A Rene Gonzalez’s letter, one of the Cuban five political prisoners held in the United States, answering an addressee from the Peace and Democracy Campaign that has denounced Cuba due to the trial held against counter revolutionaries carried out in March 2003. Joann Landy leaded actions from this Peace and Democracy statement against Cuba

July 15, 2003

Dear Mrs. Joanne Landy

Being a revolutionary through my whole life and having fought in Angola against the South African invaders and jailed at present in one of the federal prisons of the United States due to my tasks of protecting the people of Cuba from terrorist actions sponsored, encouraged and silenced by the North American government, I hope that if a progressive man still means to struggle for a better world, I‘ll be granted the benefit of being considered a progressive man.

When I opened a magazine precisely called, The Progressive Magazine and I read an announcement of the Peace and Democracy Campaign asking for signatures to condemn Cuba for the supposed "repression against mavericks" I could not believe it.

I could not imagine that someone that considers himself a progressive person take as his own slandering words and media lies aired by the United States with respect to Cuba. It would only take a little bit of intellectual honesty and some research to unveil money paid to the "dissidents" was openly and publicly approved by the North American authorities and distributed by entities such as NED, USAID to those that in the island decided to live as "dissidents"

Who has given moral authority to the North American government to create a paid opposition in Cuba? Which principles of the international laws fit to this behavior? Since when the role of a North American diplomat is that one of traveling across the island organizing the opposition and delivering money?

Whoever receives money from a foreign power to undermine his government is considered a traitor, either in Cuba or any other nation of the world, including the United States.

The so called "dissidents" have had all rights to express their opinions in Cuba, and this is not what the article says. All they have to do is to introduce themselves in a postulation meeting for candidates and explain to their neighbors what they want and that is to set back their nation to the years of the 1959 and return lands to the United Fruit Company and invite terrorists that now reside in Miami to come to the island and give them back their properties and sell the country to multinational companies and become themselves into the political class to defend the interests of the few. If neighbors agreed with they, then they would be named without spending one dollar and nothing could happen to them for making ridicule at expressing their political draft in front of the electorate.

But if they face a revolutionary electorate and neighbors are people committed with their country and support a government of the people, for the people and by the people having fought and died by their society, not willing to betray the patriots’ memory that have for long given their lives for Cuba’s sovereignty and independence- no "dissident" will be proposed or none of them would reach a vote.

And if them do not deserve their people’s confidence, they do not have the right of going to the American embassy the last place I would think of as a democratic paradise- to find a source of sovereignty that only belongs to the Cubans.

Cuba for more than 40 years has faced to a stage of war and hostility that has caused more than 3 000 dead and more than 2 000 wounded as a consequence of armed and terrorist actions carried out by traitors being paid, supplied and trained by the government of the United States.

These mercenaries had to face the legal system. They were not arbitrarily declared "enemies" or illegal "combatants" or eliminated by a rocket just for Fidel to address the people and declare by TV that "they are not anymore a problem" nor were judged by military courts in secret, or their relatives’ houses were destroyed by Cuban military men.

They were sentenced according with their participation in terrorist activities and this has nothing to do with the irrational punishment given to the Puerto Rican patriots, just because they were affiliated to a given organization or the vengeance treatment I received together with the rest of defendants indicted of protecting Cuba from those mercenaries that now with their money and links with the North American administration sponsor scandals as "dissidents" or encourage illegal migration from Cuba to justify the aggressive policy against Cuba.

The Cuban people does not have any other option than to accept its losses and go on building its socialist society for which many have struggled, leaving history to serve justice, trusting its incredible patience and great courage.

I do not know how many progressive people have joined this campaign against Cuba, since things here are so relative that someone can be considered liberal simply because he eats a hamburger with his left hand and having used to see by TV someone announcing himself as a leftist just because they are a little bit at George Wallace’s left side..

I assume that among them there might be some true progressive people, people who are really worried for human rights and honestly believe in justice, confused by means of perverse means that leave them without any other reference when it is about knowing what it is going on in the world.

To these people I want to say them the following:

Consider for a single moment the huge power accumulated by the imperialist government of the United States. Consider the great sense of impunity that right now this people can feel that has just ended with an aggression war challenging a whole world, lying in front of everybody as it had never done before to justify that war, creating a criminal and illegal doctrine of preventive war, breaking with any principle of international relations in the process of doing what it wants. Compare this enormous power with the tiny island of Cuba and it will not be difficult to see how much damage this fascist establishment can cause to my country.

I have always had a great respect to honest Americans that in spite of the huge power of the most sophisticated machinery ever designed, have been able to see far beyond and own a vision of the world events that honor this country. One needs much more intelligence, curiosity, courage and most of all sensibility.

I want to make a call to sensibility and with all my respect invite you to think about it. One thing is to be a Roman citizen with privileges being a citizenship with rights to discuss in Senate or in Rome’s streets on liberty and democracy and another thing is just to fight for democracy and freedom in the battlefield against all chances, under the siege of Pompeii’s legions defending his own life together with Spartacus.

 

Sincerely yours,

Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert

Correctional Federal Institution

Edgefield South Carolina