The Italians have a phrase that has always struck me as very endearing: “Me la sento di dirtelo.” It’s a way of justifying a verbal impulse, something like: “Maybe this isn’t the right moment, maybe I don’t have the right to tell you this, maybe it’s not my place… but I feel that I have to say it.”
And I “me la sento” to say something to that reality we call “the Left.” I know I am just a simple rural priest, a tiny voice, but I “me la sento” to address the entire Left that lives outside of Cuba, my homeland.
Dreams are beautiful, and so are ideals. For a long time, my island has been, for the Left—both European and Latin American—the dream and the ideal of something that has never existed: a successful socialism, a cheerful and prosperous Marxist-Leninist country where the people feel at ease and protected, where there is no injustice or misery, where the humble are supported and secure, proud of their leaders and confident in the bright and happy future of their children. That is what a meticulous propaganda campaign asked you to see, and that is what you have insisted—and still insist—on seeing.
I understand that you would have liked Cuba to be the model of a successful and functional socialism, but I would be lying if I told you that it is. I know it is hard to see dreams break apart, and I know how difficult it can be to overcome the stubborn desire to want what is not to be.
The Cuban model has been a failure, and I would ask the Left to finally accept it, because while you refuse to acknowledge it and boast about continuing to tell a dead man, “Come on, you can keep going!”, my people suffer, my people endure, my people are dying.
We endure a life similar to that of nations at war, where everything becomes an exhausting ordeal: food, medicine, transportation, education, working conditions…
We endure fear of expressing ourselves freely and vulnerability before a judicial system that condemns any differing opinion.
We endure the uncertainty of a social model in which we have no control over our present or our future.
We endure the death of our dreams, the syndrome of flight, and the endless sea as our only hope.
I would have wanted to say the opposite. I would have wanted to shout: “Come, we have found the formula for happiness, we have achieved an earthly paradise, we have discovered how to banish injustice and misery from this world!” But it would be a mockery on my part to invite you to live in a mirage—beautiful and hopeful, like all mirages, but empty and false.
And just as I refuse to mock you, I ask the same for my people. Please, stop mocking my people. Stop mechanically defending a reality that does not exist.
Respect yourselves and accept that Cuba is not what you would have wanted it to be, and that 67 years is more than enough time to demonstrate that it never will be.
If you believe that Marxism-Leninism is the solution to the problems of this world, you have every right to seek solutions through it, and I will respect you. But do not applaud the failure of socialism in my land with speeches of feigned pride. And if you do not wish to say plainly that we have failed, then at least remain silent—learn to be silent, for that too can be a dignified option.
For our part, we will continue trying to build a Cuba where one can live in truth and freedom, remembering from time to time what Oscar Wilde once said: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
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