Reflections of Fidel

While I was preparing a reflection about McCain’s relationship with the anti-Cuban terrorist mafia in Miami and other related subjects of historical interest, fresh news was flowing about this character that is being projected by the empire’s hawks as Bush’s replacement: his visit to Colombia and Mexico which will begin tomorrow. It is not possible to avoid them since they confirm the opinions we have held.

“McCain will be in Colombia for two days, starting tomorrow on Tuesday, and then he will travel to Mexico”, the Panamanian newspaper La Prensa informs us.

“The United States Fourth Fleet returns to patrol Latin American waters”, Clarín, the Argentine newspaper with largest circulation, publishes; “This time under the command of Rear Admiral Joseph Kernan. Kernan who, up till now has been Commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, has a background that is rather worrying”, the newspaper comments. “The naval officer belongs to the Navy SEALs, an elite commando team made up of men chosen for the toughest of special operations, trained to act in the most adverse and challenging conditions. They were in action in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The choice of Kernan to command the Fourth Fleet, according even to the Pentagon’s own admission, is absolutely unusual…” “Furthermore, with this decision, the Southern Command reaches the same level of importance as the Central Command operating in the Persian Gulf with the U.S. Fifth Fleet”.

“What reason could the United States have to send such a powerful naval force to a region in peace, without nuclear power, without any real military conflicts or threats?·, the newspaper wonders. “They are never going to admit that it is because of natural resources, but it is no coincidence that this decision comes just when a structural change in world economy is beginning, in which reserves of fresh water, food and energy resources take on a position of important strategic value”, replies Professor Khatchik Der Ghougassian of the Argentine University of San Andrés, an expert on security issues.

The professor adds that

“They do not hide the enormous importance of the oceans of the southern Western Hemisphere and they admit that this will increase their capacity for action since the U.S. Fourth Fleet will be supervising ships and aircraft, including both civilian and commercial navigating south of the United States.”

“James Stavridis, the current Commander of the Southern Command”, Clarín continues, “added drug trafficking, the fight against terror and the possibility of responding to the massive migration of refugees from countries such as Haiti or Cuba. James Stevenson, Commander of the United States Naval Forces Southern Command, specified that his vessels could even reach the extensive system of rivers in South America, navigating more in fresh waters than in the traditional salt waters. In other words, they shall have a vast control of the Latin American interior.

“United States Naval Forces Southern Command carries out social work such as the distribution of food or medical supplies that would allow them to convince the U.S. Congress that such penetration is justified”

the Argentine newspaper adds.

El Universal of Mexico, under the headline “John McCain will go from the Basilica to Iztapalapa”, writes:

“John McCain will travel to Mexico not just to makes politics. Or perhaps not just party politics. The Republican candidate will visit the Basilica of Guadalupe. He will also tour one of the tough neighborhoods in Mexico City.”

“The visit McCain will make to Colombia and Mexico has had his team of collaborators working overtime, even on weekends”, the newspaper comments. “On Saturday night an event that had been planned as a farewell reception for the closing ceremony of the conference of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (known as NALEO in English), turned into a discussion roundtable about the scope of his trip to Latin America…he would be getting up early to do an interview with a Televisa news program. Then he would head to the northern part of the city where a half-hour visit to the Basilica of Guadalupe is scheduled…he would attend a luncheon with members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Mexico. Later he would be meeting with Mexican and American businessmen…he would end the day with a visit to the Iztapalapa neighbourhood where he would be briefed about strategies to fight organized crime and support community harmony.”

Amid a torrent of comments relating to the Republican candidate, 52,521 people with more than a million dollars live in South Florida, according to the latest detailed report by an important research firm. Almost all the capital came from Latin America.

McCain, not known to be a piously religious man, thinks that by offering a prayer at the Basilica of Guadalupe he will fool Catholics, Protestants, whites, blacks, Indians and mestizos in the countries where, by contrast, extreme poverty grows on a daily basis.

Today the front page of Granma reads: “U.S. airline fined for violating blockade against Cuba”, while a Mexican press agency refers to some 57 thousand Cubans arriving in that country between 2005 and 2007. It is well known that 20 thousand Cubans of all ages, except those fulfilling some indispensable social duty, are legally authorized each year to emigrate to that country; they travel safely, both the children and the adults have received education and are in good health. With the aim of family reunification, Cuba supports this sacrifice.

Those who have been enticed by the cynical Cuban Adjustment Act do so directly or through third countries, either secretly or under some legal cover; not only are they acting with a despicable lack of ethics but they are depriving our peoples’ economy of their specialists and qualified workers. It is an outrageous brain drain and it takes away our productive members; our homeland, in its heroic struggle, must fight this with determination.

I shall publish the reflection I prepared earlier some other day. It is worthwhile to know the real story.

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 30, 2008.
5:16 p.m.

He was born one hundred years ago in Valparaiso, in southern Chile, on June 26, 1908. His father, a middle-class lawyer and notary, was a member of Chile’s Radical Party. When I was born, Allende was already 18 years old. He was pursuing secondary studies in high school in his native city.

In his senior years, an old Italian anarchist, Juan Demarchi, introduced him to the works of Marx.

He graduated with top grades. He liked and practiced sports. He enlisted for military service voluntarily, joining the Cuirassiers of Viña del Mar Regiment. He asked to be transferred to the Lancers Regiment of Tacna, a Chilean enclave in the dry and semi-deserted north, a region later returned to Peru. He completed his service as an Army reserve officer. By then, he was already a man of socialist and Marxist ideas. He was not a weak or characterless young man. It was as though he sensed that he would one day fight to the death in defense of the convictions that were already taking shape in his mind.

He decided to study for the noble profession of medicine at the University of Chile. He organized meetings with a group of students who met regularly to read and discuss Marxist literature. He founded the Avance Group in 1929. He was elected vice president of the Federation of Chilean Students in 1930 and actively participated in the struggle against the Carlos Ibáñez dictatorship.

The Great Depression had already unleashed in the United States, following the Stock Market Crash of 1929. In Cuba, the struggle against Machado’s dictatorship was underway. Mella had been murdered. Cuban workers and students faced repression. Communists, led by Martínez Villena, organized a general strike. “We need a charge to do away with scoundrels, to complete the work of revolutions (…)”, Villena had written in a vibrant poem. Guiteras, a man of profound anti-imperialist sentiments, attempted to overthrow the dictatorship through an armed insurrection. Machado, who was unable to contain the nationwide upheaval, was overthrown and there ensued a revolution which the United States managed to crush, in a matter of months, with kid gloves and iron fist, securing absolute control of the island until 1959.

In a country where imperialist domination was brutally exercised over its workers, culture and natural resources, Salvador Allende remained true to his ideals in a struggle where he showed an unwavering revolutionary conduct.

In 1933, he graduated as a medical doctor. He took part in the founding of Chile’s Socialist Party. By 1935, he was already a leader at the Chilean Medical Association. He was imprisoned for nearly half a year. He impelled efforts to create a Popular Front and was elected sub-secretary general of the Socialist Party in 1936.

In September 1939, he was appointed head of the Department of Health of the Popular Front government. He published a book on social medicine. He organized the first Housing Fair. In 1941, he participated in the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in the United States. In 1942, he became Secretary General of Chile’s Socialist Party. In 1947, he voted in the Senate against the Permanent Defense of Democracy Law, also known as the “Cursed Law”, due to its repressive nature. In 1949, he was promoted to President of Chile’s Medical School.

In 1952, the Popular Front put him forth as presidential candidate. He was then 44 years old. He was not elected. He presented the Senate with a draft law for the nationalization of the copper industry. In 1954, he traveled to France, Italy, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Four years later, in 1958, he was proclaimed candidate to the presidency of the republic by the Popular Action Front, made up of the Popular Socialist Union Party, Chile’s Socialist Party and the Communist Party. He lost the election to the conservative Jorge Alessandri.

In 1959, he attended the inauguration ceremony of Venezuelan President Rómulo Betancourt, who until then had been considered a leftist revolutionary figure.

That same year, he traveled to Havana and met with Che and me. In 1960, he gave his support to Chile’s coal miners, who went on strike for more than three months.

In 1961, he and Che denounced the demagogic nature of the Alliance for Progress at an OAS meeting held in Punta del Este, Uruguay.

Appointed candidate to the presidency once again, he was defeated in 1964 by Eduardo Frei Montalva, a Christian Democrat who enjoyed the full support of the dominant classes and who, according to declassified US Senate documents, received campaign money from the CIA. During his time in office, imperialism attempted to craft what came to be known as the “Revolution in Liberty”, an ideological response to the Cuban revolution. What it engendered were the foundations of the fascist dictatorship. At that election, however, Allende had secured more than one million votes.

In 1966, he headed the delegation that attended the Tri-Continental Conference of Havana. He visited the Soviet Union for the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution. The following year, in 1968, he visited the Democratic Republic of Korea and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, where he had the pleasure of meeting and conversing with that country’s extraordinary leader, Ho Chi Min. His itinerary included Cambodia and Laos, at a time when revolutionary sentiments were at their most effervescent.

Following Che’s death, he personally accompanied three Cuban members of the Bolivia guerrilla to Tahiti, men who had survived the Heroic Guerrilla and were already in Chilean territory.

The Popular Unity Party, –a political coalition made up of communists, socialists, radicals, the MAPU, PADENA and Independent Popular Action parties– proclaimed him its candidate on January 22, 1970. On September 4 of that year, he won the elections.

Allende is a truly classical example of the peaceful struggle for the establishment of socialism.

The US administration, headed by Richard Nixon, went immediately into action following this electoral triumph. The Chilean Army’s Commander in Chief, General René Schneider, was the victim of an assassination plot on October 22 and died three days later. He had not kowtow to the imperialist demand that he lead a coup d’état. The attempt to keep the Popular Unity Party out of office had failed.

Allende legally took office on November 3, 1970 in a wholly dignified manner. From office, he began his heroic battle for change, and against fascism. He was already 62 years old. I had the honor of having fought next to him against imperialism for 14 years, from the time of the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

At the municipal elections of March 1971, the Popular Unity Party secured an absolute majority of votes (50.86 percent). On July 11, President Allende promulgated the Copper Nationalization Law, an idea he had presented before the Senate 19 years before. It was unanimously passed by Congress. No-one dared oppose it.

In 1972, before the UN General Assembly, Allende denounced the international aggression of which his country was victim. He received a standing ovation which lasted several minutes. That same year, he visited the Soviet Union, Mexico, Colombia and Cuba.

In 1973, at the March parliamentary elections, the Popular Unity Party obtained 45 percent of the vote and expanded its parliamentary representation.

The measures impelled by the Yankees in the two Houses to have the president dismissed met with failure. Imperialism and the Right intensified their all-out war against the Popular Unity government and unleashed acts of terrorism around the country.

I wrote Allende six confidential letters —I handwrote them in small print using a fine-point pen—between 1971 and 1973. In them, I took up issues of interest with the utmost discretion.

In May 21, I wrote him:

“(…) We’re amazed at your extraordinary efforts and the limitless energies you’ve poured into maintaining and consolidating your victory.

“Here, we can appreciate that the people are gaining ground, in spite of the difficult and complex mission they shoulder.

“The April 4 elections were a splendid and encouraging victory.

“Your courage and resolve, your mental and physical energy and ability to carry the revolutionary process forward, have been of the essence.

“Great and different challenges are surely in store for you, and you must face these in conditions which are not precisely ideal, but a just policy, with the support of the people and applied with determination, cannot be defeated (…)”

On September 11, 1971, I wrote:

“The carrier will travel to discuss the details of the visit with you.

“Initially, considering that a direct flight in a Cubana airliner is possible, we deemed it convenient to travel to Arica and to begin the tour at the north. Two things then come up: the interest you and Velazco Alvarado have expressed in a potential contact during my trip there; the possibility of using a Soviet IL-62 plane with greater capacity. If we opted for this, this would allow us to travel directly to Santiago by air.

“I am including an itinerary for the tour and activities. You may add, remove or introduce whatever modifications you deem appropriate.

“I have focused exclusively on what might prove of political interest and have not concerned myself much about the pace or intensity of the work, but we await your opinions and considerations on absolutely everything.

“We were very pleased with the extraordinary success you had in your trip to Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. When will we, in Cuba, have the opportunity to share in the heartfelt emotion and the warmth with which Ecuadorians, Colombians and Peruvians welcomed you?”

During that trip, whose itinerary I had conveyed to President Allende, my life was miraculously spared. I walked dozens of miles before an immense crowd, standing by the side of the road. The Central Intelligence Agency had organized three actions to ensure my assassination during the trip. At an interview for the press which had been previously coordinated, Cuban mercenaries, who had entered Chile with Venezuelan passports had a camera, supplied by a Venezuelan television broadcaster, equipped with automatic weapons. Ultimately, they were not brave enough, they who had only to pull the trigger at any point during the lengthy interview, while the cameras were on me. They did not want to risk death. What’s more, they had chased me down all around Chile, where they had not been able to have me as close and vulnerable as at that moment. I was to learn of the details of the cowardly action only years later. US Special Services had gone further than what we had imagined.

On February 4, 1972, I wrote Salvador:

“The greatest care was put into receiving the military delegation here. The Revolutionary Armed Forces devoted practically all of their time during those days to look after it. The gatherings were cordial and fraternal. The program was intense and varied. My impression is that the trip has been positive and useful, that it is possible and convenient to continue organizing such exchanges.

“I spoke with Ariel about the idea of your trip. I can understand perfectly well that the intense work ahead of you and the tone of the political struggle in recent weeks have not allowed you to schedule the trip for the approximate date we mentioned on that occasion. It is clear we had not taken these eventualities into account. That day, on the eve of my return to Cuba, when we dined in your house in the early morning hours, having little time and in the haste of the moment, it was reassuring for me to think that we would again meet in Cuba, where we would have the opportunity to converse at length. Nevertheless, I still harbor the hope that you can consider scheduling your visit for some time before May. I mention this month because, mid-May, at the latest, I must make a trip, which can no longer be postponed, to Algiers, Guinea, Bulgaria, other countries and the Soviet Union. This long tour will demand considerable time.

“I am immensely thankful for your impressions on the situation there. Here, more familiarized with, interested in and very much moved by the process Chile is experiencing each day, we are following the news that reach us very attentively. Today, we can better understand the affection and passion that the Cuban revolution must have inspired in others at the beginning. You could say we are re-living our own experience, from the outside.

“In your letter, I can appreciate the magnificent state of mind, serenity and courage with which you are determined to confront the challenges ahead. And that is of the essence in any revolutionary process, particularly one undertaken in the highly complex and difficult conditions of a country like Chile. I took away with me a very strong impression of the moral, cultural and human virtues of the Chilean people and of its notable patriotic and revolutionary sentiment. You have the singular privilege of being its guide at this decisive point in the history of Chile and America, the culmination of an entire life devoted to the struggle, as you said at the stadium, devoted to the cause of the revolution and socialism. There are no obstacles that cannot be surmounted. Someone once said that, in a revolution, one moves forward ‘with audacity, audacity and more audacity’. I am convinced of the profound truth of that axiom.”

I wrote President Allende again on September 6, 1972:

“I sent you a message on different matters with Beatriz. After she left and, in response to the news that reached us all last week, we decided to send comrade Osmany to reiterate our willingness to help in any way, and so that you can convey to us, through him, your impression of the situation and your ideas about the scheduled trip to this and other countries. The pretext for Osmany’s trip will be the inspection of the Cuban embassy, but this will not be publicly announced. We want his stay there to be as brief and discrete as possible.

“Work is already underway with respect to the points you made through Beatriz (…)

“Though we are conscious of the current difficulties faced by Chile’s revolutionary process, we are confident you will find the way to overcome these.

“You can rely on our full cooperation. A fraternal and revolutionary salute from all of us goes out to you.”

On June 30, 1973, we sent President Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity parties an official invitation to participate at the ceremonies organized to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Garrison.

In another letter, I wrote him:

“Salvador:

“The above is the official, formal invitation to the ceremonies in commemoration of the 20th anniversary. It would be formidable if you could hop over to Cuba on that date. You can imagine what this would mean in terms of joy, satisfaction and honor for Cubans. I know that this depends, more than anything, on your work and the situation there. We leave it, then, to your consideration.

“We are still under the impact of the great revolutionary victory of the 29th and your brilliant, personal role in the events. It is natural for many difficulties and obstacles to subsist, but I am certain that this first trial, where you have come out successful, will encourage you and consolidate the people’s confidence in you. These events have been attached special importance internationally and are considered a great triumph.

“With actions like those of the 29th, the Chilean revolution shall come out victorious of any test, no matter how hard. Again, Cuba is at your side and you can rely on your faithful friends of always.”

On July 29, 1973, I wrote him my last letter:

“Dear Salvador:

“With the pretext of discussing matters concerning the meeting of Non-Aligned Countries with you, Carlos and Piñeiro will travel to Chile. The real objective is for you to inform them on the situation and to offer you, as always, the assurance of our willingness to help you face whatever difficulties and dangers stand in the way of the revolutionary process. Their stay will be very brief, as they have much pending work here and, not without sacrificing part of their time, we decided they should make the trip.

“I see that you are now facing the delicate question of a dialogue with the Christian Democrats, in the midst of serious developments, such as the brutal murder of your naval aide-de-camp and the new truck-drivers strike. I can therefore imagine the great tension and your interest in winning time, improving the balance of forces in case the struggle should break out and, if possible, find a path that will allow you to carry the revolutionary process forward without a civil war, as well as assuming your historical responsibility for what could happen. Those are commendable aims. But, should the other side, whose real intentions we are not in a position to assess from here, pursue a treacherous and irresponsible policy and demand a price that the Popular Unity Party and the revolution cannot pay, something which, in fact, is quite likely, do not for a minute forget the formidable strength of Chile’s working class and the vigorous support they’ve shown you at all difficult moments. They can, at your call, defend the revolution in a moment of danger, paralyze the coup officers, impose their conditions on them and decide, once and for all, if it were necessary, Chile’s fate. The enemy must be conscious of this fact; they must be on guard and ready to go into action. Its strength and combativeness can tilt the balance of forces in your favor, even when other conditions are not as favorable.

“Your decision to defend the process steadily and honor, at the cost of your own life, which everyone knows you are willing to sacrifice, shall bring all forces capable of fighting and all men and women of honor in Chile to your side. Your courage, serenity and audacity at this historical time for your country and, above all, your firm, resolved and heroic leadership, are crucial in this situation.

“Let Carlos and Manuel know how your loyal Cuban friends can help.

“Let me remind you of Cuba’s affection and unqualified confidence in you.”

I wrote this a month and a half before the coup. The emissaries were Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Manuel Piñeiro.

Pinochet had talked with Carlos Rafael. He had feigned the kind of loyalty and firmness sworn by Carlos Prats, Army Commander in Chief for a time under the Popular Unity government, a dignified military man, who the oligarchy and imperialism brought to a total crisis, obliging him to resign, later murdered in Argentina by two DINA henchmen, following the fascist coup of 1973.

I had been mistrustful of Pinochet from the time I read the books on geopolitics he gave me as a gift during my visit to Chile and had the opportunity to observe his style up close, his declarations and the methods, as Army Chief, that he used when the provocations from the Right obliged President Allende to decree a state of siege in Santiago de Chile. I recalled what Marx had forewarned in the 18th Brumaire.

Many Army chiefs in the different regions and their general staffs wanted to converse with me wherever I was and showed considerable interest in issues related to our war of liberation and the experience of the Missile Crisis in 1962. The meetings, which lasted hours, would be held in the early morning, which was the only time I had available. I would agree to these to help Allende, to familiarize them with the idea that socialism was not an enemy of armed institutions. Pinochet, as a military leader, was not an exception. Allende considered those meetings useful.

On September 11, 1973, he died heroically, defending the Presidential Palace of La Moneda. He fought like a tiger until his last breath.

The revolutionaries who stood up to the fascist onslaught there would later recount incredible stories about those last moments. Their versions didn’t always agree, for they fought at different parts of the Palace. Also, some of their closest collaborators perished or were later assassinated during the intense and unequal battle.

The difference in the testimonies consisted in the fact that some affirmed he had fired his last shots at himself to avoid being taken prisoner and others that his death was brought about by enemy fire. The Palace was up in flames as a result of an attack perpetrated by tanks and planes which sought to consummate a coup they had considered an easy task that would meet with no resistance. There is no contradiction whatsoever between these two ways of answering the call of duty. In our wars of independence, there is more than one example of illustrious combatants who, when defeat was imminent, took their own lives to avoid falling prisoners.

Much remains to be said about what we were willing to do for Allende. Some have written about this, but it is not the aim of these lines.

Allende was born one hundred years ago today. His example shall live on.

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 26, 2008
6:34 p.m.

We know that people living in industrialized and wealthy countries spend, on average, 25 percent of their income on food. Those who live in nations which were condemned to economic underdevelopment by the former devote up to 80 percent of their income to this end. Many go physically hungry and endure immense social disparities. Unemployment rates are usually two to three times higher; infant mortality rates are even higher, and life expectancy is as little as two-thirds that which is reported in rich countries. This system is simply genocidal.

In the reflection I wrote three days ago, I stated: “Our country has demonstrated that it can stand up to all pressures and help other peoples”. Could Europe affirm the same thing?

A UNESCO report published yesterday, June 20, states that a 2-year study conducted with over 200 thousand children from 16 countries places Cuba as Latin America’s number one country in terms of third grade mathematics and reading and sixth grade mathematics and science, with over 100 points above the regional average. This is the second time Cuba is thus recognized by UNESCO.

It is reasonable to assume that no country where human rights are systematically violated can reach such high educational levels.

Why has Cuba been blockaded for 50 years?

Why is it the object of slander?

Why is it barred from all access to technical and scientific information?

Why do they seek to take it back to an unsustainable economic and social system which offers no answers whatsoever to humanity’s problems?

There is a reason millions of Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Uruguayan, Argentinean, Brazilian, Central American and other Latin American citizens have migrated to Europe, whence now they can be brutally returned to their countries of origin if they fail to meet the requirements set down by the new anti-immigrant laws.

What’s worse: figures several times larger of Mexican, Central and South American citizens have emigrated to the United States, crossing borders, walls and seas, without any kind of documentation or any Adjustment Act that privileges them or encourages them to emigrate. Of them, 500 die each year. In addition to this, thousands perish every year in Mexico and Central America, victims of organized crime, in the struggle to control the drugs market in the United States, where its highest authorities are unable and unwilling to combat drug use.

Assistant attorney José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos declared that human trafficking is the second most profitable illegal activity in the world. In the case of Cubans, profits are comparable to those of drug-trafficking:

“They charge as much as 10,000 dollars per person.”

The money comes from the United States. I don’t believe Mexico can become a haven for the trafficking of immigrants, as even US coast guards intercept and return those who are captured at sea.

Mexico is not obliged to accept having a version of the dry-foot wet-foot policy imposed on it.

There is no organized crime in Cuba or any kind of impunity for drug-trafficking. It has combated both efficiently, without resorting to a blood bath. Only hypocrisy explains why the United States hasn’t acknowledged this fact.

I did not write an anti-Europe diatribe, I simply wrote the truth. It is not my fault if the truth proves offensive.

To keep yesterday’s reflection short, I did not even mention weapons exports, military spending and NATO’s military adventures, let alone the secret flights and Europe’s complicity in the acts of torture perpetrated by the United States.

I have no knowledge of anyone having been arrested anywhere in the country for breaking the law. That has nothing to do with the reflection which I asked be published exclusively on Cubadebate. Any connection is totally arbitrary. I will make use of this Internet site as I deem appropriate. I shan’t try anyone’s patience. I don’t make a cent doing this, I work for free.

I am not, nor will ever be, the leader of a faction or splinter group. No one has any reason to assume, therefore, that there are inner struggles in the Party. If I write, it is because I continue to struggle, in the name of the convictions I have defended all of my life.

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 21, 2008

The discredited way in which the European Union suspended its sanctions on Cuba on June 19 has been reported in 16 international press dispatches. It has absolutely no economic effect on our country. On the contrary, the United States’ extraterritorial laws and, thus, its economic and financial blockade are still fully in effect.

At my age and with my state of health, one cannot be sure of the time one has left to live. Nevertheless, I want to express my contempt towards the immense hypocrisy of that decision. Such hypocrisy is made all the more evident by the brutal European measure to expel illegal immigrants from Latin American countries, some of which have populations which, in their majority, are of European origin. Immigrants are also the fruit of colonial, semi-colonial and capitalist exploitation.

In the name of human rights, Cuba is asked to grant impunity to those who would bind the feet and hands of the homeland and its people and hand them over to imperialism.

Even Mexican authorities have to admit that the Miami-based mob, at the service of the U.S. government, used force to snatch from the hands of an important contingent of migratory agents, or bought, dozens of illegal immigrants who had been arrested in Quintana Roo, including innocent children transported by force across risk-laden seas and mothers obliged to emigrate. Traffickers of human beings, like drug traffickers, who take advantage of the largest and most coveted of the world’s markets, have undermined the authority and moral statute needed by any government to lead the State, spilling Latin American blood everywhere, to say nothing of those who die trying to emigrate by climbing over the humiliating border wall erected over what was once Mexican territory.

The food and energy crises, climate change and inflation are scourging the world’s nations. As political helplessness prevails, ignorance and illusions tend to flourish. Not one of these governments, let alone those of the Czech Republic and Sweden, which were firmly opposed to the European Union“s decision, was able to give coherent answers to the questions that have been put on the table.

All the while, in Cuba, the mercenaries and traitors at the empire’s service are at their wit’s end and throw up their hands in horror in defense of the rights to treachery and impunity.

I have many more things to say, but let this suffice for today. It is not my intention to trouble others with these words, but, as I am alive, I continue to think about these things.

I shall publish this reflection on the Internet only, today, June 20, 2008.

Fidel Castro
June 20, 2008

It would seem there’s no topic worthy of addressing that would not bore our patient readers, after the Round Table program of June 12, which dealt with the new edition of a book published in Bolivia 15 years ago, featuring now a prologue I wrote. During this program, an introduction was also read written at a later date by Evo Morales and a message from the prestigious Argentinean writer Stella Calloni, to be included in an upcoming edition. I had carefully chosen the information I used for that prologue.

A powerful internationalist spirit, which had its roots in the broad contingent of Cuban combatants who participated in the anti-fascist struggle of the Spanish people and made the best traditions of the world worker’s movement its own, had developed in Cuba in the first years of the Revolution.

We are not in the habit of publicizing our cooperative efforts with other peoples, but it is at times impossible to prevent the press from mentioning it. Our cooperative efforts stem from profound feelings that have nothing to do with a desire for publicity.

Some ask themselves how it is possible for a small country with scarce resources to carry out tasks of such magnitude in fields as decisive as education and health, without which contemporary society is unthinkable.

Humanity developed the goods and services essential to its existence since establishing its first society, and the latter has in turn developed from the most elementary to the most sophisticated of forms over many thousands of years.

The exploitation of man by man was inseparable from this development, as we all know or ought to know.

The different ways in which this reality has been perceived have always depended on the place each of us occupies within society. For long, exploitation was seen as something natural and the immense majority was never aware of the above relation.

At the very height of capitalist development in England, which was a world leader, next to the United States and other countries in Europe, in a world that was already dominated by colonialism and expansionism, a great thinker and history and economics scholar, Karl Marx, on the basis of the ideas of the most prestigious German philosophers and economists of the time –including Hegel, Adam Smith and David Ricardo, with whom he disagreed– elaborated, wrote and published his ideas on capitalism’s relations of production and exchange in 1859 in a work titled Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In 1867, he continued to spread his ideas with the publication of the first volume of his most important work, a work that made him famous: The Capital. Most of the long book, on the basis of Marx’s notes and comments, was edited by Engels, who shared Marx’s ideas and, like a prophet, spread his work after Marx’s death in 1883.

What Marx published constitutes the most serious analysis ever to be written about class society and the exploitation of man by man. Marxism had thus been born, as the foundation of revolutionary parties and movements that proclaimed socialism as their objective, including nearly all social-democratic parties that, when World War I broke out, betrayed the slogan proclaimed by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848: “Workers of the world, unite!”

One of the truths that this great thinker expressed in simple terms was that: “In the social production during their lives, men establish certain necessary relations independent of their wills, relations of production which correspond to a given phase of development of their material productive forces. It is not man’s consciousness which determines its being, but on the contrary, it is its social being which determines its consciousness. On reaching a given phase of development, society’s material productive forces come into contradiction with existing production relations…From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations become obstacles to the latter and an era of social revolution thus begins…No social formation disappears before its productive forces are fully developed and no new and more advanced production relations emerge before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the old society”.

I could not find better words to more clearly and precisely express these concepts elaborated by Marx, concepts whose essence, with a basic explanation from a teacher, even one of the young Cubans who joined the Young Communists League this past Saturday June 14th could understand.

To describe the concrete development of the class struggle, Marx wrote The Class Struggle in France from 1848 to 1850 and the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, two excellent historical analyses that delight any reader. He was a true genius.

Lenin, a profound continuator of dialectical thought and Marx’s research, wrote two key works: The State and Revolution and Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Marx’s ideas, put into practice by Lenin through the October Revolution, were also developed by Mao Zedong and other Third World revolutionary leaders. Without them, the Cuban Revolution would not have taken place in the United States’ backyard.

Had Marxist thought simply limited itself to the idea that “no social formation disappears before its productive forces are fully developed”, the capitalist theoretician Francis Fukuyama would have been right in proclaiming that the collapse of the Soviet Union marked the end of history and ideologies and that all resistance to the capitalist system of production should cease.

When the founder of scientific socialism published his ideas, society’s productive forces were far from fully developed. Technology had not yet yielded deadly weapons of mass destruction capable of exterminating the human species; the aerospatial domain did not yet exist, nor did the unlimited squandering of hydrocarbons and non-renewable fossil fuels; climate change had not yet been detected in a natural world whose potential seemed infinite to humanity, nor had the world food crisis, to be borne by innumerable combustion engines and a population six times larger than that which inhabited the planet on the year Marx was born (then of one billion), made itself known yet.

Cuba’s socialist experience takes place at a time when imperial domination has expanded across the globe.

When I speak of consciousness I am not referring to a will capable of changing reality but, on the contrary, to knowledge of objective reality which can determine the path to follow.

Tens of million of people died in the war sparked off in the mid 20th century by fascism, an ideology which was new at the time, born in the anti-Marxist bosom of the developed capitalist world Lenin had foretold.

In Cuba, as in other Third World countries, the struggle for national liberation, under the leadership of the middle classes and petite bourgeoisie, and the struggle for socialism that the most advanced sectors of the working class and farmers had been waging over the years, combined and strengthened one another. Ideological and class contradictions also flourished. Objective and subjective factors varied considerably from one process to another.

The United Nations and other international organizations, where many saw the beginning of a new, international consciousness, emerged from the last world war. Those hopes were betrayed.

Fascism, whose instrument Hitler called the National Socialist Party, was re-born, more powerful and threatening than ever.

The empire deploys and keeps aircraft carriers in all of the world’s seas, ever ready for military intervention. What does it decide to do in order to compete with Cuba in our hemisphere? To deploy an enormous ship turned into a floating hospital that works ten days in each country. It can assist a number of people daily but it cannot solve a country’s problems. It does not compensate for the brain-drain, and it cannot train the specialists who are needed so that real medical services may be offered on any day of the week and year. All of the world’s aircraft carriers, which today are instruments of military intervention deployed across the world’s oceans, working as hospitals, could not offer those services to the millions of people treated by Cuban doctors in remote corners of the planet, where women go into labor, children are born and there are sick people in urgent need of attention.

Our country has demonstrated that it can stand up to all pressures and help other peoples.

I was thinking about our cooperative efforts, not only in Bolivia, but in Haiti, the Caribbean, several countries in Central America, South America, Africa and even distant Oceania, 20 thousand kilometers away. I also recalled the missions undertaken by the Henry Reeve Brigade, which responded to serious emergencies, traveling in our planes, transporting personnel and other resources.

We are not far from reaching the figure of one million people annually operated on for sight problems, free of charge. Can the United States really compete with Cuba?

We will make use of computers, not to create weapons of mass destruction and exterminate people but to convey knowledge to other peoples. From the economic point of view, the development of the intelligence and conscience of our fellow citizens, made possible by the Revolution, allow us not only to aid those in most need at no cost to us, but also to export specialized services, including healthcare services, to countries that have more resources than our own. In this field, the United States will never be able to compete with Cuba.

Our small country shall continue to hold its ground.

In one phrase: The ant has proved mightier than the elephant!

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 18, 2008