By Luis A. Montero Cabrera / December 17, 2020
The giant of the North is a country that during the most recent two centuries has accumulated significant wealth and power thanks to undeniable geographical advantages, the uninterrupted scientific and cultural enrichment that has meant the immigration of people from all over the world, to intense work of its town and to the economic and social evolution in these times.
These factors and many others have positioned it as an economic powerhouse that in many ways receives good dividends from around the world. Cuba, on the contrary, is a small country that has not enjoyed any of these advantages or exercised any privilege of exploitation over other countries. We have only depended on the tenacity, talent, hard work and resilience of our people to survive, through thick and thin. A greater or lesser part of the wealth of the northern country depended at some point on Cuba, in various ways. Likewise, the prosperity of Cuba at certain times in this history was driven by that of the neighboring country.What has been asymmetrical has been the damage. The undeniable majority of our misfortunes have also been caused by this neighborhood and not the other way around. But, like it or not, the destinies of Cuba and the United States have always been, are and will be closely related. Neither of us can move to another place, as Fidel once referred .
A period of four dark years of government is now ending in that country where, perhaps more than ever before, an imperial and autocratic style has prevailed. All kinds of ethics have been conspicuous by their absence in their actions and lies have been their media pattern. The damages are very great both for the other countries that in one way or another depend on them and for their own people. The most obvious sample button for self-harm is the sad story of a pandemic that has had the most vicious, capricious and ignorant driving in the world. It has already cost them hundreds of thousands of innocent lives, many of which could be saved with a simple rational and national policy in correspondence with the greatness and immense power that are used for other purposes.
In the case of Cuba, the years of a political win-win action undertaken in 2014 by the Obama administrationthey became four to lose – lose. The only beneficiaries were some unscrupulous opportunists who have long made a way of life with the policy of merciless hatred against the Cuban Revolution. The relations of a powerful and rich country like the US with a very close, small and poor neighbor, like Cuba, were rebuilding for mutual benefit until 2016 after many bilateral events that almost always brought mutual suffering, but especially on the island side. For Cuba, sixty years of aggressions and sanctions of all kinds, some even laughable, by the most comprehensive economy in the world have left a trace of isolationism and poverty that no one can deny, and perhaps not even imagine if they have not experienced it.
For the US, the damage has been relatively minor, but it has undoubtedly existed. Just to mention a few: the offer of Cuban medical aid for emergency care to New Orleans was not accepted in connection with Hurricane Katrina. How many lives did this refusal cost? Strategic projects for trade and mobility of both countries have also been detained, such as the Pan-American Highway of land and sea to link Florida with Yucatán and the high-performance distribution port between the Pacific Ocean and the eastern United States in Mariel. Millions of Americans have stopped enjoying, every year, some of the best beaches and most important and safest cultural sites in the world, all on Cuban soil just a few miles away. Very few have been able to prove if our health system can solve problems that theirs does not solve, or rest the rest of their lives without removing a shovel of snow from their houses and in beautiful and peaceful tropical paradises, very abundant in our archipelago. .
An action of hatred and fanaticism for electoral purposes on the side of the administration that took power in the US in 2017 halted the process, pushed it back, and the only thing that has been obtained is a great loss for both countries. A democracy, paradoxically very proud to be one, gave the presidency to someone who had obtained 3 million fewer votes than its contender in the 2016 elections. There is no doubt that the form that the majority of Cubans have recently consecrated for their government ratified by about 85% of the voters in the new constitution, it is very different from the one the United States adopted more than two centuries ago. No one in their right mind can think that Cuba has an interest in “imposing” its socialism on the United States. However, the pragmatism that does characterize the inhabitants of that country can find much in Cuban experiences that it can benefit from. Undoubtedly, Cuba can also find in facets of the scientific, technological, innovation and economic management system of the US experiences that can bring it well-being and progress if they are properly applied to our conditions and under our sovereignty. Nothing is absolutely negative or absolutely positive.
A very sensitive majority of the US people, now 8 million, have voted for change, responding to their own tragedies suffered during this period. Cubans, without being voters, have observed that the possibility of restoring sanity in relations between the two countries is opening up, overcoming the aggression and confrontation that have been marked by the hatred of the northern side. It is undeniable that the terrain to win – win is very fertile if a possible real collaboration and mutual sovereignty between our countries is undertaken. History will tell how our lives and those of many inhabitants of that country change for the better if something as simple as working together for the well-being of all is achieved, with normal relations between neighbors who have well-defined borders, without hatred and with very similar peoples in many ways, respecting each other in our integrity and freedoms.
Taken and tranlated from: www.cubadebate.cu
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