Monday. Feb. 15, 1969 University Daily Kansas
Page 3
Letter-Writers Defend Actions of Cubans We Defend Our Sovereignty Value Judaments Criticized
Editor:
We, the undersigned Cuban students, would like to answer some of the points made in Thursday's Kansan editorial, signed by Jack Harrison.
How easy it is to call disgrace the civic attitude of a group of students! If to make fools of ourselves means to defend the sovereignty and dignity of our Fatherland, Cuba, against the false and intentional outburst of lies coming from such frustrated reporters as Mr. Jules Dubois, we would not hesitate to do it again.
So we have given ourselves a black eye, and other students as well. What in the world is Mr. Dubois doing when he spills his horrendous outburst of calumnies against us? If you went to a foreign country and had to listen to certain reporters emphasizing in major scale the worst points of juvenile delinquency and racial discrimination, and measuring the American people on the basis of such judgments, without any regard to the great realization of this nation, what would you have done if you had felt a little bit of dignity? I bet that you wouldn't have given yourself a black eye, as you called our action, but a knockout for sure.
As you put it, we have placed the University in a bad light. Anyone with a little bit of conscience and understanding would understand that a University is great when its students are concerned with the problems affecting their country, and not with trivial matters.
Let it be known that Mr. Dubois refused to have an open discussion with us, stating later that we must have been paid by the Cuban government and handpicked by Castro in order to carry out such acts. A reporter who stated such a thing is likely to go farther in his misconceptions.
When the meeting was over some students asked him about his picture with some of Trujillo's agents at the Conference of Chile, which appeared in Venezuelan newspapers. This time he waved his fist angrily and after shouting a few words, left the room in visible anger. He left proof that he did not want to talk and "prove his facts." He just wanted to deceive the audience gathered in his honor, and we, as any other persons whose dignity and sovereignty are placed in a dubious spot, stood and raised our voices against such outrage.
How hard it is to understand and not be understood. How easy it is to crush the morale and dignity of students, especially the Cubans, when we saw our country being defamed by the "honored" journalist of the Chicago Tribune.
That is Latin America itself? We have to shout to be heard! To you
Estamos Contigo Fidel!
A Reply to Jules Dubois
The monster broke our backs
With bloody fingers,
The cane turned red,
And sugar tears
Beneath our backs
Fell to the dust of
Foreign soil
In our backyard.
Dry sun in the drying racks
Seared our faces,
Leaving parched lips
Where hunger dwelt
In green land.
Our clothes held white bones
In burnt skin
And starvation,
El tiempo del muerto,
Amidst the flowers.
Estamos contigo Fidel!
Our flesh is smoked in foreign pipes,
Our blood is boiled for foreign candy,
And we lie here.
White bones amidst the flowers,
In our backyard.
Estamos contigo Fidel!
Estamos contigo Fidel!
and many others like you we are just a bunch of kids with impolite manners. But our pride and decency will be as high as the glorious Sierra Maestra. No matter what you want to call us, we have grown in dignity and austerity toward our Fatherland. Jose Marti, the apostle of our independence from Spain, said, "It is not a kid, he who can defend with courage the dignity of his Fatherland against any kind of defaemation."
Arly Allen
—Lawrence senior
Editor:
Policy?
Ramon A. Mayor
Placetas, Cuba, junior
Luis E. Mayor
Placetas, Cuba, junior
Just what do you want? If the UDK would keep its editorial staff long enough to clearly state its editorial policy, I am sure this confusion would not arise.
Placetas, Cuba, junior
All last summer you cried "student apathy." Your big arguments were that students were only interested in their own physical comfort (Re: Summerfield Hall Heat) and interested in neither national nor international affairs. I agreed with this. Now, when students have a voice in international affairs you tell them to "Grow up, Kiddies."
I could tell you that you were wrong in assuming that it was only the Cubans and Latin American students that voiced their opinions and thus only vested interests were involved, but this is not the point at all. The fact that the so-called apathetic student body raised its voice for once and was put down is significant of the ambivalent nature of your editorial policy.
You can't cry for a thing and not be "grown up" enough to handle it when you see it. It is easy to heap the chastisement of immaturity upon a subject that you in effect take the fifth amendment upon.
It is highly significant that about five years ago a man stood on the most populated corner in New York City with a copy of the Preamble of the Constitution of the U.S. in the hopes of soliciting signatures of people who agreed with its precepts. The N. Y. Times reported that after eight hours he could not get one signature. Needless to say this was at the height of the McCarthy pogrom.
When one lives in a virtual desert of interest in international affairs, as exists at KU, and the long dormant seeds begin to sprout, does one pull up the shoots lest they make a presumptuous and unmannerly display?
Is this lack of affirmation of the principles upheld in the Constitution an example of your kind of maturity? Would the people who might have signed be told to "grow up, kiddies?"
The vested interests of the Cubans and Latin Americans on this issue is of course less important than the non-vested more dispassionate interests of the few internationally-oriented American students. Can we consider these interested Americans less important than the ultra-conservative views of the Chicago Tribune whose foundations are based on such glorious traditions of Col. McCormick as his "America First" campaigns and his pro-fascist enthusiasm?
How can the "UDK call this student body apathetic if its own staff will condemn the few voices who cry out as "brash, impolite outbursts"? I wonder if the word communism has not been semantically confused with "outspoken"??!
New York graduate student
Donald Kissil
In the UDK editorial (Feb. 11, 1960) you state that "a small number of KU students gave a black eye not only to themselves, but to KU students in general, and especially other Latin Americans."
Editor:
P. S.-On Lincoln's birthday I am reminded of a man who though brash and often impolite cared enough for the little voice that he became president so that it may be heard. (Editor's note: Kansan editorial editors change every semester. The opinions stated in a particular editorial are those of the person whose name appears on the editorial.)
This is a value judgment to which you are entitled when writing editorials. But another value judgment is that your values are derived of a national sickness; i.e., an antagonism against difference—an antagonism which recently caused teenagers to choose "egg-head" as the number one word having the worst connotation for them.
You would suggest that the courage to fight for truth when one believes it threatened by lies is not courageous, but "brash and impolite." It should not be done, for it causes contention — and contention is uncomfortable.
But more important, your feelings (if these are your feelings) are irrelevant to the issue; i. e., are Mr. Dubois and other newsmen deceiving the people of the United States as to the practices of the Castro regime?
It is all right to shout "freedom of the press," but the history of the American press is spotted with instances when the press was free, but the freedom of expression existed only for the partisan interests the press represented.
The press is free today, but newspaper studies have shown that not all papers lend the freedom of expression to all national interests—and one of the worse offenders is the "Chicago Tribune."
The press was free when the "Chicago Tribune,"the "New York World" and Hearst papers started the Spanish-American War.
A CBS newsman, Robert Taber,
who has reported in Cuba since
April 1957 and is doing research for
a book on Cuba, writes in the Jan.
23 "Nation" that the American
press view of Castro has varied
each time the press has reassessed Castro's intentions and their effect upon American business.
Once Castro was the press's "romantic bourgeois hero" but now he is its "dangerous fanatic and Communist."
But Castro is neither, Mr. Taber writes. Castro is for independence, self-determination, economic emancipation, and social justice. He is for the Cuban people.
Mr. Taber documents a basic economic and political conflict of interests between Castro, a ruler representing the people of Cuba, and American businesses which exploited the people under Batista for profit.
Editor:
Mr. Taber, a reporter equally as prominent as Mr. Dubois, has given a report diametrically opposed to that of Mr. Dubois. You, as a Kansan editor might better have reviewed this report for your readers than giving them value judgments.
Mr. Taber writes in regard to the press:
"There has been a virulent press campaign, concocted of ignorance, half-truths, name-calling, connotative misdirection and outright fabrication, all tending to erode the first bright image of the revolution and to discredit its leadership."
Larry Miles
Besides, why so much exaggerated veneration for Mr. Dubois, the perfect gentle knight, who has already been declared persona non grata in Cuba, Venezuela, Dominica, and Argentina. Are we to measure the value of Mr. Dubois' personality by the number of countries he has mortally offended? Just as a certain political school measures the value of Mr. Nixon's
'We Are Amazed'
We feel almost compelled to answer this adolescent leader styled "Grow up Kiddies." We are amazed at such a reaction to a mere example of free speech. There are times when the expression of emotion is not only inevitable but salutory. Why should Mr. Dubois, and the American people, be insulated from the impact of Latin American indignation about the North American attitude to Cuba? The students of a university should represent the most active and radical elements of a country and not the most conservative and security conscious. It is not part of the tradition of a free country to regard every manifestation of political conviction a "Beatnikism."
Larry Mues Lawrence graduate student
by the number of stones which have been thrown!
Secondly, why should we accept Mr. Dubois as an infallible authority on the standards of freedom of the press, when he asserts that the press should have the right to print whatever it pleases, no matter how erroneous it is? Has the press no responsibility to the people for the dissemination of accurate information? In fact, during the Batista regime, it is notorious that the coverage of Cuban affairs by the American press was prejudiced, defective, and highly corrupt. The most striking example of this was when the American press unanimously reported the end of the Castro revolt—the day before Batista fled! Have we any reason to believe that the American press has become more honest or reliable since?
Thirdly, another interesting problem comes to mind. The contrast between the complete news blackout of the press on the 20,000 executions by Batista and the very extensive news coverage on the nationalization of property by Castro. It seems that we must regard
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