Reflections of Fidel

Today, the presence of the Flu A (H1N1) virus was announced in Cuba. The carrier is a young Mexican citizen who is studying medicine in our country. The only thing that can be confirmed now is that it was not the CIA that introduced it. It came from Mexico.

What was the Mexican president complaining about regarding the measures Cuba adopted, according to the established norms and without the least intention of affecting our sister nation of Mexico? We were far from imagining that the epidemic would break out there and in the United States.

Mexican authorities did not inform the world of the presence of the flu virus while they were awaiting Obama’s visit, and now they are threatening to suspend President Calderon’s visit, something that had been already done earlier because of other understandable and non-flu epidemic related reasons. At this point, we and dozens of other countries are paying the piper and on top of that we are being accused of using harmful measures against Mexico.

“I was indeed going to go to Cuba in these days or weeks but since Cuba has cancelled flights to Mexico”, declared the Mexican president, “perhaps I won’t be able to do so, it could be one of the unforeseen consequences that do not have sufficient technical bases,” Calderon added, according to information from an important European news agency.

The next day, another news agency on this continent printed the same thing. The authorities of that country were not even clear about that. Now it would seem that we have been unfair, acting without technical basis and with hostility towards the Mexican people.

The Mexican students are in no way even minimally guilty; they are excellent people, as are the Cuban professors and workers at the school, strictly carrying out the appropriate control measures dictated by the circumstances.

What is most fair is that the Mexican people be informed that in the Final Declaration of the NAM Ministerial Meeting, three of its paragraphs state:

“The Ministers of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries express their deep concern and solidarity with the Government and people of Mexico given the serious situation created by the swine influenza outbreak in that country.

“The Ministers request the World Health Organization and the international financial organizations to provide full logistical and financial support to the Government and people of Mexico in their efforts to combat this epidemic promptly and effectively as well as to provide adequate assistance to other affected countries to prevent further outbreak of this disease.

“In this regard, the Ministers call upon the World Health Organization in coordination with the Mexican authorities, to ensure a systematic and proper follow-up in order to effectively contain the further spread of this epidemic.”

I am merely expressing ideas that occur to me as the news kept coming.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 11, 2009
9:38 p.m.

Governments can change but the instruments they used to turn us into a colony are still the same.

For one president in the United States with a sense of ethics, in the last 28 years we have had three who committed genocides and a fourth who internationalized the blockade.

The OAS was the instrument for those crimes. Only its expensive bureaucratic apparatus took its ICHR agreements seriously. Our nation was the last of the Spanish colonies after four centuries of occupation and it was the first to liberate itself from U.S. domination after more than six decades.

“Freedom is very dear, and it is necessary, either to live without it or to decide to buy it for its price”, the Apostle of Our Independence taught us.

Cuba respects the opinions of the governments of sister nations in Latin America and the Caribbean who think in a different manner, but it doesn’t wish to be part of that institution.

Daniel Ortega who made a valiant and historic speech in Port of Spain explained to the people of Cuba that the independent countries of Africa did not invite the European former colonial powers to be part of the African Unity. It is a position worthy of being taken into account.

The OAS was not able to prevent Reagan from unleashing the dirty war against his people, mining their ports and resorting to drug trafficking to acquire weapons to fight the war, with which he financed the death, maiming or serious wounding of tens of thousands of young people in a country as small as Nicaragua.

What did the OAS do to protect it? What did it do to prevent the invasion of Santo Domingo, the hundreds of thousands of people murdered or disappeared in Guatemala, the air attacks, the assassinations of prominent religious leaders, the massive repression against the people, the invasions of Grenada and Panama, the coup in Chile, the tortured and disappeared there and in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and other places? Did it ever accuse the United States? What is its historical evaluation of these events?

Yesterday, on Saturday, Granma printed what I had written about the ICHR agreement against Cuba. I was curious later about the stance it adopted against Venezuela. It was more or less the same rubbish.

The Bolivarian Revolution’s access to power was different from that of Cuba. In our country, the political process had been suddenly interrupted by a treacherous military coup promoted by the United States on March 10, 1952, a few weeks away from the general election that was to be held on the first of June of that same year. In Cuba, once again, the people had no other alternative but to resign themselves. Again the Cubans fought, and this time the result was very different. Almost seven years later, the Revolution emerged victorious for the first time in history.

With a minimum of weaponry, more than 90% of which had been captured from the enemy during 25 months of warfare backed by the people, and in the final offensive with a general revolutionary strike, the revolutionary combatants trounced the tyranny and took control of all its weapons and power centers. The victorious Revolution became the source of law just as in any other era in history.

That was not the case in Venezuela. Chávez, a revolutionary soldier like others in our hemisphere, became president by the rules of the established bourgeois Constitution as the leader of Movimiento V República, allied to other leftist forces. The Revolution and its instruments were yet to be created. After the military uprising led by him had triumphed, the Revolution in Venezuela might have possibly taken another route. However, he abided by the established legal norms within his reach as the chief method for the struggle. He developed the habit of consulting the masses as often as necessary.

He submitted the new Constitution to a popular referendum. It was not long before he became aware of the methods of imperialism and its allies in the oligarchy to recover and hold on to power.

The coup on April 11, 2002 was the counterrevolution’s response.

The people reacted and brought him to power again when, isolated and incommunicado, he was at the point of being eliminated by the right wing which was forcing him to sign his resignation.

He didn’t give up and resisted until the very Venezuelan navy released him and air force helicopters brought him back to the Miraflores Presidential Palace which had already been occupied by the people and army soldiers in Fuerte Tiuna who had risen up against the senior officers perpetrating the coup.

At the time I thought that his policy would become more radical; however, concerned for unity and peace, at the moment of greatest strength and support, he was generous and talked with his adversaries seeking their cooperation.

The response given to that attitude by imperialism and its accomplices was the oil coup. Perhaps one of the most brilliant battles he waged at that time was the one he carried out to supply fuel to the people of Venezuela.

We had talked many times since he visited Cuba in 1994 and he spoke at the University of Havana.

He was a true revolutionary, but as he was gaining awareness of the injustice rampant in Venezulean society his thinking took on greater depth until he arrived at the conviction that Venezuela had no alternative other than radical and total change.

He knows even the smallest details of the Liberator’s ideas, a person he profoundly admires.

His adversaries understand that it is not easy to win when faced with the tenacity of a man who struggles without even a moment’s rest. They could decide to take his life but his internal and external foes know what that would mean for their interests. There can be irrational lunatics and fanatics, but neither leaders, peoples or humanity itself are exempt from such dangers.

Considering it calmly, today Chávez is a formidable adversary for the capitalist production system and for imperialism. He has become a real expert on many of human society’s basic problems. I have seen him in these days as he inaugurated dozens of health services. He is impressive. He forcefully criticizes what was happening with vital services such as hemodialysis, which used to be provided in private centers and paid by the State. The poor were condemned to die if they lacked the money. The same was happening with many other services; today, new facilities are available in the hospitals with the support of the most modern equipment.

He masterfully handles even the most insignificant details concerning national production and social services. He is on top of the theory and practice of socialism needed by his country and he makes great efforts through his most profound convictions. He defines capitalism for what it is: he doesn’t draw caricatures of it; he reveals X-rays and pictures of the system.

We are dealing with a peculiar and horrible ensemble of forms of exploitation of human work: unjust, unequal, arbitrary. He doesn’t simply talk about the worker; he shows him on television working with his hands, showing his energy, his knowledge, his intelligence, creating the goods or services that are essential to human beings; he asks them about their children, their families, husbands or wives, their kin, where they live, what they are studying, what they are doing to improve themselves, their age, salary, future pension, all the grotesque lies about property that are being spread by the imperialists and capitalists. He shows the hospitals, schools, factories, boys and girls; he provides facts about the factories being built in Venezuela, the machinery, figures on the growth of employment, natural resources, plans, maps, and he provides news on the latest gas discovery. The most recent measure adopted by Congress: the law nationalizing the 60 key companies supplying services each year to PDVSA, the state oil company, for a value of more than 8 billion dollars. They were not private property; Venezuela’s neo-liberal governments created them with resources belonging to PDVSA.

I had not seen such a clear transformation into images of an idea, broadcast by television. Chávez doesn’t just have a special talent to capture and transmit the essence of the processes but he accompanies it with a prodigious memory; it is rare for him to forget a word, a phrase, a verse, a musical inflection; he combines words that express new concepts. He speaks of a socialism that seeks justice and equality; “while cultural colonialism continues to live in our minds, the old will never die and the new will never be born”. He combines eloquent verses and phrases in articles and letters. Above all else he has shown himself to be the political leader in Venezuela who is capable of creating a party, incessantly transmitting revolutionary ideas to its members and educating them politically.

I especially observed the faces of the captains and other crew members of the ships of the nationalized companies; their words reflect inner pride, gratitude for the recognition, security in the future; the faces of the jubilant young economy students who name him godfather of the promotion at the point of finishing their university studies when he tells them more than 400 of them are needed to move to Argentina, ready to work in the management of 200 new factories in a program agreed to with that country; they will be sent there at the end of their course to be trained in the production processes.

Ramonet was with him; he was amazed at Chávez’ work. When about eight years ago we started our revolutionary cooperation with Venezuela, he was in the Palace of the Revolution, asking hundreds of questions. The writer knows the subject and he racks his brains trying to guess what will be replacing the capitalist production system. The Venezuelan experience is certainly filling him with astonishment. I have been witness to a unique effort in that direction.

It is a battle of ideas that has been lost beforehand by the adversary who has nothing to offer humanity.

No wonder the OAS is hypocritically trying to present him as an enemy of freedom of expression and democracy. Almost half a century has gone by since those chipped and hypocritical weapons came up against the steadfastness of the Cuban people. Today, Venezuela is not alone and it has the experience of 200 years of exceptional patriotic history on its side.

This struggle has barely begun in our hemisphere.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 10, 2009
1:36 p.m.

Yesterday the German cable service DPA revealed that the ICHR of the OAS approved a report pointing out that Cuba “continued to transgress” on fundamental rights by keeping “restrictions” on the population’s political and civil rights, while at the same time continuing to be the “only” country in the region where there is absolutely no freedom of expression.

Is there really an ICHR within that rotten institution? Yes, there is, I answer myself. And just what is its mission? To judge the human rights situation in the OAS member countries. Is the U.S. a member of that institution? Yes, it is one of the most honorable members. Has it ever condemned the government of the United States? No, not ever. Not even the crimes of genocide that Bush committed, exacting the lives of millions of people? No! Never! How could it commit that injustice? Not even the tortures at the Guantánamo Base? As far as we know, not one single word.

On the Internet we obtained a copy of the agreement against Cuba. It’s pure rubbish. It is dedicated to counterrevolutionary gossiping. It is long, in the style of those State Department documents, the political paradigm and head of the OAS. How right Roa was when he called it the Yankee Ministry of Colonies!

We could ask that shameless institution: if we were expelled from the OAS for proclaiming our convictions and we are not members of that institution, what right do they have to pass judgment on us? Would the OAS do likewise with the Peoples’ Republic of China, Vietnam or other countries who, like Cuba, have proclaimed their allegiance to Marxist-Leninist principles?

The OAS should know that for a while now we are not part of that church, nor do we share in its teachings. We start from different positions. If we speak of freedom of expression, we must remind it that in our country we do not recognize private ownership of the media. It was always the owners of these media who decided what was to be written and who would be doing the writing, what would be broadcast or not, what would be shown and what would not. Illiterate and semi-literate people cannot do it, and for hundreds of years, while colonialism reigned and the capitalist system was developing since the invention of the printing press, four-fifths of the population could neither read nor write and there was no free and public education system.

The modern media have changed all that. Today, through huge investments alone one can have centers which broadcast the news throughout the planet and only those who direct them decide what is broadcast and how it is broadcast, what is printed and how it is printed.

The efforts made by the Pentagon to monopolize information and the Internet networks are obvious. Our own country is blocked from access to those sources. It would be better that the ICHR accounts to the world the resources that its bureaucracy is spending on stupidities, instead of analyzing these realities and informing Latin American countries about the very serious dangers threatening the freedom of expression of all the peoples of the world.

To question Cuba’s role in this area, it would have to start with the outright recognition that this has been the nation which has done the most for education, science and culture among all the peoples of the planet, and that its example is followed today by other revolutionary and progressive governments. If they have any doubt whatsoever, let them ask the United Nations.

In this hemisphere, the poor never had freedom of expression because they never received quality education and knowledge was reserved solely for the privileged and bourgeois elite. Don’t blame Venezuela now, which has done so much for education since the Bolivarian revolution, or the Republic of Haiti, crushed by poverty, diseases and natural catastrophes, as if any of these were ideal conditions for the freedom of expression proclaimed by the OAS. Do what Cuba is doing: first help to massively train quality healthcare personnel and send revolutionary doctors to the most remote corners of the country so that they may contribute to the saving of lives, and transmit to them educational programs and experiences; insist that the financial institutions of the developed and rich world send resources to build schools, train teachers, produce medicines, develop their agriculture and industries, and then talk about the rights of Man.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 8, 2009
12:14 p.m.

Carter is the only ex-president of the United States that I have had the honor of meeting, other than Nixon who was not one yet.

I had visited Washington to take part in a press conference that meant a tough challenge for me because of the questions that the expert reporters would be asking. The president had suggested to Nixon that he invite me for a conversation in his office. He was deceitful and hypocritical. He left that office with the idea of recommending the destruction of the Cuban Revolution.

Following his advice, Eisenhower was the author of the first plans to eliminate me physically, of the terror campaign against Cuba and the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.

The year 1959 marked the beginning of the treacherous history that President Carter tried to rectify 18 years later.

I knew, or rather I guessed, that he was a man of a religious ethic, from a long interview in which difficult subjects were broached and which he handled with sincerity and modesty. In those days, there were strong tensions between Panama and the United States. The leader of that country, Omar Torrijos, was an honest, nationalist and patriotic soldier. He could be persuaded by Cuba to not adopt extreme positions in his struggle for the return of the Canal territory which, like a sharp knife, was splitting his country in two. Perhaps because of that, the small nation was able to avoid a blood-bath although later on the country would be portrayed to the people of the United States and to the world as an aggressor.

Later, and without talking to anyone in the United States, I could predict that maybe Carter was the only president of that country with whom it would be possible to reach an honorable agreement without spilling one single drop of blood.

Not much time had passed before Washington would sign the agreement between the United States and Panama in the presence of other heads of state, excluding Cuba of course.

I mention this because Omar Torrijos himself, on a visit he made to our country, spoke about the efforts Cuba had made in this respect.

As president of the United States, Carter agreed with Cuba to create the Interests Sections in Havana and Washington. With that move we saved a lot of diplomatic procedures and paperwork that were driving the austere and meticulous Swiss diplomats insane. Maintaining the colossal building in the former United States Embassy in Havana was already in itself quite a feat for Switzerland.

Another thing: Carter discussed major issues with Cuba, such as the limits of territorial waters and the rights of each, the use of energy resources included in the jurisdictional waters of Mexico, Cuba and the United States as well as fishery resources and other subjects of inescapable attention. Not all the agreements favored Cuba. Our fishing fleet had been catching in international waters, as it was established, 12 miles off the coasts of Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. However, in solidarity, Cuba was supporting Chile, Peru and other Latin American countries in their right to exploit fishery resources on their respective sea shelves. The final result was that our modern expensive fishing boats finally ceased to work in those waters, when such a battle was finally won. The requisites established by the U.S. authorities were such on the rich shelves where our boats were fishing near the coast of that country, and other limitations in the light of the new law, that they priced themselves out of the market.

When Carter became president of his country, the aggressions, terrorism and blockade against the people of Cuba had existed for many years. Our solidarity with the peoples of Africa and many other poor and underdeveloped nations in the world could not be the object of negotiations with the U.S. government. Nor would we leave Angola, or suspend the assistance already committed to the African countries. Carter never actually requested it but it is clear that many in the United States were thinking along those lines.

The defense of our sovereignty not only unleashed deep contradictions with the U.S. but also with the USSR, our ally, when as a result of the October [Missile] Crisis, without consulting our country, the USSR negotiated a mutually convenient agreement with the U.S. by which the blockade, terrorist actions and the Guantanamo Base remained intact in exchange for strategic concessions by the two superpowers. We did not seek unilateral advantages. Revolutionaries who act that way do not survive their mistakes.

Compliance with the international standards would have never been an obstacle for Cuba and, as we have often said, peace is also an unavoidable objective of the Cuban Revolution. Many forms of cooperation are possible between peoples with different political concepts.

One proof of that is the war against drug trafficking, organized crime and the trafficking of human beings; this can be extended to many forms of cooperation in the fight against epidemics, natural catastrophes and other problems.

The Revolution has never used terrorism against the United States.

That country invented plane hijackings to strike against Cuba. That action, in a society with so many social conflicts, became an epidemic. How could they have resolved it without Cuba’s cooperation? We had adopted severe laws to punish the culprits, but it was useless. Finally, we made the decision to return them in the very same hijacked planes after warning them about it earlier.

Thus, the first plane we returned was the last one hijacked in the U.S.; this coincided exactly with the Carter years. I have spoken about this at greater length. I’m not saying anything new.

After Carter, Reagan took the dirty war to Nicaragua, using drugs to get around the laws of Congress and with the incomes supply weapons to the counterrevolution, mining ports; his policy took thousands of Sandinista lives while many were wounded and maimed.

Bush senior carried out the horrible slaughter of El Chorrillo to punish Panama and erase the marks left by Carter’s gesture.

When Carter visited Cuba between May 12 and 17 of 2002, he knew that he would be welcomed here; I attended his lecture at the University of Havana; I invited him to an important baseball game played between the national Occidentales and Orientales teams at the Latin American Stadium. Both of us were there at the opening pitch to which he was invited, with no bodyguards whatsoever, surrounded by 50,000 people in the stands, perfect targets for any sharp-shooter hired by the CIA. Bush Jr. was already governing the U.S. I only wanted to show Carter the relationship of the country’s leaders with the people. When we arrived at the stadium, he accepted with dignity my invitation to persuade his chief of security to leave him on his own, and that’s what he did.

What I know about forestry in the U.S. was explained to me by Carter at the dinner we hosted for him on the last day: how the trees are planted, what varieties, the time they need to grow, production per hectares, and so on and so forth.

I observed his faith in the capitalist system where he was raised and educated; I respect that.

When he was in the government, times were difficult. He had to carry the burden of the effects of an economic crisis, but he was austere, he didn’t drown the future generations in debt. His successor, Ronald Reagan, would squander all the savings Carter had made. He was a movie actor and handled the teleprompter well, but he never asked himself where the money was coming from.

Yesterday, former President Jimmy Carter said to the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper: “I would like (the embargo) to end today. There is no reason why the Cuban people should continue to suffer,” stated the former president who heads a human rights organization and this week was visiting Brazil to meet with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

“According to Carter, the initiatives adopted so far by Obama to ease the restrictions dictated against the island were less daring than what would be desired.”

“I think that Obama’s initiatives were not as good as those of the two U.S. Congress houses which today are one step ahead of the president with regards to Cuba.”

“The next step should be immediate removal of all travel restrictions to the island, not just for Cuban-Americans. It was what I did when I was president 30 years ago. The end of the embargo will follow suit,” the former president said.

Carter finally expressed that results were also depending on the Cuban leaders; surely, on us and on all the Cubans who have struggled and are willing to struggle.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 7, 2009
7:15 p.m.

Our world is not only threatened by the cyclical economic crises which are ever more serious and frequent. Unemployment, bankruptcy, and the huge losses in goods and wealth are inseparable companions of the blind market laws which govern the world economy today. Neo-liberalism proscribes any interference by the State, considering it a disturbing element for the economy, as if the domestic order, the army, health, education, culture, science, the courts, the judges, and many other activities could exist without the State and its laws.

Obviously, the State, with its rigor and coercive force, was considered an obstruction by those like Marx, Lenin and other theoreticians, who saw it as an instrument used by the exploiters to impose the heinous capitalist system, and conceived the idea of turning it into an instrument of the Revolution in the stage of transition to an entirely new society.

Colonialists, capitalists and imperialists have created their own codes of conduct and imposed their values. They talk about freedom, democracy, human rights and so on. After the United States was founded, millions of human beings continued working as slaves; the Creator had not granted them any right, as was stated in the Philadelphia Declaration. During almost 100 years they were like merchandise which was bought and sold in the market, and for another 100 years, after the civil war, they were atrociously discriminated against and marginalized. Today, together with the American Indians and the Latin Americans, they are the poorest citizens to be found in the US prisons; they do the toughest and worst paid jobs.

It is never said that billions of people in the world suffer the consequences of ignorance, unemployment, underdevelopment, diseases that curtail their life span to two thirds or by one half -and sometimes less than that- as compared to the life span enjoyed by people in rich countries.

New problems, such as drug trafficking, organized crime, brain drain and illegal migration, add to the old ones. There is even an attempt to control human minds using the mass media and the most modern techniques of the so called entertainment industry.

What supports that order? Wealth and the use of force. For that they have all the money in this world and the most sophisticated military means. Besides, they are the big producers and exporters of weapons that pose no threat whatsoever to their international hegemony, but spur local wars, multinationals profits and their allies’ dependence.

They mint unlimited amounts of the hard currency required by international trade, and with that they acquire properties for their multinationals and take hold of the natural resources and the fruits of peoples’ labor in order to prop up the societies of consumption and waste that they have created.

Furthermore, the United States keeps a monopolist control over the international credit and investment agencies.

Whenever these concerns start going around the minds of many millions in the world who do not let themselves be misled by the lies that are proclaimed, news begin to flow showing different realities.

For example: In the year 2004, the last shown by statistics, the US multinationals’ profits abroad amounted to 700 billion dollars, for which they paid to the Treasury only 16 billion dollars in offsets, which grant special privileges to US companies investing in other countries, thus affecting those which invest inside the US and create jobs in that country. The mere attempt by the present US administration to reduce that privilege gave rise to a protest by important US business organizations whose economic and political power no one can deny.

Gathering a number of national and international news showing the national privileges that country has imposed on the whole world could even be an enlightening pastime. There are politicians inside and outside the United States who take offense if someone dares to describe that system as an empire, as if there were another word that could better define it.

The other side of the coin offers a much gloomier picture. On several occasions reference was made to the seven fleets with which the US imposes its military might on the world, resorting to more than 800 military bases scattered throughout the planet. Guantanamo, whose prison camps and tortures astonished the world’s public opinion, is only one of the hundreds of military bases that they have.

Maybe we could have a better idea of the military power with which the superpower supports the economic and social system it has imposed on humankind by referring to some data which were recently published by the specialized press.

The US military power is based on its nuclear arsenal.

It has 534 Minuteman III and Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM); 432 Trident C-4 and D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) installed on board of 17 Ohio submarines; and around 200 long-range nuclear bombers that can be supplied in mid-air, among them 16 invisible B-2. The missiles carry several warheads. The number of nuclear warheads deployed ranges between five thousand and ten thousand. Its Armed Forces are made up by more than 2 million men. Added to all these there are hundreds of military and communication satellites which make up the space shield and are the means for an electromagnetic war.

Russia, the other big nuclear power, has been surrounded by offensive nuclear weapons.

It is hardly necessary to add one more word, except for being reminded that thanks to the monopoly over money and natural resources, the United States announced yesterday through the Pentagon’s principal commander for cyber-war that that country was determined to lead the global effort to use computer technology to deter or defeat the enemies, while protecting people’s constitutional rights. The news was broadcast by the AP, the main US news agency.

How much security can be found in today’s world? That is a question with no answer!

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 6, 2009
3:32 p.m.

On May Day, still under the impression of the parade, the colors of our flag, today a symbol in the eyes of the world, and the youthful, intelligent and enthusiastic faces of our students, who closed the parade of that overflowing river, the words of the poet, repeated so many times that day, came to my mind:
“For this freedom one will have to give everything!”

I felt a desire to know more about the life of Fayad Jamís. Barely two hours after that International Workers Day “Reflection” was published, I set myself to read some material. The first that I saw, by chance, was a message from our dear friend Stella Calloni. Through her we learned in detail of the conspiracies, the horrific crimes committed by U.S. governments as the promoters and allies of the bloodiest dictatorships that the peoples of this continent have ever known. But in this concrete case, it was to talk to us about Fayad Jamís, the author of the poem, and to transmit to us her impressions concerning realities that are sometimes bitter, without anything, in spite of that, dampening her enthusiasm.

I pass on here the exact text of the message that I had the honor of receiving that May Day night.

“Dear Comandante:

“I was very moved that you quoted Fayad, whom I knew in Mexico and to whom I was linked in a beautiful friendship and comradeship. He was a friend to all the exiles. An excellent poet, painter and an artist with a great love of his land. At that time he was a cultural attaché. Marvelous in everything that he did. I even wrote him a little poem. But what was beautiful for me is that you have rescued the ‘giving one’s everything,’ because it is so necessary to repeat that today, when we are being invaded by what I call the ‘fatal attraction’ of a neoliberal lack of culture that has prospered to a large degree. The postmodernism of underdevelopment, which has done so much damage and helped to justify so many individualisms, is pathetic.

“The I, I, I before we, that of always seeing how we can beat the other, is something at a total remove from that giving everything. And it has advanced like a pandemic that destroys everything in its path, old friendships and loyalties, roads walked together. To make it more effective, there is also the recourse to the cynicism of mocking those who maintain their principles, their faith in humanity, in human beings, in justice, in dignity.
“Cuba has been an example of giving everything, even to those who were unable to see that as the most revolutionary act of the Revolution – excuse the repetition – which is constant solidarity, like a cloak sheltering others.

“It seems to me that these are the times to recover magic and poetry, because revolutions are made of all of that. If it wasn’t for all of that, tell me how you would have embarked on the Granma, for example. How would Cuba have resisted and defended itself and, at the same time have created culture, education, ballet, everything that was being born in the embers of a genuine Revolution. Even now, when one sees those old documentaries of boys and girls going to the mountains and sierras as part of the literacy campaign, that was and is that giving everything, because they went with that spirit and are going with that spirit .

“I experienced that in the literacy campaigns in Nicaragua, or in Bolivia very recently when, moved to tears, I was there on the day that that country was declared free of illiteracy (and, in this case, also in original languages). Who could do this if they did not have the spirit of giving everything?

“And the examples are so many, but sometimes, as they are not seen as a whole, they are not seen. They are isolated and cold news items. I saw the Cuban doctors in a barrio in Venezuela and a woman, arriving with her children to have them vaccinated, told me, ‘You know, they give their everything here.’ And what to say about the Five? They have given everything in order to protect their country. The rest is trifling, passing, rootless.

“One day I said to you, moreover, that we have to write among all of us the history of solidarity, because on that day we are going to realize that the enemy that appears so great, so immense, is nothing more than an empty shell. Those who know what ‘giving everything’ is, are invincible, because they keep on and keep on giving across time, casting light like the beloved CHE.

“An immense embrace and thank you, because you are still giving everything.
“Stella.”

Beautiful words from Stella for those who know the real history of our epoch, which can never be erased with the stroke of a pen!

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 4, 2009
3:17 p.m.

Thursday, April 30 was unlucky for the United States. On that day it occurred to them to include Cuba yet again on the list of terrorist countries. Committed as they are to their own crimes and lies, perhaps even Obama himself was unable to untangle himself from that mess. A man whose talent nobody denies must feel ashamed about the empire’s cult of lie. Fifty years of terrorism against our Homeland come to light in an instant.

What can one explain to those who know about the horrific event of a plane blown up in mid flight, with its passengers and crew, about the participation of the United States in the events, the recruiting of Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles, and the supplying of explosives, funds and the complicity of the intelligence agencies and the authorities of that country? How can one explain the campaign of terror that preceded and followed the mercenary invasion of the Bay of Pigs, the attacks on our coasts, towns, transport and fishing vessels, the terrorist actions inside and outside of the United States? How can one explain the hundreds of frustrated assassination plots on the lives of Cuban leaders? What can one say about the introduction of viruses such as hemorrhagic dengue and swine fever that genetically had never even existed in the hemisphere? I am merely mentioning some of the acts of terror in which the United States has played a part, the ones recorded in their own declassified documents. Don’t these events embarrass the current administration?

I could put together an endless list of abhorrent activities.

At our request, Bruno Rodriguez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, sent me the exact words used by a France-Presse reporter to ask him a question on April 30, along with his compelling answer.

Rigoberto Diaz, of AFP: “Coinciding with the final moments of this meeting and also on a subject that has been dealt with during this event, the US government has once more included Cuba on the list of countries sponsors of terrorism along with Sudan, Iran and Syria. I would like to hear your opinion on this.”

Bruno’s reply:

“We do not recognize any political or moral authority to the US government to make any list on any subject, or to “certify” good or bad behavior.

The Bush government was “certified” by world public opinion as a government violating international law; as being aggressive and war-mongering; as a government that tortures and that is responsible for extrajudicial executions.

“Bush has been the only president who has boasted in public, in the US Congress, about having carried out extrajudicial executions. That is a government which kidnapped people and transported them illegally, created secret prisons that nobody knows whether they are still in existence, and a concentration camp where torturing is going on in the part of territory usurped from the Republic of Cuba.

“In the matter of terrorism, the US government has historically held a long record of State terrorism acts, not only against Cuba.

“In the US, Orlando Bosch and Posada Carriles are free to come and go; these two who are responsible for numerous terrorist acts including the blowing up of a civilian Cuban plane in mid-flight. There is no answer to Venezuela’s official request for the extradition of Posada Carriles who is being tried for various charges, but not as a notorious international terrorist.

“The US government held a travesty of a trial against the five young Cuban anti-terrorist activists who are today being held as political prisoners in its jails.

“The US government covers up acts of State terrorism committed by Israel against the Palestinian people and the Arab peoples. And, it kept silent before the crimes taking place in the Gaza Strip.

“Therefore one shouldn’t recognize that the United States has any moral authority whatsoever, and I, frankly, believe that nobody pays any attention or reads those documents, among other things, because the author is an international outlaw in many of the matters which it criticizes.

“Cuba’s position against all manifestations and forms of terrorism, wherever they may be committed, against any state that may be affected, in any form it may be carried out, for whatever purpose, is clear and consistent with its actions.

“Cuba has been the victim of terrorism for many years and it has a completely clean record in this matter. Cuban territory has never been used to organize, fund or execute terrorist acts against the United States of America. The State Department which issues those reports cannot say the same.”

This declaration, issued at the ministerial meeting of the Non-Aligned Countries, is not yet widely known by the population which in these days has been receiving plenty of news of all kinds. If the State Department wishes to discuss this with Bruno, there is sufficient information to bury it in its own lies.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 2, 2009
7:12 p.m.

Yesterday, I had a lengthy talk with Miguel d’Escoto, president pro tempore of the United Nations General Assembly. I had listened to his remarks at the ALBA meeting in Cumana on April 17.

I admired his significant statement. I had first met him after the victory of the Revolution in Nicaragua when Daniel Ortega appointed him minister of Foreign Affairs, a position he held until Reagan’s dirty war, which caused the death of thousands of Sandinista youths and great economic damage, ended up with the victory of counterrevolution in Nicaragua.

The backwardness that situation brought throughout seventeen years, and the economic and social disaster imposed by the U.S. “democracy” on the noble Nicaraguan people, led to the return of the Sandinista government to the country; this time with constitutional limitations and a marked dependency from the United States. Daniel denounced it on April 17, at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain where with great dignity he condemned the blockade on Cuba. On the other hand, Miguel d’Escoto, who as a minister of Foreign Affairs of Nicaragua had earned great prestige with his talents and ideas, was elected in 2007 president of the UN General Assembly for a two-year period.

It was in this capacity that he attended the Non Aligned Movement’s ministerial meeting held in Havana this past April 28, 29 and 30. Today, he was at the Revolution Square with Raul watching the impressive parade for the International Worker’s Day carried live by our television while in Santiago, the cradle of the Revolution, and in the other provinces of the country enthusiastic parades took place which constituted an irrefutable expression of the fortitude of our Revolution.

The words of the announcers were heard from the rostrum vibrant with emotion as Miguel d’Escoto and many foreign relation ministers and representatives of NAM as well as two thousand visitors from countries of every continent shared the joy of this workers’ celebration.

The poem dedicated by Fayad Jamis to Manuel Navarro Luna, a revolutionary and communist poet who lived in Granma province since he was a six year old child –the same province where our last war of liberation started– was quoted more than once.

From his early childhood, Navarro Luna was forced to give up school and start working in various trades. He worked as a janitor, a shoe shiner, and a diver, a night watchman and a clerk. He studied by himself to acquire some knowledge.

In 1915 he published his first poems and in 1919 his first book. In 1930 he joined the Communist Party.

He worked at the first Communist Mayor’s office in Cuba after the fall of Machado’s government in 1933. After the revolutionary victory in 1959, and challenging the passing of time, he became a member of the National Militias and took part in the fight against the counterrevolutionary bandits at Escambray and in the victory of Playa Giron.

…For this freedom of song beneath the rain
We will have to give our all
For this freedom of being closely bound
To the heart of the people sweet, firm we will have to give our all
For this freedom of a sunflower opened in the dawn of factory furnaces
And illuminated schools
And of crackling earth and waking child
We will have to give our all
There is not alternative but freedom
There is not other path but freedom
There is not homeland but freedom
There will be no poetry without the violent music of freedom
For this freedom which is the terror
Of those who always violated it
In the name of lavish misery
For this freedom which is the night of the oppressors
And the definitive dawn of the whold invincible people
For this freedom which lights up sunken eyes
Bare feet
Leaking roofs
And the eyes of children who wander in dust
For this freedom which is youths empire
For this freedom
Beautiful like life
We will have to give our all
If necessary
Even our shadows
And it will never be enough.

The white, red and blue colors of our flag, sustained by the industrious hands of thousands of students from the University of Informatics Sciences closed the parade, preceded by the youths of the university and middle level education students’ federations from the capital; the disciplined and active youths of humble origins being trained as Social Workers; the children from La Colmenita art troupe and other creations of the Revolution; they are all aware that they carry a flame that nobody will ever be able to extinguish.

I was very pleased to know that Miguel d’Escoto was there watching the parade. Three days before, in his remarks to the foreign ministers and representatives of the Non Aligned Movement he had said:

“…The world order exists based on the capitalist culture in which having more means being better; the same that promotes selfishness, greed, usury and social irresponsibility. These anti-values of the capitalist culture have led the world to a number of converging crises that should be effectively taken care of; otherwise they might endanger the life of the human species and the capacity to sustain life on Earth.

“At the root of all of the different crises we are facing lie an enormous moral crisis, a deep crisis of ethical values and principles. We have all betrayed the values derived from our respective religious and ethical-philosophic traditions. By succumbing to the capitalist temptations we have betrayed ourselves, and by assuming its anti-life values of hatred and selfishness, we have become the worst predators, enemies of our Mother Earth, we have dehumanized ourselves…

“…Cuba has always been a place for spiritual refreshment. Here we can all see that love is stronger and more powerful than selfishness. Here more than anywhere else we can learn what solidarity is: the most important antidote for humanity to survive the insane selfishness that seems destined to bring about its annihilation.

“…In this 21st century, a century of reconciliation and peace through the rule of law, social justice and democratic inclusiveness, we respect every minority and we want to hear them all. It is at the G-192, the General Assembly, where we shall decide on the path to take in order to avoid the trap of the insane and suicidal selfishness that capitalism has led the world to. It will not be with any kind of revanchism but with the spirit to build a better world for all, without exceptions or exclusions…

He did not run for the position of president of the UN General Assembly he now occupies. He learned of his candidacy through the Nicaraguan Ambassador to the UN. It was Latin America’s turn, and Daniel Ortega, being aware of his qualities had made the proposal unhesitatingly. He did not even have time to explain his health problems to take on such a high responsibility. The countries of Latin America, Africa and the Third World quickly offered their support. Miguel was not perturbed by the difficulties and accepted the position.

He handed me a document he signed as president of the UN General Assembly designating Cuba a paradigm of international solidarity and showed me the gold medal that comes with the decree and that he designed himself.

He said in his remarks many other interesting things that I am not quoting here to avoid being to extensive.

His words and deeds have honored our Revolution.

…We will have to give our all
If necessary
Even our shadows
And it will never be enough.

These were the final words of this poem by Fayad Jamis.

Fidel Castro Ruz
May 1, 2009
7:23 p.m.