Reflections of Fidel

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.

I confess that many times I have meditated on the dramatic story of John F. Kennedy. It was my fate to live through the era when he was the greatest and most dangerous adversary of the Revolution. It was something that didn’t play a part in his calculations. He saw himself as the representative of a new generation of Americans who were confronting the old-style, dirty politics of men of the sort of Nixon whom he had defeated with a tremendous display of political talent.

He had behind him his history as a combatant in the Pacific and of his adroit pen.

Because he was over-confident, he was dragged into the Bay of Pigs adventure by his predecessors, since he had no doubts about the experience and professional capacity of all those men. His failure was bitter and unexpected, a scant three months after his inauguration. Even though he was on the point of attacking the Island with his country’s powerful and sophisticated weaponry, on that occasion he didn’t do what Nixon would have done: use the fighter-bombers and land the Marines. Rivers of blood would have flowed in our Homeland where hundreds of thousands of combatants were ready to die. He controlled himself and came up with a categorical phrase that is hard to forget: “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan.”

His life continued to be dramatic, like a shadow that accompanied him at all times. On the strength of wounded pride, he again succumbed to the idea of invading us. This brought on the October [Missile] Crisis and the most serious risks of thermonuclear warfare that the world has ever known until the present day. He emerged from this test as an authority thanks to the mistakes of his chief adversary. He seriously wanted to talk with Cuba and that’s what he decided to do. He sent Jean Daniel to talk with me and return to Washington. His mission was being carried out at that moment when the news of President Kennedy’s assassination arrived. His death and the strange way in which it was orchestrated and carried out, was truly sad.

Later I met close family members who visited Cuba. I never mentioned the unpleasant aspects of his policy against our country, nor did I refer at all to the attempts to eliminate me. I met his son when he was an adult, who had been a young child when his father had been the president of the United States. We got together as friends. His own brother Robert was also assassinated, multiplying the drama shadowing that family.

At the distance of so many years, information arrived about a gesture that impressed me.

These days, while so much was being said about the lengthy and unfair blockade of Cuba in the upper echelons of the continent’s countries, I read a news item in Mexico’s La Jornada: “At the end of 1963, the then Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to overturn the ban on travel to Cuba and today his daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, wrote that President Barack Obama ought to take this into account and support legislative initiatives that would allow all Americans to travel to the island.

“In official documents declassified by the National Security Archive research centre it is recorded that on December 12, 1963, less than one month after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sent a communication to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, urging the removal of regulations prohibiting Americans from traveling to Cuba.

“Robert Kennedy claimed that the prohibition violated American freedoms. According to the document, he affirmed that the current restrictions on travel are inconsistent with traditional American freedoms.

“That position was unsuccessful inside the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and the State Department decided that to suspend the restrictions would be perceived as a softening of the Cuban policy and that they were part of the joint effort made by the United States and other American republics to isolate Cuba.

“In an editorial article by Kathleen Kennedy printed today in The Washington Post, Robert’s daughter expresses her wish that her father’s position be adopted by the Barack Obama government, and that this should be the position promoted by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. while the Obama government weighs the next step it will take with Cuba, one that should be pushing for allowing more than just Cuban-Americans to travel freely to the island and dealing with the rights of all Americans, most of whom are not free to go.

“Kathleen Kennedy writes that just as Obama found out at the summit meeting last week-end, Latin American leaders have adopted a coordinated message on Cuba: the time is here to normalize relations with Havana. By keeping on trying to isolate Cuba, they essentially told Obama, Washington has only succeeded in isolating itself.

“Thus, the niece of the president who attempted to invade and overthrow the Cuban Revolutionary government and impose the blockade, adds her voice now to the ever-growing chorus in favor of reversing these policies which were put in place half a century ago.”

A worthy article by Kathleen Kennedy!

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 24, 2009
1:17 p.m.

Pressure against the U.S. blockade of Cuba was so great that on the day Raúl categorically declared that our country would not join the OAS, the secretary of the discredited institution began to prepare the terrain for Cuba’s participation in an eventual future Summit of the Americas. His recipe is to abolish the resolution which decided the expulsion of the Island for ideological reasons. Such an argument is truly laughable when important countries such as China and Vietnam, which the world today cannot do without, are being lead by Communist parties that were created on the same ideological foundations.

Historical events prove the hegemonic policies of the United States in our region and the disgusting role of the OAS as the hideous instrument of the powerful country.

Insulza’s formula consists of wiping the criminal agreement off the map. Raúl declared in Cumaná that Cuba would never rejoin the OAS. Using Marti’s scathing phrase, he expressed that first “the Southern sea would join the Northern sea, and a serpent would be born from the eagle’s egg”.

At that same occasion, in response to an alleged gesture by Obama which offered a conversation with Cuba about democracy and human rights, he replied that the government of Cuba was willing to discuss any subject on the basis of the most absolute respect for the equality and sovereignty of both countries. Our country knows full well the meaning and dignity of those words.

Among Obama’s public demands is the liberation of those imprisoned for their treacherous services to the United States which, during almost half a century, has been assaulting and blockading our Homeland.

Raúl stated that Cuba was willing to show clemency if the United States would receive them and if it would free the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes.

However, both the government of the United States and the maggot’s nest inside and outside of Cuba have reacted with all kinds of arrogance.

AP and other cable news agencies have suggested divisions in the heart of our revolutionary leadership.

According to AP, “a prominent human rights activist” said that “most of the two hundred Cuban prisoners prefer serving long sentences on the Island rather than being exchanged for five Communist agents being held in prisons in the United States, as President Raúl Castro has suggested.

“It is practically unanimous among the prisoners that they not be exchanged for soldiers who were arrested red-handed spying in the United States”, the agency stated, citing the head of the ill-named “Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Conciliation”. One would now have to see who they would classify with this concept. Pope John Paul II made no difference between political and ordinary prisoners when he visited Cuba, and he sought clemency for a number of them. Actually, the majority of those classified as ordinary prisoners in the United States are, generally speaking, the poorest and most discriminated against people.

“Nevertheless Obama -AP later goes on to say- could suffer serious political consequences if he were to agree to the exchange of five Communist agents who were condemned for spying in 2001. The leader of the group was implicated in the deaths of four Cuban exiles when their planes were shot down by Cuban fighter planes in 2001.” Isn’t that cable an indirect threat to the president of the United States?

The alleged mercenary leader was a sectarian coming from the youth section of the former Communist Party that later joined the new party created by the Revolution. When we found ourselves in the necessity to disagree with the USSR for its incorrect decision to negotiate an agreement for the October [Missile] Crisis with the United States without first consulting our country, the individual became an enemy of the Revolution. He served the superpower during the entire Bush term in office. Now he is enjoying the privilege of being instrumental in threatening Obama.

AP says not one word about the life sentences passed on the Five Heroes in cooked trials, the lies concocted with the complicity of the authorities, the cruel treatment they have received and many more details related to the case. Those are the slanderous rumours being printed in much of the news media throughout the world.

Whenever the state of health of any of the mercenaries warrants it, the government of Cuba has never failed to show clemency, without the United States having to demand it.

On the other hand, the government of Cuba never used torture, something that is acknowledged by the world. The president of Cuba cannot order the assassination of an adversary. Has the new U.S. president condemned that horrible practice? If he does so, believe me that I shall not hesitate to acknowledge the impression of sincerity he gave all of us at the beginning.

Tomorrow we shall be meeting again with Daniel. In less time than he had to wait in the LACSA plane under the intense tropical heat in Port of Spain, the Cuban plane will return him to his beloved homeland.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 23, 2009
2:54 p.m.

Daniel’s appearance on the National Television Round Table program went as I hoped. He spoke eloquently and he was persuasive, calm and irrefutable.

He gave no offence nor did he wish to offend any other Latin American country; he held firmly to the truth in every moment of his appearance: Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua, as ALBA spokesmen, rejected the idea that the Final Declaration was submitted as a matter of consensual agreement, in no uncertain terms.

Through Daniel we learned that Obama himself acknowledged that he hadn’t even read that document which snuck through as the Official Summit Declaration. Telesur also broadcast the appearance live. It had wide coverage.

Daniel pronounced categorical concepts. “It was the censorship meeting. ‘Stop the blockade against Cuba!’: this was a unanimous outcry, with different nuances, but unanimous all the same.” He stated that: “There was a very good speech by President Rafael Correa when he explained: “Elections do not mean democracy because a multiparty system is nothing other than a way to disintegrate a nation.” Daniel added that: “Cuba has a model where the people are not split up between green, red, yellow and orange. It’s simply the Cuban people, the citizens, without those campaigns where the interests of big capital are at work. It’s the Cuban people who elect their authorities without the stridency of elections in the bourgeois democracies imposed by the west.

“Courtesy does not erase ideological and political differences; it doesn’t erase reality. I wish to emphasize this because I observed a lot of star-struck attitudes among some of the heads of state and government just because they were shaking President Obama’s hand.” Alluding to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he stated: “With his little flute and all the rats behind him, we are headed for the cliff. But Obama didn’t have the effect he wanted.”

“The United States hasn’t changed, as Raúl reminded us in Cumaná. It was a Republican administration that prepared the Bay of Pigs invasion and it was a Democratic administration that carried it out.

“We have a president of the United States who says we should forget about the past, but he is trapped in the past! Of 50 years of blockading Cuba! In 2004, when he was running for senator, he said that the blockade was terrible and that it had to be called off. They asked him the question at the press conference and now he replies that that was eons ago. He is telling us that he lies; it is the answer of a person who lies.

“He is declaring that the blockade of Cuba cannot be lifted. That Cuba should be thankful for the concessions recently made. They want to sell this as a change; it doesn’t even come close to the measures Carter took 30 years ago; it’s more like going backwards. They would like us to forget about history.

“The OAS is dead. It is an unburied corpse.”

“African Unity has its own instrument. It isn’t France, it isn’t England; the former colonialists of these countries are not there; it’s the peoples of Africa that are there.

“Likewise, here we must be, the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; and from those positions, from that dialogue, from that unity, we can talk to the North, talk to the United States and Canada, talk to the Europeans; in other words, engage in a dialogue with the countries of the North and defend our positions.

“What is also clear about this Summit is that the United States has not changed and Latin America and the Caribbean, we have indeed changed; we have changed and we are changing grasping tightly onto the roots of our history.”

He finally explains that “the document was dead and the policy of the carrot and the stick is still in effect because President Obama is trapped inside the structure of an empire”.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 23, 2009
11:23 a.m.

Some of the things Daniel [Ortega, President of Nicaragua] told me would be difficult to believe if they weren’t being told by him and if they weren’t happening at a Summit of the Americas.

The odd thing is that there was no such consensus on the final document. The ALBA group did not sign it; so it was recorded in the last exchange with Obama in the presence of Manning and the other leaders on the morning of April 19th.

Chavez, Evo and Daniel spoke at that meeting with absolute clarity.

It had appeared to me that Daniel expressed a bitter complaint when, on the opening day of the summit, he said in his remarks: “I think that the time I am taking is much shorter than the three hours I had to wait in the plane at the airport.”

I asked him about that and he told me that six high level leaders had to wait on the runway: Lula from Brazil, Harper from Canada, Bachelet from Chile, Evo from Bolivia, Calderon from Mexico and he, the sixth. The reason was the sycophantic decision of the organizers to make space to receive the president of the United States. Daniel remained for three hours inside a hot LACSA plane, held up in the airport under the sweltering tropical sun.

He related to me the behavior of the main leaders present at the Summit, and the basic and specific problems of each of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. He didn’t appear to be holding a grudge. He was sure, calm and understanding. I remembered the days of Reagan’s dirty war, the thousands of weapons launched by that president against Nicaragua, the tens of thousands of dead, the mining of the ports, using drugs on the part of the U.S. government to get around Congress regulations forbidding the funding for that cynical war.

We do not ignore the criminal invasion of Panama ordered by Bush senior, the horrible massacre at El Chorillo, the thousands of dead Panamanians, the invasion of little Grenada with the complicity of other governments in the region, all fairly recent events in the tragic history of our hemisphere.

In each of these crimes, the hairy paw of the OAS could be found, principal accomplice in the brutal actions of the great military and economic power against our impoverished countries. He told me about the harm drug trafficking and organized crime inflict on the Central American countries, the traffic in American weapons, the immense market that drives that activity, so detrimental to the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.

He told me about the geothermic possibilities Central America has as a highly valuable natural resource. He thinks that, in this manner, Nicaragua would be able to reach a generating capacity equivalent to two million kilowatt hours. Today its total electrical generating capacity, including the different energy sources, barely reaches 700,000 kilowatt hours and blackouts are frequent.

He spoke of Nicaragua’s capacity to produce food, about the price of milk which is distributed for a third of what is charged in the United States even though salaries in this country are dozens of times higher.

Our conversation revolved around this and other practical subjects. At no time did I see him resentful, much less suggesting extremist measures in the economic area. He is well informed and makes very realistic analyses of what can and ought to be done.

I explained to him that in our country many had not been able to hear his speech because of the schedule and the lack of timely information about the Summit; therefore I asked him to please explain the most interesting subjects related to the Summit on a television program, to a panel that would be made up of three young journalists, things that would surely interest many Latin Americans, Americans and Canadians.

Daniel knows of many concrete possibilities to improve the living conditions of the Nicaraguan people, one of the five poorest countries in the hemisphere as a result of the United States interventions and pillage. He was pleased with Obama’s victory and he observed him well at the Summit. He didn’t like his behavior at the meeting. “He would move all over the place -he told me- seeking out people to influence them, convincing them with his power and flattery.”

Of course, a long-distance observer like me could perceive a strategy that was set up to extol positions that were most compatible with U.S. interests and most opposed to policies in favor of social changes, unity and the sovereignty of our peoples. In my judgment, the worst was the maneuver of introducing a declaration that was supposedly supported by all.

The blockade of Cuba was not even mentioned in the Final Declaration and the president of the United States used it to justify his actions and to cover up alleged concessions made by his administration to Cuba. We would better understand the real limitations that the new U.S. president has to introduce changes to his nation’s policy towards our country, than the use of lies to justify his actions.

Are we expected to applaud the aggression on our radio and television air space, the use of sophisticated technologies to invade that space from great heights and the application of the same policy Bush had against Cuba? Shall we accept the U.S. right to keep up the blockade for a geological period of time until capitalist democracy is brought to Cuba?

Obama confesses that the leaders of the Latin American and Caribbean countries talk to him everywhere about Cuban medical services, and he nevertheless expresses that “And it’s a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have — have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region.”

Subconsciously, Obama understands that Cuba basks in the prestige of its doctors’ services in the region and even gives it more importance that we ourselves do. Perhaps he has not even been informed that Cuba has sent its doctors not just to Latin America and the Caribbean, but also to numerous African and Asian countries in times of catastrophes, including small islands of Oceania like East Timor and Kiribati, under the threat of being submerged if the climate changes, and that we even offered to send, in a matter of hours, a complete medical brigade to assist the victims of Katrina when most of New Orleans was helpless under the floodwaters and they might have saved many lives. Thousands of young people chosen from other countries have been educated as doctors in Cuba; tens of thousands more are now being trained.

We have been cooperating not only in healthcare, but also in education, sports, science, culture, energy saving, reforestation, protection of the environment and other areas. United Nation agencies could bear witness to this.

And more: the blood of Cuban patriots has been shed in the struggle against the last bastions of colonialism in Africa and in the defeat of apartheid, an ally of the United States.

And most important of all, Daniel said it at the Summit, is the total absence of conditions in the contributions of Cuba, that small island blockaded by the United States.

We didn’t do it seeking influence and support. They were the principles underpinning our struggle and our resistance. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than in the United States; for a long time now we have had no illiterates; white, black and mestizo children go to school every day, with the same opportunities for education, even those requiring special education. We have not achieved complete justice, but we have certainly achieved the maximum of justice possible. All National Assembly members are nominated and elected by the people; more than 90% of the people entitled to vote do so.

We have not asked for that capitalist democracy under which you were educated and in which you sincerely, and with all your right, believe.

We do not aspire to export our political system to the United States.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 22, 2009
12:53 p.m.

Yesterday I referred to what was funny about the “Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain”.

Today I could refer to what is tragic about it. I hope our friends do not take any offence in this. There were some differences between the draft that we received, which was going to be submitted by the hosts of the Summit, and the document that was finally published. In all that last-minute haste, there was hardly any time for anything. Some items had been discussed at long meetings held some weeks previous to the Summit. At the very last moment, proposals such as the one submitted by Bolivia, complicated even more the whole picture. The Bolivian proposal was included as a note in the document. It stated that Bolivia considered that the implementation of policies and cooperation schemes aimed at expanding the use of bio-fuels in the western hemisphere could affect and have an impact on the availability of foodstuffs, the increase of food prices, deforestation, the displacement of populations as a result of the land demand, and that consequently this could make the food crisis to be even worse, which will directly affect low income persons and, most of all, the poorest economies among developing countries. The note added that the Bolivian government, while recognizing the need to look for and resort to environmentally friendly alternative sources of energy, such as the geothermal, solar, and eolic sources of energy, and to small and medium size hydro-power generators, it advocates for an alternative approach, based on the possibility of living well and in harmony with nature, in order to develop public policies aimed at the promotion of safe alternative energies that could ensure the preservation of the planet, our ‘mother land’.

When analyzing this note submitted by Bolivia please bear in mind that the United States and Brazil are the two biggest producers of bio-fuels in the world, something that is opposed by an increasing number of persons on the planet, whose resistance has been growing since the dark days of George Bush.

Obama’s advisors published on the Internet their version -in English- of the interview the US president granted to some journalists in Port of Spain. At one point, he asserted that there was something he found interesting -and added that he had known of it in a more abstract way but that he found it interesting in more specific terms- which was listening to these leaders who, when speaking about Cuba, did so referring specifically to the thousands of doctors Cuba is disseminating throughout the region, and finding how much these countries depended on them. He said this reminded them in the US of the fact that if their only interaction with many of these countries was the war on drugs; that if their only interaction was of a military character, then it was possible that they would not be developing connections that, with time, could enhance their influence with a positive effect when they may find it necessary to advance policies of their interest in the region.

He said he thought that was the reason why it was so important -for the sake of their interaction, not only here in this hemisphere, but in the whole world- to recognize that their military power was just part of their power, and that they have to resort to diplomacy and their aid to development in a more intelligent way, so that peoples could see concrete and practical improvements in the life of ordinary citizens, based on the foreign policy of the United States.

Jake, one of the journalists, said thanks to the President and added that in Port of Spain the President had listened to many Latin American leaders who want the US to lift the embargo against Cuba. The journalist reminded the President he had said that was an important influence that should not be eliminated. But he added that in 2004 the President did support the lifting of the embargo. He reminded the President he had said that the embargo had not managed to raise the standards of living, that it had squeezed the innocent, and that it was high time for the US to recognize that that particular policy had failed. The journalist wondered what made the President change his opinion with regards to the embargo.

The President responded that the year 2004 seemed to be thousands of years ago, and wondered what he himself was doing in 2004.

The journalist answered that back then he was running for the Senate. The President added that the fact that Raul Castro had said his government was ready to talk with the US government not only about the lifting of the embargo but also about other issues, namely, human rights and political prisoners, was a signal of progress. He said there were some things the Cuban government could do. He added that Cuba could release the political prisoners, reduce the surcharge imposed on remittances, which will correspond with the policies that they have applied, whereby Cuban-American families are allowed to send remittances. He said that it so happened that Cuba applies a very high surcharge. He said that Cuba is exacting significant profits. He added that this would be an example of cooperation where both governments would be working to help the Cuban family and improve the living standards in Cuba.

There is no doubt that the President misinterpreted Raul’s statements.

When the President of Cuba said he was ready to discuss any topic with the US President, he meant he was not afraid of addressing any issue. That shows his courage and confidence on the principles of the Revolution. No one should feel astonished that Raul spoke about pardoning those who were convicted on March, 2003, and about sending them all to the United States, should that country be willing to release the Five Cuban Anti-Terrorism Heroes. The convicts, as was already the case with the Bay of Pig’s mercenaries, are at the service of a foreign power that threatens and blockades our homeland.

Besides, the assertion that Cuba imposes a very high surcharge and obtains significant profits is an attempt by the President’s advisors to cause trouble and division among Cubans. Every country charges a certain amount for all hard currency transfers. If those are made in dollars, all the more reason we have to do it, because that is the currency of the country that blockades us. Not all Cubans have relatives abroad that could send them remittances. Redistributing a relatively small part of them to benefit those more in need of food, medicines and other goods is absolutely fair. Our homeland does not have the privilege of converting the money minted by the State into hard currency -something the Chinese very often call “junk money”- as I have explained on several occasions, which has been one of the causes of the present economic crisis. With what money the US is bailing out its banks and multinationals, while plunging future generations of Americans into indebtedness? Would Obama be ready to discuss those issues?

Daniel Ortega stated it very clearly when he remembered the first conversation he had with Carter, which today I will once more repeat:

“I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter, and when he told me that now, after the Somozas’ tyranny had been ousted, and the Nicaraguan people had defeated the Somozas’ tyranny, it was high time ‘for Nicaragua to change’, I said: ‘No, Nicaragua does not need to change; you are the ones that need to change. Nicaragua has never invaded the United States. Nicaragua has never mined the US ports. Nicaragua has never launched a single stone against the American nation. Nicaragua has not imposed any government on the United States. You are the ones that need to change, not the Nicaraguans.’”

At the press conference, as well as in the final meetings of the Summit, Obama looked conceited. Such attitude by the US President was consistent with the abject positions adopted by some Latin American leaders. Some days ago I said that whatever was said and done at the Summit will be known anyway.

When the US President said, in answering to Jake, that thousands of years had elapsed since 2004 until the present, he was superficial. Should we wait for so many years before his blockade is lifted? He did not invent it, but he embraced it just as much as the previous ten US presidents did. Should he continue down that same path, we could predict he would face a sure fiasco, just as all his predecessors did. That is not the dream entertained by Martin Luther King, whose role in the struggle for human rights will ever more illuminate the American people’s path.

We are living in a new era. Changes are unavoidable. Leaders just pass through; peoples prevail. There would be no need to wait for thousands of years to pass by; only eight years will be enough so that a new US President -who will no doubt be less intelligent, promising and admired in the world than Barack Obama- riding on a better armored car, or on a more modern helicopter, or on a more sophisticated plane, occupies that inglorious position.

Tomorrow we shall have more news about the Summit.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 21, 2009
5:34 p.m.

It is not known how many people in the United States write to Obama and how many different topics are presented to him. It’s clear that he cannot read all the letters and deal with everything because he wouldn’t be able to fit it into a 24-hour day or a 365-day year. What is certain is that his advisors, backed up by their computers, electronic equipment and cell, answer all the letters. Their contents are recorded and there are pre-written answers supported by the multiple declarations of the new president during his campaign to be nominated and elected.

Anyway, the letters have influence and bearing upon United States policy since we are not dealing, in this case, with a corrupt, lying and ignorant politician as his predecessor was, who hated the social advances made by the New Deal.

For that reason I fixed upon a news cable published yesterday on April 14, originating from Washington, provided by the DPA news agency.

It stated that a group of high-ranking retired U.S. military were urging President Barack Obama to ‘support and sign’ a law to end the prohibitions on travel to Cuba by all U.S. citizens, arguing that the embargo against the island is of no use for political purposes or for Washington’s security.

In a letter released today in Washington, the 12 retired high-ranking officers, among them the ‘drug czar’ during the Clinton administration, Brian McCaffrey and Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson, warn that the embargo has caused a significant diplomatic movement against U.S. policy.

As military professionals, we understand that the interests of the United States are better attended to when the country is capable of attracting the support of other nations to our cause, the soldiers insist in the letter sent to Obama on Monday, the same day that the U.S. president announced the end of the travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban-Americans, but not for all American citizens as progressive sectors want.

In the opinion of these soldiers, the ‘Law on Freedom of Travel to Cuba’ presented before the House of Representatives by the Democrat Bill Delahunt ‘is an important first step towards the lifting of the embargo’.

They add that this is a kind of policy ‘with more possibilities for bringing change to Cuba’ and also for changing Washington’s international image.

Throughout the world, leaders are demanding a real political change based on the hopes you inspired in your campaign, the soldiers maintain.

They add that Cuba provides a handier element to demonstrate that change and furthermore it would be a manoeuvre that would be deeply etched into the minds of our partners and rivals in the world.

Placed as it was among 315 pages of cables, the news would appear to be somewhat insignificant. However it deals with the crux of the problem that motivated four reflections in less than 24 hours, revolving around the Summit of the Americas which will be starting within 48 hours.

In the United States, wars are unleashed by the politicians and they have to be fought by the soldiers.

The young and untried Kennedy decreed the blockade and the Bay of Pigs invasion, organized by Eisenhower and by Nixon who knew less of war than he did. The unexpected twist of fate led him to new and unwise decisions that ended up in the October Missile Crisis from which he nevertheless emerged gracefully although traumatized by the risk of a nuclear war that hovered at his elbow, as the French journalist Jean Daniel told me. “He is a thinking machine”, was the praise he added about the president who had greatly impressed him.

Later, enthused with the Green Berets, he dispatched them to Vietnam where the U.S. was supporting the restoration of the French colonial empire. Another politician, Lyndon Johnson, carried that war to its final consequences. In that inglorious adventure, more than 50,000 soldiers lost their lives, the Union squandered no less than 500 billion dollars when the value of the dollar in gold fell 20 times, killed millions of Vietnamese and multiplied the solidarity for that poor Third World country. Conscripts had to be replaced with professional soldiers, removing the people from military training and thus weakening that nation.

A third politician, George W. Bush, protected by his father, carried out the genocidal Iraqi war that hastened the economic crisis, making it more serious and profound. Its cost in economic figures is at trillions of dollars, with a public debt that will fall upon the new generations of Americans, in a world which is convulsed and full of risks.

Those who affirm that the embargo affects the security interests of the United States, are they right or not?

Those who wrote the letter are not appealing to the use of weapons, but to the war of ideas, something which is diametrically opposed to what was done by the politicians.

In general, the American soldiers who defend the economic, political and social system of the United States have privileges and are very well paid, but they are concerned about not taking part in the stealing of public funds, something that would lead to their disrepute and to the total lack of authority for their military endeavours.

They do not believe that Cuba constitutes a threat to the security of the United States, as we have been attempted to be portrayed before American public opinion. It has been the governments of that country which have transformed the Guantánamo base into a refuge for counter-revolutionaries or emigrants. Worse than all this, they transformed it into a torture centre that made them famous as a symbol of the most brutal negation of human rights.

The soldiers also know that our country is a model for the fight against drug trafficking and that never have any terrorist actions been allowed against the people of the United States from our territory.

As the Black Caucus from the U.S. Congress was able to discover, including Cuba on the list of terrorist countries is the most dishonest thing that has ever been done.

We give thanks to those who wrote the letter to Obama, just as we thank senators Lugar and Delahunt, the Caucus and other influential members of Congress.

We do not fear dialogue; we do not need to invent enemies; we do not fear the debate of ideas; we believe in our convictions and with them we have known how to defend and continue defending our homeland.

With the fabulous advances of technology, war has become one of the most complex sciences.

It is something the American soldiers understand. They know it isn’t a matter of issuing orders along the lines of the old wars. Nowadays one will possibly never see the adversary’s face; they can be thousands of kilometres apart; the deadliest of weapons are fired by programmes. Men hardly participate. Decisions are previously calculated and bereft of emotions.

I have met several of them, by now retired, who dedicate themselves to the study of the military sciences and warfare.

They express no hatred or dislike of the small country which has struggled and resisted, faced with such a powerful neighbour.

In the United States these days there is a World Security Institute in existence; our country maintains contact with it and carries out academic exchanges. 15 years ago what existed was the Centre for Defence Information (CDI). It made a first visit to Cuba at the end of June in 1993. Between that date and November 19, 2004 nine visits were made to Cuba.

Until the year 1999, the delegations were mainly made up of retired military.

On the October 1999 visit, the composition of the delegates began to change, and the military became less of a presence. From the fifth visit, all the delegations were presided by the prestigious researcher Bruce Blair, expert in security policies and specializing in nuclear control and command forces. He is consulting professor at the universities of Yale and Princeton. He has published many books and hundreds of articles on the subject.

This was the way I met soldiers who had taken on important roles in the U.S. armed forces. We did not always agree with their points of view, but they were always pleasant. We had extensive exchanges about historical events in which they had participated as the military.

Visits continued in 2006, but I had had the accident in Santa Clara and later on I became seriously ill.

Among the twelve retired soldiers who signed the letter to Obama, one of them had taken part in those meetings.

I learned that in the last meeting to take place, they frankly said that the military had no intention of militarily attacking Cuba; that there was a new political situation in the United States coming out of the administration’s weakness on account of its disaster in Iraq.

For the comrades who met with the Americans it was evident that they felt they were being poorly led and they were embarrassed by what was happening even though nobody could provide guarantees about the president of the United States’ adventurous policy which he kept up right to his last day in office. That meeting took place in March of 2007, 14 months ago.

Bruce Blair must know much more than I about the thorny subject. I was always impressed by his brave and transparent behaviour.

I didn’t want this information to stay in the files waiting for a time when it would no longer be of interest to anyone.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 15, 2009
9:16 p.m.

Today I spoke frankly about the atrocities committed against the peoples of Latin America. The peoples of the Caribbean were not even independent when the Cuban Revolution triumphed. Exactly on April 19th, the day when the Summit of the America finishes, it will be 48 years since the Cuban victory at Bay of Pigs. I was cautious when referring to the OAS; I didn’t say a single word that might be interpreted as an offence to that very old institution even though everyone knows how repugnant it is to us.

A rather hostile cable from the British news agency Reuters states that in an interview granted to the Brazilian paper ‘O’Globo’, Insulza said that Cuba needs to make it clear that it is committed to democracy if it wants to return to the Organization of American States, as demanded by an increasing number of Latin American governments.

He added that the U.S. President Barack Obama is reviewing Washington”s decades-old policy of isolating communist Cuba ahead of the Summit of the Americas meeting this weekend, where Latin American leaders are expected to press for an end to the U.S. embargo on the island, in force since 1962.

He said that some countries are also expected to push for Cuba to be readmitted to the OAS, from which it was expelled in 1962 at the height of the Cold War.

Insulza cautioned that the OAS” democracy clause remained an obstacle to the demands pushing to readmit Cuba, a one-party state.

He said that we needed to know if Cuba is interested in returning to multilateral organizations or if it is thinking only about the end of the embargo and economic growth. He added that this is a Summit of good will countries, but good will alone is not enough to make a change.

Insulza, a former Chilean foreign minister, said that all 34 leaders attending the Summit, from which Cuba is barred, come from democratic countries.

When asked about Cuba he told O’Globo that the General Assembly of the OAS decided that all member countries must adhere to democratic principles.

But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, one of Washington”s harshest critics, has already said he would seek to place the Cuba issue at the center of the summit debates.

Isulza said to O’Globo that the return of Cuba to the body not only depends on the Summit of the Americas, but on the OAS General Assembly.

The OAS has a history which collects all the trash accumulated after 60 years of betraying the peoples of Latin America.

Insulza asserts that Cuba must first be accepted by the OAS before joining that institution. He knows that we don’t even wish to hear the loathsome name of that institution, for it has not rendered any single service to our peoples. It is rather the incarnation of betrayal. If one were to add up all the aggressive actions to which it was an accomplice, they would span hundreds of thousands of lives and several bloody decades. Its meeting will be a battlefield that will place many governments into an embarrassing situation. However, let it not be said that Cuba has thrown the first stone. Insulza even offends us by presuming that we are eager to join the OAS. The train has passed by a long time ago, and Insulza still does not know it. Some day many countries will ask to be forgiven for having belonged to it.

Evo spoke today at noon. He still hasn’t said the last word about whether or not he will be attending the ALBA meeting and the Summit of the Americas. He won an undeniable and overwhelming victory.

Nevertheless he accepted the number of seats assigned to indigenous towns to be reduced to 7 from the 14 he had proposed. The adversary will surely try to exploit that aspect to spur its machinations against the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), betting on the weakening of the movement.

MAS will have to struggle hard to secure both the electoral biometric register and an alternative, if the oligarchy succeeds in postponing the drawing up of the new register. His hunger strike was a brave and daring decision and the Bolivian people’s awareness was greatly enhanced.

Now the centre of attention will concentrate on the Summit of the Americas. It will be a privilege to know what will be said there; intelligence and decency will be put to the test. We shall not go down on our knees begging the OAS to allow us entering into infamy.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 14, 2009
4:43 p.m.