Luis Aguilar Leon. Published Tuesday, July 25, 2000, in the El Nuevo Herald
It was with some skepticism that I read in the July 9 El Nuevo Herald Pablo Alfonso's interview with Manuel Cuesta Morua, secretary general of the Socialist Democratic Current in Cuba. Describing himself as an Afro-Cuban (unlike most of his black countrymen who stress nationality above race),
Cuesta Morua modestly calls the Current "a small group of dissidents.'' One must need an admirable equilibrium to survive in communist Cuba as a dissident socialist.
My skepticism grew upon later noting the differences between Cuesta Morua's Nuevo Herald statements and those he published in the July 20 Herald. In the first interview, Cuesta Morua unequivocably affirms that "Fidel Castro's regime blocks economic reforms while inalterably maintaining a
lack of political will for economic change.'' Yet later he blames nearly every native problem on "the power of the ultra-conservative Cuban exiles in the United States.''
Such a radical 180-degree turn gives the impression that Cuesta Morua plays a solo jazz in Spanish and the official drumbeat in English. In the latter tone, he adds that "U.S. politics is a major obstacle to the transition to peaceful politics we all seek for Cuba . . . every menacing U.S.
attitude, every intent to economically strangle Cuba, inevitably provokes a defensive reaction by the Cuban government.''
Perhaps his lack of access to accurate documentation may be making Cuesta Morua unaware of who started the Cuba-U.S. conflict long before the vilified embargo. In 1959, Castro assailed the United States for every Cuban ill since Columbus, including the explosion of a merchant boat and the "bombardment''
of Havana by "imperialist planes.'' This perpetual offensive against Washington, dating back to Castro's student days, assured that every U.S. initiative to improve relations with Cuba was repulsed at every turn on different pretexts.
Cuesta Morua cannot grasp how a scant Cuban-American minority can have such enormous influence in the U.S. Congress. Very simply, because a minority in a democracy outweighs the majority in a dictatorship.
I would like to assure the secretary general of the SDC that the majority of exiles support lifting the embargo. They themselves often violate the embargo with visits and gifts to Cuba, an economic support that staves off the regime's collapse. No doubt if the socialists ruled Miami not one
crumb would reach the island. But unlike Castro's apologists, they insist that the dictator make some concessions to democracy and open Cuba to its people, as promoted by the Pope and many world leaders. It is Castro's refusal that maintains the embargo.
The Cold War is dead, asserts Cuesta Morua, and those who dwell on it are "relics.'' If that's true, then Cuba has a museum of relics; a Russian spy base on the island. If it's true, then why does a bankrupt country have the costliest military in Latin America? No doubt it's to defend
against an imperialist invasion from the north.
Luis Aguilar Leon is a former opinion-page editor of El Nuevo Herald.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald
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