October, 2001
español

Armando Pérez Roura

GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Message read by Armando Pérez-Roura, General Director of Radio Mambí and Chairman of Cuban Unity (Unidad Cubana), at the massive gathering of support for the United States in Miami on Saturday, October 20, 2001.

Dear brothers and sisters united in liberty and hope: Thank you for being here. Thank you all, men, women, children and the elderly, for having answered this call of human and democratic solidarity. Thank you for your upstanding civic good will. Thank you for your innumerable flags, like patriotic songs of praise. Thank you for your voices of encouragement. Thank you for your smiling faces and your words of support and trust. Thank you for everything. Thank you!

It has been said that indifference is the worst vice of a nation and conscience its insurmountable virtue. This is why we are all here today. Because we are not indifferent. Because we have a steadfast conscientiousness of whom we are, where we are going and of what we expect from life.

We are conscious that we live in the most democratic and free country of the planet.

We are conscious that this great nation, akin to a generous mother, has opened to us the wide doors of its peaceful and prosperous home.

We are conscious that here we have rebuilt our lives, have raised and educated our children and have been given the opportunity that every free man yearns for: to use his intellect and efforts to better the society to which he belongs.

This is what we, exiled Cubans and immigrant Latin Americans, have always done in the United States. In calm and peaceful times, but also in turbulent times, like times of war. And today, who can doubt it? We are at war. This is why we have come; to tell the United States: We are here!

We are here! To offer, dear nation, all the sacrifices you may ask of us.

We are here! To confront the unexpected bellicose risks of this strange war.

We are here!  To tell you that you did not deserve the sly attack of September 11th.

We are here! To proclaim before the world, with the strength of those who speak the truth, that whomever attacks this tower of modern civilization and creative peace that is the United States, must be declared the enemy of all humankind.

The dark forces that from their hiding places turned aircraft filled with innocent human beings into satanic projectiles, missed their target with their erroneous strategy.

They believed they would place the United States in the defendant’s seat. And it is they who are sitting there today.

They believed the financial and military might of the United States would create jealousy and mistrust and would deprive it of its allies. They were wrong. It is they who have no allies today.

They believed they could confuse ordinary souls, transferring to a sacred book and to a pious religious heritage, sentiments of fanatical hatred, blind vengeance and dark envy. And they were wrong. It is they who have been written out of the book and deprived of all religious respect.

They believed death would procreate life and ethnic and religious differences would build walls between men and nations. And they were wrong. Not even the most backward Moslem would be capable today of reinitiating the absurd war that at one time in history pitted the children of Mohammed against the children of Jesus and Jehovah.

No! They shall not win! Neither they, nor their comrades in gunpowder and bombs, coming out of seminaries of Communist hatred, will be able to push the 21st Century down the narrow path of the prejudice, hate and violence that during the last decades of the past century bloodied half the world.

Today’s man is cured of extravagance and false radicalism.

Today’s man has known the ravages of Fascism and Communism.

And, like the men of the Renaissance era, he has reviewed the fury of the Crusades and renounced them.

Today’s man has made the decision that no one will set him back. Be he called Osama Bin Laden, Sadam Hussein or Fidel Castro. What humankind seeks and longs for, in Europe and in Central Asia, in Cuba and in Iraq, in Colombia and in Afghanistan, is one thing only: peace. Peace with liberty! Because the other one, the peace of despotism, is unacceptable even to beasts.

This is why we are here today! Hand in hand…like the fraternity of free men that we are! We are gathered here joining our voices to speak as one (as a community of Hispanic roots from whence we come). To tell this nation, and the whole world, that these new executioners will not prevail!

They may demolish towers! They may kill thousands of innocents! They may psychologically wound our collective soul with the uncertainty that every rumor holds and paralyzes business, grounds airplanes and plants fear in the soul of a father taking his child to school! They may yet do more! They may be able to turn the noble symbol of messages, which have always been letters, into dark, fatal instruments that many dare not touch. But the soul of the American nation, the historical will of these admirable people to be ever more just, more prosperous and more generous each decade, or each century, will not be conquered!

Stupidity has never overcome intelligence. Evil has never killed goodness. The yearning of universal man (of all colors, of all religions and of all times), to become better each day, to flee the inner beast that lies in wait, and to become closer to God, is a force which neither flaming gunpowder nor deadly poisoned powders have the power to control.

This is why we are here today! We, Latin Americans all, who have made the United States our second and loving home. And we, particularly exiled Cubans, who one day left our country not because of personal decision but when confronted by the dark carriage of oppression and terror. This is why we are here! To tell the United States, and the entire nation in the person of President George W. Bush, that we do not have to be summoned by the bugle of war. That we were already called by the heartbeat of our gratitude and our nobility. We are here! The Cubans of today, as were the Cubans of yesteryear in World War II, and in the Korean and Vietnamese conflicts, and as we all were in the rank and file during the perplexing era of the Cold War in which the Communist empire, which swallowed our nation, also threatened the American nation.

We are here! In thanksgiving, yes, but mainly because the flag of the United States under which we rally on this day, is the flag of human decency, political democracy and total freedom. It symbolizes the same ideals of our tricolor flag that waved yesterday in Cuba and that will wave in freedom tomorrow over those blue skies and turquoise seas.

God Bless America! Yes! May God Bless America! And may God also bless a violated Cuba, a bleeding Colombia and an unstable Venezuela. May God also protect the Arab nations, so they may be freed from the plague of extremism that has hurt them so deeply and threatens to continue doing so. May God save a persecuted Cuba, enslaved today, but free tomorrow, free forevermore! And may God grant us all the moral strength and spirit of coexistence that may allow us to end this new century not with hatred but with a crown of justice and peace among nations and peoples.

God Bless America! Yes, God bless America! A free America yesterday!, a free America today!, a free America tomorrow!, a free America forever!