On December 20, 1989, the United States invaded Panama. I will never forget that anguished night, watching Cuban television until the wee hours of the morning as I followed the tragic events: the machine-gunning of civilians in the densely populated areas of El Chorrillo, the bombings and fighting, the arrest of Noriega, and the destruction of a sister nation.
Twenty-six years have passed and the script is repeating itself, with the logical differences in actors and circumstances, but the pretexts used are almost the same, and the threatening tone goes beyond the borders of the unjustly attacked country to extend to all of Our America, with the cynicism and naturalness of someone referring to their backyard.
Once again, the world's policeman is arrogating to itself the right to violate a sovereign country and kidnap its president, trampling on all the norms of international law, and without a single convincing argument. Meanwhile, a wave of protests, emotions, and mixed reactions has risen around the world in recent hours.
Those of us who know something about history and the anti-imperialist thinking of our forefathers cannot help but think of lapidary, prophetic phrases, such as that of Bolívar, in his letter to Patricio Campbell, in which he rightly asserted that the United States seemed destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of freedom.
Today, threats have multiplied in the insane arrogance of that contemporary version of Nero who governs the United States. The triumphalist rhetoric is not new, nor are the promises of "freedom" to the country it has just bombed, and also to Mexico, Colombia, and of course, Cuba, the obsession of all the presidents of that country, even from the early days when they ceased to be 13 English colonies and became the United States.
No less monstrous are the statements made by certain Venezuelans and Cubans; some celebrate the aggression against their homeland, while others eagerly await Cuba undergoing the same bloody experience.
Many of these despicable individuals live in their countries of origin and display a shameful and cynical desire for annexation. Others live in the bowels of the monster, and clearly, neither group possesses the slightest bit of common sense or ethics.
It seems that the bombs will come with names and surnames, intended only for communists and patriots, politicians and military personnel. It also seems that they and their families will be given a protective cloak that will free them from all evil.
And evil, I repeat, is not found in one's place of residence. It is found in hatred, in betrayal, in the thirst for absurd revenge that glorifies the very same being who deports hundreds of migrants every day without the slightest consideration, displaying racism and brutality inherited from the ethnic cleansing typical of medieval barbarism or 20th-century fascism.
I do not question people's right to live where they want, for whatever reasons: personal, family, economic, even political. You may like a government more or less, you may or may not sympathize with the president of a particular country, but from there to considering a direct attack, a war of plunder, against a sovereign people, the distance is enormous.
Today it is Venezuela, a few years ago it was Iraq, Syria, Libya, anyone who had something coveted by the interests of a decadent and desperate empire, which in its collapse seeks to drag the world down with it. Tomorrow it could be anyone else, because no one is safe.
It is worth remembering the definition and considerations given by Martí on December 19, 1889, in his speech known as Madre América (Mother America), on the reasons for our American emigration to the United States, and how we could help the America of Juárez, even while living in that of Lincoln.
It is worth noting that this speech was delivered at an event organized by the Hispanic American Literary Society of New York to honor the delegates from the continent attending the Pan-American Conference, or Washington Congress, who were subjected to a strategy of pressure and seduction to make them feel belittled and agree to imperial plans to subjugate our republics through one-sided trade agreements and other legal monstrosities.
The Cuban said, appealing to the patriotism of those who had taken up residence in the North:
"That is why we live here, proud of our America, to serve and honor it. We do not live, no, as future servants or as dazzled villagers, but with the determination and ability to contribute to its being esteemed for its merits and respected for its sacrifices; because the very wars that those who do not know it throw in its face out of pure ignorance are the badge of honor of our peoples, who have not hesitated to accelerate the path of progress with the fertilizer of their blood, and can wear their wars on their foreheads like a crown. In vain — lacking the daily friction and stimulus of our struggles and our passions, which reach us from far away, from the soil where our children do not grow! — this country invites us with its magnificence, and life with its temptations and its cowardice, to indifference and oblivion.
Obviously, Martí, like so many other Latin Americans, many of them members of the board of directors of the Literary Society itself, or fighters for Cuba's independence, belonged to that lineage of dignified men who continued to honor the great homeland. They did not seek to assimilate: they continued to honor it from exile, and showed a dignity that sought to destroy the "contempt of the formidable neighbor who does not know it," as he wrote shortly afterwards in the essay Our America.
Martí was also aware of the then understandable, but today inexcusable, naivety of those who "[...] believe that the United States is a giant made of sugar, with one arm of Wendell Phillips and the other of Lincoln, who will bring wealth and freedom to peoples who do not know how to conquer it for themselves, or are among those who have already changed their domicile and interests forever, and say 'my country' when they speak of the United States, with lips as cold as two gold coins, two lips that they wipe secretly, so that their new compatriots do not know them, the last drops of mother's milk [...]".
Nothing can be expected from such renegades. From those who proudly preserve their ties to their origins, we now expect a rejection of aggression and threats to peace. From them, because they are almost a linguistic and cultural majority there, we expect a pacifist stance, respect for the sovereignty of Our America, and a demand for the protection of the lives of our families, already sufficiently bled dry by hatred, intrigue, and selfishness.
From them, from their integrity, we can also hope that they will not allow their children, due to economic imperatives or the desire for residency rights, to give in to the temptation to plunge the sword, "stained with the blood of their own veins," into the flesh of their attacked brother.
To save Venezuela is to save Our America, humanity, and all the peoples who have committed themselves to peace, sovereignty, and justice.
