Are you anti-USA?

Are you anti-USA?
Let me be clear as fresh water on this so that even those who add 2 plus 2 and get 22 will understand. I am not, in any way, anti U.S.A. I am pro-peace, pro-love and understanding. I am pro-putting away our toys of destruction along with our violent ideas of the past and learning to talk to each other.

It seems odd that simply presenting the information in this site would solicit such a question, even when it's carefully disguised. Part of the problem may be the way historical issues are traditionally dealt with in American schools and textbooks. (How do you explain to kids that we tried to conquer or wipe out everyone who didn't look or act like us?) Last year I received an email from a Cuban-American Junior High School student suggesting that I invented the Platt Amendment in order to support Castro! I can only imagine what happened when he mentioned this to his history teacher. I can also guess that the Platt Amendment isn't very likely to come up as a topic in a Jr. High School in Florida.

I do deplore the methods of imperialism that have tainted most of the relations between the U.S. and Cuba, and I resent the arrogance that has influenced these relations. The U.S. is my home. Cuba is Patria, homeland. I have equal amounts of love and fondness for both, and I revel in my multi-cultural existence. I don't like the political fanaticism associated with anti-movements, and I feel we've arrived at a point in history where peace should be our goal, not political domination and economic warfare.

I don't want my home to continue being the mean bully simply because it's the biggest kid on the block. I don't want my patria to be destroyed (meaning absorbed, colonized, Americanized, democratized or anything that produces social changes through external influences) simply because they have different ideas.

How can I tell the story of my people without pointing out those who've tried to dominate and/or destroy us? Americans, I believe, are also entitled to the truth, and would not agree with the U.S. role so far in my people's history.

The time is long past for relations between the U.S. and Cuba to move beyond the ideals of "manifest destiny" and the politics of Miami. We (North Americans) must accept that the time of U.S. influence over the island ended with Cuban Revolution, and we have no right to manipulate the island for our purposes. We have, in fact, enough problems of our own to solve (look at the Human Rights Watch report on the U.S. http://www.hrw.org/wr2k1/usa/index.html).

The U.S. is my home. I like how Americans are able to disagree with each other and still sit down for a meal, or a football game. I have friends with views to the right and to the left of me on many crucial issues. Some go to church regularly. Others never go. Some are pro-choice. Some are pro-life. Some prefer digital cable, others "the dish." We don't try to kill or undermine each other.

Americans seem to agree that it's ok to disagree. No American has told me to go back to Cuba because I oppose the embargo, or because we disagree on other issues. Cuban-Americans, curiously, suggest that to me on a regular basis with varying degrees of implied threat and insult. How can they claim to support democracy in Cuba when they can't support democracy in the U.S.?

Throughout the recent presidential-election confusion, the American people behaved with dignity and honor. No lynchings, no bombings, no arrests… an exemplary display of civility (political spinning, loud-mouthing and legal maneuverings notwithstanding). Schools and libraries remained open. Mail was delivered. Restaurants continued serving food and hospitals continued to treat the sick. (Of course, we didn't have a continent-sized superpower trying to manipulate our political situation through forced starvation and hidden military actions.)

Democrats and Republicans eating lunch together, going to movies and museums… Instead of bloody street wars, we went to work, we paid our bills, took out our trash… we saw it through, somehow, without violence.

This, I believe, the world would do well to imitate. And if there's a lesson to be learned here, we should apply it to our relations with Cuba.

The time for peace is now.