Reflections of Fidel

(to the Cuban National Assembly, December 28, 2007)

Comrades of the National Assembly:

You have no easy task on your hands. On January 1st, 1959, surrounded by the accumulated and deepening grievances that our society inherited from its neo-colonial past under U.S. domination, many of us dreamed of creating a fully independent nation where justice prevailed. In the arduous and uneven struggle, there came the moment when we were left completely alone.

Nearly 50 years since the triumph of the Revolution, we can justifiably feel proud of ourselves, as we have held our ground, for almost half a century, in the struggle against the most powerful empire ever to exist in history. In the Proclamation I signed on July 31, 2006, none of you saw any signs of nepotism or an attempt to usurp parliamentary powers. That year, at once difficult and promising for the Revolution, the unity of the people, the Party and State were essential to continue moving forward and to face the declared threat of a military action by the United States.

This past December 24, during his visit to the various districts of the municipality which honored me with the nomination of candidate to parliament, Raúl noted that all of the numerous candidates proposed by the people of a district famous for its combativeness, but with a low educational level, had completed their higher education. This, as he said on Cuban television, made a profound impression in him.

Party, State and Government cadres and grassroots organizations face new problems in their work with an intelligent, watchful and educated people who detest bureaucratic hurdles and inconsiderate justifications. Deep down, every citizen wages an individual battle against humanity’s innate tendency to stick to its survival instincts, a natural law which governs all life.

We are all born marked by that instinct, which science defines as primary. Coming face to face with this instinct is rewarding because it leads us to a dialectical process and to a constant and altruistic struggle, bringing us closer to Martí and making us true communists.

What the international press has emphasized most in its reports on Cuba in recent days is the statement I made on the 17th of this month, in a letter to the director of Cuban television’s Round Table program, where I said that I am not clinging to power. I could add that for some time I did, due to my youth and lack of awareness, when, without any guidance, I started to leave my political ignorance behind and became a utopian socialist. It was a stage in my life when I believed I knew what had to be done and wanted to be in a position to do it! What made me change? Life did, delving more deeply into Martí’s ideas and those of the classics of socialism. The more deeply I became involved in the struggle, the stronger was my identification with those aims and, well before the revolutionary victory I was already convinced that it was my duty to fight for these aims or to die in combat.

We also face great risks that threaten the human species as a whole. This has become more and more evident to me since I predicted, for the first time in Rio de Janeiro, –over 15 years ago, in June 1992– that a species was threatened with extinction as a result of the destruction of its natural habitat. Today, the number of people who understand the real danger of this grows every day.

A recent book by Joseph Stiglitz, former Vice-President of the World Bank and President Clinton’s chief economic advisor until 2002, Nobel Prize laureate and bestselling author in the United States, offers up-to-date and irrefutable facts on the subject. He criticizes the United States, a country which did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, for being the largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, with annual emissions of 6 billion tons of this gas which disturbs the atmosphere without which life is impossible. In addition to this, the United States is the largest producer of other greenhouse gases.

Few people are aware of these facts. The same economic system which forced this unsustainable wastefulness on us impedes the distribution of Stiglitz’ book. Only a few thousand copies of an excellent edition have been published, enough to guarantee a margin of profit. This responds to a market demand, which the publishing house cannot ignore if it is to survive.

Today, we know that life on Earth has been protected by the ozone layer, located in the atmosphere’s outer ring, at an altitude between 15 to 50 kilometers, in the region known as the stratosphere, which acts as the planet’s shield against the type of solar radiation which can prove harmful. There are greenhouse gases whose warming potential is higher than that of carbon dioxide and which widen the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, which loses as much as 70 percent of its volume every spring. The effects of this phenomenon, which is gradually taking place, are humanity’s responsibility.

Few people are aware of these facts. The same economic system which forced this unsustainable wastefulness on us impedes the distribution of Stiglitz’ book. Only a few thousand copies of an excellent edition have been published, enough to guarantee a margin of profit. This responds to a market demand, which the publishing house cannot ignore if it is to survive.

To have a clear sense of this phenomenon, suffice it to say that the world produces an average of 4.37 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita. In the case of the United States, the average is 20.14, nearly 5 times as much. In Africa, it is 1.17, while in Asia and Oceania it is 2.87.

The ozone layer, in brief, protects us from ultraviolet and heat radiation which affects the immune system, sight, skin and life of human beings. Under extreme conditions, the destruction of that layer by human beings would affect all forms of life on the planet.

Other problems, foreign to our nation and many others under similar conditions, also threaten us. A victorious counterrevolution would spell a disaster for us, worse than Indonesia’s tragedy. Sukarno, overthrown in 1967, was a nationalist leader who, loyal to Indonesia, headed the guerrillas who fought the Japanese.

General Suharto, who overthrew him, had been trained by Japanese occupation forces. At the conclusion of World War II, Holland, a U.S. ally, re-established control over that distant, extensive and populated territory. Suharto maneuvered. He hoisted the banners of U.S. imperialism. He committed an atrocious act of genocide. Today we know that, under instructions from the CIA, he not only killed hundreds of thousands but also imprisoned a million communists and deprived them and their relatives of all properties or rights; his family amassed a fortune of 40 billion dollars -which, at today’s exchange rate, would be equivalent to hundreds of billions- by handing over the country’s natural resources, the sweat of Indonesians, to foreign investors. The West paid up. Texan-born Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was then the President of the United States.

The news on the events in Pakistan we received today also attest to the dangers that threaten our species: internal conflict in a country that possesses nuclear weapons. This is a consequence of the adventurous policies of and the wars aimed at securing the world’s natural resources unleashed by the United States.

Pakistan, involved in a conflict it did not unleash, faced the threat of being taken back to the Stone Age.

The extraordinary circumstances faced by Pakistan had an immediate effect on oil prices and stock exchange shares. No country or region in the world can disassociate itself from the consequences. We must be prepared for anything.

There hasn’t been a day in my life in which I haven’t learned something.

Martí taught us that “all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn”. Many times have I said and repeated this phrase, which carries in eleven words a veritable school of ethics.

Cuba’s Five Heroes, imprisoned by the empire, are to be held up as examples for the new generations.

Fortunately, exemplary conducts will continue to flourish with the consciousness of our peoples as long as our species exists.

I am certain that many young Cubans, in their struggle against the Giant in the Seven-League Boots, would do as they did. Money can buy everything save the soul of a people who has never gone down on its knees.

I read the brief and concise report which Raúl wrote and sent me. We must not waste a minute as we continue to move forward. I will raise my hand, next to you, to show my support.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 27, 2007

Fidel’s message to the Roundtable

Dear Randy:

I listened to the entire “Roundtable” program on Thursday the 13th without missing a single second of it. The news about the Bali Conference highlighted by Rogelio Polanco, editor-in-chief of Juventud Rebelde, confirms the importance of the international agreements and why they must be taken very seriously.

That island hosted a meeting of numerous heads of government from the so-called Third World who are fighting for their development and demanding equal treatment, financial resources and technology transfer from the representatives of industrialized nations also represented there.

In response to the tenacious obstruction by the United States in the midst of the 190 representations meeting there and after 12 days of negotiations, the secretary general of the United Nations said on Friday the 14th, Cuban time —when it was already Saturday in Bali— that the human species could disappear as a consequence of climate change. Then he left for East Timor.

That statement turned the conference into a buzzing beehive. By the twelfth day of sterile efforts at persuasion, the Yankee representative Paula Dobriansky, sighing deeply, stated: “We join the consensus.” It is obvious that the United States maneuvered to deal with its isolation, although it changed absolutely nothing in the empire’s dark intentions.

The big show came: Canada and Japan immediately joined the United States in response to the other countries, which were demanding serious commitments on the emission of gases that cause climate change. Everything had been anticipated beforehand among the NATO allies and the powerful empire which, in a deceptive maneuver, agreed to negotiate in 2008 in Hawaii, U.S. territory, for a new proposed agreement that would be presented and approved in the Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, to substitute the Kyoto agreement when it expires in 2012.

In this theatrical solution, the role of savior of the world was reserved for Europe. Brown, Merkel and other leaders of European countries spoke, asking for international gratitude. An excellent Christmas and New Year’s gift. None of the eulogists mentioned the tens of millions of poor people who continue to die of disease and hunger every year given the complex realities of today, as if we lived in the best of all possible worlds.

The Group of 77, comprised of 132 countries fighting for their development, had reached a consensus to demand that, by 2020, the industrialized countries should reduce gases that cause climate change from 20% to 40% below the level reached in 1990, and from 60% to 70% by the year 2050, which is technically possible. They also demanded the allocation of sufficient funds for technology transfer to the Third World.

It should not be forgotten that those gases lead to heat waves, desertification, the melting of glaciers and higher sea levels, which could cover entire countries or large parts of them. The industrialized nations share with the United States the idea of turning food into fuel for luxury cars and other wastefulness in consumer societies.

What I am affirming was demonstrated when, on Saturday, December 15, it was announced at 10:06 Washington time that the United States president had asked the Senate, and the latter had approved, $696 billion for military spending in the fiscal year 2008, including $189 billion allocated for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I experienced a healthy sense of pride in recalling the dignified and serene manner in which I responded to the hurtful proposals made to me in 1998 by then-Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien. I harbor no illusions.

My deepest conviction is that the answers to current problems in Cuban society, which has an average educational level of about 12th grade, almost one million university graduates and the real possibility of education for its citizens without any discrimination, require more varied responses for each concrete problem than the contents of a chessboard. Not one single detail can be ignored, and it is not going to be an easy road if the intelligence of human beings in a revolutionary society is to prevail over their instincts.

My essential duty is to not cling to posts, much less block the way for younger people, but to contribute experiences and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era in which it was my destiny to live.

I think, like Niemeyer, that one must be consistent until the end.

Please include this letter in the “Roundtable” program announced for today about Bali.

Fidel Castro
December 17, 2007

I am indebted to him. Yesterday marked another anniversary of his physical death. There are over forty different versions of how it occurred, but all coincide on several details that are of great interest.

Maceo was in the company of the young Francisco Gómez Toro, who had entered Cuba through the west of Pinar del Rio as part of the expedition headed by General Rius Rivera. Previously wounded in one arm, Panchito traveled together with Maceo from one shore of Mariel Bay to the other. With them were 17 brave officers from his general staff, a number of sailors and just one man from his escort.

That day, the 7th, in the camp they had improvised in the vicinity of Punta Brava, Maceo and his officers heard an account by Miró Argenter, the author of Crónicas de la Guerra (War Chronicles), of events of the combat of Coliseo, where the invading column had defeated General Martínez Campos’ troops. For several days, Maceo had been suffering a high epidemic fever and all of his wounds were hurting.

At around 3 in the afternoon, heavy gunfire was heard some 200 meters away from the camp situated west of the city of Havana, capital of the Spanish colony. Maceo was angered by the surprise attack, as he had ordered constant exploration, something his expert troops regularly did. He asked for a bugler in order to give orders; none was available at that moment.

He leapt onto his horse and rode toward the enemy. He ordered that an opening be made in the wire fence standing between him and the attackers. Noting the enemy’s apparent retreat, he exclaimed “this is going well” seconds before a bullet severed his carotid artery.

Panchito Gómez Toro, having learned what happened, arrived from the camp, ready to die next to Maceo’s fallen body. Gómez Toro tried to commit suicide after finding himself surrounded and about to be taken prisoner. First, he wrote a very short and dramatic farewell note to his family. The small dagger, the one weapon he carried with him for lack of a revolver, could not be driven in with enough force by the one hand he could still use. An enemy soldier, on seeing that someone was moving among the dead, slit his neck with a machete, nearly cutting off his head.

With Maceo’s death, demoralization spread among the patriotic troops, most of them inexperienced soldiers.

On learning what happened, Mambí Colonel Juan Delgado of the Santiago de las Vegas Regiment set off in search of Maceo.

The enemy had been in possession of the body, stripping it of personal belongings without realizing that it was Maceo, known and admired all over the world for his heroic feats.

The troops headed by Juan Delgado, in a valiant effort, rescued the lifeless bodies of the Titan and his young aide, son of Chief General Máximo Gómez. They buried them after long hours of marching along the heights of El Cacahual. At that time, the Cuban patriots did not say one word about this valuable secret.

Marti’s stern countenance and Maceo’s searing expression point, for every Cuban, to the arduous path of duty, not to a more comfortable life. There is much to read and meditate on in these ideas.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 8, 2007