Reflections of Fidel

Forty eight years ago mercenary troops in the service of a foreign power invaded their own homeland, escorted by a United States squadron, including an aircraft carrier and dozens of fighter planes. That date cannot be forgotten. The great power to the North can apply the same recipe to any Latin American country. It has already happened many times throughout our hemisphere’s history. Is there any declaration guaranteeing that such an action will never repeat again, either directly or through the very armies of other countries, as it occurred in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and others?

The wily surprise attack on the Bay of Pigs cost us more than 150 lives and hundreds of seriously wounded. We would like to hear some self-criticism from the powerful country and a guarantee that this shall never happen again in our hemisphere.

Yesterday, April 13th, commemorated the seventh anniversary of the failed coup against the Revolution in Venezuela.

For the sake of democracy and human rights, we need to be hearing a voice from Washington telling us that the School of the Americas, specializing in coups d’état and torture, will be shut down forever.

We cannot forget that, in April, El Salvador will still be governed by the ARENA leader, who was an oligarchic ally of Bush in the Iraqi genocide. In a million human lives sacrificed there is enough blood to drown all the accomplices.

Am I being offensive by remembering this? Or, is it also prohibited, in the name of decency, naiveté and complicity, to refer to the subject?

The decision to relax travel restrictions is indeed positive in itself, although minimal. Many others are required, including the abolition of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act which is exclusively applied to our country alone in the whole world. We should like to hear an answer to the question about whether the migratory privileges being used to combat the Cuban Revolution and to strip it of human resources would also be granted to all other Latin American and Caribbean nations. But everything in Port of Spain will be secret. Listening to the debates and the statements to be made by the heads of state and government will be forbidden. Whatever is said by each of them there will anyway be known.

We have no wish to offend Obama in the least, but he shall be president for one or two terms. He is not responsible for what has happened and I am sure that he wouldn’t commit Bush’s atrocities. In his wake, however, someone equal or worse than his predecessor might come. Men come and go; peoples live on.

There are other extremely serious problems such as the climate change, and the current president of the United States has decided to cooperate in that problem so vital for humankind. We have to acknowledge that.

Enough for today. I do not wish to add one single word.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 14, 2009
11:15 a.m.

The U.S. administration announced through CNN that Obama would be visiting Mexico this week, in the first part of a trip that will take him to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where he will be within four days taking part in the Summit of the Americas. He has announced the relief of some hateful restrictions imposed by Bush on Cubans living in the United States regarding their visits to relatives in Cuba. When questions were raised on whether such prerogatives extended to other American citizens the response was that the latter were not authorized.

But not a word was said about the harshest of measures: the blockade. This is the way a truly genocidal measure is piously called, one whose damage cannot be calculated only on the basis of its economic effects, for it constantly takes human lives and brings painful suffering to our people.

Numerous diagnostic equipment and crucial medicines –made in Europe, Japan or any other country– are not available to our patients if they carry U.S. components or software.

The U.S. companies producing goods or offering services anywhere in the world apply these restrictions to Cuba, since they are extraterritorial measures.

An influential Republican Senator, Richard Lugar, and some others from his same party in Congress, as well as a significant number of his Democratic peers, favor the removal of the blockade. The conditions exist for Obama to use his talents in a constructive policy that could put an end to the one that has failed for almost half a century.

On the other hand, our country, which has resisted and is willing to resist whatever it takes, neither blames Obama for the atrocities of other U.S. administrations nor doubts his sincerity and his wishes to change the United States policy and image. We understand that he waged a very difficult battle to be elected, despite centuries-old prejudices.

Taking note of this reality, the President of the State Council of Cuba has expressed his willingness to have a dialogue with Obama and to normalize relations with the United States, on the basis of the strictest respect for the sovereignty of our country.

At 2:30 p.m., the head of the Interests Section of Cuba in Washington, Jorge Bolaños, was summoned to the State Department by Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. He did not say anything different from what had been indicated by the CNN.

At 3:15 p.m. a lengthy press conference started. The substance of what was said there is reflected in the words of Dan Restrepo, Presidential Adviser for Latin America.

He said that today President Obama had instructed to take certain measures, certain steps, to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their wishes to live with respect for human rights and to determine their own destiny and that of the country.

He added that the president had instructed the secretaries of State, Commerce and Treasury to undertake the necessary actions to remove all restrictions preventing persons to visit their relatives in the Island and sending remittances. He also said that the president had issued instructions for steps to be taken allowing the free flow of information in Cuba, and between those living in Cuba and the rest of the world, and to facilitate delivering humanitarian resources directly to the Cuban people.

He also said that with these measures, aimed at closing the gap between divided Cuban families and promoting the free flow of information and humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people, President Obama was making an effort to fulfill the objectives he set out during his campaign and after taking on his position.

Finally, he indicated that all those who believe in the basic democratic values hope for a Cuba where the human, political, economic and basic rights of the entire people are respected. And he added that President Obama feels that these measures will help to make this objective a reality. The president, he said, encourages everyone who shares these wishes to continue to decidedly support the Cuban people.

At the end of the press conference, the adviser candidly confessed that ‘all of this is for Cuba’s freedom.’

Cuba does not applaud the ill-named Summits of the Americas, where our nations do not debate on equal footing. If they were of any use, it would be to make critical analyses of policies that divide our peoples, plunder our resources and hinder our development.

Now, the only thing left is for Obama to try to persuade all of the Latin American presidents attending the conference that the blockade is harmless.

Cuba has resisted and it will continue to resist; it will never beg for alms. It will go on forward holding its head up high and cooperating with the fraternal peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean; with or without Summits of the Americas; whether or not the president of the United States is Obama, a man or a woman, a black or a white citizen.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 13, 2009
6:12 p.m.

On April 2nd, while the G-20 Summit Meeting was beginning and ending in London, the well-known journalist of the influential Washington Post, Karen De Young, wrote: “Senator Richard G. Lugar called on President Obama to appoint a special envoy to initiate direct talks with the island’s communist government.

“The nearly 50-year-old economic embargo against Cuba, Lugar (R-Ind.) said…puts the United States at odds with the views of the rest of Latin America, the European Union and the United Nations, and ‘undermines our broader security and political interests in the Western Hemisphere.’

“The April 17-19 Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago would present a ‘unique opportunity for you to build a more hospitable climate to advance U.S. interests in the region through a change in our posture regarding Cuba policy.’

“Lugar, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, -says Karen De Young- is in the forefront of a broad movement advocating a new policy that includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, a number of state governments and human rights groups. A bipartisan majority of Congress has repeatedly voted to ease restrictions on travel and other contact with Cuba, although the measures died after threatened presidential vetoes during the Bush administration.”

“Lugar is a co-sponsor of a bipartisan bill introduced in the Senate this week that would end all restrictions on travel to Cuba except in cases of war or direct threats to health or safety”.

“Lugar said the appointment of an envoy and initiation of direct talks on subjects such as migration and drug interdiction would “serve vital U.S. security interests . . . and could ultimately create the conditions for meaningful discussion of more contentious subjects.”

Karen’s article expresses no doubt that the Indiana Senator is walking on solid ground. His starting point is not a philanthropic position. As she states, he is working with “the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups, a number of state governments and human rights groups”.

I am certain that Richard G. Lugar doesn’t fear the silliness of being described as soft or pro-socialist.

If President Barack Obama travels the world asserting, as he did in his very own country, that it is necessary to invest the sums needed to pull out of the financial crisis, to guarantee the homes where countless families live, to guarantee jobs for the American workers who are becoming unemployed by the millions, to install health services and quality education for all citizens, how can he reconcile that with blockade measures to impose his will over a country like Cuba?

Today drugs are one of the most serious problems in this hemisphere and in Europe. In the war against drug trafficking and organized crime, encouraged in the enormous U.S. market, the Latin American countries are now losing almost ten thousand men each year, more than twice the number lost by the United States in the Iraq war. The number grows and the problem is very far from being resolved.

That phenomenon does not exist in Cuba, a neighboring country close to the United States. On that thorny subject and in the war against illegal migration, the U.S. and Cuban coast guard services have been cooperating for many years. On the other hand, no American has ever died as the result of terrorist actions coming from our country, because such activities would not be tolerated.

The Cuban Revolution, which has not been destroyed either by the blockade or the dirty war, is based on ethical and political principles; that is the reason why it has been able to resist.

My aim is not to exhaust the subject. Far from it: in this reflection I am leaving out the damage inflicted on our country by the United States’ arrogant attitude towards Cuba.

Those who are capable of serenely analyzing the events, as is the case of the senator from Indiana, use an irrefutable argument: the United States’ measures against Cuba, over almost half a century, are a total failure.

There is no need to emphasize what Cuba has always said: we do not fear dialogue with the United States. Nor do we need the confrontation to exist as some foolish people think: we exist precisely because we believe in our ideas and we have never feared dialogue with the adversary. It is the only way to secure friendship and peace among peoples.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 5, 2009
1:04 p.m.

Yesterday on Thursday April 3rd, at midday, I had an almost two-hour meeting with Daniel Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo.

As I explained to Daniel in the letter I sent to him in the afternoon, I was pleasantly impressed with the meeting. I thanked him for the opportunity I had in learning about the details of his struggle in Nicaragua.

I expressed my sadness to him about the cadres who deserted and I recalled Tomás Borge, Bayardo, Jaime Wheelock, Miguel D´Escoto and others who had remained faithful to Sandino’s dreams and to the revolutionary ideas brought to Nicaragua by the Sandinista Front.

I asked him to please send me news as often as possible in order to know about the ups and downs of a small Third World country in the face of the insatiable ambitions of the G-7.

I sent Rosario a copy of the book “The Geology of Cuba for All” that I received three days ago, a marvelous biography of nature on our island throughout hundreds of millions of years, illustrated with beautiful pictures and photographs, written by 12 Cuban scientists and constituting a literary jewel with its articles and analyses. I showed it to her and she had been very interested in it.

I chatted with Daniel at length about the “famous” Summit of the Americas which will be taking place on the 17th, 18th and 19th at Port of Spain, the capital of Trinidad and Tobago.

Those summit meetings have a history which has certainly been rather dismal. The first took place in Miami, capital of the counterrevolution, the blockade and the dirty war against Cuba. That summit was held on the 10th and 11th of December in 1994. It had been convened by Bill Clinton, elected president of the United States in November of 1992.

The USSR had collapsed and our country was in the midst of the special period. The fall of socialism in our country as it had happened first in Eastern Europe and later in the Soviet Union was taken for granted.

The counterrevolutionaries were packing their bags for their victorious return to Cuba. Bush Sr. had lost the elections as a result of that warmongering venture in Iraq. Clinton was preparing for the post-revolutionary-Cuba era in Latin America. The Washington Consensus was in full swing.

The dirty war against Cuba was at the point of having a successful conclusion. The Cold War was ending with the victory of the West and a new era was dawning for the world. The presidents of South and Central America enthusiastically attended the 1994 Miami Summit, heartened by Clinton’s invitation.

President Carlos Menem of Argentina topped the list of South American presidents who attended the meeting, followed by his right-wing neighbor Lacalle of Uruguay, Eduardo Frei of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile, the Bolivian Sánchez de Lozada, Fujimori of Peru and Rafael Caldera of Venezuela. There was nothing strange about the fact that they pulled along Itamar Franco and Fernando Enrique Cardoso, his successor in the presidency, Samper of Colombia and Sixto Duran of Ecuador.

The list of attendees from Central America in Miami was headed by Calderón Sol, of the ARENA Party in El Salvador and Violeta Chamorro who, by virtue of the anti-Sandinista dirty war, had been instated by Reagan and Bush Sr. in Nicaragua.

Ernesto Zedillo was representing Mexico at the Miami Summit.

A strategic objective lurked in the background of this meeting: the imperialist dream for a free trade agreement reaching from Canada all the way to Patagonia.

President Hugo Chavez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela had not yet made his appearance at the summits until the year 2001 in Quebec; neither had George W. Bush with his sinister role on the international scene.

History decreed that José Martí, our National Hero and the champion of Cuban independence, would experience capitalism’s first great economic crisis in the United States, the one lasting until 1893. He understood that economic union with the United States would mean the end of the independence and culture of the peoples of Latin America.

In May of 1888, the president of the United States had sent the peoples of the Americas and the Kingdom of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean an invitation from the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives to an international conference in Washington to study, among other things, “the adoption of a common silver-based currency by each of the governments that would be enforced for the reciprocal trade transactions among the citizens of all the American states”.

Certainly, the members of Congress must have studied well the consequences such measures would have.

Nearly two years after the International American Conference, of which the United States was a party, an international monetary union was recommended and, as basis for this union, the minting of one or more currencies that might be used in the represented countries.

Finally, after a month’s delay, as Marti himself tells it, the United States delegation declared in the International Monetary Commission, in March 1891, that “it was a fascinating dream that could not be attempted without the agreement of all the other countries on the globe”. It also recommended that gold or silver be used in the currencies that would be minted.

It was a premonition of what would happen 55 years later in Bretton Woods where the U.S. was granted the privilege of issuing an international paper currency, using gold and silver.

However, that event led to Marti drawing up the most impressive political and economical analysis I have ever read in my life, published in the Illustrated Review of New York in the month of May of 1891 in which he resolutely opposed the idea.

During my meeting with Daniel, he gave me a large number of paragraphs that are being debated about the final declaration of the upcoming Port of Spain Summit.

The OAS as the permanent secretary for the Summit of the Americas is dictating guidelines: it is the role assigned to it by Bush. It contains 100 paragraphs; it seems that the institution likes round numbers to sweeten the pill and give more punch to the document; an epigraph for each one of the 100 best poems in the lovely language.

Surely there are a great number of inadmissible concepts. It will be a litmus test for the peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America. Could it be a step backwards? Blockade and also exclusion after 50 years of resistance?

Who will assume those responsibilities? Who now demands our extinction? Could it be that they do not understand that the days of treaties excluding our people are a thing of the past? There will be important reservations in that declaration signed by heads of state so that it can be understood that in spite of the changes attained through tough talks, there are ideas which are unacceptable to them.

Cuba has always shown its willingness, in new circumstances, to provide maximum cooperation with the diplomatic activities of the countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. Those who ought to, know this well but we cannot be asked to keep silent in the face of unnecessary and inadmissible concessions.

Even stones shall speak!

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 4, 2009
7:34 p.m.

These days, many news cables are talking about China’s economic potential.

Yesterday, March 28th, it was the main U.S. news agency which was acknowledging that

“China is the only major economy still growing at a fast clip…

“In his second rebuke of U.S. leadership this past week – the cable continues, not very kindly at the end of the paragraph- the central bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, said China’s rapid response to the downturn — including a stimulus package equivalent to $586 billion— proved the superiority of its authoritarian, one-party political system. ”

The AP agency immediately releases the verbatim version of the governor of the central bank of China:

“Facts speak volumes, and demonstrate that compared with other major economies, the Chinese government has taken prompt, decisive and effective policy measures, demonstrating its system advantage…” a statement that, according to the press agency, were taken from Zhou’s remarks posted on the People’s Bank of China’s Web site.

“Two weeks away from the summit of 20 leading economies (G20) to be held on April 2 in London, Zhou called on foreign governments to give their finance ministers and central bankers broad authority so that they can “act boldly and expeditiously without having to go through a lengthy or even painful approval process.”

“China has made its agenda clear: It wants a stable U.S. dollar, and has even advocated the creation of another global currency altogether. Beijing is leery of protectionism. And it is demanding a larger say in how financial systems are regulated and rescued, while holding back on any promises for new rescue or stimulus measures of its own.

At the end of the cable, it states:

“…Wen Jiabao, the Chinese Prime Minister, has urged the United States to remain “a credible nation.” In other words, Beijing wants Washington to avoid spurring inflation with excessive government spending on bailouts and stimulus packages.”

As one can see, the influence of the Peoples’ Republic of China at the London meeting will be enormous from the economic point of view vis-à-vis the world crisis. That would have never happened earlier when the power of the United States used to prevail totally in this field.

On the other hand, it is amusing to see the unrest at the entrails of the empire, full of insurmountable problems and contradictions with the peoples of Latin America which it intends to dominate forever and ever.

Those reading the statements made by the pious Catholic Joe Biden in Viña del Mar, ruling out the lifting of the economic blockade against Cuba and longing for an internal transition which in our country would be frankly counter-revolutionary, will be amazed. It is so sad to hear his plaintive laments, especially when there is not a single Latin American and Caribbean government that doesn’t perceive a millstone from the past in that antediluvian measure. What kind of ethic subsists in United States policy? How much of Christianity remains in the political thinking of Vice President Biden?

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 29, 2009
3:43 p.m.

In the game between the Japanese and Cuban teams that concluded today at close to 3:00 a.m., we were unquestionably defeated.

The organizers of the Classic decided that the three countries holding the first three places in world baseball should confront each other in San Diego, including Cuba arbitrarily in the Asian group despite the fact being the Caribbeans that we are.

However, I doubt that any team from the West can defeat Japan and Korea within the group of competitors who will be playing in Los Angeles in the next three days. With their quality, only one of the two Asian countries will decide who takes the first and second places in the Classic.

What mattered to the organizers was to eliminate Cuba, a revolutionary country that has heroically resisted and has remained undefeated in the battle of ideas. Nevertheless, one day we shall again be a dominant power in that sport.

The excellent team representing us in the Classic, made up mostly of young athletes, is without a doubt a genuine representation of the finest athletes in our country.

They competed with great courage; they didn’t lose heart and sought victory right up to the last inning.

The line-up, suggested from Cuba by the leading bodies with expert advisors, was good and inspired confidence. It was strong both offensively and defensively. They had a good reserve of pitching talent and strong hitters, in the event of the changing circumstances of a game requiring it. By applying the same concepts, they defeated and dominated the powerful Mexican team.

I should point out that the team leadership in San Diego was abysmal. The old criteria of well-trodden paths prevailed against a capable adversary who is constantly innovating.

We must learn the relevant lessons.

Among all the sports, baseball today is the most capable of sparking off expectations given the enormous variety of situations that could arise and the specific role of each one of the nine men on the diamond. It has a reputation everywhere as a genuinely emotive show. Even though the stadiums fill up with fans, nothing is comparable to the images captured by the cameras. Baseball would seem to have been devised to be transmitted by that media. Television heightens that interest by going into great detail about every action. It even offers the possibility of seeing the stitching and rotation of a ball pitched at a speed of 100 miles per hour, a ball rolling along a white line or being caught in the glove of a defender one tenth of a second before or after the runner’s foot touches base. I can think of no other sport that could compete with such a variety of situations, except chess, where the activity ceases to be muscular and becomes an intellectual one, something impossible to televise.

In Cuba, where we practice almost all sports and have numerous amateur players, baseball has become a national passion.

We have rested on our laurels and we are now paying the consequences. Korea and Japan, two countries that are geographically at a good distance from the United States, have invested abundant economic resources into that imported, or imposed, sport.

Development of that sports activity in those two Asian nations obeys their own distinctive characteristics. Their inhabitants are hard-working, self-sacrificing and tenacious.

Japan, a developed and wealthy country with more than 120 million inhabitants, has devoted itself to developing baseball. Like everything within the capitalist system, professional sports are big business, but national will has imposed rigorous standards on their professional players.

Cuban players who have worked in Japan are very familiar with the standards imposed. The salaries paid to professionals in the U.S. Major Leagues are logically much higher than in Japan, a country which, for its part, possesses the most powerful professional league after that of the U.S. No professional Japanese player can go one to play in the U.S. Major Leagues, or in any other foreign country, until he has played in the Japanese national league for eight years. For that reason, none of the members on its international team is under 28 years old.

Training sessions are incredibly rigorous and methodical. They have devised technical methods to develop the reflexes required by every player. Every day, batters practice with hundreds of balls pitched by left- or right-handers. As for the pitchers, they are obliged to throw 400 balls every day. It they commit any error during the game, they have to pitch another 100. They do it with pleasure, as if it were a form of self-punishment. In that way, they acquire a notable muscle control that obeys orders sent by their brains. That is why their pitchers’ ability to place balls exactly where they want them amazes everyone. Similar methods are applied to all of the activities each of the athletes must carry out in the positions that they defend and in their activities as batters.

Athletes are developing with similar characteristics in the other Asian country: the Republic of Korea, which has already become a powerhouse in professional world baseball.

The Asian players are not as physically strong as their western rivals. Neither are they as explosive. But strength alone is not enough to defeat the reflexes that their players have developed; nor can explosiveness alone compensate for the methodology and sangfroid of their athletes. Korea has tried to find heavily-built men capable of hitting with more force.

Our hopes were based on the patriotic dedication of our athletes and the fervor with which they defend their honor and their people, starting with a reserve with several times, even dozens of times, fewer human resources in comparison, for example, with Japan, discounting from those resources those of weak conscience who let themselves be bribed by our enemies. But this is not enough to maintain our supremacy in baseball. We have to apply methods that are more technical and scientific in developing our athletes. Our country’s excellent educational and sports base allows that.

We currently have enough young pitchers and batters with magnificent athletic qualities. In a nutshell, we have to revolutionize the methods for the preparation and development of our athletes, not just in baseball, but in all the sports disciplines.

Our national team should be returning home in the next few hours. Let us receive them with all the honors that their exemplary performance merits. They are not the ones responsible for the errors that led them to the adverse result. We are the ones to blame, because we were not able to correct our errors in time.

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 19, 2009
2:58 p.m.

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

He told journalists that what interests President Obama is the Cuban-American community. It was the first time that he mentioned the subject since the inauguration. Those Cubans qualified to do so had voted 3 to 1 for the Democratic candidate in the state of Florida. The almost 12 million Cubans inhabiting the island do not interest him (Obama).

When they asked him to specify his candidate in Cuba, the man closest to the president did not wish to go into the subject in depth: “I think that the less said on Cuba, the better.”

“He will authorize Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba and send remittances.”

Regarding the right of U.S. citizens to travel, he didn’t even mention it.

For him, the Cuban Adjustment Act and the blockade were not worthy of any reference whatsoever.

Thus, sooner rather than later, Obama’s politics are losing their virginity.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 5, 2009
7:12 p.m.

It could loose strength but it is already raining in most of the country. It’s raining on farming areas absolutely drenched by the recent rainfalls. The water reservoirs filled up to almost full capacity due to hurricanes Gustav and Ike will be releasing water on cultivated fields and valleys. This already happened at the end of August and early September. This hurricane has been given the misleading name of Paloma.

After countless hours of labor, many crops almost ready for harvesting as well as fuel, seeds, fertilizers, herbicides and the work of the equipment used to urgently grow food will again be lost.

In many places where the families awaited for and received materials to repair their homes, and where they excitedly applauded the workers who were reestablishing electricity so vital to many services, will again partly live through the same experience.

Once again destruction will revisit highways, roads and other works in various provinces of the country.

The latest report from the Meteorology Institute’s National Forecast Center has confirmed the inexorable development of the event. Nevertheless, we should not be discouraged by adversity. Paloma is not covering such an extensive area as Gustav.

Our people should learn from every such event about the consequences of climate change and the ecologic unbalance, which are some of the many problems humanity is facing.

The initial estimates of the economic damages caused by the two previous hurricanes were short of reality. The losses amounted to 8 billions instead of the 5 billions originally announced. This time there will be additional damages.

The cadres who are decidedly and restlessly coming to grips with the problems shall insist on demanding from their compatriots that they respond to these adverse circumstances with hard work in both production and services.

And, if the chief of the empire and leading promoter of the genocidal blockade on our country were to offer again his pious assistance, he would again receive a dignified response: it would certainly be rejected. Our people demand that the blockade is lifted, especially now that humanity has unanimously called for it amidst a financial crisis which is pounding on every developed and developing nation on the Earth.

There are still some who dream of submitting Cuba using the criminal blockade as an instrument of the U.S. foreign policy against our homeland. If that country made the same mistake again it could spend another century implementing that useless policy against Cuba; that is, if the empire could last that long.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 7, 2008
8:24 p.m.