Reflections of Fidel

In my last reflection of Tuesday afternoon, August 29, when Hurricane Gustav unexpectedly formed and started to threaten our country on the same day when our Olympic delegation returned, I wrote: “We are lucky to have a Revolution! It is a fact that nobody will be neglected…Our strong, forceful and farsighted Civil Defense protects our people…The growing frequency and intensity of these natural phenomena show that the climate is changing due to the actions of human beings. The current times demand ever increasing dedication, steadfastness and conscience. It doesn’t matter if the opportunists and traitors also benefit without contributing anything to the safety and well-being of our people.”

I know the colossal efforts that the Revolution has to make after the national territory is hit by a hurricane. I could add that Cuba counts with keen and persevering scientists such as José Rubiera.

Hundreds of millions of working hours are lost in a brief period of time when the wind gusts beat directly on economic and social centers in broad areas of national territory. Interminable rains accompany these natural phenomena. Rivers overflow, sweep away anything they find in their path and flood extensive areas. Thousands of facilities that produce vegetables, milk, eggs, poultry meat and pork, as well as sophisticated irrigation systems, are seriously damaged; tens of thousands of hectares of sugar cane, grains, cereals and fruit trees ready for harvesting are lost; schools, polyclinics, entertainment and cultural centers, houses, roofs, factories, warehouses, highways and bridges are all damaged by the winds and the rain. This time those winds and rains affected all provinces to a greater or lesser degree, since the hurricane made its way via the sea in the vicinity of the southern part of the country and moved across it via the westernmost province, with a radius of 30 kilometers in its eye gale-force winds with a diameter of more than 450 kilometers.

Nothing is as devastating as the damage and destruction left behind by a hurricane. Hundreds of thousands of compatriots mobilize and work very hard during the passing of the hurricane and afterwards during the recovery stage. Reserves are reduced or depleted. Today, more than ever, the blow to food supplies is costly and significant. But this is our country; this is our rightful place in this planet, and we have to develop and defend it.

The task we have ahead requires time and expertise. The true Cuba and its noble people, which have been ready to share with others its knowledge and even part of its resources including its own blood, were not built overnight. That is why it has been an invincible adversary in confronting the powerful empire that has tested all of its weapons against our country.

But there is hardly any information to the world about Cuba’s merits and its extraordinary struggle.

Two days ago, on Friday 29th, not one of the 11 cables published by the international press on Cuba referred to the hurricane that was approaching our island or the intensive efforts being made by our Civil Defense, with the generous support of millions of Cuban families led by a courageous political vanguard.

One of the cables published by the German DPA news agency read:

Popular Cuban Actor Arrives in Miami: “I left because I got tired.”

It immediately adds that a well-known Cuban television actor, Yamil Jaled, had left Cuba for Miami to join his Cuban-American wife, according to a local newspaper.

It notes that Jaled featured in some very popular TV series, the theater and movies, including some blockbusters produced in France and Italy. Jaled graduated as an actor from the Higher Institute of Arts (ISA) in 1997 and started work as a professional actor in the Rita Montaner theater group, moving into television one year later he started to work in television.

The cable goes on to explain that he is 31 years old and profusely describes his artistic qualities and his triumphant journey through television, thus echoing a Yankee newspaper directed at media warfare and campaigns against Cuba. We Cubans could add: What a patriot! What a democrat! What a brilliant example is this man whom they are presenting as a prototype! This is how information is disseminated throughout the world information about a guy far less known and important than Hurricane Gustav.

They want to turn him into a sacred cow. Deepest convictions, which have successfully resisted the trials of time and the upheavals of life, cannot be acquired in a day. Before that, it is necessary to surmount many tendencies that we carry within us.

I do not hate other human beings, but I do hate vanity, egocentricity, selfishness, arrogance, smugness, the absence of ethics and other tendencies that human beings are born with. Only education and the example set by those who excel in their battle to be better, will triumph and influence all of us. A minimum of philosophy on the need for modesty is needed here.

There are sacred cows who attempt to put our five heroes, brutally separated from their homeland and their closest relatives, on the same level with the mercenaries justly sanctioned as traitors and never subjected to personal and inhuman outrage.

What I am stating in this reflection reaffirms the conviction that I would like to convey to my compatriots, is that only just ideas defended with courage, dignity and firmness, will prevail.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 31, 2008

I have carefully followed the Western media’s reaction to my Sunday reflections on the Olympic Games in China. Actually, rather sensitive events were overlooked while others were highlighted ad libitum by the advocates of world plunder and exploitation.

Let’s see:

“Fidel Castro today blamed the judges and the Mafia for the poor performance of the Cuban delegation at the Olympic Games. He also justified the Cuban tae kwon do athlete Angel Volodia Matos, who was permanently suspended after kicking a referee in the head, and expressed his full solidarity with him.”

“The former Cuban President called on Monday to make a deep analysis of sports in Cuba. He also expressed his solidarity with an athlete who was permanently suspended together with his coach for assailing a judge.”

“Castro manifested his full solidarity with the tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for attacking a referee and a judge.”

“Castro in solidarity with the Cuban tae kwon do athlete permanently suspended for aggression.”

There is a long list of similar sentences. This was the prevailing line of information. I didn’t expect otherwise. I was doomed, the same as the Cuban boxers in the face of bribed referees and judges, and I knew what would be publicized.

As was to be expected, not a word was published about hunger, undernourishment, lack of medicines, sport gear and facilities suffered by 80% of the countries competing there.

I praised the merit of the country that organized the last Olympic Games. I did not hesitate to recognize the extraordinary qualities of the successful athletes. I appreciated the joy, the passion and the human feelings conveyed to millions of people by those who won medals. I specially appreciated the message of peace embodied by the Olympic Games, in the face of the endless carnage, devastation, genocide and real threat of extermination sustained by the human species every day.

What went unsaid about Cuba:

1. It is the only country where professional sport is not practiced.
2. It is the only country that years ago established a grand International School of Sports and Physical Education at the higher level, the same that has graduated thousands of youths from Third World countries and which presently accommodates 1500 students absolutely free of charge.
3. It is the only country in which its high-performance athletes study free of charge to become professors of Sports and Physical Education and which has graduated thousands of people in that specialty in higher education centers. These are now working with children, teenagers, youths and people of all ages. Many of them are also working in Third World countries as collaborators, sometimes free of charge and in some cases for a minimum fee. This way they have made a contribution to the international development of sports
4. It is the only country, among those participating in the Beijing Olympics, which is economically blockaded by the most powerful and richest empire that ever existed.
5. It is also the only country, among all those same participants, to which an Adjustment Act is applied, that, in addition to its bloody fruits, facilitates and encourages the theft of Cuban athletes.
6. Our country has devoted a specialized hospital to care for the health of high-performance athletes.

The truth cannot be hidden under the anesthesia and the fireworks of the Olympic Games.

In Barcelona 1992, in full Special Period, Cuba took fifth place for gold medals.

In the most recent Games we still obtained a total of 24 medals; that is gold, silver and bronze — a higher number than any other country in Latin America and the Caribbean.

We should not hesitate to objectively analyze our sports activity and to prepare for future contests. But, I repeat, we should not forget that “in London we shall find European chauvinism, corrupt referees, the buying of muscles and brains, a price too high to pay, and a strong dose of racism.”

As I write these lines I remember that a cyclone, Fay, paid a visit to us in the middle of the Olympics. Yesterday, coinciding with the arrival of most of our delegation, we got news that another tropical storm was heading straight for the eastern provinces. Today it is stronger, and its projected course even more dangerous. We need to strengthen not only our bodies but our spirits, too.

We are lucky to have a Revolution! It is a fact that nobody will be forgotten. If lives were lost, they would not be in the hundreds or thousands, as was the case in Santa Cruz del Sur on November 9, 1932, due to a tidal wave, and on October 3, 1963, due to Hurricane Flora which flooded the heartland of the provinces east of Cuba. At that time we had no regulatory reservoirs like those of today, which are moreover, sources of irrigation and running water. A strong, energetic and farsighted Civil Defense system protects our people and provides more security in the face of disasters than in the United States. However, every possible danger must be anticipated.

Neither should we be resting n our laurels. The growing frequency and intensity of these natural phenomena demonstrates that the climate is changing due to the faults of humanity. These times demand ever-increasing dedication, steadiness and conscience. It doesn’t matter if the opportunists and traitors also benefit without contributing anything to the safety and wellbeing of our people.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 26, 2008

If one were to statistically work out the number of facilities, sport fields and sophisticated pieces of equipment we just saw in the recently concluded Olympic Games, accessible to every one million of the world’s inhabitants; the number of swimming pools for diving and polo, artificial underfoot for track and field competitions or field hockey, basketball and volleyball courts, rapids for kayak races, cycle tracks for speed-bike races, firing ranges, and so on and so forth, one could conclude that they are beyond the reach of 80 percent of the countries that were represented in Beijing, which is equivalent to billions of people around the planet. China, an immense and millennia-old country with over 1,2 billion inhabitants, invested $40 billion in the construction of the Olympic facilities and it will still require time to satisfy the sporting needs of a society at the height of development.

If one calculates the total number of people living in India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries, not to mention the world’s nearly 900 million Africans and more than 550 million Latin Americans, one will have an idea of the number of people around the world who have no access to these kinds of sport facilities.

It is in this light that we ought to analyze the news that surrounded the Olympic Games in Beijing.

The world enjoyed the Olympics because it was something it needed, because we wanted to see the smiles and emotions of the athletes who participated, particularly those who came in first place, whose perseverance and discipline were duly acknowledged.

Which one of them could be blamed for the colossal inequalities that exist in the world in which it is our lot to live? How can one forget, on the other hand, the hunger, malnutrition, lack of schools, teachers, hospitals, doctors, medications and basic means of sustenance that the world endures?

We are aware of what those who pillage and exploit the world we live in evidently want. Why did they unleash violence and make the risk of war more imminent, on the same day that the Olympic Games were inaugurated? That happened only 16 days ago.

Now, when the anesthesia has worn off, the world must again face its distressing and growing problems.

Some days ago, I wrote about Cuban sports. I had long been condemning the repulsive, mercenary-like maneuvers perpetrated against this revolutionary activity and writing in defense of the courage and honorable conduct of our athletes.

In the course of the competitions, I reflected on these matters. Perhaps I would not have decided to write something on the issue so soon if there had not been the incident involving the Cuban tae kwon do athlete, Angel Valodia Matos, Olympic champion in Sydney eight years ago. His mother died when he was competing there and winning a gold medal, 20,000 kilometers away from his country. Taken aback by a decision that struck him as utterly unfair, he protested and threw a kick in the direction of the referee. They had tried to buy off his trainer. He was already ill-disposed and angry. He couldn’t hold back his anger.

The athlete was used to bravely endure the lesions that frequently arise in a tae kwon do match. The referee suspended him during the match when he was winning 3-2. It wasn’t the only incident. In these types of matches, the referee has all the power and the athlete has none. The two Cubans, the tae kwon do athlete and trainer, were barred for life from participating in international competitions.

I saw when the referees shamelessly robbed two Cuban boxers of their victory during the semifinals. Our boxers put up a dignified and courageous fight, they were constantly on the offensive. They had their hopes set on winning, in spite of the referees. But to no avail: their fate had been sealed beforehand. I didn’t see Correa’s fight, where he was also robbed of his victory.

I feel no duty to remain silent about the deeds of this mafia. The latter has managed to make a mockery of the Olympic Committee rules. What they did to the young members of our boxing team, to complete the work of those who make a living out of stealing Third World athletes, was criminal. In their malice, they denied Cuba even one Olympic gold medal in this discipline.

Cuba has never bought an athlete or referee. There are sports in which referees are very corrupt and our athletes have to fight both the adversary and the referee. Cuban boxers, whose prestige is internationally recognized, have had to face bribery and corruption attempts aimed at violently snatching gold medals from the country, at buying highly trained and experienced boxers, as they try to do in the case of baseball players and other prominent athletes.

The Cuban athletes who competed in Beijing and, instead of gold medals, brought home silver or bronze medals or any kind of acknowledgment are to be commended as representatives of amateur sports, which rekindled the Olympic movement. They are without parallel in the world.

What dignity they showed during the competitions!

Professional athletics were introduced into the Olympics because of commercial interests which turned sports and athletes, as we’ve said, into mere commodities.

Cuba’s Olympic baseball team showed an exemplary conduct. In Beijing, they twice defeated the U.S. selection, the country that invented that sport which, because of the commercial interests of big companies, was excluded from the Olympics. This year, 2008, is, for now, its last in the Olympics.

The final match against South Korea was dubbed the tensest and most extraordinary that the Olympics have ever known. The game was decided in the last inning, with three Cubans on base and an out.

The adversary’s professional baseball players were like batting machines. They had a left-handed pitcher who threw varied speed balls with surgical precision. An excellent team. Cubans do not practice the sport for profit. They are trained, as all our athletes are, to serve their country. Were this not the case, the country, small in size and of limited resources, would lose them forever. It would be impossible to calculate the value of the recreational and educational services they offer the nation in the course of their lives, in all provinces and the Isle of Youth.

In volleyball, Cuba’s team defeated the U.S. selection in the qualifying round. They had been climbing from the lowest end of a more than 50-rung ladder. Even though they returned with no medals, this is a feat that will go down in history.

After a difficult match against a Russian rival, Mijaín proudly won Cuba’s first gold medal in the discipline.

Dayron Robles won the gold by a wide margin. The rain had soaked the brand-new track. Without the rain, he could have easily broken the Olympic record, let alone the world record he had set weeks earlier in the difficult 110-meter hurdles, which requires pinpoint accuracy. He is a disciplined and tenacious 21-year-old with nerves of steel.

Yoanka González won Cuba’s first Olympic cycling medal.

Leonel Suárez, who won a bronze medal in the decathlon, will turn 21 in September. The results obtained in each of the 10 competitions in their extremely difficult sports are indeed impressive.

There are many athletes of great merit, men and women I cannot mention here but who cannot be forgotten.

More than 150 athletes from our small island participated in the 2008 Olympics and put up a fight in 16 of 28 sport disciplines there.

Our country does not practice chauvinism or commercialize sports, which are as sacred as the people’s education and health. What it practices, rather, is solidarity. Years ago, it created a Physical Education and Sports Training School, with capacity for more than 1,500 students from the Third World. With that same spirit of solidarity, it celebrates the triumph of the Jamaican sprinters, who won six gold medals, the Panamanian jumper who won a gold medal, the Dominican boxer that won the same medal or that of the Brazilian volleyball players who dealt a crushing defeat to the U.S. team and came in first.

In addition to this, thousands of Cuban sports trainers have worked in Third World countries.

These merits do not exempt us in the least from assuming present and future responsibilities. In world sporting competitions, for the reasons we pointed out, a qualitative leap has taken place. We no longer live in the time in which we managed to become the world’s first in gold medals per inhabitant in relatively little time, and that isn’t going to happen again, of course.

We account for around 0.07 % of the world’s population. We cannot be strong in all sports like the United States, which has at least 30 times our population. We cannot have access to even 1 % of the facilities and different types of equipment that they possess, nor avail ourselves of the varied climates they have. The same holds for the rest of the rich world, which has at least twice as many inhabitants as the United States does. They account for around one billion inhabitants.

The fact that more nations are competing and competitions are now tougher attests, in part, to Cuba’s victory as an example to the rest of the world. But we are resting on our laurels. Let us be honest and recognize this, all of us. It doesn’t matter what our enemies are saying. Let us be serious about this. Let us go over every discipline, every human and material resource we devote to sports. We must analyze this deeply, apply new ideas, concepts and knowledge. We must distinguish between what is done for the sake of our citizens’ health and what is done for the sake of competing and making this instrument more accessible for the wellbeing and health of everyone. We could abstain from competing outside the country and the world would not end because of this. I think the best course of action is to compete both inside and outside the country, to face all difficulties and make better use of all human and material resources available.

Let us prepare ourselves for important future battles. Let us not be taken in by London’s smiles. There, we will find European chauvinism, corrupt referees, the buying of muscle and brains (an incalculable loss) and a strong dose of racism.

Let no one even dream that London will achieve the level of safety, discipline and enthusiasm that we saw in Beijing. One thing is certain: there will be a Conservative government that is perhaps less belligerent than the current one.

Let us not forget the decency, honesty and professional prestige enjoyed by our international referees and internationalist sport workers.

All of our solidarity accompanies the tae kwon do athlete and his trainer. For those who are returning today, the ovation of all Cubans.

Let us give a warm welcome to our Olympic athletes in all parts of the country. Let us extol their dignity and their merits. Let us do for them everything in our power.

A gold medal for honor!

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 24, 2008

Perhaps some governments are unaware of the concrete facts, and so for that reason Raúl’s message setting Cuba’s position seemed to us to be very timely. I shall be generous in the aspects that cannot be dealt with in a brief and precise official statement.

The government of Georgia would never have launched its armed forces against the capital of the Autonomous Republic of South Ossetia in the dawn of August 8, engaged in what it called the re-establishing of constitutional order, without previous coordination with Bush who, in April in Bucharest, committed to support President Saakashvili for Georgia’s admission to NATO; that is like plunging a sharpened dagger deep into Russia’s heart. Many European member states of that military organization are seriously concerned about the irresponsible manipulation of the nationalities issue, fraught with potential conflict, which within Britain itself might result in the disintegration of the United Kingdom. This is how Yugoslavia was dismantled: Tito’s efforts to avoid that proved useless after his death.

What need was there to light the powder keg of the Caucasus? How often can the jug be taken to the well before it shatters? Russia continues to be a strong nuclear power. It has thousands of such weapons. On the other hand, I must recall that the Western economy illegally siphoned out more than $500 billion from that country. If Russia today is no longer a Communist threat and no longer has more than 400 nuclear launching-pads directly aimed at Europe’s military and strategic targets, given that they were dismantled after the demise of the USSR, why the determination to surround it with a nuclear shield? The old continent also needs peace.

The Russian troops stationed in South Ossetia were sent there on an internationally recognized peace mission: they were not shooting wantonly.

Why did Georgia choose August 8th, at the time the Olympic Games were being opened in Beijing, to occupy Tskhinvali, the capital of the Autonomous Republic? On that day, four billion people on the entire planet were watching on television the marvelous spectacle with which China opened those Games. Only the American people could not enjoy a live broadcast of the exciting festival of friendship among all the people of the world that was staged there. The monopoly over the broadcasting rights had been bought by a television channel that had paid $900 million and wanted to earn maximum commercial dividends for every minute of broadcasting time. The rival corporations got even by covering news of the war in the Caucasus, since this was nobody’s exclusive. The dangers of a serious conflict were threatening the world.

Bush though, could enjoy the spectacle as an official guest. On Sunday the 10th, two-and-a-half days later, he could still be seen waving flags, pretending to be a champion of peace and preparing to delight in the victories of the excellent American athletes, whom his eyes, accustomed to besmirching everything, were looking upon as the symbol of the power and superiority of his empire. In his moments of leisure, he held long conversations with his officials in Washington, threatened Russia and encouraged the humiliating speeches against that country given by the representative of the United States in the UN Security Council.

Some of the countries that made up the socialist bloc or were part of the USSR itself are today acting as U.S. protectorates. Their governments, driven by a irresponsible hatred of Russia — such as the case of Poland and the Czech Republic — aligned themselves in positions of absolute support for Bush and for the surprise attack on South Ossetia by Saakashvili, an adventurer with a bizarre background who was born under socialism in Tbilisi, capital of the country, graduated as a lawyer from a Kiev university and took postgraduate courses in Strasburg, New York and Washington. He was a practicing lawyer in New York City. He comes off as a Westernized Georgian, greedy and opportunistic. He returned to his country supported by the Yankees and then went fishing in the tempestuous river of the disintegration of the USSR. He was elected president of Georgia in January 2004.

Following the United States and Britain, it is the country with the most soldiers in the Iraqi war adventure; and not exactly out of internationalist sentiment. When Cuba, throughout almost two decades, sent hundreds of thousands of combatants to fight for independence and against colonialism and apartheid in Africa, they were not seeking fuel, raw materials or capital gains: they were volunteers. Thus the steel of our principles was forged. What are Georgian soldiers doing in Iraq if not supporting a war which has cost that people hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of victims? What ideals are they defending there? It is only natural that people from South Ossetia do not wish to be sent as soldiers to fight in Iraq or in other parts of the planet at the behest of imperialism.

Saakashvili, on his own, would never have launched himself into the adventure of sending the Georgian army into South Ossetia, where he would be clashing with Russian troops stationed there as a peace force. A nuclear war is not something to fool around with; and providing cannon fodder to the market cannot be rewarded.

This reflection was already drafted when Bush spoke at 5:30 p.m. Cuban time. But none of what he said changes what we are analyzing here: only that the U.S. government media war is today even much more intense. It is the same prefabricated maneuver that fools no-one.

The Russians have very clearly stated that the withdrawal of the invaders to their positions prior to the conflict is the only decent solution possible. Let’s hope that the Olympic Games can continue without being interrupted by a very serious crisis. The women’s volleyball match against a good U.S. team was great and the baseball has yet to begin.

Fidel Castro Ruz
August 11, 2008