Thank you Fidel, thank you Cuba

Oscar Sánchez Serra

TYLER MacNiven flew to the Bahamas from California and from there to Havana on June 7; being a U.S. citizen he was unable to fly direct to the Cuban capital and, in fact, he is not even permitted to come to us via a third country. According to U.S. legislation he is exposing himself to a sanction. However, a dream that he was at the point of realizing is once again calling him to get over any barrier.
He arrived in Cuba on June 8, on the same day that our newspaper reproduced the Reflections of Fidel Castro "Ridiculous response to a defeat" (published on Sunday, June 7 in Juventud Rebelde), in which the leader of the Cuban Revolution exposed another of the dirty maneuvers of the empire, with irrefutable arguments against a ridiculous Cuban espionage comic strip right at the time that, as Fidel says, "some contacts were being made between the governments of the United States and Cuba on important issues of common interest." Or, curiously, "24 hours after the defeat suffered by U.S. diplomacy at the OAS General Assembly."
Tyler was not taken by surprise at the new "Reflection," he follows them all and is a confirmed faithful and disciplined reader. "Every day I go on line to see if there’s something new." What did impact on him was the relation of one of its paragraphs to the objective of his return to Cuba. And that is: "I’ve come back seven years later to fulfill my dream, to embrace Fidel, because I know that that embrace will allow me to embrace the very heart of Cuba, I want to make my contribution to the friendship between our two peoples," he tells us with notable emotion.
In "Ridiculous response to a defeat," Fidel states: "The people accused are Walter Kendall Myers and his wife Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers. The report added that the former had worked as a specialist on European affairs and that in 1995 – 14 years ago – they had traveled to Cuba, and were received by me during their trip. During that period, I met with thousands of different U.S. citizens for diverse reasons, either individually or in groups; sometimes, there were groups numbering several hundred, such as the students who traveled to Cuba on the Semester at Sea Project, so for that reason I could hardly remember details of a meeting with two individuals. Now I realize why George W. Bush prohibited the cruise ship students from continuing to visit Cuba. They talked with me for many hours, despite the fact that they came from upper middle-class families."
"I was one of the members of that project in 2002, we met with Fidel in the International Conference Center for more than four hours. When he ended his speech, I raised my hand and was given the floor, I was able to talk with him. I wanted to express to him, and I did, my gratitude to the Cuban people and to him. We had eaten some sandwiches at the University of Havana and some of us got sick, I remember that I sat down somewhere in Havana to rest and soon afterward collapsed on the ground. A group of Cubans came rushing up to me and kindly tried to help me up, but seeing that I still felt bad, got me into a private car with an unknown driver and took me to the nearest hospital.
"I was attended to by three highly specialized doctors and recovered soon afterward. What I was grateful for was not so much the professionalism of the doctors or being attended to without charge, but that I think that I was cured by the displays of kindness of this people, who have won my heart for ever. I, as an American, was treated like one of you, like a Cuban. It really made an impression on me."
He recounted that he felt somewhat embarrassed and ashamed, or perhaps just shyness and, on that occasion, and didn’t ask Fidel for the embrace he so much desired. But, he told us that "at the end of the session in the International Conference Center, a good friend of mine, Dominic, said: "Mr. President, as we can ask you anything, I should like to make a petition: can I give you an embrace?"
His friend’s question ran through his entire body, and… "Then Fidel answered Dominic, "without charging you a cent, come down, I’m waiting for you." "While my friend was running down to the stage I sunk down in my seat and, when Fidel and he embraced each other, to the applause of all us, I understood that I had lost a great opportunity. But I also felt very happy over the humanity of that man, by embracing Dominic he was embracing all of us and my country as well."
Sitting beside Tyler, my colleague Alberto Núñez and I felt an admiration for that story. He asked us to help him attain his dream; we replied that what we could do was to tell his story. He gave us a video of that meeting with the Comandante en Jefe and we reciprocated by giving him the 236 Reflections of Fidel. He eyes shone to know that he had all of those texts.
It was then that he told is than during the by then close to six days that he has been in our country, he feels that, in addition to his dream of embracing Fidel, he is experiencing another unique one, "the human warmth and also that of this early summer, the smile on the face of every man, woman or child, the openness of this country, its music, its people. It is really wonderful to come from the United States and to know that you are welcome, and more than that, loved. I am sorry that my Spanish isn’t good enough to be able to take in more of this reality that I am seeing here. I remember that Fidel said to me jokingly that time in the International Conference Center that the doctors who attended me would have to be criticized for not speaking English; I criticize myself too for not knowing more Spanish, but I’m going to learn a lot more."
As he left, after telling us that he is to tour our country from the west to the east, until July 8, Tyler said to us: "I’d like to say to you the same words with which I ended my dialogue with Fidel that day in 2002 at the International Conference Center. I said then ‘Thank you Fidel’ and now I am saying, ‘Thank you Fidel, thank you Cuba.’"