lennon

DEAR JOHN,

YOU WERE ALWAYS AMONG US

Speech by Ricardo Alarcon Quesada, president of the Cuban National Assembly

Translation by Cindy O'Hara

On December 8, 2000 a statue of John Lennon by Cuban sculptor José Villa was dedicated in a park in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. The statute was unveiled by President Fidel Castro Ruz and singer Silvio Rodriguez.

Compañeras y compañeros:

Here, in front of the excellent work of art of José Villa, we return to listen to what some said twenty years ago today: "About this man you can believe anything except that he is dead. "

Nostalgia does not bring us together. We are not inaugurating a monument to the past, nor a site to commemorate something that disappeared.

This place will always be a testimonial to struggle, a summoning to humanism. It will also be a permanent homage to a generation that wanted to transform the world, and to the rebellious spirit, innovative, of the artist who helped forge that generation and at the same time is one of its most authentic symbols.

The sixties were much more than a period in a century that is ending. Before anything else, they were a attitude toward life, that profoundly affected the culture, the society and politics, and crossed all borders. Their renewing impulse rose up, victorious, overwhelming the decade, but it had been born before that time and has not stopped even up to today.

To these years we turn our sights with the tenderness of first love, with the loyalty that guards all combatants for their earliest and most distant battle. Some still denigrate them, with obstinate antagonism, those who know that to kill history they must first tear out its most luminous and hopeful moment.

This is how it is, and has always been in favor of or against "the sixties."

In that time old imperial colonies fell, people previously ignored arose and their art, their literature, their ideas started to penetrate the opulent nations. The Third World was born and tricontinental solidarity, and some discovered that there, in the rich north, existed another Third World that also awakened.

In the United States, a century after the Civil War, black people fought for the right to be treated as persons and with them marched many white students. In Europe the young people repudiated imperial violence and identified themselves with the condemned of the earth. Nobody spoke yet of globalization but, for everyone, the Earth got smaller, the whole world became closer.

Then, finally liberated, appeared Cuba, truly discovered in 1959 as an inseparable part, fully pledged to liberty, life and truth.

Victory seemed immediate. To obtain it, people strived without rest. In mountains and cities, with stones and fists, with weapons snatched from the oppressors and also with speeches, poems and songs. They tried to assault the sky, to conquer, in a single act, all justice, for the black and the woman, for the worker and the poor, for the sick, the ignorant, and the marginalized. They believed they could arrive at a horizon of peace between nations and equality among men.

It was more than anything the rebellion of the youth. Before their impetus fell dogmas and fetishes, they broke the molds of pharisee and banality, they turned back the dull mediocrity of an unjust and false society that reduces man to merchandise and converts everything into false gold.

Years afterward, and affirming the continuity of the movement, Lennon described it with these words: "The Sixties saw a revolution among the youth . . . a complete revolution in the mode of thinking. The young people took it up first, and the following generation afterwards. The Beatles were a part of the revolution. We were all in that boat in the sixties. Our generation -- a boat that went to discover the New World. And the Beatles were the lookouts on that boat. We were a part of it."

Tumultuous was the passage from that memorable concert in 1963 when Lennon asked the people who occupied the most expensive theater seats to, instead of applauding, just rattle their jewels, to six Novembers later when he returned the Order of the British Empire in protest of the aggression in Vietnam and the colonialist intervention in Africa. The refusal to perform before an exclusively white public in Florida, in 1966; the refusal to perform in the South Africa of apartheid; the denunciation of racism in the United States when he arrived there to participate in concerts that had been boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan; the calls for peace in the Middle East; the support for young people who deserted the Yankee aggressor army and the constant support to the Vietnamese resistance and the struggle of the Irish people; the incessant search for new forms of expression, without ever abandoning the roots and authentic language of the people; the repudiation of the bourgeois system, its codes and merchandizing mechanisms; the creation of a corporation to combat them and defend artistic liberty, an entity to which was attributed, even, a certain communist inspiration.

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DEAR JOHN, YOU WERE ALWAYS AMONG US Speech by Ricardo Alarcon Quesada, president of the Cuban National Assembly Translation by Cindy O'Hara On December 8, 2000 a statue of John Lennon by Cuban sculptor José Villa was dedicated in a park in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana. The statute was unveiled by President Fidel Castro Ruz and singer Silvio Rodriguez.


	Compañeras y compañeros: Here, in front of the excellent work of art of José Villa, we return to listen to what some said twenty years ago today: "About this man you can believe anything except that he is dead. " Nostalgia does not bring us together. We are not inaugurating a monument to the past, nor a site to commemorate something that disappeared. This place will always be a testimonial to struggle, a summoning to humanism. It will also be a permanent homage to a generation that wanted to transform the world, and to the rebellious spirit, innovative, of the artist who helped forge that generation and at the same time is one of its most authentic symbols. The sixties were much more than a period in a century that is ending. Before anything else, they were a attitude toward life, that profoundly affected the culture, the society and politics, and crossed all borders. Their renewing impulse rose up, victorious, overwhelming the decade, but it had been born before that time and has not stopped even up to today. To these years we turn our sights with the tenderness of first love, with the loyalty that guards all combatants for their earliest and most distant battle. Some still denigrate them, with obstinate antagonism, those who know that to kill history they must first tear out its most luminous and hopeful moment. This is how it is, and has always been in favor of or against "the sixties." In that time old imperial colonies fell, people previously ignored arose and their art, their literature, their ideas started to penetrate the opulent nations. The Third World was born and tricontinental solidarity, and some discovered that there, in the rich north, existed another Third World that also awakened. In the United States, a century after the Civil War, black people fought for the right to be treated as persons and with them marched many white students. In Europe the young people repudiated imperial violence and identified themselves with the condemned of the earth. Nobody spoke yet of globalization but, for everyone, the Earth got smaller, the whole world became closer. Then, finally liberated, appeared Cuba, truly discovered in 1959 as an inseparable part, fully pledged to liberty, life and truth. Victory seemed immediate. To obtain it, people strived without rest. In mountains and cities, with stones and fists, with weapons snatched from the oppressors and also with speeches, poems and songs. They tried to assault the sky, to conquer, in a single act, all justice, for the black and the woman, for the worker and the poor, for the sick, the ignorant, and the marginalized. They believed they could arrive at a horizon of peace between nations and equality among men. It was more than anything the rebellion of the youth. Before their impetus fell dogmas and fetishes, they broke the molds of pharisee and banality, they turned back the dull mediocrity of an unjust and false society that reduces man to merchandise and converts everything into false gold. Years afterward, and affirming the continuity of the movement, Lennon described it with these words: "The Sixties saw a revolution among the youth . . . a complete revolution in the mode of thinking. The young people took it up first, and the following generation afterwards. The Beatles were a part of the revolution. We were all in that boat in the sixties. Our generation -- a boat that went to discover the New World. And the Beatles were the lookouts on that boat. We were a part of it." Tumultuous was the passage from that memorable concert in 1963 when Lennon asked the people who occupied the most expensive theater seats to, instead of applauding, just rattle their jewels, to six Novembers later when he returned the Order of the British Empire in protest of the aggression in Vietnam and the colonialist intervention in Africa. The refusal to perform before an exclusively white public in Florida, in 1966; the refusal to perform in the South Africa of apartheid; the denunciation of racism in the United States when he arrived there to participate in concerts that had been boycotted by the Ku Klux Klan; the calls for peace in the Middle East; the support for young people who deserted the Yankee aggressor army and the constant support to the Vietnamese resistance and the struggle of the Irish people; the incessant search for new forms of expression, without ever abandoning the roots and authentic language of the people; the repudiation of the bourgeois system, its codes and merchandizing mechanisms; the creation of a corporation to combat them and defend artistic liberty, an entity to which was attributed, even, a certain communist inspiration.

			Text (c) 2000 R. Alarcon Photos (c) 2000 K. Epstein Translation & Webpage (c) 2000 C. O'Hara
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