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Dr, Emilio-Adolfo Rivero For a Unified Nation Fellow Founders of the Popular Republican Party: I hope that at some time in the coming weeks we can meet again, perhaps in Stone Mountain, Georgia, to ratify our program. In the meanwhile, I invite your ideas and proposals in order that they can be considered and put to use in our founding document, which we would like to reflect the judgment and vision of as many of our members as possible. For now, let's look at some preliminary thoughts and concepts that we can develop further. People establish political parties as a vehicle for attaining power -- and then, from a position of power, to unfold a government that can realize those earlier-stated aims. Political activity requires, therefore, three elements: a popular following; a program that binds people together; and the will to attain power as a means of influencing or reshaping society. We of Cuban origin today consecrate the Popular Republican Party ( Partido Republicano Popular) or, in either language, PRP. Desirous of bringing peace and prosperity to our nation, we pledge to join efforts, with others inside Cuba and outside, to help rescue the Republic from its current political, social and economic bankruptcy. Our means for achieving this aim is the installation of a new government. The catastrophe we now face is the product of a 36-year-old autocracy, a system of one-man rule, that has usurped the national sovereignty and placed it in the hands of an armed minority, justifying itself in the guise of a political credo that is completely alien to our traditions. During these 36 years, Cuba's people have suffered the disgrace of seeing, enshrined in constitutional law, their country's submission to another power in exchange for an economic subsidy; as well as the promulgation of a political doctrine whose precarious hold on Cuba could only be maintained by force of arms. That Constitution goes so far as to associate this law with a proper noun, branding the Cuban people with the disgrace of an overseer. In recent years, this imposed ideology has produced a massive social breakdown, as well as disgrace on a global scale. And that constitutional proper noun, with each passing day, is increasingly a synonym for despotism, corruption, and crime -- whence the extreme state we call political bankruptcy. In the last 36 years, Cuba has become -- for the first time in its history -- a nation of emigrants. In a diaspora hitherto unknown in Latin America, a number of people amounting to more than one-tenth of Cubans have fled their country. At present a minority, driven by the caprice and dementia of a single individual, holds sway over an oppressed majority teeming with the desire to get away from the country in which they were born. Hence we use the term social bankruptcy, because the compact between the individual and society has been rent. Society will not grant what the individual justly desires; and it restricts or disallows what the individual has always been able to choose freely. We speak of economic bankruptcy because the Cuban state owes a debt of some thirty million dollars to the Soviet Union's successor governments as well as a further nine billion dollars to various European and Asian banks. Aside from these enormous sums, which will burden Cubans for many generations to come, the nation's productivity diminishes by the day and the regime that continues to hold power keeps making, in the nation's name, agreements it cannot possibly keep. The one-man regime, obsessed with keeping power come what may, and faced with a lack of resources occasioned by its own extravagance, incapacity and corruption, is now causing -- with enforced cooperation from a people who have no other means of living -- the spoliation of rivers and seas, the destruction of forests for fuel, the disappearance of flora and fauna in a land once rich in vegetable and animal species, now become a wasteland. All these abuses are retold from Cuba, every day, in cries of anguish and desperation; and we have no choice but to respond with all our strength, and keep augmenting our efforts with those of all who love Cuba, to address the crisis that is destroying the country, threatens the existence of its nationhood, and makes bitter and difficult, for our fellow countrymen, the simple task of staying alive. The situation is beyond hope. It demands action. We are here today to answer that call, because we intend that our determined, sustained, coordinated effort can change the course of history; and we believe it will. We reject the idea of a patronizing state that sets goals for its people and lays down rules for realizing them. We don't want a nation in which people, desperate for work, overwhelm officials or ministries with appeals for positions in the public sector. Instead, we want to encourage the idea, without trying to impose it, that the private sector will be the dominant source of economic opportunities. We want farmers to have the free use of what they produce. We want to see gaining ground, every day, the notion that the worker -- more than being simply salaried -- has an interest in the land he works or in the profits he produces. We think that labor with an owner's attitude -- no matter how minor the ownership share -- will raise productivity in a manner that profits the entrepreneur and compensates all those who work in a common effort. These are not novel propositions or visionary ideas. In this very country, thousands of enterprises make use of such incentives. And it's precisely the small and medium-sized businesses, like the ones we will have in Cuba, that create the most jobs and make for growing, varying sources of economic productivity. To extricate the Cuban people from the state of ruin into which they have been plunged, we propose to attract to Cuba enterprises that are on the cutting edge of technology and business. These companies have products or technologies on the drawing board that they have not yet been able to bring to the market. The destruction and vitiation of urban areas leave an opening for the most advanced projects of housing construction and urban renewal. The crisis in urban and interurban transport offers possibilities for developing ultra-modern techniques in those areas. The worldwide impulse to know Cuba, after the present power-mad regime is gone, will know no limits. Let's seize on the opportunity to make Cuba a model society of the new millennium. "Interdependence" at national and international levels is the key word in everything we see for the Cuba of the future. The global village and instantaneous communication are already tangible realities. The millenarian dream of human unity is taking shape before our eyes. Even so, the complexities and contradictions of human nature, and various hidden interests, have foisted upon mankind the regressive tendencies of ethnic or nationalist chauvinism, which in turn have led to needless warfare all over the world. We ourselves, without doubt, favor cooperation and interdependence between the world's peoples. Cuba's ethnic diversity, and the diaspora that has scattered us to the four corners of the globe, naturally cause us to favor that view. We are alarmed that educational institutions around the world, including universities, have trivialized and limited themselves to the extent that, bit by bit, we are losing contact with humanity's five-thousand year-old legacy. The obvious decline in the study of the humanities is pointing to a cultural disaster that we cannot allow. We pledge to restore Greek and Latin studies in Cuban universities, to enrich ourselves with the enormous heritage that Greece and Rome, as well as their historic successors, left to us. At the same time, we will create access to other cultures that are still awaiting the attention they deserve. Men and women have inhabited the earth for tens of thousands of years. We should learn more about how men lived, in all latitudes, in order to help man propel himself from who he is to who he can be. The diaspora that has scattered Cubans to far-flung lands leads us to consider the position that those of us with other nationalities will have in a liberated Cuba. This is a complex matter that must be settled cooperatively. For now, we propose that all who once held Cuban nationality, along with their descendants, ought to be able to recover it. This will give rise to the issue of double nationality, and will be subject to agreements with other governments. We are striving for a Cuba where the ability of all, and the overriding need to reconstruct the Republic, will leave behind those passions and disagreements that divide us from each other. In the words of José Manuel Cortina, uttered before the House of Representatives in 1909 on the anniversary of General Antonio Maceo's death, "The country of Martí cannot be a country of fratricides. It must be a country by all, with all and for the good of all." And if the stubbornness of a few, or of one blinded and inflamed by the haughtiness of absolute power, provokes the unchaining of passions and a fruitless Holocaust, let it be remembered that we, the men and women of the Popular Republican Party, are advocates of the concord and solidarity that can only come from recognizing the rights of all. This initiative, the Popular Republican Party (PRP), launched after six years of planning, has now become an urgent matter. We are seeking to form an alliance -- really a state-building project -- with a number of parties: the Coordinated Cuban Social Democrats, the Christian Democrats and the Cuban Liberal Union, all members of the Cuban Democratic Platform (CDP), an entity that enjoys friendly relations with European groups of equal or similar standing. Each of the parties in this Cuban alliance maintains its individual identity and ideology. When the CDP was created six years ago, we were invited to constitute ourselves as a party, as we are now doing. Our road has been longer than expected, but now we are here. The element that the CDP has hitherto lacked -- a party with a clearly conservative viewpoint -- is what we are now bringing to it. We have already begun our talks with the other parties in the CDP, and we hope that the ensuing exchanges will lead to a secure and long-lasting accord. Generous has been your solidarity, valuable your time and effort. Now, as we step onto our path, let us again bear in mind the words of our greatest orator: "The palms are like brides at the altar." Many
thanks
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