In response to a movement to give Cubans at least some freedoms, Fidel Castro has responded by declaring socialism "untouchable," and setting up an organized "petition" campaign of his own in opposition.

The Valera Project is taking advantage of a feature of Cuban law that states that anyone who can raise 10,000 signatures in a petition can bring an issue up before the National Assembly.

Following is what the Valera Project is looking to enact:

The project proposes that the laws change and give us the freedom of expression and association, a multiparty system, free press, free trade unions and other freedoms that are obvious in a democratic system but that we do not enjoy in Cuba.



The project asks that all-political prisoners--many of them serving heavy sentences for having tried to exercise freedom of opinion—be freed. Here in Cuba, private enterprise is a privilege reserved for foreigners. The project proposes to change the laws so that Cubans could own and run private businesses.

Current election law provides for one candidate per seat in parliament, proposed by organizations controlled by the Communist Party. A new electoral law that the project demands would guarantee to Cubans the right to freely elect their parliament.

The project also asks for free elections to be held a year after the approval of the referendum.



There are people in Cuba who have the guts to sign their names on this kind of thing in the face of certain punishment.

In response, Castro has created his own petition program, declaring Socialism "untouchable," and is setting up over 120,000 petition stations around the country, about one station for every sixty registered voters in Cuba, or one for every ninety inhabitants. In case the point isn't clear enough, many of the stations are set up inside neighborhood headquarters for the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the thugs who run the "vigilance committees" on each residential block across the country. Castro expects to get the signature of every registered voter on his referendum, and sees no reason to believe otherwise.

Castro has stated that his petition campaign will be organized by organizations representing women, university students, workers and other groups. "It will not be a state activity," he says.

With "the proverbial organizational ability acquired by our people, their culture, and their political conscience, this important step will be made, and at the end there will remain absolutely no doubt about how the people of Cuba feel and think," he said. "Millions of Cubans will also give, in the same way, an appropriate and resounding response to the liberator who no one invited: Mr. W. Bush," Castro said of President Bush, using a shortened nickname he recently adopted.

The usual million-man-marches have been organized.

Look at the list of goals of the Valera Project, and the fact that Castro sees these goals as totally impossible under socialism.

Then keep trying to convince yourself that socialism is "just an economic system, not a political system" and that the Marxism at the core of all Leftist philosophy has nothing to do with any of this. You might be kidding yourselves, but you're not kidding anyone else.