Interviews with Carlos Alberto Montaner

I think we need to tell the international community and democratic countries that we all share a moral responsibility with those countries and societies that suffer the consequences of totalitarianism. A moral responsibility because we cannot live in a world in which we are proud of our global economy and the globalization of international transactions, but see suffering in certain societies as if it were happening in remote places that do not affect us. Globalization includes a moral responsibility towards all humans that are suffering.

Forgetting this in the 1930’s and 1940’s during World War II, the indifference of the world, is what brought about the massacres performed by the Nazis. Horrible crimes, especially against the Jewish community, six million Jews, because of the world’s indifference. Something similar happened with the communist dictatorships. Communist dictatorships destroyed millions of people. In the Black Book of Communism, which is an extensive compilation, they talk of 100 million deaths. Humanity must not allow that indifferent behavior towards others’ pain. It’s ethically immoral to maintain that indifference, it’s political suicide. What happens to a Cuban, to a North Korean, to an Iranian suffering under a dictatorship should affect us all.

Carlos Alberto Montaner is an exiled Cuban author and journalist. He was born in Havana in 1943. Soon after the revolution of 1959, he was imprisoned by the Castro regime on charges of participating in terrorist attacks and working with the CIA. Montaner, who was 16 years old at the time, emphatically denied the charges. He later escaped from prison and from Cuba.

In the 1960s, Montaner began writing a weekly column that was soon appearing in almost every Latin American country. In 1970, he moved to Madrid and began writing works of fiction and nonfiction. In 1972 he established a publishing house, Editorial Playor. His most widely acclaimed books include “Informe Secreto Sobre la Revolución Cubana,” published in 1975; “200 Años de Gringos,” published in 1976 on the occasion of the bicentennial of the United States and analyzing the reasons the United States has developed differently than Latin American countries; and “Fidel Castro y la Revolución Cubana” (1984).

It has been estimated that 6 million people now read his weekly columns, and he has lectured frequently throughout the hemisphere about the defense of liberty, economic development, and the important role of culture in the evolution of societies. He is also a regular commentator on CNN’s Spanish-language broadcasts.