The why and what-for of a liberal party, here and now

Strategy and vision for the future

Establishing a political party in exile is a difficult thing to do. Parties should respond to a national reality, they are made for a territory and for the people that live there. However, sometimes circumstances impede. What happened to Marti in the closing years of the past century has now happened to us. At the end of the XX century, as happened before at the end of the XIX century, the ruling political regime does not allow us to do in Cuba quickly and easily that which would have naturally occurred if the necessary conditions had existed. In any case, the intention of the Union Liberal Cubana is to grow within Cuba. We continue our efforts to form ties with the dissidents, intellectuals, professionals, managers, and workers of the country. And we have never stopped sending them information with which they can confirm the unstoppable advance of liberal ideas. Ideas which already have begun to implant and strengthen themselves across the Island, simply because now is the time of liberalism in the world.

The hour of economic liberalism

In effect, the entire planet, with Latin America being no exception, is living the emergence of a liberalism renovated by the passage of time, the failure of the socialist experiences, and the impetus of a new liberal way of thinking. This way of thinking is encarnated by thinkers such as I. Berlin, K. Popper, C. Rangel, or in the recent recipients of the Nobel Prize in Economics Gary Becker, Richard Coase, James Buchanan, Milton Freidman or Friedrich von Hayek. These thinkers are all followers, and have elaborated upon, the work done by Mises, Schumpter and the so called School of Vienna. (Who has said that liberalism pertains only to the past? There is not a school of thought more contemporary.) In brief, this means that in our days, after a century of failed experiments, an end has been put to the utopias proposed by Marx; and, to the individual has been returned the prevailing role in society that he should play. Along with this has come a healthy surge in the number of privatizations, a reduction in the jurisdiction and functions of the state, a diminution of public spending and a recognition of the status as role model that private industry and civil society should be. It has also been realized that an economy planned by bureaucrats who are distanced from daily reality cannot function, and that it is in the free market where the most important mechanisms of progress and growth lie. It is not the government, in short, who should watch over the people. It is the inverse. It is not the government who should direct the individuals. It is the reverse. It is not the government who should be responsible for human beings. It is also the opposite. This is not to say, of course, that it is not the responsibility of the state to protect those people who are helpless or to provide the means so that all may, realistically, compete and procure a superior existence. Because, without education and health, without a flexible and accepting society in which the struggle to succeed is possible, it would be meaningless to speak of a competitive spirit. That is to say, we live in a time in which it is recognized that the men and women that compose a society have obligations and rights, responsibilities and benefits, and are, or at least should be, active participants in history. They are not mere objects at the mercy of the caprices or revelations of the political groups or the ruling class, regardless of the good intentions that they claim to have.

The hour of liberal democracy

As was hoped for, together with the validation of the liberal economic way of thinking has come also vindication of its political counterpart, liberal democracy. This is democracy accompanied by its best attributes: formal liberties, a state of legal rights without privileges or special groups, government subject to the constant audit of its citizens, respect for human rights, multiparty government, complete and total disclosure of information, and a special devotion to tolerance, a civic virtue without which peace and tranquility for citizens is impossible. After the failure of the fascisms - which in Latin America were mixed with militarism and popularism - and of all the diverse manifestations of socialism, the wise conclusion has been reached that liberty is the best cure for poverty and injustice. It is no coincidence that the twenty most free nations on earth are also its most prosperous. Greater liberty to produce and sell, greater liberty to examine the problems of society without fear, corresponds with greater general wealth. Liberty, in conclusion, is a key component of prosperity. Liberty includes respect for people just as they are, because liberalism repudiates all the dangerous manipulations of social engineering or political genetics. It is these dangerous manipulations which have brought so many calamities to man when attempting to submit to artificial "perfections", decided upon by illuminated groups who arrogantly believe they posses the absolute truth. Liberalism does not claim to possess an ultimate truth. It does not claim to know the motives or underlying mechanism behind historical change nor believes they can be known. Liberalism doesn't intend to change human nature. It resigns itself to creating an adequate legal and economic framework in which the species' most common virtues find a favorable environment, while reducing the possibility for the less beneficial behaviors to flourish. This is done with the goal of reducing the number and intensity of the conflicts which inevitably confront human beings.

The ULC in the short term

Naturally, for Cubans, after experiencing the more than three decades of painful errors and abuses provided by socialism, liberalism becomes like a soothing ointment to the wounds of society, and like an antidote as well. A soothing ointment because liberalism is a noble manner of understanding society, a fact which will be able to well alleviate the tensions and staunch the wounds after the inevitable collapse of communism in Cuba. An antidote because in its basic fundamentals is the vaccine against future totalitarian adventures.

So, in 1989, not too long after the fall of the Berlin Wall, when it was already evident that communism would finally disappear from the face of the earth, a group of Cuban liberals gave ourselves the task of creating a party with very defined short, medium and long term objectives.

There was no doubt of what had to be done in the short term: contribute to the end of the Castro dictatorship. This must be done through peaceful means, carefully attempting to avoid a bloody outcome. Since 1974 when the Portugese dictatorship ended, or since 1975 when Franco died, until the collapse of the communist tryannies in Europe - passing through the Latin American experiences ofArgentina, Chile, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and Brazil - all the transitions to democracy, with the partial exception of Rumania, have gone through the same process of change: a political battle, manifested in negotiations between the power and the opposition, which culminates in an electoral process which would dispose of the dictator whose turn it was. It has occurred in this manner in more than a dozen countries, and there's no reason that it shouldn't happen in Cuba. In fact, to Cuban liberals it would be very desirable that the end of Castro's reign would come about through negotitions and the electoral process. This is not only to save our compatriots the pain and devastation that the emergence of violence would provoke, but also to break once and for all the ill-fated revolutionary tradition. That is, the erroneous conviction that it is always proper and patriotic to replace through means of force the bad governments which weaken and subdue the country. Liberals have the hope that this sad historical moment will have at least one positive outcome: the substitution of a violent political culture for a political culture of persuasion, dialogue and compromise.

Learning from history

The desire to learn from history is based in itself. In the twentieth century, Cubans have witnessed two successful revolutions, one in 1933, and one in 1959. Although both emerged as gallant expressions of rebellion against illegality and abuses of government, in the end all they did was generate pain, violence and misery. The revolution of 1933, filled with youthful heroism and enthusiasm against an authoritarian and despotic general, brought as a consequence not only seven years of illegitimate government and countless abuses, but also gave a place to the emergence of another antidemocratic tyrant, Batista, and generated inumerable wrongdoings, like gangsterism, the growth of corruption and impunity for public crimes. This led to the rise of attitudes which, without a doubt, debilitated the institutional foundations of Cuba and made possible, 25 years later, an even greater catastrophe: the revolution of 1959. This revolution handed over the nation to a group of audacious adventurers who were secretly aligned with Marxism, though surrounded with idealistic youths filled with good intentions and had nothing to do communism. For Cuban liberals it is clear that the best for Cuba was not/to continue experimenting with violence and revolutions, but to place more confidence in laws, negotiations, and compromise. A century of failures and frustrations should be a sufficiently extensive and painful lesson for all those capable of understanding the weight of history. We should look at the fact that we are beginning the twenty-first century in almost the same way we began the twentieth, as an opportunity to learn from the past, and not repeat the traditional errors.

The ULC at medium term

This way of understanding history dictated to us an immediate plan of action for now as well as a medium term policy. This strategy took shape in the form of the creation of the Plataforma Democratica Cubana, a coalition of three parties which coincide in their search for peaceful solutions: the Coordinadora Social Democrata, the Partido Democrata Cristiano, and our own, the Union Liberal Cubana. The three parties, linked in one way or the other to their respective ideological families, the Internationals, contributed to the political battle a network of relations in all the west, which immediately commenced to bear its jointly shared fruit. The coalition, furthermore, was created not only to overthrow Castro in the political arena, but also to contribute in the guidance of the transition to liberty. When the change occurs, there will be the democratic influences of dozens of governments and hundreds of allied political parties spilling all over the Island, given that almost all of the nations of the free world are governed by parties linked to one of these political inclinations. In brief, the Union Liberal Cubana formulated a short term policy: to end Castroism without violence or bloodshed; a medium term policy: peaceful transition to another state model with the aid of a vast net of friends composed of both governments and parties; and a long term policy: to lay down the basis of what would be the long term objectives of the party.

The ULC in the long term

The ULC, lastly, was born with the idea of eventually transforming itself in Cuba, into a political party capable of giving the country ideas, projects, institutional stability, and forging a wellspring from which can emerge the best political leaders of the future Cuba.

There can be no democracy without strong political parties. And there can be no strong poitical parties if within the party there does not exist a coherent universal vision, with a diagnosis of the wrongs that afflict society and a flexible proposal conceived to give solutions. Liberalism, fortunately, provides for all of these. It is not an ideology. It is a rational means of understanding life, essentially based in the defense of individual liberty and responsibility. Luckily, the most talented in the Cuban political tradition have been liberals: from Arango and Parreño to Ignacio Agramonte, from José Martí to Jorge Ma¤ach or Carlos Márquez Sterling. The most serious and prudent statesmen that the nation has produced have subscribed to the same liberal ideas that we embrace, though many of them never belonged to a party that carried the word `liberal' in its name.

The Union Liberal Cubana picks up that tradition and that spirit, and links it to the new liberalism of our days and gives it a new form and new content. The Union Liberal Cubana is the future, or at least that is how we would like it to be. The Cuban Liberal Union is a political party founded in Madrid in 1989 by a group of Cuban exiles with writer Carlos Alberto Montaner as President. He continues as leader, with Juan Suárez Rivas as Vice-president. The CLU has headquarters in Miami, Caracas and San Juan.