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What led you to write this story?

A sense of betrayal and a rage that welled up inside me one morning, while watching CNN and drinking coffee with my mother, at the St. Augustine lighthouse. It was inconceivable to both of us, after enduring “Shake and bake” show trials, family separations and property confiscations in Cuba, to be reliving that painful past—live from Miami.

I’ve always felt that the abuses we suffered in Cuba are the standard “gruel” churned out by all tyrannies in their perpetual determination to smite our humanity, while prolonging their own survival. Whether done in the name of Lebensraum, cultural superiority or most cynically: God and freedom, and no matter what the scale (millions, thousands or hundreds); butchery and oppression on any level, indelibly scar the survivors forever. But, those vile experiences also make us empathetic. In essence, a victim’s firsthand taste of a hot poker’s cruelty instills in him, or her, the conviction never to emulate their oppressor. Unfortunately, revenge is narcotic, men love taking orders and every rule has exceptions. Miami was a prime example.

Is this story then, your “Mea Culpa” or maybe your “J’accuse?”

I’m neither racked with Latin guilt, nor blessed with Zola’s eloquence. In fact, this is not an admission of misdeeds, nor is it an effort to condemn others. What’s done is done. I’m just hopeful this imperfect yarn serves as a call to reflection for others, just as writing it has been for me. Every one of us, on occasion, needs to stop, step back and stare in a mirror while asking: What am I now? Who have I become?

You see, more often than we know, we allow the past to remind us of what we are not now. And yet, we’re creatures endowed with reason, for whom change, both intellectual and spiritual, is as inevitable as our physical ones. We are not the same people we were, whether born in Katmandu or Kalamazoo. We need to allow our idealized sense of self to meet up with who we really are.

Is this then a psychological yarn?

No, just a simple story about immigrants. You see, many tempest-tost arrivals like me live in a static past, which seduces us into a misplaced ethnic allegiance that bears no relation to reality. Hand in hand with this delusion, we abhor questions and debate, and we deny the overwhelming power of democracy on cue, while obsessing over its shortcomings.

However, this story is not targeted at immigrants chained to their mythical roots by fact or fiction, as much as it is aimed at the average John and Jane Doe, who work for a paycheck and are the backbone of our democracies. These folks are the ones that concern me most. They’re increasingly cowed by political correctness, a dwindling sense of self-worth and misplaced guilt over their first world status. As a result, they tolerate threats, honor killings in their midst and much more, all in the name of cultural relativity. A blind tolerance that fails to recognize that our “by the people and for the people” systems of government are under siege around the world.

What do you mean by self-worth when speaking of democracy?

Whether we look at the U.S. or England, Spain, Greece or France, I see the same malady spreading. Cross the Pacific and look at Australia then Japan, or head over the North pole and down to Norway, Sweden and Germany, even beyond into the boot of Italy; there is a dwindling sense of confidence and loss of devotion to liberty taking hold, at the level of the individual. Democracies are not a static political concept, but rather a collective of souls who share common ideals and values. Well, every one of those ideals and values were secured at great cost in lives—over generations.  And yet, the beneficiaries of those sacrifices made long ago, today merely stand on the sidelines, resigned to being spectators to bloody dogfights they’re not inclined to stop or at least condemn.

I suppose your reference to dogfights is tongue in cheek?

Not at all.  You’d be surprised at what’s going on in some of our democracies; countless exotic imports hidden behind the veil of cultural relativism: child marriages, female circumcision, slavery, gender and religious discrimination, honor killings etc.  Believe me, I realize that neither Americans, Englishmen or others are above dabbling in blood sports. I’m just pointing out there are some practices sufficiently inhuman and debasing, that they can neither be justified or tolerated from anyone, native or immigrant, and specially when cloaked under the euphemisms of culture, religion or the ever popular catch-all: diversity.

How do you see democracy as compromised?

We, in the free world, seem not only complacent, but also utterly disinclined to defend the fundamentals underpinning our democracies. In an effort to avoid conflict or disagreement, we cow-tow to the increasing intolerance around us, both imported and domestic. I ask you: how much intolerance are we willing to endure in the name of tolerance? At what point does disrespect for our culture, defiance of our laws and rejection of our language finally tip the scale unleashing the destruction of all the freedoms we hold dear? Point of fact: Does printing a voting ballot in Swahili or Urdu, in fact contribute to the viability of our democracy, or just the opposite. Is not culture, as embodied in our language and values, an inseparable component of our body politic and a linchpin of our freedoms?

I imagine that picture over your shoulder has a bearing on your concerns?

In fact it does. It serves for me as constant reminder of the days when democracies wielded their strongest weapon with devastating effect. Understand one thing: I’m not speaking of misguided invasions as policeman to the world or token battles where democracy is a P.R. banner. I’m speaking of defending freedom for its own sake—starting right here at home. I took that picture when I lived in West Berlin during the summer of 1980. As you can see, tyrannies need walls, minefields and electric fences to keep people in, while insulating themselves from the world. Why? Because anything, from a runaway rumor to the ridicule from a clever joke can spell their downfall. In fact, that wall came down without a shot, simply because we exercised our freedoms with purpose and conviction. We challenged their isolation at every turn.

On the other hand, look 90 miles off the coast of South Florida and you see a tyrant who has endured because we metaphorically provided the brick and mortar for his isolation. We allowed America’s foreign policy to be shanghaied, not by some foreign horde, but by a south Florida clique disdainful of Yankee democracy and hell-bent on insuring that their myopic personal interests, rather than America’s, were served by our representatives in Washington. But for their interference, Castro and his despotic regime would have also disappeared within weeks of that wall behind me.  

You paint such a bleak future for democracy, as if it’s already doomed. Is that your forecast?

Absolutely not. I see democratic institutions as embodying all the strengths of our collective reason. While an imperfect system, it is still the most self-correcting and the most flexible; the best in fact, when compared to all the other forms that wallow in tyranny, while invoking faith or überpatriotism. Every day I read headlines describing butchery in the name of God or massive waves of refugees cast into exile in the name of tribe or ethnic superiority. How can anyone not see democracy as superior, as priceless and for those of us who have it—as worthy of unrelenting defense?

So where’s the threat, the challenge?

The real threat is complacency. Yes, we are moving towards a global world order and we must reach out to other cultures, taking the best they have to offer and making it our own; that’s how it always worked in the past from village, to City-State, to Nation-State and it shall continue its course. But just as resolutely, we must reject what is debasing of our humanity or counter to our liberties, whether domestic or imported. At minimum, western cultures are no less deserving of survival and equally entitled to their space on this planet.

Offering asylum to the downtrodden is a moral imperative for any democracy. But every one of those souls we shelter and nurture should accept the fact that assimilation is not capitulation; in fact it is the course that all our ancestors followed. We are a testament to that successful process. Its essential that we, the advocates of democracy, raise our heads without arrogance, but cognizant of our achievements and mindful of our vulnerabilities in a world besieged by massive movements of peoples across borders; most of them set in flight by fanatics who are neither complacent or indecisive in affirming their disdain for all we hold dear. 

Do you see the world’s democracies at a disadvantage in this struggle?

No, not as along as we defend our principles and battle intolerance wherever it rears up, whether in an immigrant enclave, a temple, a school or our office. Look again at that picture. Amazing to me how all those concrete fortifications, those guard towers and minefields, were razed by one simple thing: the exercise of freedom’s corrosive power by word, thought and deed.

Tyranny’s palette seems broad, but from a painter’s perspective it’s still narrow, ranging from Mars black to burnt umber. The rest of the color spectrum belongs to the free world; but that span does not guarantee our survival, given the universal popularity of doctrine and the widespread ignorance that’s out to destroy us. It’s time for us all to stand up and reaffirm the primacy of our laws, to celebrate our cultural achievements and to take active part in protecting what is most dear and irreplaceable: our liberties.