that in our own country try to escape poverty and the lack of opportunities, transfer themselves to different provinces.
• End to all inequalities and limitations of access to positions, and of exclusions for political and ideological reasons and removal of other privations such as the right to the Internet.

The regime pursues with its full repressive forces activists who collect signatures for The Heredia Project while talking of possible migration reforms. Some make it easier for them when they make echo of this deception against the people. They accompany the regime in this despotic speculation through statements, publications, conferences and the propagation of doctrines in which they call for a vote of trust for the government of Raul Castro and not the rights, the vote and trust in people.

The conference “A Dialogue between Cubans” that begins today in the Sacerdotal House of Havana, is organized and led by those in Cuba, who not only despise the internal nonviolent opposition, but also deny its existence, explicitly, in their publications; they advance each time more and more in the tunnel of alignment with the lies of the regime and with the proposed continuation of totalitarianism, in which the privileged in power have set their mind to. They are encouraging the oligarchy to continue denying Cubans their rights. In this manner, those who enjoy the privilege of having a voice and protected spaces, conspire against the true reconciliation and peace that can only be achieved if it respects all the rights of all the Cubans, their freedom of expression and association and that free elections are held. We will continue demanding these rights even if we we are alone facing these tactics and conspiracies against popular sovereignty.

These “organizers” speak with the concepts of “the prospects for a relationship between Cuban immigrants and their country of origin, referencing the process of economic reforms or modernizations that have been initiated in Cuba.” We denounce that these are the same terms used by the regime to deny the full condition of Cubans to those who have left our country in search of the freedom that does not exist in Cuba and to those that the regime maintains in the condition of outcasts, as it treats those who currently leave under the category of “definitive exit”. This category of “definitive exit” is employed even in the latest Housing Law, issued only a few months ago. What then is the perspective?

The Christian Liberation Movement in a declaration emitted last March 30th states: The Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to be inserted, that would be part of fraudulent change.(1)

Only in the context of a culture of fear and repression with which the regime silences the people are they able to implement the painful maneuver that includes some who take political positions from the Church, others from their intellectual and media show cases, others from their economic interests and others distancing themselves from the Diaspora, so that with their participation contribute to this fraudulent change that is the project that the government clearly expresses in the phrase that says: ”changes for more socialism.”

Although totalitarianism has been sustained for more than fifty years, but it has not subdued the hearts of the Cubans, nor can it fabricate a people to the measure of a regime without freedom, nor a church or a Diaspora in the function of their power. Enough of despotism, of doctrines, of excluding and conditioned conferences, of maneuvers and tactics of distraction to justify and consolidate a fraudulent change that is the change without rights, which leaves the majority of the poor getting poorer and leaves all Cubans without freedom. Cubans in the Diaspora and those of us who live in Cuba, are one people, victims of the same oppressive regime and we have the same hope and the same claim to liberty.

ALL CUBANS, ALL BROTHERS AND NOW FREEDOM.

Christian Liberation Movement
http://www.oswaldopaya.org


Havana, Cuba April 19, 2012

(1) See. CHANGE NOT FRAUD, YES TO LIBERATION Havana, March 30, 2012. http://www.oswaldopaya.org

Eliseo Alberto: An honest man who spoke out

''It was like opening a valve... more than an exorcism... The book was already written. It was very painful, but very easy.'' - Eliseo Alberto

The writer who opened the door to life in Cuba during the Castro regime to me has passed away. Never had the opportunity to actually meet him but he left a great impact on me. His name was Eliseo Alberto. He died in Mexico days after having undergone a kidney transplant.



The book that in first person honestly described how people loyal to the regime lived in it during the 1970s and 1980s was a revelation. His father, Eliseo Diego, is considered one of Cuba's greatest writers and poets of the 20th Century. Following his father's death in 1994 Eliseo Alberto began to write this important book. Although Peter Katel in September 1, 1997 reviewed Eliseo Alberto's most important book Report Against Myself (Informe Contra Mi Mismo) with the headline: "A Coward Speaks Out" and began the review stating:

Talk about an antihero. Cuba's latest literary sensation is a writer whose memoir recounts how he was offended by government orders to spy on his own family-but was too scared to say no. He waxes nostalgic over the Cuba of the '60s and '70s, yet acknowledges that he and his friends stood by while the state persecuted homosexuals and longhairs. He describes his eagerness to move abroad while keeping his ties to the island as long as he kept his mouth shut (which he did for several years). The harshest self-criticism in the book was to include this observation from a friend still in Cuba: "I can't help but notice that in your previous books you never touched on the political problem. You had a healthy reputation for cowardice."

However, Katel got it wrong. Speaking or writing the truth including ones own shortcomings is not cowardice but in fact its opposite: courage.

A book that begins with a profound and personal description of Castro's tropical Stalinism in the first person with author describing how he spied on his own family.In a November 20, 1997 interview in the now defunct magazine Exito Santiago Aroca wrote

''They first asked me to inform on my family in 1978,'' is the first line of the book. According to Alberto, Cuban State Security police directed him to spy on his father, the poet Eliseo Diego, considered by some among the foremost Cuban intellectuals of the 20th. Century. ''I would ask my father what I should write in my report and he would even correct my spelling,'' said Alberto. ''My father said he wasn't concerned about me accusing him of crimes against the Revolution... but he thought it would be unforgivable for the report to contain grammatical errors.''

In the end writing the book Report Against Myself (Informe Contra Mi Mismo) his status as one of the privileged nomenklatura came to an end. In the same Exito interview Eliseo Diego described how it went: ''After the book was published, they took my passport away and they gave me another one that looks horrible, with rusted staples, very thin. It makes the holder seem like a suspicious character,'' said Alberto. ''Now, with an American stamp that says ''rejected,'' it looks so disreputable that when I went to the Cuban consulate to ask for a visa to go to my own country as a tourist, the official looked at it suspiciously and said it wasn't prudent at this time for me to return to the place I was born.''



His father Eliseo Diego had offered Alberto words of hope while still in Cuba: "The old man used to say that in this world of crooks, to see an honest man was really something. Of course, there are honest men in Cuba and they are heroes, even though they may spend more time in jail than on the street."

Writing honestly has a cost in a totalitarian regime and in Eliseo Alberto's case it was to die exiled from his homeland in Mexico. Requiescat in pace.

Return to the Center's Lessons for Cuba

"You can't have human rights without God." - Otto von Habsburg

Just completed reading Otto von Habsburg's Return to the Center (Zurück zur Mitte) translated by Carvel de Bussy and published back in 1993. The past 18 years have only provided greater context to this extraordinary book that offers a reflection on Central and Eastern Europe's democratic transition; the implosion of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the European Union. This in itself is enough to recommend reading this book but there is much more to gain. This blog has a focus on Cuba which although obviously not in Europe is a product of Western civilization for good or ill. Even the current crisis and totalitarian regime that Cuba is suffering is a product of heresies that arose out of the heart of Europe in the nineteenth century. The nationalism born of the French Revolution combined with Communism, a creation of the fevered imagination of Karl Marx. Otto von Habsburg, a Christian statesman, is the antithesis of both and has much to offer anyone trying to sort out the present crisis in Cuba. Below are brief excerpts from this book and clips of Otto von Habsburg offering insights on the challenges faced by the West today.

"At Dumbarton Oaks in which there was just three countries represented: the United States, Great Britain and Russia. Russia’s representative at that time was Maxim Litvinov who was no longer foreign minister but he was still carrying on this matter. And it was when these three met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington the firs thing Litvinov read was that for Russia - For Stalin there was an absolute base condition: In the past you always had a reference as to the Supreme Power or to God or to something like that and that he wanted to make all those ghosts of the past disappear and put man at the place of God into the treaties. That was when for the first time Russia demanded that there shouldn’t be any mention of any supreme being. Although it was in my opinion it was absolutely erroneous also for the very simple reason: you can’t have human rights without God without a last authority because to submit it to the sort of changing majorities is no ultimate authority and consequently it makes no possibility of putting something which is the point of reference.” - Otto von Habsburg, World Security Network 2007



"When the Goddess of Reason was placed on the altar two hundred years ago during the French Revolution and when it was announced that God was dead or had never lived, there began the greatest crisis humanity had suffered up to then. This led in the twentieth century to the erection of the concentration camps of National Socialism and the Communist gulags. - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 217



"However , one could not imagine until the Wall came down and it was possible to travel through the former East Bloc without difficulty, the extent to which the socialist system had destroyed not only individual lives, but also those of the least political persons. It was truly the Evil Empire. The worst was that the people were spiritually crushed. Some of the finest lived in psychiatric clinics or in prisons and work camps in a concentration camp atmosphere. But the individual was robbed of any initiative or joy of living also in the schools, the universities, the Army and in professional life." Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 113-114 "The degree of sensitivity with which certain circles react to the word totalitarianism is striking. They repeatedly refuse to use it for Communism or the allegedly new shapes it is assuming." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 176

"Certain people often seem to feel more sympathy for the overthrown dictators than for those who bled under their terrorism." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 114

"In most countries nowadays arrested terrorists who allege an ideological reason for their acts of violence are considered to be political prisoners and enjoy certain privileges which are not given to normal criminals. This is especially manifest in areas of Europe which are most at risk, the Basque country and Northern Ireland. The penalties for mass murder are more than mild as in Spain, for example there is no longer even life imprisonment." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 179


"The patriot loves his country and respects other nations; the nationalist idolizes his people and looks down on others. Man cannot live without religion. If he renounces God and His moral order, he automatically turns to false idols that fill the empty place of the Almighty. The Nation was such a demon in the thought-world of the nationalists. Figuratively speaking, it was the "Superman" over and above Good and Evil." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 220


"Trees with roots in evil do not grow to Heaven. Let us not forget: there was a period of delusion when even a British Liberal like Lloyd George congratulated the Germans on having a "great Fuhrer." After his defeat, the time had come at least in the West for a free Europe. There were admirers of Stalin who simply refused to see what was going on in the Soviet Union. And in 1989 we experienced the "Gentle Revolution" in the east of Central Europe. The evil is loud and the good is soft. The sound of Hell is shrill, whereas the angels whisper. And in spite of this, the positive forces finally win out. - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 223



"The right to a homeland does not expire in one generation. The Jews have proven this. They remained true to the Zionist ideal for two thousand years. On every Long Day they greeted each other in the small synagogues of Central and Eastern Europe with the phrase: "Next year in Jerusalem." How unrealistic that must have sounded at that time! Still because Israel was not prepared to dismiss its homeland from its heart, Jerusalem's day has come after millennia." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 224

"We believe as Christians that man is the image of God and not only an accumulation of cells. He has rights that were not given him by any race, class or collective group and which they likewise cannot take away from him. The dignity of man is of divine origin and thereby stands above the power of the state." - Otto von Habsburg, Return to the Center pg. 214

THE DECLARATION OF MÓSTOLES: A Call for the Restoration of Human Rights & Sovereignty to Cubans

On September 2, 2010 Ten Cuban former prisoners of conscience banished to Spain and housed in Móstoles made public a manifesto demanding a national dialogue without exclusion of the Cuban people to obtain political, economic and social rights for all Cubans.

TEXT OF THE MANIFESTO

DECLARATION OF MÓSTOLES

The people of Cuba are the victims of those who with sickly optimism respond to interests that are not those of the Cubans in order to barter and manipulate the postponed aspirations for freedom of our people.

Political prisoners, who have been banished to Spain, were jailed for defending peaceful dialogue between Cubans as a civilized way to achieve political, economic and social rights that for over fifty years, the Cuban totalitarian regime has denied the people.

Only the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), and the government of Spain seem to see changes in the state of lawlessness which the Cuban people are subject to.

Confusing the forced exiles that have been carried out to date, with an opening process towards democracy is an insult to the legitimate right of all Cubans who want to build a free and reconciled society.

In Cuba the will of the people calling for a REFERENDUM on the Varela Project, an initiative of law which is a massive exercise of popular sovereignty, is ignored.

Still in our country those who fight to restore the people's voice are pursued, assaulted and imprisoned.

Still obtuse forces of the tyranny are thrown at a heroic mother who had to bury her son was killed for defending a cause that was just.

For there to be changes repression should cease and the laws that deny freedom repealed.

Unfortunately it occurs that some political sectors in Spain and its government seem to want to endorse with its stubborn commitment to declare change, without rights for the Cuban people, recognizing as the only interlocutor the repressive forces which the Cuban people are subject.

They are turning the current military junta on the island, into the economic Mafia of the future.

We do not know if this attitude of some in Spain responds flawed ideological or spurious economic interests. But, by siding with tyranny, they deny the fraternal bond that has united, and will always join the Spanish people and the Cuban people.

The undersigned, former political prisoners of conscience banished to Spain, only recognize as signal the beginning of changes in Cuba when there is a transparent commitment from the government of the island to the national dialogue that has already started in and out of Cuba between tens of thousands of Cubans to exercise sovereignty in designing the future of the nation, without exceptions, or external opportunism that marginalize the voice of the people.

SIGNED:

Regis Iglesias Ramírez. Ex political prisoner banished.
Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez. Ex political prisoner banished
Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta. Ex political prisoner banished
Normando Hernández. Ex political prisoner banished
Ricardo González Alfonso. Ex political prisoner banished
Julio César Gálvez. Ex political prisoner banished
Jesús Mustafá Felipe. Ex political prisoner banished
Marcelo Cano. Ex political prisoner banished
Arturo Pérez de Alejo.Ex political prisoner banished
Fabio Prieto Llorente.Ex political prisoner banished

Móstoles, Madrid 2 de septiembre de 2010.

Original Spanish text below:

TEXTO DEL MANIFIESTO

DECLARACION DE MÓSTOLES

El pueblo de Cuba está siendo víctima de quienes con optimismo enfermizo responden a intereses que no son los de los cubanos, pues truecan y manipulan las impostergables aspiraciones de libertad de nuestro pueblo.

Los presos políticos que hemos sido desterrados a España, fuimos encarcelados por defender pacíficamente el diálogo entre cubanos como vía civilizada para alcanzar los derechos políticos, económicos y sociales que por más de cincuenta años el sistema totalitario cubano ha negado al pueblo.

Sólo el Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), y el gobierno de España parecen ver cambios en el estado de no derecho al que está sometido el pueblo cubano.

Confundir los destierros que se han realizado hasta la fecha, con un proceso de apertura hacia la democracia es un insulto al legítimo derecho de todos los cubanos que quieren construir una sociedad libre y reconciliada.

En Cuba se ignora la voluntad del pueblo que reclama un REFERENDO sobre el Proyecto Varela, iniciativa de ley que es un ejercicio masivo de la soberanía popular

Aún en nuestra patria se persigue, agrede y encarcela a quienes luchan por devolver la voz al pueblo.

Aún las fuerzas obtusas de la tiranía son lanzadas contra una heroica madre que ha debido enterrar a su hijo asesinado por causa de la justicia

Para que haya cambios deben cesar la represión y ser derogadas las leyes que niegan la libertad

Sucede desafortunadamente que algunos sectores políticos en España y su gobierno parecen querer avalar con su obstinada apuesta los cambios, sin derechos para el pueblo cubano, reconociendo como único interlocutor a las fuerzas represivas que someten al pueblo cubano

Están convirtiendo a la junta militar actual en la isla, en la mafia económica del futuro.

No sabemos si esta actitud de algunos en España responde a taras ideológicas o a espurios intereses económicos. Pero, tomando partido con la tiranía, niegan el vínculo fraterno que ha unido, y unirá siempre al pueblo español y al pueblo cubano.

Los abajo firmantes, ex-presos políticos de conciencia desterrados a España, solo reconoceríamos como señal del inicio de los cambios en Cuba cuando exista un compromiso transparente del gobierno de la isla al diálogo nacional que ya se ha iniciado dentro y fuera de Cuba entre decenas de miles de cubanos para diseñar soberanamente el futuro de la nación, sin exclusiones lacerantes, ni oportunismos externos que marginen la voz del pueblo.

FIRMADO:

Regis Iglesias Ramírez. Ex prisionero político desterrado.
Antonio Ramón Díaz Sánchez. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Normando Hernández. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Ricardo González Alfonso. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Julio César Gálvez. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Jesús Mustafá Felipe. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Marcelo Cano. Ex prisionero político desterrado
Arturo Pérez de Alejo.Ex prisionero político desterrado
Fabio Prieto Llorente.Ex prisionero político desterrado

Móstoles, Madrid 2 de septiembre de 2010.

Banned & censored Cuban artist Celia Cruz sings Josè Martì's words

I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think. - José Martí
It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you. - José Martí


José Martí was born today on January 28, 1853 and in addition to being a journalist, poet, independence leader he was a fervent defender of freedom of expression and conscience. The regime operating in Cuba today is an affront to the values he defended his entire life. It is in remembrance of both him and of Celia Cruz who passed away in July of 2003 in Exile whereas Martí, who would spend most of his life in Exile, would return to Cuba by way of Haiti and perish in one of the early skirmishes in Cuba's second war of independence on May 19, 1895.

Celia Cruz banned and censored in Cuba for refusing to support the dictatorship is one of the great Cuban musicians who has been erased from the "official" Cuban history, but is remembered and loved by Cubans everywhere and in Cuba is remembered and listened to thanks to an underground black market. --> According to the book Shoot the singer!: music censorship today edited by Marie Korpe "musicians who left Cuba permanently after the Cuban revolution, whether for political reasons or simply to try to explore a possible career somewhere else in the world, are heavily censored by the government-backed broadcasting centre, the Cuban Insitute for Radio and Television (ICRT). How did this happen? When where the arts politicized and subjected to the dictatorship's veto? It began in 1961 and the website of Free Muse, an organization focuses on the freedom of musical expression, describes how it happened in its Cuba country profile:

Fidel Castro in June 1961 met on three consecutive Sundays in Havana with hundreds of artists and intellectuals. As a conclusion he gave a speech where he stated that "the Revolution defends freedom; the Revolution has brought to the country a big sum of liberties; that the Revolution can essentially not be an enemy of the liberties; that if somebody's preoccupation is that the Revolution will asphyxiate his creative spirit, that preoccupation is unnecessary, as this preoccupation has no raison d'être".

However, the worries were not diminished during the intense discussions, and Castro's speech was sufficiently ambiguous as to generate more doubts about the limits of freedom of expression, especially because one sentence became a key to the future cultural policy: "Within the Revolution everything is permitted, outside the Revolution, nothing".

Gradually the grip on culture was tightened. Music performed by those musicians who chose to go into exile criticizing the new regime, such as the extremely popular Celia Cruz and her orchestra, Sonora Matancera. The new music which was developed in North America and Western Europe at that time by groups and musicians like The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Janis Joplin, Earth, Wind and Fire, was labeled decadent and counterrevolutionary.

The banning was so consequent that for years it was even forbidden to mention some of those names. The banning of Celia Cruz was specially tough because she was so popular before the revolution. [...] Her name and Sonora Matancera were among those omitted in the Cuban musicologist Helio Orovio's 'Diccionario de la música cubana' (Dictionary of Cuban Music, Havana 1981). In a later edition these omissions were corrected.

Eric Silva Brenneman observes that “[b]etween the 1960s and 1970s, the island performed a cultural genocide the consequences of which are still difficult to calculate today.” After fifty years of totalitarianism it is important to analyze and document the damage done and where possible seek the means to heal and restore that which has been lost where possible. In the area of music and culture much can be done.

"Guantanamera" Simple Verses by Josè Martì

I am an honest man
From where the palm tree grows
And before dying I want
To share the verses of my soul.
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

My verse is a clear green
And it is flaming crimson
My verse is a wounded deer
Who seeks refuge in the woods.
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his honest hand.
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

And for the cruel one
who would tear out this heart with which I live
I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles
I cultivate a white rose
Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

With the poor people of the earth
I want to share my fate
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea
Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera