An old Cuban man

There’s an old Cuban man. Some say he is a powerful man. He is loved by many and despised by many. When he speaks people listen. No, I am not talking about that old Cuban man. I am talking about a man who doesn’t need to pressure or force people to hear him speak. I am talking about man who people listen to because they want to. Because he expresses with conviction what they would say if only they could articulate it so well. This man does not command an army or have access to any conventional weapons. But he does have weapons of a sort: the spoken word backed by the truth.
When this old Cuban man walks into a room his appearance betrays his age. I have had the pleasure of meeting this old Cuban man on several occasions. His critics say he wants to rule Cuba himself. Or alternately, they say that a free Cuba would mean the end of this man’s career. The idea that this man whose hands shake, another sign of his age, would have any kind of ambition beyond simply outliving that other man and his murderous regime is preposterous.
Tonight that man spoke at a venue with a capacity of 839. It was standing room only. And the people that came to hear this old Cuban man? They were largely a group of old Cubans in their own right. These people are likewise belittled. It’s easy to make of fun of them. “Armchair intransigents” some people might call them, ignoring the fact that many of these same people spent what should have been the best years of their lives in the anonymous misery of a Cuban political prison. It would be much easier for these tired old people to stay home and forget about Cuba. To forget about the country of their birth. But they can’t. So they do what they can. They gather to hear this old man recount the history they know so well. Perhaps it’s because they need to keep hearing it to make sure they haven’t gone mad. I’m quite sure that, in their position, I would have. You see the entire world denies the tragedy that these people have lived. All they have is each other. Yes it’s easy to laugh at them. But it would be hard to live what they have lived.
These old Cubans are patriotic. They rise to sing, first the star spangled banner and then the Cuban national anthem. And then they sit to hear the man they came to see. He explains that there was once another man, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, who had a vision for a free Cuba 139 years ago. That vision is still alive, he says, anywhere in the world where you can find freedom-loving Cubans.

Then the old Cuban man explains how on the eve of the death of the Cuban tyrant that there will be great pressure on the people in the room support a negotiation with those who have destroyed a country they still yearn for after half a century. There will be pressure to make deal with those people and “forgive and forget.” But to do so would be a betrayal of the memory of the thousands who have died on the firing squad wall. It would be a betrayal of those who languished for decades in the worst political prisons of the western hemisphere.

And those old people stood and applauded that old man. Their only hope is to see the very beginning of what will be a new era in their long-suffering homeland. There will be no wavering. The “declaration of Miami” and those receiving it, in person and over the airwaves, have affirmed that tonight.
Yes, this is a powerful man. He’s powerful because he’s a dignified man who speaks the truth with conviction and who denounces untruths and abuses.