Who Should Be Apologizing?

Who Should Be Apologizing? / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on March 25, 2016

Rebeca Monzo, 24 March 2016 — No sooner had Air Force One taken off for
Buenos Aires from Jose Marti International Airport in Havana with
President Barack Obama, his family and entourage onboard than Cuban
media began broadcasting distorted commentary by a twisted and
pretentious Roundtable, which tried to undermine the excellent speech
Obama had given at the Alicia Alonso Gran Teatro.

Terrified by the impact of the president's words, which even in a
specially chosen auditorium generated unauthorized applause, the local
press began calling into question the spot-on and convincing arguments
Obama put forth, especially those dealing with civil society. Among
other trivialities, they claimed the president of the United States
should have apologized to the people of Cuba for the victims of Barbados.*

Perhaps it is the Cuban government which should be apologizing to its
own people for the religious and ideological persecutions we have
suffered for decades. Or for the concentration camps run by the Military
Units to Aid Production. Or for the victims of the sinking of the "March
13" tugboat in which three adolescents were shot and killed for trying
to commandeer a launchboat without hurting anyone. Or for the thousands
and thousands of people who have perished trying to cross the Florida
Straits in rickety rafts, fleeing a regime responsible for unjust
arrrests following the 2003 Black Spring and for weekly Sunday assaults
on members of the Ladies in White.

Please, let's turn the page, as President Obama asked Raul to do, and
look towards the present and the future, not to the past. That is the
only way to break out of the economic, political and social morass in
which we have been stuck for more than half a century.

* Translator's note: In 1976 a Cuban exile and former CIA agent planted
a bomb aboard a civilian Cuban airliner, which blew up over Barbados,
killing all seventy-three persons onboard.

Source: Who Should Be Apologizing? / Rebeca Monzo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/who-should-be-apologizing-rebeca-monzo/