With all respect: It’s not enough
Al’s loupe
With all respect: It’s not enough
By Álvaro F. Fernández
alvaro@progresoweekly.com
I’m glad I spent part of last week and the weekend in the Washington, D.C., area. The first several days were peaceful – I spent them in Virginia with one of my sisters. We brought each other up to date. This country is so big that moments like these are priceless.
As an additional pleasure, spring was on our side. Cool days and evenings, some rain but not enough to keep us from taking our daily strolls. And the flowers! How quickly they grow around here at this time of year.
I waited with impatience for Saturday the 28th. I was going to participate in the National Encounter of Cubans Residing in the United States. It was a meeting by the Cuban ambassador in Washington and his aides with almost 120 Cubans who live in the U.S.
Part of the morning program included an hour-long conversation, through modern technology, with a number of high-level government functionaries on the island. It was a moment for the Cuban émigrés to learn about the new developments in the delicate and difficult relationship between the U.S. and Cuba.
It was also an opportunity for me, a Cuban living in the U.S., to seek clarifications, submit requests and debate differences with government officials from my country of origin.
The day’s focus – rightly so – was on the United States’ 50-year-long embargo against Cuba and everything it implies. A war waged by the U.S. against Cuba that at this time satisfies only a small but powerful group concentrated in South Florida.
Just as important was the discussion about the terrorism staged against Cuba from U.S. soil, which has resulted in the loss of innocent lives throughout the years. Linked to this topic (and a priority subject) was the work of The Cuban Five – incarcerated in this country, unfairly seized because of their antiterrorist work in the United States.
These are topics on which all of us there were in accord. People like me, who have access to the media, blogs and/or radio programs, have dealt with those topics countless times, out of basic consistence.
Precisely because of that consistence, I addressed the Cuban officials there and brought up the situation faced today by thousands of Cuban brothers and sisters who arrived in this country as balseros – rafters. Most of them have not seen their relatives or been permitted to visit the homeland, some since 1994. The situation is inhuman. Sooner or later, a solution must be found to allow these Cubans to visit their relatives and friends.
Some of you readers might ask: Why consistence? Well, if at the time the W. Bush administration split the Cuban family with its restrictive rules on visitations and family aid, we didn’t stop challenging that policy, how could we not insist in the case of the balseros?
At the end of the day, the Cuban ambassador reported that the issue of the balseros was being studied. He announced that 31 people who had been brought to the U.S. on rafts as children were approved for travel to Cuba.
The estimates I’ve read are that the number of balseros in the U.S. ranges from 15,000 to almost 50,000. Taking 30,000 for the purposes of this article, if Cuba grants entry permits to 31 balseros, that’s one-tenth of one percent.
With all respect, that’s not enough. It’s precisely that issue that prevented me from voting in favor of the final document, which has nine points. One out of nine? Well, if I’ve been consistent with eight of them for years, how, I asked myself, can I not be consistent with this issue, which has such a strong content of humanity?
I am deeply convinced of this. When it comes to the reunification of the Cuban family, it shouldn’t take years for us – all of us – to reach an accord. But that’s what happened.
Another subject discussed (another wasted opportunity?) was the discussion about the high cost of passports, travel documents, etc. My Cuban passport costs me about US$800 for a period of six years. Yes, I pay it. But it is an excessive amount – possibly the world’s most expensive passport. And not everyone can pay it.
In other words, its cost is exclusionary for many émigrés, out of reach to them. There were other subjects that could have been discussed more expansively. But that didn’t happen. Why?
I blame us, the Cubans who live in the U.S. and were present that day, for much of this. Our job, our responsibility as émigrés, is to appeal to the Cuban government and its representatives with arguments that range from human sensitivity to effective practicality.
