"Doing is the best way of saying"

Abstract

Lothar Kohl's article may raise some questions. Moreover, how else to explain the early presence of Cuban teachers and doctors in the most inaccessible, impoverished, difficult communities of the current autonomous regions, if not with that phrase of Tomás Borge: “solidarity is the tenderness of the peoples”. It cannot be otherwise. The usual cynics will say that Cuban expansionist communism, eager to brainwash the Costa Ricans, is the explanation. Let us accept, in principle, such a crude argument. And then one might ask: why didn't the enemies of Cuban expansionism go to teach literacy, cure, build, to the same communities where the Cubans worked? The cynics will reply: it is because the Sandinistas did not let us. Again, let us accept the singular reasoning. But we answer them with another question: why, before the Sandinistas and the Cubans, didn't those they accuse with so much determination go to those remote communities, to show their concern for the welfare of the people of the coast?