Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 49

The Forum convoked by CADAL and the Progressive
Arc, among others, was a continuation of one that took
place in Chile, during CELAC’s first summit, in 2013,
which essentially served as a Democratic Forum on
Human Rights and International Relations. Now the
Cuban State is (falsely) accusing Manuel of spreading
false news that could jeopardize international
peace.
The organizers wanted to believe that Cuba
was a place for all, and were already working
on a Final Declaration they meant to publish a
few days after the Summit’s end. It was expected that each of the Cuban civic organizations would be able to contribute to and sign
this document.
Yet, this Forum was under pressure from the
very start. The authorities were absolutely bent
on keeping it from taking place: and succeed
they did. Nobel Laureate Vargas Llosa summarized this situation in the following manner:
“‘the first thing’ the Regime did was to imprison or silence the few oppositionists who
dared to stick out their necks.”
Social-Democratic dissident Manuel Cuesta
Morúa, who is one of few, black, Cuban dissidents, and is quite active in the fight against
racism, is one of those who dared to stick out
his neck. What one can conclude from the government’s attitude is that [its repression of
him] is based on the old argument that “because he [Manuel] is black, he has no right to
protest, because the Revolution gave him everything.”
The Plataforma de Integración Cubana [Platform for Cuban Integration] invites all lovers of freedom and free people of the world to prevent this slander from continuing. If the so-called cautionary measure against Manuel Cuesta Morúa continues to be enforced, and there is not international outcry, the Cuban
government will have found the perfect mechanism
for putting an end to travel by free Cubans, whether
they are oppositionists or not, without having to incarcerate them or deny them a passport.

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Manuel is not only an oppositionist. He is an oppositionist who openly defends deliberative democracy as
a tool for social and political integration for diverse
societies. This, of course, is inadmissible for a Cuban
government that is clinging to a socialist “democracy”
that has continued to strengthen the position and

power of the same people…for more than half a century.
The Plataforma de Integración Cubana [Platform for
Cuban Integration] will continue to follow these
events and has crafted a Plan of Action it will quickly
coordinate with other organizations, institutions and
people in Cuba and the rest of the world.