Welcome Hollande, Goodbye Hollande

François Hollande and Raul Castro, at their meeting at the Palace of the Revolution. (EFE)

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 12 May 2015 — The official reception at the airport, the photo shaking hands with the host, the wreath laid at the statue of José Martí and the expected lecture at the University of Havana. How many foreign politicians have followed this script in recent months? So many that we have lost count.

A true shower of presidents, foreign ministers and deputies has intensified over Cuba without daily life feeling any kind of relief from such illustrious presences. To this parade of world leaders has been added, this week, the French president François Hollande, who assured us that his country wants to “strengthen ties with Cuba” so that both nations, “assume greater international leadership.

During his stay, the politician met with Raul Castro, visited Fidel Castro in his home, and awarded the Legion of Honor to Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino. The agenda did not include, however, any meeting with dissidents and activists. His vision of the Cuban stage could not be completed with a critical eye on the Government’s relationship with its own people. As the presidential plane lifted off, the official version of events barely registered on the retinas and ears of the French.

In a lecture at the University of Havana’s Great Hall, Hollande said that “to come to Cuba is to come to a country that represents for Latin America a form of expression, of vindication of dignity and independence.” Although he didn’t say it, the French president knows that he is in a nation with prisoners of conscience, without political parties, where opponents are threatened and repressed. A land without union rights, with an illegal independent press, and a military power that is handed down in the family.

On this visit we needed reaffirmation that the France of the Rights of Man still believes in the unshakeable values that recognize the rights of individuals to disagree, to express their differences without fear and to organize around them. We demanded some words of support, words that would confirm for us that the government of the European country is willing to support, in Cuba, the desires for freedom that have so marked and modeled its own national history.

In the minds of many, the first French president on Cuban soil will be remembered for his complacent posture toward the authorities

A man who has declared that French and Cubans have “shared the same movement of ideas, the same aspirations, the same philosophical inspiration, cannot believe that he has visited a country where citizens have chosen by their own free will to subordinate themselves to a totalitarian power. Does Hollande think that we have tacitly chosen the cage? Does he suppose, perhaps, that we are comfortable in our chains?

On the positive side of this visit, we will be left with the opening of the new Alliance Francaise headquarters, and a wider collaboration in tourism, education and health. However, in the minds of many, the first French president on Cuban soil will be remembered for his complacent posture toward the authorities. Hard to remember, after all these years, a trip with a script so very played-out.

Hollande was accompanied by a business delegation made up of companies such as Pernod Ricard, the hotel chain Accor, Air France, the distribution group Carrefour, the telecommunications company Orange, and several banks. Closing deals in the energy and tourist sectors was ultimately the most substantial share of their presence in Cuba, although the meeting with Fidel Castro has dominated the headlines.

Time will pass and our country will progress to a new political situation. We will hear some historians say that the influence exercised by the French president was decisive on this path to change. But that will be later, when the historians rewrite the past and adorn it at their convenience. For now, it is difficult to know how this insipid visit could influence our future.