IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 79

Europe was launched in the 1970s. Isn’t it necessary then to draw inspiration from here in order to achieve in the today’s negations with the communist government of Cuba the desired results? Should not the governments of the United States and the EU insist that the Cuban state must not only honor its international obligations in the area of human rights if the negotiations are to move forward in the spirit of cooperation, but stop using the concept of state sovereignty in a way which is obsolete and out of step of current international law - recognizing as its emerging norms the concepts of “democratic entitlement” and “democratic legitimacy”? Should not they insist that any progress in negotiation can be made only after Cuba accepts the notion that the state sovereignty is not absolute or unconditional, because “Governments instituted among Men”, as American Declaration of Independence phrased it, derive their just power from the consent of the governed”? That the state sovereignty is always secondary and contingent to the sovereignty belonging to the people? Shouldn’t they insist that the independent voices of civil society must be also allowed - in an appropriate way - to participate in the process of “rapprochement” and turned into an indispensable “third” party to the agreement which will also be in charge of its implementation? When in 1975, the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe was signed, there were also many skeptical voices, especially in the United States, that this deal between the East and West to secure the peaceful co-existence of states with “different social and political systems” was a victory of the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and the ultimate confirmation of the status quo which was established in Europe as the result of the Second World War. But just the opposite turned out to be true. The third basket of the Helsinki Accords, however, opened the space for Czechoslovak Charter 77, The Polish KOR and later Solidarnosz, for the Helsinki Committees and other similar bodies emerging first in the Soviet Union itself and later throughout the whole region. It was the Western diplomats who sought and managed to secure for these civic initiatives, sometimes after a very hard fight, at least some level of international recognition. And it was this recognition what empowered them also domestically; what not only created a kind of protective shield against the excessive persecutions of their participants, but opened the way to the miraculous year of 1989 with its wave of peaceful and democratic revolutions which changed radically the political face of the whole region. The diplomatic processes taking place around Cuba today call for exactly for the same strategy. The Cuban democratic opposition seems to be aware of it and there are multiple encouraging signs that that they are ready to step out internationally as a coherent enough and sufficiently organized body able to communicate effectively with its international partners; to present to them their own version of transition in Cuba; to comment on the 79