Two Cuban reformers debated yesterday about the future of their country and offered their differing opinions on how to save their country's culture and independence.
Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, president of Cambio Cubano, said without economic reform, Cuba will soon lose its nationality.
Maria Elena Cruz Varela, poet and professor at Universidad Interamericana in Puerto Rico, said Cuba needs to reinvent its culture if it wants to have a future.
"We must rebuild the nation, the human side of it," Varela said. "We don't need a new maximum leader. We need a culture of respect to others, to listen to what's happening on the island."
Menoyo's and Varela's remarks came during a two-and-a-half hour debate that was the inaugural event in a three-day conference on "The Future of Democracy in Cuba."
The conference is sponsored by the John Sloan Dickey Endowment for International Understanding.
Marty Sherwin, director of the Dickey Endowment, opened the conference on Cuba, the fourth country in the "Future of Democracy" series.
"I am of the optimistic school of diplomatic history," Sherwin said. "I think each of those will reach a state of stability, of democracy."
Spanish and Portuguese Professor Agnes Lugo-0rtiz introduced Menoyo.
Menoyo's group, Cambio Cubano, advocates the establishment of a dialogue between the U.S. and the Cuban governments.
Menoyo, a former guerrilla fighter against the Baptista dictatorship, spent 22 years in Cuban prisons under Castro's regime.
He nonetheless advocated a program of reform, particularly of the economic situation, which he called "a matter of survival for Cuba."
"Everyone has to become revolutionaries and try to change the system," he said. "We want a nation of brotherhood, not a nation of animals. We want a nation of giants, not of dwarves."
Varela, who left Cuba only nine months ago, expressed her longing to find a place within Cuba for intellectuals and democratic idealists.
"I feel a true anguish ... of the person against fear to say what is right, what is wrong," she said.
Varela said she feels Cubans "have to look beyond the present."
"I think Castro is just a mirage, that his power remains in the past, in the psyche of Cubans," she said.
