Reflections of Fidel

Dear Hugo Chávez,

Oh, I’m so scared! I just about died when I read the statements made by the U.D.I (Independent Democratic Union).

It was 2006. I was really very ill but very much aware of what was happening. During those days around the middle of September, the XIV NAM Summit where Cuba was elected to the Presidency was ending. I could barely sit up and take my place at a table. That’s how I received some important heads of state or government. The Prime Minister of India was among them. The highest ranking visitor I received in that emergency room in the Presidential Palace was the Ghanaian Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, who a few days later would be ending his mandate.

The Chilean oligarchs tore their cloths at the visit of President Michelle Bachelet to Cuba.

It doesn’t matter what I say about the friendly meeting, some news agencies and papers will take the information and will print that the old man, convalescing after a serious illness or some other description directed towards reducing the modest value of whatever I expressed to my prestigious interlocutor.

What a strange surname! It appears Spanish, easy to pronounce, but it’s not. Never in my life have I heard or read about any student or compatriot with that name, among tens of thousands.

The response came barely a few hours later. Rahm Emmanuel, the White House chief of staff, spoke. It is of no importance that he failed to mention my modest Reflection. What is important is the response.

The other day I noted some of Obama’s ideas that point to his role within a system that is the negation of every just principle.