End of the Year Greetings from the Five Cuban Patriots

Dear friends of the Cuban 5,

Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio and Fernando, send these holiday messages of solidarity to the Cuban people and to their friends around the world from their prisons and Rene from his unjust supervised probation.   

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Dear sisters and brothers,

This year 2012 is reaching an end and we want to use this special opportunity to express how proud and grateful we are for counting on your support, love and brotherhood.  

Thanks to your presence, we never feel alone, we are strong and optimistic, you give us the reasons to believe in justice and freedom. You give us the certainty that one day we will get together to celebrate this victory, and together we will go on fighting for just causes all over the world!!

Thanks so much for your solidarity and love!  

On behalf of the Cuban 5, our five families, and the Cuban people:
Marry Christmas!
Best wishes in the New Year!
Happiest 2013!!!!
Love and Peace! 

Ramón Labañino
Dec. 12th, 2012
FCI Jesup, Georgia. 8:21 A.M.

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Dear friends,

Another year of intense solidarity with the cause of our liberation comes to an end. There have been countless actions, demonstrations, and tangible results from the work of all of you in different parts of the world.

We feel the strength of your solidarity. A few years ago our situation was almost unknown but today, thanks to you, and to your tireless work on this initiative, the information about the case of the Five has reached almost all corners of politics and society and has virtually reached the entire universe. 

Much remains to be done. Not for lack of effort on your part, but because of the stubborn opposition and the obstacle that represents the powerful forces that collude to keep reality in the most absolute silence. 

However, we are confident in the human quality of you, in your wisdom and commitment as activists, and in your inexhaustible spirit of solidarity. We know that we can count on you and that you will accompany us until together we will achieve our goal; our freedom and our return to the Homeland and our families.

Please accept in every city or town of the universe from which you give us your solidarity our most profound gratitude. Thank you very much for your support, many successes in 2013, and congratulations on the New Year.

Fernando González Llort 
December 24, 2012  

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To our dear people and friends around the world,

Yesterday evening, while many here were watching television, I sat down to write a poem in my cell and that  is how these verses were born. As this year ends, when people are accustomed to receiving special gifts, I want to give them to all of you, and especially my four brothers.

SIMPLE FREEDOM

Simple freedom, nourishment of dreams,
love of a single face visible in the surface of the moon.
Simple freedom, without bridle, without owners,
free likes no one.

Simple freedom, of the unnamed peak,
where night falls buried in his lance
Simple freedom, in which man cultivates
the magic hope.

Simple freedom, as a swallow
that insists to fly until it loses its winds.
Simple freedom, under the sky and the ruins,
surrounded by bullets.

Simple freedom, as springtime
singing to life, challenging death.
Simple freedom, fiction of a frontier
against bad luck.

Simple freedom, giving birth and repeating
streets, cities, houses, books, songs, struggles.
Simple freedom, with which you learn
that you have many weapons.

Simple freedom, oh, face of love!,
it seems that I saw you in the skin of the moon.
Simple freedom, sentiment and honor
that no one can take from you.

In the year of the 54th Anniversary of the Revolution and also the year we will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, we move forward with indestructible unity and with full confidence in our revolution under the guidance and example of Fidel and Raul.

Congratulations, wishing you health, peace and success in your goals in 2013.

Five embraces.
¡Venceremos!

Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez
US Federal Prison, Marianna
December 25 , 2012

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Dear friends,

Once again we are at the end of another year, forced to write to you from the punishment that paradoxically has brought us the support that today motivate these grateful words. It has been 14 years of unjust vengeance during which time the most powerful country on earth, with their usual arrogance, has made deaf ears to the outcry of you all. 

For us it has been another year of this long and tiring struggle, but it also provides a reason to reaffirm ourselves. The future of humanity cannot stay in the hands of people with so much hatred. We either rise up over those who pretend to be the last human product of history, so as to put the future in the hands of the people; or not many generations will go on until stupidity and barbarism will manage to end it all.

Today humanity is focused in that battle for its own survival. Our continent is awakening from a long nightmare imposed by the blood and fire of imperialism. The contradictions of capitalism are everyday more evident and acute.  Our people are working to do everything possible to build itself into such a more humane alternative, one that is truly democratic and sustainable,  which has been a kind of utopia for humankind since it started its fight for justice. Our place is there with our people and also with all of you, who from your respective places work every day to build a better world that we all need, including for those who are trying to ignore it. 

To all of you that during these years have supported us, giving us your encouragement and making us feel that we are not alone; we send our best wishes of happiness and success in the New Year.

We will continue counting on you. In any trench that we are we will honor your solidarity and trust.

A fraternal embrace.

René González Sehwerert 
December 25, 2012

For more information about the Cuban 5 visit: www.thecuban5.org