_-_Eiffel_Tower,_Paris.jpg)
thought yesterday in Paris. I was there for the first time Dumas, Hugo and then much later Valerie, beautiful and slim short black hair Paris and gray eyes, was working at a Carrefour and studied at night English. The Bastille, the Louvre, Versailles, Montmartre, Montparnasse, Place des Vosges or strolling along the left bank of the Seine and into the Latin Quarter, walking slowly down Blvd St. Germain of her hand. Valerie told him a beautiful afternoon at the end of the century there in Paris, was then one hundred years, had met English and American, without even a Cuban present, to negotiate the future of our island battered and tattered after decades of battle and many bloody deaths by fire, machete, sadness and starvation.
The Treaty of Paris of 1898 , signed by the representatives of the late English empire and the powerful nation of the eagle that new "feathered" to North America, our real sovereignty postponed fought bravely for many years by the Mambi Liberation Army came to meet more than 180 000 English soldiers, the largest detachment of troops was never a Crown colony. EU negotiates with the decaying empire the transfer of their possessions with total disregard to the Cuban Government of the Republic in Arms and his battered troops robbing the people of Cuba the reins of their destiny. Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, passed from hand to hand to maintain its colonial status. The English fair to say, managed to rip off the Americans in the negotiation, "independence" of Cuba, considered by them as an overseas province instead of cologne.
Since 1895 the American investment in Cuba exceeded $ 50 million and since the introduction of the steam engine and the railway in the early nineteenth century, modern sugar factories faced with the stubborn and the old imperial ideas of the authorities Colonial. At the end of that century, Cuban and English troops are exhausted, are famous for the bloody excesses Captain General Valeriano Weyler, abruptly replaced in 1897 by General Ramón Blanco while granted autonomy in "domestic issues" on Cuba and Puerto Rico. It was too late to Spain, the "average" American did not stop then inform the public of the northern colossus on the dangerous conflict near saga of the battleship "Maine" including, preparing public opinion for what would be the first war imperialist young federation of states, its first deployment of military force, curiously focused on 4 islands strategically located: Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico and Cuba. With the collapse of the modern battleship "Cristobal Colon" in unusual naval battle in front of Santiago Bay ironically concludes the saga of the conquest of America, initiated 400 years ago by the Genoese sailor and a handful of adventurers aboard three caravels heroic, three "little paper."
Three years after the end of the war and the northern investment had doubled and thousands of hectares of fertile land depreciated over the war were taken over by American investors and power concessions, mining and railway. The Platt Amendment was there for many years, "decorating" our "Independence", humiliating constitutional appendix, "democratic" as well.
In just one century the world has changed as much as it did in all previous centuries human history combined. Few years have been enough to see the emergence, development, rise and fall of two social models of development, essentially as has been shown recently, not so different. Both Capitalism and Socialism in the powerful, having as support workers work, just "socializing" blatantly spreading among all its losses and its colossal failures. The "piper" always pay "industrious ant" both "ant capitalist dynamic, feisty, disciplined, methodical, ambitious, sharp, used to" work under pressure, competitive, selfish and voracious consumer and her sister the "socialist ant" less sophisticated and irresponsible campechanota, gregarious, suspicious, undisciplined, but quite inventive and daring.
have wanted the parallels of history that the spectacle of the untenable situation in Cuba to join the dramatic hour that lives its powerful northern neighbor. Everything coincides with a change of state administration and is clear to everyone that we are on the threshold of new times that require thorough analysis, caution and attention. Among the enormous tasks facing the Obama Administration will make a site to "the Cuban agenda," a policy that will have to rethink completely. Nothing could be more mortifying to the Stalinists who usurp Cuba power in a friendly initiative of the U.S. government to the people of Cuba and its future. As I said a few days ago Carlos Alberto Montaner, "Cuba is a matter of domestic policy for the United States." The U.S. Government can do much more than anyone would Cuco, and always from a new perspective, to also help "change" in Cuba. The change also Cubans want and can not win at the polls. Obama should "engage" the representatives of the Cuban regime to dialogue, to boldly approach a panel discussion and negotiation is not a sign of weakness. Some U.S. "friendly" disarm all arguments of the radicals of both banks that bog down the final solution for individual interests. This country has an interest in Cuba there is stability, strong institutions of government and a healthy and dynamic economic environment that discourages illegal immigration and a likely civil war and intervention in re-make Marines. It would be a bold move and nothing naive for Barack Obama if he offers to the current real collaboration Cuban authorities, respectfully, without trying to corral them, helping them to be institutionalized in an orderly, gradual, transparent, reliable, the new State law that will replace the current machine "administrative" obsolete and inefficient one day soon. Propitiate academic exchange, removal of travel restrictions by both parties, the recognition of the rights of Cuba by Cuban-Americans and their children, as well as all Cubans living abroad and their children and also those that carry the most diverse need passports and their offspring, the dismantling of TV Martí (do not you see! and is certainly "front" of a drain on resources absurd and ineffective bound to "derechona" nobody is a fool !...) and especially the gradual lifting of the embargo on the same as they give strong progress in democratic rights of Cubans inside and outside the island and take concrete steps in the dismantling of the old system of totalitarian government. Oddly
these days flew by the Presidents of Brazil, Cuba, China and Russia. We do not know if they travel to say goodbye to Fidel Castro, rushing for the last photo with the stubborn "gallego" or is that a new Cold War is cooked in the heat of U.S. difficulties as Raul sings an old song in Chinese Maoist and the Commander handles delivery. Or is it that we are facing a possible "interesting output" of the Cuban regime and seek consensus and support for a "transition" real including the normalization of relations with Washington? If so, Fidel Castro and his team, led by brother Raul as we finally reveal the brilliant strategists of the old leaflets, only that we would have been "tricking" presumably for many years "to mislead" the enemy.
In any case, it is time for vigilance. Very soon there will be 110 years after that disastrous meeting in Paris, a December 10, 1898, where our valiant never reached mambises reach. And history teaches that silence gives consent.
