DEMOCRACY: A CUBAN
BIRTHRIGHT
The Aims of Education Address
New School University Convocation
September 4, 2003
On January 1, 1959 the Cuban people
awoke to find that Fulgencio Batista, the dictator who had ruled the island
since 1952, had left the country and that a group of revolutionaries led
by a young lawyer named Fidel Castro had taken over the government. I
was ten years old at the time and I remember my father leading my sister
and me out of the bedroom to the back yard where the rest of the family
was celebrating the end of the old regime and the beginning of the new.
The celebration, fueled by the jubilation the rest of the country felt,
went on the rest of that day and spilled into the following week. Schools,
factories and offices were closed. People were wandering the streets in
a state of euphoria breathing what they thought was the fresh air of freedom
for the first time in seven years. There would be no more torture or political
executions. Jail doors would be opened and political prisoners freed.
There would now be freedom of speech and the press. Democracy would be
restored and elections held.
These were the hopes that fed us during the first few days of the new
government and allowed us to put aside any doubts about the public trials
and executions of former government officials and Batista supporters that
were aired almost daily on national television. I still remember one in
which the top of a man’s head was blown apart by the firing squad’s
bullets. It was the subject of my nightmares for weeks afterwards. We
accepted the official justification for these executions: these people
had done awful deeds, had tortured and killed their enemies. They deserved
no more than a few hours before the revolutionary tribunals and they certainly
deserved no mercy. We put aside any doubts we had that some of them were
not guilty, as they themselves claimed, or that the trials seemed to conclude
too quickly, with the frenzied audience screaming, “Paredón,
paredón” (“To the firing squad”). The country needed
to be purged. The new order needed to be established. Under the laudable
banner of social justice, the new leaders had promised great things: agrarian
reform, the end of government by corruption, free education and health
care for all, and democratic elections. Schools eventually opened, people
went back to work, and an apparent sense of normalcy ensued. Over the
next few months several members of Fidel Castro’s inner circle, among
them Huber Matos, a hero of the revolution, were arrested, tried, and
given long prison sentences. Others, such as Felipe Pazos, Cuba’s
foremost economist and a supporter of the revolution, were forced into
exile. Negative elements needed to be pushed aside in favor of the great
agenda. We watched as private property was inventoried and businesses,
large and small, expropriated by the government. Land would be distributed
to the peasants, good housing would no longer be the exclusive privilege
of the rich.
Among the first businesses taken over were magazines, newspapers, and
radio and television stations. Now that all media was in the hands of
the state, freedom of speech would no longer be the province of the wealthy
but a right accorded to all Cubans, rich and poor alike. We accepted the
peculiar logic behind these activities. Large crowds were allowed entry
into newspaper buildings. They destroyed the printing presses contained
therein, threw typewriters out of windows. Typewriters, my God! I was
already a fledgling writer and a great admirer of José Martí,
the greatest political and literary figure Cuba has ever produced. I memorized
his poems. I longed to be like him. When I saw those writing instruments
hit the sidewalk and shatter, something in me changed. Much as I tried
I was unable to find a rationale for such actions. I turned from the television
and went outside
.
The seed of doubt was planted in my parents when three uniformed militia
came to our small two-bedroom house in the suburbs of Havana to inventory
the contents—furniture, appliances, even books. My mother pleaded
with them. We were supporters of the revolution, had helped the rebels
in the mountains with money for food and armaments. In school our new
teachers taught us that the yanquis were evil, that it was all right to
hate them, that we had to obey the state above all things. If we did so,
great things would happen and we would live in a society where everyone
was equal, everyone was happy. It was at this point that my father and
mother decided it would perhaps be best if we left the country to wait
out the changes and hope that things would settle soon. In little over
a week we were in Cubana Flight 412 headed to Miami, and a few days after
that we were watching snow fall in Manhattan.
In March and April of this year 75 people were arrested in Cuba, summarily
tried, and given prison sentences ranging from 6 to 28 years. None of
these people were common criminals. They had not robbed anyone or threatened
their fellow citizens with violence of any sort. Most were highly educated
individuals—doctors, lawyers, economists, engineers, poets, journalists
and independent librarians—whose only crime was that they dared to
speak up in favor of democratic and human rights initiatives. The best
known of these initiatives is the Varela project, which used a loophole
in the Cuban constitution to present a petition to the Cuban parliament
calling for free and democratic elections, freedom of speech, and the
release of all political prisoners. The petition was supported by 11,020
signatures, 1, 020 over the 10,000 required by article 88 (g) of the Cuban
constitution.
Spearheaded by Oswaldo Payá, a man of great conviction and moral
courage who has been in the forefront of the human rights struggle in
Cuba for many years, the Varela project is but the latest installment
in a movement rooted in and inspired by the life and work of Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. It represents but the tip of
the iceberg of Cuban aspirations, which predate the current regime to
the early 19th century when a number of Cubans began to formulate the
idea of a Cuban nation independent from Spain and a Cuban character distinct
from others in the Caribbean region. Foremost among these was Felix José
Varela, after whom the Varela Project is named. Priest, writer, philosopher,
educator, Felix Varela was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1787 and raised
in St. Augustine, Fla., when that city was in Spanish hands. He returned
to Cuba as a young man to study at the Seminary College of San Carlos,
where he eventually became a professor of philosophy. His book Lecciones
de filosofía (Lessons of Philosophy) became a standard
text throughout Hispanic America. He was the teacher of a number of prominent
Cuban thinkers, one of whom said, “As long as there is thought in
Cuba, we will remember him, the one who taught us how to think.”
Felix Varela was the first teacher at San Carlos to conduct his classes
in Spanish, as opposed to Latin, the accepted language of instruction,
and the first to speak his lessons rather than read them, a common practice
today, but back in those days in Cuba, a truly revolutionary act. An avowed
empiricist, Varela organized a scientific laboratory at San Carlos, the
first on the island. He was as well a competent violinist and founded
the first Philharmonic Society of Havana, where he taught violin. Eventually
he entered politics and was elected Cuban deputy to the Spanish courts.
While there he argued in favor of Cuban independence, the abolition of
slavery, and the institution of democracy. Facing imprisonment for his
views, Varela sailed for the United States, eventually settling in New
York, where for twenty years he ministered to Irish immigrants in lower
Manhattan at the same time that he promoted the cause of Cuban independence.
When his health faltered, he retired from his priestly duties and moved
to St. Augustine, the much loved city of his childhood, and died there
in 1853.
The life and work of Father Varela empowered Cubans to think for and by
themselves. He encouraged his students not to accept orthodoxy, but to
question, and, if necessary, attack dogmas presented to them as inviolable.
As holder of the Chair of Constitutional Studies at San Carlos, he defended
Cuban culture and explained that society “should never be a slave
to its government, nor should it renounce its rights to progress and advancement.”
His legacy was two-fold: he showed Cubans the importance of a liberal
education and he highlighted the value of freedom and civic responsibility.
They are, in fact, are inseparable. His views deeply influenced the thinking
of many Cuban intellectuals and teachers who came after him, among them
José de la Luz y Caballero, José Antonio Saco, José
Martí, and the five people the University is honoring today.
Marta Beatriz Roque, Oscar Elías Biscet, Raúl Rivero, Vladimiro
Roca, and Oswaldo Payá are all highly educated people. In many
ways they are representative of the dissidents, many of them anonymous,
who have been harassed, jailed, exiled and executed in Cuba not just during
the wave of repression that began this past March, but throughout the
forty-four-year history of the present regime. This latest group of dissidents
grew up in Cuba and took advantage of the educational opportunities available
to them. Roque is an economist, Biscet is a medical doctor, and Rivero
is a highly esteemed poet and journalist. Roca studied aeronautics in
the Soviet Union and was a MIG pilot in the Cuban air force. Despite constant
harassment from government agents, Payá, essentially self-taught,
became a telecommunications engineer by studying at night.
But these individuals did not stop at being competent professionals. Education,
no matter how narrow or limited, instills in human beings the ability
to think independently. Education also shows us that no one individual
or group of individuals has control of the truth. “I don’t know
the truth,” Oswaldo Payá has said. “Let us search together
for the truth, but don’t impose yours on me.” We in the educational
profession understand the power of that posture. When an atmosphere of
trust prevails, when knowledge is not the province of one group at the
expense of the other, an extraordinary thing happens: the teacher learns
as much as the student and both become engaged in an exploration which
is, by its very nature, democratic and reciprocal. This exploration changes
them, making them less certain but also less rigid, less prone to making
pronouncements, more willing to entertain dissent and respect noncomformity.
A liberal education does not end within a certain time period—a semester
or year—capped with a grade of A or B, but becomes a practice that
informs and guides the life of the individual and of the society to which
he or she belongs. Ideally, such a practice lasts for the rest of the
individual’s life and allows him to live fully and actively within
society; it balances passion with reason so that his decisions are not
based on whim alone; and it accords him the right and the moral courage
to challenge those who would usurp society to achieve their own selfish
ends. As José Varela showed us, education is the Achilles heel
of dictatorship; it is, as well, part and parcel of the practice of democracy
and of that greater practice we call civilization.
What these dissidents have been calling for is the establishment of the
civic trust without which none of these practices can flourish. For years
they and their colleagues have challenged the powers that be. Their only
armaments are their courage, their ideas, and their hopes for a free and
democratic Cuba. I think of them: Raúl Rivero and Oscar Elías
Biscet in jail in conditions that would horrify the most jaded criminologist;
Marta Beatriz Roque in a prison hospital receiving minimal medical attention;
Oswaldo Payá and Vladimiro Roca, harassed constantly by agents
of state security, their homes spray painted with insulting slogans, their
children shunned at school, their families ignored by neighbors, and I
am saddened and angered. I am reminded of the great Cuban poet Heberto
Padilla, who dared to oppose Castro in the late 60’s and early 70’s
with his poems. As a consequence he was jailed, tortured, and forced to
confess his anti-revolutionary sins before a public gathering in 1971.
Padilla, who died in exile in 2001 and was never again allowed to publish
his work in his own country, may indeed have the last word. In a poem
titled “Note to be Written in a Tyrant’s Album” he says,
Protect yourself from the wavering ones
Because one day they will learn what
it is they do not want.
Protect yourself from the speakers
of nonsense,
From Juan-the-Stutterer and Pedro-the-Mute,
Because one day they will discover
their strong voice.
Protect yourself from the timid ones
and those you beat down,
Because some day they will no longer
stand up when you enter.
Cubans are no longer wavering and they are no longer timid. They are refusing
in ever-increasing numbers to stand up whenever He enters for they know
what has been kept from them all these years: the birthright of every
human being, democracy. I am extremely proud that my university, the University
in Exile, is honoring Oswaldo Payá, Marta Beatriz Roque, Oscar
Elías Biscet, Raúl Rivero, and Vladimiro Roca today. In
doing so we pay homage to all of those who struggle for freedom and democracy
on this earth.
