by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
The press reported this week that Mr. Gabriel Valdez, Chile’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, has started systematic talks with all Ibero-American ambassadors in Santiago to seek Cuba’s admission to the OAS and reintegration into the community of American nations.
At first glance, the cause might seem appealing. Leftist propaganda around the world has given the words “integration” — and, similarly, “reintegration” — a very powerful, almost magical, significance. Just saying these words can instantly win support from certain opinion groups. This is especially true in the small, angry, wealthy circle of my “toad” friends.
In reality, things are much more complicated. Integrations or reintegrations are beneficial when they bring together healthy and harmonious people, values, or things. They become disastrous when they combine something sick with something healthy or mix heterogeneous elements.
This is a common observation. It is visible in plant grafting and even more so in the grafting of human organs.
I am not surprised that the foreign minister of the Chilean Christian Democratic government is advocating this unhealthy integration of communist Cuba with the fundamentally anticommunist Americas. Christian democracy is itself an unstable mix of incompatible elements, a kind of ideological centaur, half Christian and half socialist. This profound inconsistency is causing the centaur to fall apart worldwide. True to its inherent heterogeneity, the Chilean foreign minister is understandably trying to “centaurize” the Americas by hanging Cuban “democracy” on them like a grotesque horse’s tail. This may be the Christian Democratic Party’s last feat before the next election, in which the valiant Andean people will sweep it from the political scene.
However, as a steadfast opponent of all inconsistencies, I am entitled to hope that the continent’s governments will reject the Centaur’s proposal for many reasons.
Let me list some of them:
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The Cuban regime, being communist, is inherently unjust. Recognizing it or accepting it as a legitimate part of our community of nations means endorsing institutionalized injustice. I cannot approve of the civilized nations of America acting this way.
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Fidel Castro’s regime relies solely on violence. If free elections were held in Cuba, accompanied by broad and genuine political debate, it is clear that Fidel Castro would be overwhelmingly defeated. It’s understandable that the Cuban dictator surrounds his country with barbed wire and suppresses all freedoms. Therefore, the “integration” of Fidel’s Cuba would not represent the integration of the real Cuba but rather a pseudo-Cuba, or more accurately, an anti-Cuba. We would not accept a true brother into the continental community but an impostor, a mortal enemy. By acting this way, especially knowing the facts fully, we would be causing unnecessary harm to our unfortunate and oppressed Cuban brothers.
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Furthermore, the numerous Cuban exiles and those in Cuba waiting for liberation day with highly respectable perseverance are entitled to receive from the other peoples of the continent every form of intense political solidarity to shake off the tyrant’s yoke. The Cuban communist regime’s “integration” would consolidate “Castroism” and the death of the Cuban people’s noblest hope. We would thus sin by breaking the bruised reed and extinguishing the smoldering wick (cf. Mt. 12:20).
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I am especially thinking of the countless Cubans, men and women, who work like slaves in the sugarcane fields to realize the megalomaniac dream with which Fidel Castro seeks to fix the disastrous effects of his mismanagement. I ask my fellow citizens if we, who take pride in having ended slavery in Brazil on May 13, will help sustain Cuban slavery.
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Furthermore, we cannot recognize the seriousness of a government that officially engages in piracy to address the consequences of its disastrous administration. In truth, it does not even deserve the title of government. What are airplane hijackings, if not outright acts of piracy? How can we “integrate” the “gang” that turned the Pearl of the Antilles into a den of pirates?
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I deny they are imposing this integration on us for any significant political reason. The tiny republic that Fidel Castro has reduced Cuba to has neither the prestige, wealth, nor strength to explain (note that I say explain, not justify) the capitulation of all the Americas before it. It is indeed a capitulation since the peoples of the Americas expelled Cuba from the OAS in 1962. According to Valdez, they should now invite it back without any new developments in their relations.