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January 21, 1998

Holy Father,

The land you have just kissed is honored by your presence.

You will not find here the peaceful and generous native people who inhabited this island when the first Europeans arrived. Most of the men were annihilated by the exploitation and the slave work they were unable to resist; the women were turned into pleasure objects or domestic slaves. There were also those who died by the homicidal sword, or victims of unknown diseases brought by the conquerors. Some priests left tearing testimonies of their protests against such crimes.

In the course of centuries, over one million Africans ruthlessly uprooted from their distant lands took the place of the enslaved natives who had been exterminated. They made a remarkable contribution to ethnic composition and the origins of our country's present population, which mixes the cultures, the beliefs, and the bloods of the participants in this dramatic history.

It has been estimated that the conquest and colonization of this hemisphere resulted in the death of 70 million natives and the enslavement of 12 million Africans. Much blood was shed, and injustices perpetrated, many of which still remain after centuries of struggle and sacrifices disguised under other forms of domination and exploitation.

Under extremely difficult conditions, Cuba was able to build a nation; it had to fight alone for its independence with unsurmountable heroism.

And exactly 100 years ago, it suffered a real holocaust in the concentration camps where a large part of its population perished, mostly women, old men, and children. The crimes of the conquerors have not been forgotten by humanity's consciousness.

You, a son of Poland, and a witness of Auschwitz can understand this better than anyone. Today, Holy Father, genocide is again attempted, by trying to surrender through starvation, illness, and total economic suffocation this people, who refuse to accept the dictates and the rule of the mightiest economic, political and military power in history, much more powerful than ancient Rome, which for centuries had the beasts devour those who refused to abdicate their faith. Like those Christians, who were horribly slandered to justify the crimes, we, who are as much slandered as they were, would choose a thousand times death rather than abdicate our convictions. Like the Church, the Revolution has also had many martyrs.

Holy Father, we feel as you do on many important issues of today's world, and we are very pleased to do so. On other matters, our opinions are different, but we are most respectful of the strong conviction with which you defend your ideas.

In your long pilgrimage around the world, you have been able to see with your own eyes a great deal of injustice, inequality, poverty, uncultivated land, and landless hungry farmers, unemployment, hunger, illness, lives that could be saved with little money, illiteracy, child prostitution, children working since they are six years of age, or begging to survive, shanty towns where hundreds of millions live in unworthy conditions, race and sex discrimination, complete ethnic groups evicted from their lands and abandoned to their faith, xenophobia, contempt for other people, cultures that are currently being destroyed, unpayable and uncollectible debts, unfair trade, outrageous and unproductive financial speculation, an environment being ruthlessly and perhaps helplessly destroyed, an unscrupulous weapons trade with disgusting, lucrative purposes, wars, violence, massacres, widespread corruption, drugs, vices, and an alienating consumerism imposed on people as an ideal model. Mankind has seen its population increase almost fourfold just this century. There are billions of people who suffer hunger and thirst for justice, the list of humanity's economic and social calamities is endless; I am aware that many of them are the cause of permanent and growing concern to the Holy Father.

I have been through personal experiences that allow me to appreciate other features of your thinking. I was a student in Catholic schools until I obtained my bachelor's degree. There I was told that being a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist, an animist, or a participant of other religious beliefs was a terrible fault that deserved severe and unmitigated punishment. More than once, in those schools for the wealthy and the privileged, I being one of them, I came up with the question of why there were no black students there. I have not forgotten the unconvincing answers I was given.

In later years, the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII addressed some of these sensitive issues. We are aware of efforts by the Holy Father to preach and practice sentiments of respect for the faithful of other important and influential religions that have expanded in the world. Respect for believers and non- believers alike is a basic principle that Cuban revolutionaries impress upon our fellow citizens. Those principles have been defined and guaranteed by our Constitution and laws. If there have ever been difficulties, it has never been the fault of the Revolution. We keep the hope that never again, in no school of no matter what religion, nowhere in the world will an adolescent need ask why there are no Black, indian, yellow, or white children there.

Holiness, I sincerely admire your courageous statements concerning Galileo, the known errors of the Inquisition, the bloody episodes of the Crusades, and the crimes committed during the conquest of America, as well as on certain scientific discoveries not contested by anyone today but which, in their time, were the target of so much prejudice and anathema. It took the immense authority that you have come to attain within your Church.

What can we offer you in Cuba, Holy Father? A people with less inequality, less helpless citizens, less children without schools, less patients without hospitals, more teachers and more doctors per inhabitant than any other country in the world that the Holy Father may have ever visited -- an educated people, a people you can talk to with as much freedom as you wish, in the certainty that they have talent, a high political culture, deep convictions, absolute confidence in their ideas, and all the consciousness and respect in the world to listen to you. No country is better prepared to understand your felicitous idea -- as we understand it, so similar to what we preach -- that the equitable distribution of wealth among men and peoples should be globalized. Welcome to Cuba.