Cuban Leader On 9/11: "We Are All New Yorkers"

[Itsthetruth]

Alarcón: " Since that terrible Tuesday we are all New Yorkers "

Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón recently inaugurated an exhibition entitled “Rendez-vous With Angels” at the José Martí Memorial. The exhibition is part of the 2004 National Engraving Conference linking the New York Visual Arts College with the Havana Experimental Graphic Arts Workshop, and focuses on the September 11 attacks.

Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada
Vice-President Of Cuba
President Of Cuba's National Assembly(Parliament)
July 8, 2004

"The barbaric act (of September 11) affected everyone. Constantly repeated appalling images brought about intense anger and fear. I saw the (Twin) Towers fall live on television from the capital of an African country where the highest building is no more than four floors up and for whose people the great urban landscape of skyscrapers is an envious vision of an unattainable world.

There, I also experienced total and unanimous pain – never before had I seen such an expression of human solidarity. The weeping and anger was uncontrolled – crying and cursing in the languages of millions of people for whom Manhattan is just a far-way dream, dreamed by others: a city that is no more than an inaccessible and abstract illusion. The shared anguish, the compounded love, provoked a grand revelation. Today this belongs to us too. Since that terrible Tuesday we are all New Yorkers.

Cuba’s pain was deep. The brutal crime profoundly wounded us and we suffered alongside the victims as if the attack had been against us. Long and bitter experience has forced three generations of Cubans to resist terrorism and to live beneath its constant threat. Terrorist acts have caused our people so many lives, so much destruction and such misery over the past 45 years, involving a complicity which should provoke a scandal. That some should be able to enjoy total impunity for their attacks against Cuba is an affront to those who perished on September 11, 2001. It is an insult to their memory that five Cubans should be incarcerated for opposing the very crimes that are condemned every day in the USA.

We Cubans felt especially overwhelmed that morning because we would like to have helped more – much more than the artificial enmity and hostility imposed upon us made possible. Without hesitation, Cuba was the first to condemn the unspeakable massacre offering its airports to those planes unable to land on US soil – an act that was never acknowledged by Washington. Cuban artists who were in the US in a rare instance of the systematic prohibition of their visits, donated blood to help the victims.

We would like to have done so much more.

We therefore proclaim that we still believe in the possibility of uniting humankind in a great push to eradicate terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, whoever is involved, whoever promotes it, wherever it occurs, and whoever is its victim.

Only then, truthfully, can we honor those who were immolated. There is no justice in proliferating blind violence, death and terror. Using the dead of September 11 as a malicious and clumsy excuse to unleash unjust and senseless wars is equivalent to repeating the horror. Deliberately provoking a break in the universal solidarity shown for the USA that day and instead setting off against other peoples is unpardonable folly.

We indeed need to call down the angels for help. To hasten a love that prevails over fear. That is the aim of this exhibition. This is the work of 41 Cuban artists that work directly with the lithographs of the US graphic artists Gunars Prande from the images of US photographer Richard Falco taken in the middle of the tragedy.

It is a beautiful example of direct cooperation between artists from both countries and between the New York Visual Arts School and the Havana Experimental Graphic Arts Workshop. The fruit of these efforts will certainly make history. I hope that this will not be the last joint project between creative artists from both countries as unfortunately it is likely to be if the new restrictions that practically impede any future links are maintained.

From their own vision and their own free interpretation, every one of our artists here symbolically raises the Towers again in a fraternal embrace and with the unequalled force of humanity and culture. This is a message of peace and sincere friendship towards New York and the people of the United States. By building up these towers with love, nobody, but nobody, can bring them down."

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