‘Hit and run’

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – We all have been astounded by the cases of hit-and-run that have occurred in Puerto Rico in recent months. How is it possible that drivers have not the least sense of respect for life to stop after an accident and find out if the victim needs help or is dead?

These are news that cut deep into the qualities that make us human: respect, empathy, trust, solidarity.

Perhaps because the monstrosity of abandoning someone knowing that he or she can die because of your decision is so evident that we can collectively become indignant and feel that that person — left to die — could have been me, could have been you.

I know how it feels when someone is left to die.

In my case, it wasn’t an accident that involved a pedestrian or a cyclist, or someone who fled in a state of shock or unconsciously didn’t realize what he had done. However, I share the indignation of the relatives of those victims who have been left to die. I share their pain and frustration at the lack of justice.

My father, Carlos Muñiz Varela, was cowardly shot dead in the back. It was a murder perpetrated by terrorists from the Cuban far right, in an effort to creat terror and stop the process of reunification of Cuban families and the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba.

Along with many others, my father gave his life in that process of dialogue that Obama announces today with puzzling enthusiasm, as if it were only a joining of wills and a mere administrative step in international policy, without passing judgment on his government’s past actions and without rectifying the violations of human rights committed during that historic process.

Today, the men responsible are still at large and no justice has been done. And although there were eyewitnesses to the murder — the people who, although aware of the planning for the attack, did not prevent it — I refer to those who know about it and cover it up, which means that the direct assassins and those who planned the deed, its intellectual authors, continue to live in total impunity.

The names of those who killed my father are known. But the persons who know them and have the power to solve this political assassination look the other way, ignoring our pleas for justice, prolonging the impunity.

Can we trust a system that allegedly is there to impart justice?

Imagine that you, as the relative of a victim, demand a trial for the person responsible for causing the death of a loved one, but the police and the agencies in charge of charging the suspect decide not to act and shirk their ministerial duty.

Corrupt police officers, prosecutors, agents and directors of federal agencies such as the FBI and the CIA were — and continue to be — those who, each passing day, remain indifferent and refuse to surrender the names of the assassins.

Thus, for the past 36 years, they’ve continued to flee from this political crime, as if it had been a hit-and-run case. But in my case, the person who is called to protect and do justice is sitting in the car, next to the driver who is fleeing from the scene.

It is the abandonment of the truth, justice and life itself, my father’s and my family’s.

With their acts, they abandon us every day.

And we’re going to remind them — every day.

(From Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico.)