Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind

By
Carlos Lazo                                                                  Read Spanish Version

In June
2004, President George W. Bush tightened the restrictions on travel
to Cuba for the members of the Cuban community who live in the United
States and arbitrarily redefined who would thenceforth be our
relatives on the island and who would not. Among other things, family
contacts with our loved ones on the other side of the Strait of
Florida were reduced to once every 36 months.

Bush’s
justification to implement such a barbarity — which didn’t even
contemplate humanitarian exceptions — was that the hardening of
restrictions would speed up Cuba’s transition to a U.S.-style
democracy.

However,
it’s no secret that what the White House really sought was the
electoral support of a tiny but powerful sector of the Cuban
community in the United States. The presidential contest that
approached needed votes and money.

At the
same time, that elderly, powerful and minority sector of the
traditional Cuban exile, represented by legislators of Cuban origin,
would consolidate Bush’s near-absolute political control over South
Florida.

Few
could have imagined that three years after those restrictions were
implemented they would become a boomerang that would strike back at
the same extremist and retrograde forces that helped put them into
effect.

Due in
part to these measures and the suffering they have generated between
our families in the United States and Cuba, most Cuban-Americans now
oppose them. As far as I can recall, it is the first materialization
of a movement that brings together members of our community from the
most varied political origins and most dissimilar trends, working in
unison against that legal aberration and against the artificers of
that monstrosity.

In
summer of 2004, some brave and isolated voices denounced the abuse
committed against our families. Adopting José Martí’s
axiom that we must bear the decorum of many when many have lost their
decorum, few but honorable members of the Cuban émigré
community began a tireless struggle to reverse those cruel
restrictions.

Today,
thanks to that early effort and other actions, a countless number of
Cuban-American organizations have joined that struggle and manifested
their disagreement with those obscene restrictions. According to
recent polls, the lifting of those travel prohibitions is supported
by a majority of the Cubans living in the United States.

A breeze
of fresh ideas, a shower of changes is today perceived in South
Florida. Ironically, the cruel regulations designed and orchestrated
by the legislators of Cuban origin in the U.S. Congress have become
the catalyst to accelerate those changes.

Most of
the Cuban émigrés rally round the idea that it is
urgently necessary to do something to modify the aforementioned law
and oust the legislators who spawned that monstrosity.

The
latest statements by the Democratic Party of Florida denouncing the
travel restrictions — as well as the enthusiastic reception for
Senator Barack Obama and his idea of refocusing U.S. relations with
Cuba — are the latest proof of how much we have advanced and whom
public opinion sides with.

There is
a growing number of those who wonder, with critical acuity, how
useful are the legislators who call themselves "Cuban" if
they cannot even enable their constituents to maintain a more normal
relationship with their relatives? More and more of us question the
work of those characters who have forgotten that they are in Congress
to serve the people, not to take advantage of them.

None of
the Cuban-origin legislators in Washington have lifted a finger to
amend or abolish the cruel travel restrictions that punish
Cuban-Americans in the United States and our relatives in Cuba. These
lawgivers have been deaf and blind to our pleas.

They
have shown to be not only ineffective and useless but also cruel,
insensitive and indifferent to the suffering and pain experienced by
most of the members of our community ever since the travel ban was
tightened.

When
they sowed the winds of sadness among us, more than three years ago,
the Díaz-Balarts and their cronies did not fully calculate the
degree of repudiation those policies would create. They forgot that
the Cuban community — beyond Republican or Democratic Party
affiliations, liberal or conservative labels — is formed by parents
and children, brothers and sisters, uncles and cousins, by affective
bonds that fortunately cannot be annulled by decree.

Arrogant
and forgetful, these gentlemen who cling to stale and obsolete
policies will find that their time is running out. They forgot that
— both in politics and life — he who sows the wind shall reap the
whirlwind.

Carlos
Lazo is active in the fight for the lifting of travel restrictions to
Cuba. A Cuban-American veteran who served in the U.S. Army as a
combat medic, he lives in Seattle, Wash. More information about him
can be found in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jcoJShdGFs