Dear Mr. Pedro Armando Junco:
We address you with deep respect and gratitude for the courageous public defense of various measures that we Cuban independent farmers have been demanding through the five points of our campaign “There’s no Country Without the Countryside”. It is painful to see how they try to punish a decent person for saying out loud, up front and in a constructive way what the whole country thinks and comments.
Like you, we the Cuban farmers have also made public our ideas and solutions to this crisis in a respectful way. But the government so far intends to ignore them. They prefer to advertise band-aids that give them good headlines rather than opting for the inevitable major overhaul required to ward off the looming famine.
Be sure that if they don’t listen to us, we will not accommodate to calmly witnessing a genocide caused by the selfishness and insensitivity of those who can still avoid it. We will not accept “no” for an answer to our five demands. We the guajiros speak plainly.
Respectfully,
League of Independent Peasants
Latin American Federation of Rural Women (FLAMUR)
LETTER FROM PEDRO JUNCO LOPEZ TO PRESIDENT DIAZ CANEL
Pedro Junco López, July 18 at 8:51 PM
To: Miguel Diaz-Canel
Mr. President:
In your latest speech to the Council of Ministers, which was televised by the TV Round Table, you made public some decisions made at the highest level, taking for granted, without any consultation, the approval of the Cuban people, which definitely called into question the popularity of these measures.
It is true that autocratic systems feel free to enact its decrees, being an already atavistic habit of most Cubans to give up, abide by and obey State decrees. But I felt personally accused when you said – in other words, of course, since I don’t have a tape recorder at home – that the enemies of the Revolution use social networks to lie and confuse the citizenry. And it is precisely that word, “enemies”, which has thrown in the same bag those who want the overthrow the system ruling Cuba today, together with us civic citizens who declare our truth and present our opinions publicly, by any means of expression as stated in article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as established by the new Cuban Magna Carta and, above all, as José Martí, the Apostle of Cuba’s Independence, taught us: to think and speak without hypocrisy and to work so that our government rectifies when we consider that it is wrong.
It is regrettable that the economic situation in my country, which is your country, has collapsed and forced you to adopt measures that for decades we all knew were huge economic mistakes such as penalizing the USD dollar. And it is even more regrettable that special stores have been opened only for those who have foreign currencies, which gives a humiliating slap to the currency all Cubans get paid with, and now, even to the unfair Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), yesterday equated to the US dollar and today as segregated as the traditional Cuban peso.
It is regrettable, Mr. President, that we reached such an extreme citizen abjection and that you branded us as enemies, when we are the true friends of our Homeland. We are the ones who alerted about shutting down tourism and schools and universities at the beginning of the pandemic – which even your Prime Minister has acknowledged. We are the ones saying today “open up the economy”. If there are enemies of the Revolution, look for them -and punish them- among white-collar executives, and Party leaders who allow themselves unimaginable illegalities. But stop chasing the producers: allow the fisherman to fish; let the farmer sow, let the rancher raise … But let the fisherman freely sell his seafood, let the harvester manage and commercialize his crops without the mediation of the State, let the rancher sacrifice his cattle and sell it at the price that he wants and to whoever can buy it; Because as unfair as it may seem, the greatest injustice is selling to the proletariat in a currency that does not circulate in Cuba and which only those who have support from abroad can acquire.
Read carefully this fragment of (Founding Father) Ignacio Agramonte’s speech at the University of Havana 158 years ago:
“The administration that allows the free development of individual action in the shadow of a well-understood concentration of power, is the most likely to produce optimal results, because it makes a true alliance of order and freedom.”
Join us, Mr. President. Listen to us all equally: those who flatter you, those who are trying to destroy you and those who break our necks looking for a happy solution to the economic crisis that surrounds us. Then make wise decisions.
Avoid the poet’s omen: “because peoples who suffer / like the nettle that cries / when they get tired of suffering / they do poison the leaves.”