Letter to the Minister of Higher Education, Dr. Fernando Vecino Alegret
City of Havana, January 28, 2000
Dr. Fernando Vecino Alegret
Minister of Higher Education
"The mother of decorum, the sap of liberty, the maintenance of the Republic and the remedy for vices is, above all, the propagation of culture " - José Martí.
Mr. Minister:
Four years ago we sent to the Ministry over which you preside and to other dependencies of the Cuban government a proposal for a project of readjustment to university centers. The official answer so far has been silence and repression.
We are aware of your methods and desire to return our universities to the academic prestige they formerly enjoyed as crucibles of thought and the pride of our nation. But this will not be possible with the persistence of discriminatory and exclusionary measures against those who exercise their
freedom of opinion and disagree with the methods that have substituted in these centers the doctrine of knowledge with the politics of obedience.
"Universities for revolutionaries." This stale and manipulated slogan contradicts its own statement, because it denies opportunity to the most able in favor of the most obedient; it conceals opportunism and a double morality. This slogan, in addition to being exclusionary, covers-up
ignoble purposes, by preventing sons and daughters of this country, with the same rights of all, from having access to the most important stage of study in the society because of opinions contrary to the system.
The University, Mr. Minister, like everything that constitutes the public good of the nation, does not belong to the government in power nor to any political party; much less to personal cliques, who sustained by force and concealed in pseudo-patriotic speeches, pretend to perpetuate themselves
in power, derpiving the citizens from their most elemental rights. To exclude from education or from any public endeavor of the nation anyone who expresses freely and democratically his opinion constitutes, above all, an offense against the nation. No one has the right, by invoking the sacred name
of the Fatherland, to discriminate, oppress, insult and silence any of its sons.
Liberty, Mr. Vecino, is not a perk given by one person to another. Liberty is a human attribute, and as such it should be excercised and respected.
Whoever has it, enjoys it; who lacks it, conquers it. The free man only owes allegiance to a nation that will insure liberty, equality and peace for all its children, under a rule of justice made law. To exercise these rights without oppression or manipulation should be the aspiration of every
democratic government.
In a speech given before foreign delegates, you pointed out the efforts of the Ministry on behalf of university excellence in all higher education centers in the country. To this end a strategy was developed that would achieve these objectives. I learned of this document, paradoxically as it may
seem, in prison where I was receiving the most terrible ostracism and the cruelest physical and psychological punishments for the simple, but unpostponable duty of peacefully reclaiming the fundamental rights that devolve on every Cuban. I ask myself: How to achieve excellence in the university when
the rights of Cubans to express themselves with full freedom are circumscribed, how to have an idea that may diverge from the official dictum and limit access to these centers as never before?
The university is the center where the most varied tendencies in thought come together, with absolute liberty, for truth to sprout fertilized by the exercise of reason, which is very different than the use of force. The university as a space of polemical analysis, has necessarily to dispose of
liberty so that, from open and frank debate, may emanate the light of knowledge. The lack of liberty mutilates personal initiative and thought is captive to dogma.
The symbol of the university is the Alma Mater, who with open arms greets all her children without exceptions or differences, as the mother who does not deny her breast to the child who comes seeking nourishment indispensable for life. It is then a crime for the nation to deny the right of
equality to any of its children, if they are guilty of no more than trying to save those who keep silent for fear.
It is imposible to conceive of a university that's foreign to the social and political processes of the nation; but it would be injurious to accept in these centers a forced ideologization, biased and totalitarian in favor of one class, political party or dogma; as it is offensive to accept the
continuous search in our thinkers' texts for a phrase that may serve as a slogan, while omitting the thorough interpretation of their ideas. May lightning strike those who lacking their own arguments appeal to the Apostle and other national heroes to cover-up personal interests and power groups.
A common ruse when an official power structure is criticized is to attack and condemn opponents as traitors and annexionists. With this, they pave the way for repression, they distract attention from the great ills of the nation and establish laws that violate rights and enthrone dictatorships.
This is villainy. Denying individual liberty, which collectively constitutes the liberty of the nation, violates the principles and regulations that internationally insure to all people of the world, without their being considered traitors or annexionists, peace, justice and liberty to all
of the human family.
Why not accept finally that uniformity is an idyllic supposition that deforms the will of men and submerges a nation in the most horrible spiritual and material poverty? Let's open, Mr. Minister, our universities to all children of the Fatherland, without exclusions or frontiers, without
discrimination against anyone because of political opinion, religious belief or color of skin.
Let's open the universities to the most able. Let's open the universities to free thought, so that there may rise, like the Sun that gives us light everyday, Truth and Reason. Then, Mr. Vecino, there will be an excellence in the nation that we will always be ready to defend, even from the
darkness of a horrible cell. Because before the light there was darkness.
May God light the path of peace for you.
GOD, FATHERLAND AND LIBERTY
Respectfully yours,
Néstor Rodríguez Lobaina
Director, Cuban Movement of Youth for Democracy
Project UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITHOUT BORDERS
Cc: National Directorate of the University Students Federation
CubaNet does not require sole rights from its contributors. We authorize the reproduction and distribution of this article as long as the source is credited.
|