(EFE).- The former president of Poland, Lech Walesa, on Monday in Miami encouraged the fighters for freedom in Cuba to look for “new tactics”, since “methods that have failed cannot be used”, and stressed that the key is in organizing, something that, he stressed, communism does not want or allow.
Nobel Peace Prize winner, Walesa expressed confidence that he would soon be able to participate in a “great march for victory against communism” in Havana, but warned Cuban exiles and opponents that time is running out.
“I’m almost 80 years old, hurry up,” said Walesa, who will turn 79 on the 29th of this month, amid applause from those attending an event at the Brigade 2506 museum, as combatants are known in the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs (1961) to overthrow the communist government then led by Fidel Castro.
“I’m almost 80 years old, hurry up,” said Walesa, who will turn 79 on the 29th of this month, amid applause from those attending a ceremony at the Brigade 2506 museum.
Walesa was introduced as “the man who taught us how to defeat communism” in a packed room festooned with posters bearing the word Solidarity, the name of the independent trade union he founded in communist Poland and led to the fall of the Polish communist regime in late from the 80s.
Casually dressed in a T-shirt that read Constitution in Polish, the former president (1990-1995) acknowledged that without the help of Pope John Paul II, the exit from communism in Poland in particular and in the Eastern bloc in general would have taken longer. and probably would have involved more violence.
Asked what Pope Francis can do for Cuba, Walesa responded by saying that he remains a practicing Catholic and therefore believes that it is the Holy Spirit who rules the Church.
“We have to understand the times that are coming. When we understand them, we will find the answer,” he said to Efe’s question, which was referring to the Cuban exile’s criticism of Francis, whom they reproach for not being critical of the Cuban government. “The Holy Spirit gives us the popes of every age,” he added.
Walesa reiterated that the simplest recommendation to defeat communism is to organize well.
But he explained that it is very difficult to do so because of the fear that authoritarian regimes instill in citizens, a fear that in Poland was sustained not only by the imprisonment, torture and death of opponents but also by the threat of a nuclear catastrophe. “Soviet nuclear missiles were targeting major Polish cities,” he stressed.
As he said with sense of the world, in 20 years trying to organize the struggle for freedom in Poland he managed to get at most 20 people to join him and of them “two were infiltrated state agents.”
The big push was the election of the Polish father Karol Wojtyla, who assumed the pontificate with the name of John Paul II. “The father was the one who woke up the town and took it to me,” he stressed.
Solidaridad knew how to take advantage of the large number of people who gathered the first visit of John Paul II to his native country and the religious fervor that it unleashed for the cause of freedom, according to Walesa.
Walesa stressed that, although “Cuba is a mosquito that bites the nose”, the US “does nothing”
He also received requests for help from Western Europe, the United States and the world in general, he said as images of his meetings with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and other world leaders were projected in the room.
A journalist asked the former Polish president if he still believed, as he said decades ago, that the United States has allowed the Cuban regime to endure in order to have it as a “Jurassic Park”-style attraction.
Walesa stressed that, although “Cuba is a mosquito that bites the nose”, the United States “does nothing”, and promised to continue working with the Cuban “patriots” to find ways that lead to a triumph of the cause for freedom and democracy in Cuba.
When asked to make a concrete suggestion to ignite the spark of the rebellion in Cuba, he said that the opponents should take advantage of some massive act of the Government and transform it into an act for freedom, or some massive sporting event.
“I have to study it well, we have to keep looking for ways,” he stressed.
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