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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
Adolfo A. Franco
Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean,
United States Agency for International Development (USAID)
Keynote Address
Presented at
U.S.-Cuba Seminar
on Saturday, October 4, 2003
at
The Biltmore Hotel, Coral Gables, Florida
En Español
I want to thank the University of Miami and Professor Jaime Suchlicki for inviting me to be with you today. Dr. Suchlicki and his Institute are helping to build a strong foundation for the planning of assistance to a future transition government in Cuba.
Many of us believe momentous change awaits the end of Castro rule in Cuba. The Cuban people will bring about that change, and they will determine its direction. We want that change to be peaceful and to take place soon. It must bring the Cuban people the full benefits of democracy and free enterprise. The Agency which I represent - the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) - is committed to working with the U.S. Department of State, the rest of the U.S. Government, and with free people everywhere, to help the Cuban people take an active role in shaping and managing that change.
USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios has himself written a paper concerning the need for humanitarian assistance during the transition. We will hold a seminar in Washington on January 16, 2004, to discuss his recommendations. I invite all of you to join us. We believe the continued rapid development of a genuinely independent civil society in Cuba is fundamental to the success of the coming transition. It is true that many of the leaders of Cuban civil society now languish in solitary confinement on that imprisoned island. They have paid a high price for their democratic ideals. But their example is inspiring many others. As a result, the ranks of Cuba's democratic activists are increasing. The Cuban people are beginning to lose their fear of repression. Cuba's Catholic bishops, five years after Pope John Paul II told the Cuban people not to be afraid, have recently demanded that Castro release all his political prisoners and begin to respect basic human rights. Cuba's human rights defenders, independent journalists, independent librarians and members of other independent organizations have already begun to lead the Cuban people toward a rapid, peaceful transition to democracy.
It is critical that free people everywhere provide Cuban activists with all the moral and material support, information, and training they need to carry out their mission. You can help by contributing your time and money to the many U.S. non-governmental organizations that support the Cuban activists. You can be assured that we in USAID will continue to do all we can. Since 1997, USAID has supplied $26 million to increase the flow of accurate information on democracy, human rights, and free enterprise to, from, and within Cuba. We continue to build solidarity with Cuba's human rights activists, give voice to Cuba's independent journalists, defend the rights of Cuban workers, help develop independent Cuban non-governmental organizations, and provide direct outreach to the Cuban people.
The Castro regime condemns USAID for providing food, medicine and other relief to the families of political prisoners. Our grantees have delivered more than 150,000 pounds of food and medicine to the families of political prisoners and other victims of repression. We are determined to increase that support. The Castro regime condemns us for providing Cuban civil society with 10,000 short-wave radios, and almost 2 million books, newsletters, and other informational materials. We are going to do much more. The Castro regime condemns TV and Radio Marti for breaking the wall of censorship Castro has constructed around the Cuban people. USAID will continue to work with Pedro Roig and his talented colleagues at TV and Radio Marti to help tear down that wall.
I also want to say what we will NOT do. We will NOT dictate to the Cuban people the choices they must make. We will NOT demand they follow any particular ideology or party doctrine. Nor will we encourage the Cuban people to accept a mere succession of power from one dictator to another. Fidel and Raul Castro must both leave power. And a true transition government must emerge which legalizes all political activity, frees all political prisoners, dismantles the instruments of state repression, and schedules free and fair, multi-party elections.
The Cuban government recently published a book analyzing the collapse of Marxist socialism in Eastern Europe. That book criticizes European Marxist regimes for depending on centralized decision making, for losing touch with the masses, for extending privileges to Communist party elites, for dogmatism, and for stifling creativity. In other words, the Cuban government now criticizes the former governments of East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia for the same traits that have always characterized Castro's rule in Cuba. Perhaps even Castro's closest collaborators now see their regime is on the road to ruin and collapse.
Now is the time, it seems to me, to increase our support for fundamental change in Cuba, and for the transfer of power to a true transition government.
Once that happens, USAID will immediately engage the transition government in concrete actions to accelerate humanitarian relief assistance and to lay the foundations for sustainable, private sector, economic development. We have the tools, and we have the experience to help Cuba break the cycle of poverty and despair.
As many of you know, USAID is now working with the State Department and the rest of the U.S. government to rebuild Afghanistan and to begin to rebuild Iraq. In Afghanistan alone, since the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government has spent $900 million, mainly through USAID, to rebuild Afghanistan's agriculture, roads, electricity, radio networks, schools, and health clinics. We have rebuilt 142 schools, printed 15 million textbooks, and have begun the process of constructing or rebuilding 1,000 more schools over the next three years. We have helped the Afghan people revive agriculture. Wheat production has risen 82 percent, and threats of a famine are gone.
What we are doing and have done in South Asia and the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, in Africa, and in the rest of Latin America, we can certainly do in Cuba.
Just as we have done in so many other countries, USAID will work with a future transition government in Cuba to meet the immediate emergency relief needs of the Cuban people. And we will help a democratic Cuba secure its social safety net, so that its health care, education and pension systems can be revived and sustained. In spite of Castro's rhetoric, those systems are now in ruins.
The World Food Program's recent assessment of Cuban malnutrition shows the need for emergency food relief. During the past several years, the United States has offered food assistance for the Cuban people. Castro has always said no. He prefers a malnourished population to any perceived loss of personal power and prestige. Meanwhile, the Cuban people continue to suffer not only hunger but disease. Soap is a luxury in Cuba. The Castro regime prefers to use its dwindling resources elsewhere.
Cuba requires much more, however, than emergency food and medical relief. It must have fundamental reforms that permit a private sector to emerge and flourish. Among other things, it urgently requires foreign investment to rebuild its infrastructure and foreign investment to rebuild private sector agriculture, so that it can begin to feed its own people. Science and technology are levers for increasing agricultural productivity; increasing yields and protecting them from drought, pests, and disease; lowering costs; and improving food storage and nutritional qualities.
As USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios has pointed out, "fifty percent of the improvements in agricultural productivity in the Third World are from improved seed varieties in the last 20 years. So there's a relationship between science and technology and increasing incomes among poor people in rural areas." The United States is the leading developer of these technologies. Our private ranchers and farmers are the most productive in the world. Cuban farmers, fishermen, herders must have the freedom to own and operate their own businesses in free markets. USAID and the U.S. private sector can and will help train, assist and supply them.
The task is urgent. In an island once considered the jewel of the Caribbean, years of Communist misrule and mismanagement have destroyed agriculture. Under Castro, Cuba has had to import not only meat, but rice, beans, and even fish, to stock his ration stores and feed his tourists.
And, of course, most basic infrastructure has fallen apart, especially in areas outside the tourist enclaves.
For example, the housing situation in Cuba is horrible. Several families are often crowded into a single room, often without electricity. Whole buildings collapse into the streets. Garbage and trash go uncollected for months. Outbreaks of dengue fever and other communicable diseases feed off the filthy conditions Castro has permitted to fester and proliferate. But even more outrageous is the social disorder Cuban communism has spawned. Sex tourism involves the flagrant abuse of children. All this must be swept away. A strong, determined democratic Cuban government must confront these conditions and eradicate them. We pledge our full support.
Forty-five years of dictatorial rule will soon, I believe, come to an end in Cuba. The aftermath could be chaotic, because the Cuban government has done nothing to prepare for orderly change. Successful transition to democracy, free enterprise, and prosperity is not assured. Continued repression of dissent, creativity, independent civil society, and private enterprise will jeopardize a peaceful transition. It is time to release all political prisoners and to permit freedom of expression, freedom of information, and all the other freedoms enshrined in the United Nations' Declaration on Human Rights.
I call upon all of the people of Cuba, who have suffered so long under this dictatorship, to reach out now for fresh ideas, to ask foreign embassies and foreign tourists and foreign businesspeople for copies of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, and for books, newspapers, video cassettes, access to the internet, and all the other information to which you are entitled as human beings. Demand the right to independent sources of information, so you can develop your own thoughts and make your own decisions about your lives and so that you can participate in constructing the future of Cuba.
In closing, I want to recite from a poem written by the imprisoned Cuban journalist, Manuel Vázquez Portal. The poem was smuggled from his solitary confinement cell in Boniato prison, in Santiago de Cuba, where he has just begun to serve a sentence of 18 years for writing the truth.
Cuando impone el silencio su majestad sinfónica,
el cielo entra a mi celda.
Entonces no soy pobre
ni estoy solo.
La música esencial de planetas lejanos
me enriquece y me puebla,
soy el mundo creciendo en una ergástula:
Crezco hasta los perdones,
me acerco más a Dios.
Voy prodigando alivio a todas las afrentas
e ignoro las traiciones.
Quien allanó mi casa
con oculto furor de bayonetas,
quien difamó mi nombre
con falsos argumentos
y quienes me encarcelan
tendrán como castigo sólo la oscuridad de todos los olvidos.
No me son importantes los guardianes
-torvos, hoscos esclavos de afanes superiors-
ni las rejas detienen mi rauda ensoñación.
La libertad,
un pájaro immortal que trina en la memoria,
Se eleva y me traslada,
abrazo a mi mujer,
acaricio a mis hijos
y vuelvo a mi jergón de prisionero
donde duermo otra vez como los santos.
Han caído en la trampa de encerrar lo imposible.
The voice of the Cuban people will not be silenced. The Cuban dictator has fallen into the trap of trying to incarcerate the impossible. Thank you very much.
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