The Aztecs, Maya and other pre-Columbian human groups in Mexico and Central America, for example, were excellent farmers and didn’t even know about growing coca.

The Quechua and Aymara were capable of producing nutritious foods on perfect terraces that followed the mountain level curves. On the high plateaux that often exceeded three or four thousand metres in altitude, they grew quinua, a cereal rich in protein, and potatoes.

They knew about and also grew the coca plant whose leaves they chewed from time immemorial in order to lessen the ravages of high altitudes. This is an ancient custom that the peoples practiced along with products such as coffee, tobacco, liquor and others.

Coca originated on the steep slopes of the Amazonian Andes. The settlers there knew about it from times that predated the Inca Empire whose territory, at the height of its splendor, stretched over the area covered today by southern Colombia, all of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, eastern Chile and north-eastern Argentina; it totaled about two million square kilometers.

Consumption of coca leaves became a privilege of the Inca emperors and the nobility at the religious ceremonies.

When the Empire disappeared after the Spanish invasion, their new masters encouraged the traditional habit of chewing leaves in order to prolong the natives’ working hours, a right that lasted until the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs prohibited the use of coca leaves other than for medical or scientific purposes.

Almost every country signed it. They hardly discussed any topic regarding health. Cocaine trafficking then was not as huge as it is today. In the years that ensued extremely serious problems have been created that require profound analysis.

On the thorny issue of the relationship between drugs and organized crime, the UN itself delicately states that “Latin America is inefficient in combating the crime.”

Information printed by different institutions varies due to the fact that the matter is a sensitive one. Data at times are so complicated and varied that they might lead to confusion. What we can be absolutely sure of is that the problem is rapidly getting worse.

Almost one and a half months ago, on February 11, 2011, a report published in Mexico City by the Citizen Council for Public Security and Justice of that country, provided interesting data on the 50 most violent cities in the world in terms of the number of murders that occurred in the year 2010. The report states that Mexico has 25% of the cities. For the third year in a row, the number one spot belongs to Ciudad Juárez on the United States border.

It goes on to explain “…that year the Juárez murder rate was 35% higher than that of Qandahar, Afghanistan, number two on the list, and 941 % higher than in Baghdad…”, in other words, almost ten times greater than the capital of Iraq, the city occupying the number 50 spot on the list.

Almost immediately it adds that the city of San Pedro Sula, in Honduras, occupies third spot with 125 murders per 100,000 inhabitants; it is exceeded only by Ciudad Juárez in México, with 229; and Qandahar, Afghanistan,, with 169.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, occupies the sixth spot with 109 murders per every 100,000 inhabitants.

Thus one can see that Honduras, where the Yankee air base of Palmerola is located, where a coup d’état was produced already during the presidency of Obama, has two of the cities among the six where the most murders are committed in the world. Guatemala City has 106.

According to that report, the Colombian city of Medellín, with 87.42, also rates among the most violent cities in the Americas and the world.

The speech of American President Barack Obama in El Salvador, and his subsequent press conference, led me to the duty of printing these lines on the subject.

In my Reflection of March 21st, I criticized his lack of ethics in not mentioning even the name of Salvador Allende in Chile, a symbol of dignity and courage for the world, a man who died as the result of the coup d’état promoted by a president of the United States.

Since I was aware that on the following day he would be visiting El Salvador, a Central American country that is the symbol of the struggles of the peoples of Our America that has suffered the most as a consequence of US policy in our hemisphere, I said: “There he is going to have to be quite inventive because, in that sister nation in Central America, the weapons and training received from the governments of his country spilt much blood.”

I wished him a good trip and “a bit more good sense.” I have to admit that in his long trek, he was a little more careful in the home stretch.

Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero was a man admired by all Latin Americans, whether they are religious or not, just as the Jesuit priests who were cowardly murdered by the henchmen trained, supported and armed to the teeth by the United States. In El Salvador, the FMLN, a militant leftist organization, fought one of the most heroic struggles on our continent.

The Salvadoran people granted victory to the Party that emerged from the heart of those glorious combatants; it is not yet time to construct their profound story.

What is urgently needed is to face up to the dramatic dilemma El Salvador is living, just as Mexico and the rest of Central and South America.

Obama himself stated that around 2 million Salvadorans are living in the United States; this is equivalent to 30% of that country’s population. The brutal repression unleashed against the patriots, and the systematic pillage of El Salvador imposed by the United States, forced hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans to immigrate to that country.

What is new is that added to the desperate situation of Central Americans is the fabulous power of the terrorist gangs, the sophisticated weapons and the demand for drugs, originating in the US market.

In his brief speech that preceded that of his visitor, the president of El Salvador stated, verbatim: “I insisted to you that the subject of organized crime, narco-activity, citizen insecurity, should not be a subject that only concerns El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua, and not even Mexico or Colombia; it is a subject that concerns us as a region, and that is why we are working on building a regional strategy, through the CARFI Initiative.”

“…I insisted to you that this is a matter that should not only be dealt with from the viewpoint of persecuting a crime, through the strengthening of our policies and our armies, but also by emphasizing our policies of crime prevention and thus the best weapon to fight crime per se in the region is by investing in social policies.”

In his reply, the American president said: “President Funes is committed to creating more economic opportunities here in El Salvador so that people don’t feel like they have to head north to provide for their families.”

“I know this is especially important to the some 2 million Salvadoran people who are living and working in the United States.”

“…I updated the President on the new consumer protections that I signed into law, which give people more information and make sure their remittances actually reach their loved ones back home.”

“Today, we’re also launching a new effort to confront the narco-traffickers and gangs that have caused so much violence in all of our countries, and especially here in Central America.”

“…, we’ll focus $200 million to support efforts here in the region, including addressing, […] the social and economic forces that drive young people towards criminality. We’ll help strengthen courts, civil society groups and institutions that uphold the rule of law.”

I don’t need one single word more to express the essence of a painfully sad situation.

The reality is that many young people in Central America have been led by imperialism to cross a rigid and ever-more insurmountable border, or to work for the million-dollar gangs of drug traffickers.

Wouldn’t it be fairer – I wonder – to have an Adjustment Act for all Latin Americans? Just like the one they invented to punish Cuba almost half a century ago. Will the number of persons that die crossing the US border keep on growing infinitely along with the tens of thousands already dying each year in the countries where you are offering your Partnership of Equals?

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 25, 2011
8:46 p.m.

The post Between Emigration and Crime appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

At that time the drug problem in Mexico was virtually nonexistent: it was unleashed later in an overwhelming form with its enormous burden of damage, not only in that country but also in the rest of the continent.

The countries of Central and South America invested countless energies in combating the invasion of coca cultivation dedicated to the production of cocaine, a substance obtained from highly aggressive chemical compounds, which are so damaging to heath and the human mind.

Revolutionary governments like those of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Bolivia are making special efforts to halt its advance, as Cuba did opportunely.

For some time Evo Morales had been proclaiming the right of his people to drink coca tea, an excellent traditional infusion from the millennial Aymara-Quechua culture. Prohibiting it is like telling the British not to drink tea, a healthy custom imported by the United Kingdom from Asia, conquered and colonized by the former for hundreds of years.

“Coca is not cocaine,” was Evo’s slogan.

It is curious that opium, a substance extracted from poppies, as is morphine, fruit of the conquest and the foreign colonial period in countries such as Afghanistan, and which is extremely harmful taken directly, was utilized by the English colonialists as a currency which another country of millenary culture, like China, was forced to accept as payment for the sophisticated products that Europe received from China, up until then paid for in silver coinage. It is often quoted as an example of that injustice in the early decades of the 19th century that “a Chinese who became addicted spent two thirds of his wages on opium and left his family in dire poverty.”

In 1839, opium was already within the reach of Chinese workers and peasants. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom imposed the First Opium War in that same year.

English and American traders, strongly backed by the British Crown, saw the possibility of important exchange and profits. By that date, many of the large fortunes of the United States were based on that drug trafficking.

We will have to ask the great power supported by close to one thousand bases and seven fleets accompanied by nuclear aircraft carriers and thousands of fighter planes with which it tyrannizes the world, to explain to us how it is going to solve the drug problem.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 30, 2010
3:36 p.m.

The post The Empire and Drugs appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

During the meeting at the Oriente sugar mill on December 28, 1958, with the commander in chief of the enemy’s forces, whose elite units were surrounded without any way out whatsoever, he admitted defeat and appealed to our generosity to find a dignified way out for the rest of his forces. He knew of our humane treatment of prisoners and the injured without any exception. He accepted the agreement that I proposed, although I warned him that operations under way would continue. But he traveled to the capital, and, incited by the United States embassy, instigated a coup d’état.

We were preparing for combat on that January 1st when, in the early hours of the morning, the news came in of the dictator’s flight. The Rebel Army was ordered not to permit a ceasefire and to continue battling on all fronts. Radio Rebelde convened workers to a revolutionary general strike, immediately followed by the entire nation. The coup attempt was defeated, and that same afternoon, our victorious troops entered Santiago de Cuba.

Che and Camilo received instructions to advance rapidly by road in motor vehicles with their battle-hardened forces toward La Cabaña and the Columbia military camp. The enemy army, hit hard on all fronts, was unable to resist. The people in arms themselves took over the centers of repression and police stations. In the afternoon of January 2 at a stadium in Bayamo, and accompanied by a small escort, I met with more than 2,000 soldiers from the tank, artillery and motorized infantry units, against whom we had been fighting until the day before. They were still carrying their weapons. We had won the enemy’s respect with our audacious but humanitarian methods of irregular warfare. This was how, in just four days — after 25 months of war that we reinitiated with a few guns — some 100,000 air, sea and ground weapons and the entire power of the state remained in the hands of the Revolution. In just a few lines, I am recounting everything that happened during those days 51 years ago.

Then the main battle began: to preserve Cuba’s independence against the most powerful empire that has ever existed, a battle which our people waged with great dignity. I am happy today to observe those who, in the face of incredible obstacles, sacrifices, and risks, were able to defend our homeland, and who today, together with their children, parents and loved ones, are enjoying the happiness and glories of each new year.

Today, however, is nothing like yesterday. We experienced a new era unlike any other in history. Before, the people fought and are fighting still, with honor, for a better and more just world, but now they are also having to fight, without any alternative whatsoever, for the very survival of our species. If we ignore this, we know absolutely nothing. Cuba is, without question, one of the most politically instructed countries on the planet; it started out from the most shameful illiteracy, and what is worse, our yanki masters and the bourgeoisie associated with the foreign owners of land, sugar mills, production plants for consumer goods, warehouses, businesses, electricity, telephones, banks, mines, insurance, docks, bars, hotels, offices, houses, theaters, print shops, magazines, newspapers, radio, the emerging television, and everything of important value.

After the ardent flames of our battles for freedom had been quenched, the yankis had taken upon themselves the task of thinking for a people that struggled so hard to be the masters of their independence, resources and destiny. Absolutely nothing, not even the task of thinking politically, belonged to us. How many of us knew how to read and write? How many of us even made it to sixth grade? I recall that especially on a day like today, because that was the country that was supposed to belong to the Cuban people. I will not list anything more, because I would have to include much more, including the best schools, the best hospitals, the best houses, the best doctors, the best lawyers. How many of us had a right to that? Which of us possessed, with some exceptions, the natural and divine right to be administrators and leaders?

Every millionaire and rich individual, without exception, was a party leader, senator, representative or important official. That was the representative and pure democracy that prevailed in our country, except that the yankis imposed, at their whim, merciless and cruel petty dictators whenever it was more convenient for them to better defend their properties against landless campesinos and workers with or without jobs. Given that nobody even talks about that anymore, I am venturing to remember it. Our country is one of more than 150 that constitute the Third World, which would be the first but not the only nations destined to suffer incredible consequences if humanity does not become aware, clearly, certainly and a lot more quickly than we thought, of the reality and consequences of the climate change caused by human beings if it is not prevented in time.

Our mass media has dedicated spaces to describing the effects of climate change. Increasingly violent hurricanes, droughts and other natural disasters have likewise contributed to the education of our people on this subject. One singular event, the battle over the climate issue that took place at the Copenhagen Summit, has contributed to knowledge of the imminent danger. It is not a matter of a distant threat for the 22nd century, but for the 21st; nor is it just for the latter half of this century, but for the coming decades, in which we will begin to suffer its terrible consequences.

It is also not just a question of simple action against the empire and its henchmen, which in this issue, like in everything else, are trying to impose their own stupid and egotistic interests, but a battle of world opinion that that cannot be left to spontaneity or the whims of the majority of their mass media. It is a situation with which, fortunately, millions of honorable and brave people in the world are familiar, a battle to wage with the masses and within social organizations and scientific, cultural, humanitarian and other international institutions, most especially in the heart of the United Nations, where the United States government, its NATO allies and the richest countries tried to effect a fraudulent and antidemocratic coup in Denmark against the rest of the emerging and poor countries of the Third World.

In Copenhagen, the Cuban delegation, which attended together with others from the ALBA and the Third World, was forced into a fight to the finish in the face of the incredible events that began with the speech of the yanki president, Barack Obama, and of the group of the richest states on the planet, resolved to dismantle the binding commitments of Kyoto — where the thorny problem was discussed more than 12 years ago — and to load the burden of sacrifice onto the emerging and underdeveloped countries, which are the poorest and at the same time the principal suppliers of the planet’s raw materials and non-renewable resources to the most developed and opulent countries.

In Copenhagen, Obama appeared on the last day of the conference, which began on December 7. The worst aspect of his conduct was that, after he had decided to dispatch 30,000 soldiers to the slaughter of Afghanistan — a country with a strong tradition of independence, which not even the English in their better and cruellest times could dominate — he went to Oslo to receive no less than a Nobel Peace Prize. He arrived in the Norwegian capital on December 10 and gave an empty, demagogic and justifying speech. On the 18th, the date of the Summit’s last session, he appeared in Copenhagen, where he planned to remain for just 8 hours. His secretary of state and a sel
ect group of his best strategists had arrived the previous day.

The first thing that Obama did was to select a group of guests who were given the honor of accompanying him as he gave a speech at the Summit. The complacent and fawning Danish prime minister, who was presiding over the Summit, gave the podium over to a group that numbered just 15. The imperial chief deserved special honors. His speech was a was a combination of sweetened words seasoned with theatrical gestures, already boring for those of us, like me, assigned themselves the task of listening to him in order to try and be objective in an appreciation of his characteristics and political intentions. Obama imposed on his docile Danish host, so that only his guests could speak, although as soon as he had made his own comments, he “made himself scarce” through the back door, like an imp escaping from an audience which had done him the honor of listening with interest.

Once the authorized list of speakers was finished, an indigenous man, Aymara through and through, Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, who had just been reelected with 65% of the vote, demanded the right to speak, which was granted, to the resounding applause of those present. In just nine minutes, he expressed profound and dignified concepts in response to the words of the absent U.S. president. Immediately afterward, Hugo Chávez got up to ask to speak on behalf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; the person presiding over the session had no choice but to also give him the right to speak, and he used that to improvise one of the most brilliant speeches that I’ve ever heard. When he finished, a strike of the gavel ended the unusual session.

The extremely busy Obama and his entourage however, did not have a minute to lose. His group had put together a draft statement, full of vagueness, which was the negation of the Kyoto Protocol. After he dashed out of the plenary session, Obama met with other groups of guests numbering no more than 30, negotiated in private and in groups; insisted; mentioned figures to the tune of millions of green bills without gold backing and which are constantly being devaluated, and even threatened to leave the meeting if his demands were not met. Worst of all, it was a meeting of super-rich countries, to which several of the most important emerging nations were invited and two or three poor ones, to which he submitted the document as if proposing, “take it or leave it!”

The Danish prime minister tried to present that confusing, ambiguous and contradictory statement – in the discussion of which the UN did not participate in any way – as the Summit agreement. The Summit sessions had already concluded, almost all of the heads of state and government and foreign ministers had left for their respective countries and, at three in the morning, the distinguished Danish prime minister presented it to the plenary session, where hundreds of long-suffering officials who hadn’t slept for three days, received the thorny document, and were given only one hour to discuss and approve it.

That is when the meeting became fiery; the delegates hadn’t even had time to read it. A number of them asked to speak. The first was the delegate from Tuvalu, whose islands would be inundated if what was proposed there was approved; those of Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua followed him. The dialectical confrontation at 3 a.m. on that December 19 is worthy of going down in history, if history should continue after climate change.

As a large part of what happened is known in Cuba, or is on internet web pages, I will confine myself to partially expounding on the two responses of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, worthy of being recorded in order to know the last episodes of the Copenhagen soap opera, and aspects of the final chapter, which are still to be published in our country.
“Mr. President (Prime Minister of Denmark)… The document that you affirmed on various occasions did not exist, has now appeared. We have all seen versions circulating surreptitiously and being discussed in small and secret meetings outside the conference halls in which the international community, via its representatives, is negotiating in a transparent manner.”

“I add my voice to those of the representatives of Tuvalu, Venezuela and Bolivia. Cuba considers the text of this apocryphal draft as extremely insufficient and inadmissible…”

“The document which you are presenting, lamentably, does not contain any commitment whatsoever to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I am aware of prior versions which, in questionable and clandestine procedures, were also being negotiated behind closed doors and which talked of a reduction of at least 50% by the year 2050…”

“The document that you have presented now, precisely omits the already meager and insufficient key phrases that that version contained. This document does not guarantee, in any way, the adoption of minimal measures that would make it possible to avert an extremely grave disaster for the planet and the human species.”

“This shameful document that you have brought is likewise omissive and ambiguous in relation to the specific commitment to emission reductions on the part of the developed countries, those responsible for global warming given the historic and current level of their emissions, and on whom it falls to implement substantial reductions immediately. This paper does not contain one single word of commitment on the part of the developed countries.”

“…Your role, Mr. President, is the death certificate of the Kyoto Protocol, which my delegation does not accept.”

“The Cuban delegation wishes to emphasize the preeminence of the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ as the central concept of the future negotiation process. Your paper does not say one word about that.”

“The Cuban delegation reiterates its protest at the grave violations of procedure that have been produced in the anti-democratic management of the process of this conference, via the utilization of arbitrary, exclusive and discriminatory forms of debate and negotiation…”

“Mr. President, I am formally asking for this statement to be placed in the final report on the workings of this lamentable and shameful 15th Conference of the Parties.”

What nobody could have imagined is that, after another lengthy recess and when everybody thought that only the formalities remained before the conclusion of the Summit, the prime minister of the host country, at the instigation of the yankis, would make another attempt to pass off the document as a consensus of the Summit, when not even foreign ministers were left in the plenary. The delegates from Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, who remained vigilant and unsleeping until the last minute, frustrated the latter maneuver in Copenhagen.

However, the problem was not concluded. The powerful are not accustomed to brooking resistance. On December 30, the Danish Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in New York, courteously informed our mission in that city that it had taken note of the Copenhagen Agreement of December 18, 2009, and attached an advance copy of that decision. It affirmed textually: “…the government of Denmark, in its capacity of president of COP15, invites the Parties to the Convention to inform the secretariat of the UNFCCC in writing, and as soon as possible, of your willingness to commit to the Copenhagen Agreement.”

This surprise communication motivated a response from the Cuban Permanent Mission to the United Nations, in which it “… flatly rejects the intention to gain indirect approval of a text that was the object of repudiation by various delegations, not only on account of its insufficiency in the face of the grave effects of climate change, but also for exclusively responding to the interests of a reduced group of states.”

At the same time it prompted a letter from Dr. Fernando González Bermúdez, first deputy minister of the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Envi
ronment of the Republic of Cuba to Mr. Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, some of whose paragraphs are transcribed below:

“We have received with surprise and concern the note that the government of Denmark is circulating to the Permanent Missions of the member states of the United Nations in New York. Of which you are surely aware, via which the party states of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to inform the executive secretary, in writing, of you wish to be associated with the so-called Copenhagen Agreement.”

“We have observed, with additional concern, that the government of Denmark communicates that the executive secretary of the Convention is to include in the report of the Conference of the Parties in Copenhagen, a list of the party states which have stated their will to commit to the quoted agreement.”

“In the judgment of the Republic of Cuba, this form of acting constitutes a crude and reprehensible violation of what was decided in Copenhagen, where the party states, faced with an evident lack of consensus, confined themselves to taking note of the existence of the said document.”

“Nothing that was agreed in COP15 authorizes the government of Denmark to adopt this action and, far less, the executive secretary to include a list of party states in the final report, for which he has no mandate.”

“I must inform you that the government of the Republic of Cuba most firmly rejects this new attempt to indirectly legitimate a spurious document and to reiterate to you that this way of acting compromises the result of future negotiations, sets a dangerous precedent for the Convention’s work and, in particular, is injurious to the spirit of goodwill in which delegations must continue the negotiation process next year,” concluded Cuba’s first deputy minister of science, technology and the environment.”

Many know, especially the social movements and better informed people in humanitarian, cultural and scientific movements, that the document promoted by the United States constitutes a regression of the positions achieved by those who are making efforts to avert a colossal disaster for our species. There is no point in repeating here facts and figures that are mathematically demonstrated. The data is confirmed on Internet web pages and are within the reach of a growing number of people who are interested in the issue.

The theory defending adherence to the document is feeble and implies a setback. The deceptive idea that the rich countries will contribute the miserable sum of $30 billion over three years to the poor countries in order to offset the costs implied by confronting climate change, a figure which could rise to 100 billion by 2020, which in the context of this exceedingly grave problem, is like waiting for the Greek calendars. Specialists know that those figures are ridiculous and unacceptable given the volume of investments required. The origin of such sums is vague and confused, in a way that they do not commit anybody.

What is the value of one dollar? What is the significance of $30 billion? We all know that, from Bretton Woods in 1944 to Nixon’s presidential order in 1971 – imparted in order to offload the cost of the genocidal war on Vietnam onto the world economy – that the value of one dollar, measured in gold, has gradually been reduced to the point of today, when it is approximately 32 times less than then; $30 billion thus signifies less than one billion, and one billion divided by 32 is equivalent to $3.125 million, which would not even stretch to building one middle-capacity oil refinery at the present time.

If, at some point, the industrialized countries were to meet their promise to contribute 0.7% of their GDP to the developing countries – something that, barring a few exceptions, they never have – the figure would be in excess of $250 billion every year.

The U.S. government spent $800 billion on saving the banks. How much would it be prepared to pay to save the nine billion people who will inhabit the planet in 2050, if large-scale drought and sea flooding provoked by the melting of glaciers and great masses of frozen water from Greenland and Antarctica?

Let us not deceive ourselves. What the United States has attempted with its maneuvers in Copenhagen is to divide the Third World, to separate more than 150 underdeveloped countries from China, India, Brazil, South Africa and others with which we must fight united to defend – in Bonn, Mexico or any other international conference, along with the social, scientific and humanitarian organizations – genuine agreements that will benefit all countries and preserve humanity from a disaster that could lead to the extinction of our species.

The world is in possession of constantly more information, but politicians have constantly less time for thinking.

The rich nations and their leaders, including the U.S. Congress, would seem to be arguing which will be the last to disappear.

When Obama has completed the 28 parties with which he proposed to celebrate this Christmas, if Epiphany is included among them, perhaps Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar will advise him on what he should do.

Please excuse this extended Reflection. I did not wish to divide it into two parts. I apologize to my patient readers.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 3, 2010
3:16 p.m.

Originally posted at CubaDebate.

The post The world half a century later appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

Very seldom in my life had I seen a warmer people. The film images are still preserved. We drove down the broad highway that replaced the paved road I was taken through the first time I traveled to Venezuela in 1948 -from Maiquetia to Caracas- by the most reckless drivers I had ever seen.

That time I heard the noisiest, longest and most embarrassing booing of my life when I dared to mention the name of the recently elected President-to-be. The more radical masses of the heroic and combative Caracas had overwhelmingly voted against him.

The “illustrious” Romulo Betancourt was referred to with interest by Latin America and Caribbean political circles.

What was the explanation for that? He had been so radical when he was young that at the age of 23 he became a full member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Costa Rica and remained there from 1931 to 1935. Those were the hard times of the Third International. From Marxism-Leninism he learned about the class structure in a society, the exploitation of men by men throughout history and the development of colonization, capitalism and imperialism in recent centuries.

In 1941, together other leftist leaders, he founded the Partido Accion Democratica (Democratic Action Party) in Venezuela.

He acted as provisional president of Venezuela from October 1945 to February 1948 by virtue of a civic and military coup d’etat. He went again into exile when the eminent Venezuelan writer and intellectual, Romulo Gallegos, was elected Constitutional President and almost immediately after was ousted.

The well-lubricated machinery of his party elects him President during the elections held on December 7, 1958, after the Venezuelan revolutionary forces, led by Junta Patriotica (Patriotic Junta) that was headed by Fabricio Ojeda, overthrew the dictatorship of General Perez Jimenez.

By the end of 1959, when I spoke at Plaza del Silencio, where hundreds of thousands of people had gathered, and I mentioned, out of sheer courtesy, the name of Betancourt, there was this colossal booing that I mentioned earlier against the President-elect. To me that was a true lesson of political realism. Later I had to pay a visit to him, since he was the President-elect of a friendly nation. I found him to be an embittered and resentful man. He was already the model of “democratic and representative” government the empire needed. He collaborated as much as he could with the Yankees previous to the mercenary invasion through Giron.

Fabricio Ojeda, a sincere and unforgettable friend of the Cuban Revolution, whom I had the privilege to meet and with whom I talked extensively, told me later much about the political process in his homeland and the Venezuela he dreamed of. He was one of the many persons assassinated by that regime, which was totally to the service of the imperialism.

Almost half a century has gone by ever since. I can attest to the exceptional cynicism of the empire that we, the Revolutionary Cubans, the proud heirs of Bolivar and Marti, have indefatigably confronted.

During all these years, ever since the days of Fabricio Ojeda, the world has changed significantly. The military and technological power of that empire has grown bigger, and so have its experience and total absence of ethics. Its media is ever more costly and less committed to moral standards.

To accuse Hugo Chavez, the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, of inciting a war against the people of Colombia and unleash an arms race, to portray him as the mastermind and promoter of drug trafficking, and accuse him of repressing the freedom of expression, violating human rights and other similar misdeeds is a repugnant and cynical action, as everything else that the empire has done, still does and promotes. We can neither ever forget nor stop reiterating realities. Objective and well-reasoned truth is the most important weapon with which we should ceaselessly hammer into the conscience of peoples.

The US government -it is necessary to remind us of that- promoted and supported the fascist coup d’etat in Venezuela on April 11, 2002, and after it failed, it pinned all its hopes in an oil coup, supported with technical programs and resources capable of destroying any government, thus underestimating the people and the revolutionary leadership of that country.

Ever since then, the US government has ceaselessly plotted against the Venezuelan revolutionary process, just as it did and has continued to do against the Revolution in our Homeland for fifty years now. The United States is far more interested in controlling Venezuela -given its huge energy resources and the other raw materials it has, which are obtained at negligible prices, as well as the huge facilities and services owned by transnationals- than Cuba.

After violently crushing the Revolution in Central America and thwarting, by bloody and repressive coups, the democratic and progressive advances in South America, the empire could not resign itself to the construction of socialism in Venezuela. This is a real fact that could not be denied by or hidden from those with a minimum political education in Latin America or elsewhere in the world.

It is worthwhile remembering that not even after the coup promoted by the United States on April 2002 the Venezuelan government armed itself. One oil barrel was hardly 20 dollars worth, a currency that was already devalued since 1971, when Nixon suspended the gold standard mechanism, almost thirty years before Chavez became President. When he took office, the Venezuelan oil was hardly 10 dollars worth. Afterwards, when prices went up, he invested the country’s resources in social programs, development and investment projects and cooperation with several Caribbean and Central American nations and other poorer economies in South America. No other country had offered such a generous cooperation.

He did not buy a single rifle during the first years of his government. He even did something that no other country would have done at a time when his integrity was at stake: he legally suspended the obligation of every honest and revolutionary citizen to defend their country with the arms in their hands.

I would rather say that the Bolivarian Republic waited for too long to acquire new weapons. The infantry rifles they had were the same that existed more than 50 years ago, when the head of the Provisional Government, Admiral Larrazabal, presented me with an automatic FAL rifle on November 1958, the penultimate month of the war. Venezuela continued to use that kind of infantry weaponry for several years after Chavez took office.

It was the US government the one that decreed the disarmament of Venezuela, when it banned the supplies of spare parts for all the Yankee military equipment which it had traditionally sold to that country, including fighting planes, military transport aircraft and even communication equipment and radars. Accusing Venezuela of engaging in an arms build-up is an extremely hypocritical attitude.

Quite on the contrary, the United States has supplied billions of dollars worth in arms, means of combat, aircraft and training to the Armed Forces of the neighboring Colombia. The pretext was the struggle against the guerrillas. I can bear witness to the efforts made by President Hugo Chavez in his quest for the internal peace in that sister nation. The Yankees not only supplied weapons; they also instilled feelings of hatred against Venezuela among the troops they trained, as they did in Honduras, through the Task Force based in Palmerola.

Wherever the US has military bases, it supplies the combat units with the same type of uniform and equipment used by the interventionist troops of that country anywhere else in the world. The United States does not need soldiers of its own, as in Iraq, Afghanistan or the northern region of Pakistan, to plot acts of genocide against our peoples.

The imperialist extreme right, which holds the reins of power, resorts to brazen lies to mask its plans.

The Venezuelan-American lawyer and analyst, Eva Golinger has shown how the strategic arguments used in the message sent on May, 2009, to the United States Congress to justify an investment in the military base of Palanquero were absolutely altered in the agreement whereby the United States received that same base together with several other civil and military facilities. The document sent to the Congress on November 16 entitled “Addendum to reflect terms of the US-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement” that signed on October 30, 2009, has been completely altered, as was explained by the analyst. The document is no longer about “the mobility mission providing access to the entire South American continent with the exception of Cape Horn.” All references to global reach operations, security theaters and increased capability of the US Armed Forces to launch an expeditious warfare in the region have also been modified, according to the sharp and well informed analyst.

Furthermore, it is obvious that the President of the Bolivarian Republic is striving very hard to overcome the obstacles put by the United States against Latin American countries, among them, social violence and drug trafficking. The American society was not able to prevent drug trafficking and consumption, the consequences of which are affecting many countries of the region.

Violence has been of the most exported products by the United States capitalist society during the last half a century, through the increasing use of the media and the so called entertainment industry. Those are new phenomena that the human society did not know about before. Such means could be used to create new values in a more humane and just society.

Developed capitalism created the so called consumption societies and with that it also created problems that it is not able to solve today.

Venezuela is the country that has more rapidly been implementing the social programs that can counteract those extremely negative trends. The colossal successes achieved in the last Bolivarian Sport Games is a proof of that.

At the UNASUR meeting, the Foreign Minister of the Bolivarian Republic made a crystal-clear explanation about the problem of peace in the region. What is the position adopted by each country regarding the installation of Yankee bases in South America? This is an obligation not only of each and every State, but also a moral obligation of each and every conscious and honest man and woman of our hemisphere and the world. The empire should know that whatever the circumstances, Latin Americans will fight tirelessly for their most sacred rights.

There are far more serious and pressing problems affecting all peoples in the world: climate change is perhaps the worst and most urgent at this moment.

Before December 18, each State should adopt a decision. Once again the illustrious Peace Nobel Laureate, Barack Obama, should define his position regarding this thorny issue.

Since he accepted the responsibility of receiving the Prize, he will have to respond to the ethical request launched by Michael Moore when he heard the news: “now you should earn it!” I wonder if he could. At a time when there is a unanimous demand on the part of scientific circles to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by no less than 30 per cent of the levels attained in 1990, the United States is only offering to reduce 17 per cent of what it emitted in 2005, which hardly accounts for 5 percent of the minimum that Science demands from all the inhabitants of this planet by the year 2020. The United States consumes twice as much per inhabitant than Europe, and its emissions exceed those of China, despite its 1.338 billion inhabitants. An inhabitant of the society that consumes the most, emits tens of times more CO2 per capita that a citizen from a poor country of the Third World.

In only thirty more years, the no less than 9 billion human beings that will inhabit the planet will require that the carbon dioxide volumes emitted into the atmosphere be reduced to no less than 80 per cent of the 1990 levels. Such figures are being bitterly understood by an increasing number of leaders of rich countries. But the hierarchy that leads the most powerful and rich country in the planet, the United States, comforts itself by asserting that such predictions are scientific inventions.

Everybody knows that in Copenhagen, countries will, at best, agree on continuing discussions so that an agreement could be reached among the more than 200 States and institutions that should discuss about the commitments, among them, a very important one: which will be the rich countries that will contribute to the development and energy saving of the poorest countries and how much resources will they give?

Is there any margin for hypocrisy and deceit?

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 29, 2009
7:15 p.m.

The post Is There Any Margin for Hypocrisy and Deceit? appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

The slanderous Yankee accusation that Chavez is planning a war against neighboring Colombia led an influential paper of that country to run a story last Sunday, November 15, under the headline “War Drums.” It was a pejorative and insulting editorial against the Venezuelan President asserting, among other things, that “Colombia should take very seriously the gravest threat to its national security in more than seven decades as it comes from a President with a military background.”

It goes on to say that: “The reason is the growing potential for a provocation that can go from an incident along the border to an attack on civilian and military facilities in Colombia.” Further on the editorial claims it is likely “that Hugo Chavez intensifies his attacks against the ‘scrawny’ -the sobriquet he applies to his oppositionists and tries to remove from regional and local governments those who contradict him. He already did it with the Mayor of Caracas and now he wants to try with the governors of the states sharing borders with Colombia who refuse to be under his rule – a clash with Colombian forces or the accusation that the paramilitary plan to conduct actions within Venezuelan territory could be the pretext required by Chavez’s regime to suspend constitutional rights.”

Such words can only serve to justify the United States’ aggressive plans and the blatant treachery of the Venezuelan oligarchy and counterrevolution to their Homeland.

Coinciding with the release of that editorial, the Bolivarian leader had published his weekly column known as “Chavez’s lines,” where he analyzed the shameless concession of seven US military bases in Colombia, a country that shares about 1,281 miles of border with Venezuela.

In his article, the President of the Bolivarian Republic was very clear and brave in explaining his position.

“I said it this Friday at the rally for peace and against the US military bases in Colombian territory: It is my duty to appeal to all of you, men and women, to defend Bolivar’s Homeland, our children’s Homeland. Our Homeland is free today and we shall defend it with our lives. Never again will Venezuela be anybody’s colony; never again will it kneel down before any invader or empire, the extremely serious and transcendental problem in Colombia cannot be overlooked by the Latin American governments.”

Later on, he added some important concepts: “the entire ‘gringo’ war arsenal included in the agreement responds to the concept of extraterritorial operations – it turns the Colombian territory into an enormous Yankee military enclave, the greatest threat to peace and security in the South American region and in Our America.”

“The agreement prevents Colombia from offering anyone security and respect; not even Colombian men and women. A country that has lost its sovereignty and become an instrument of the ‘new colonial power’ envisioned by our Liberator cannot offer such guarantees.”

Chavez is a true revolutionary, a profound and sincere thinker, a courageous and restless worker. He did not win power through a coup d’etat. He rebelled against the repression and genocide unleashed by the neoliberal governments that surrendered the country’s huge natural resources to the United States. He endured incarceration; he matured and developed his ideas. He did not win power with weapons despite his military background.

It is his merit to have taken the difficult path of a profound social Revolution starting out from the so-called representative democracy and an absolute freedom of expression, at a time when the most powerful media resources of the country were -they still are – in the hands of the oligarchy and at the service of the empire’s interests.

In just 11 years, Venezuela has achieved the greatest educational and social progress attained by any country in the world, despite the coup d’état and the destabilization plans and smearing campaigns implemented by the United States.

The empire did not decree an economic blockade on Venezuela, –as it did in the case of Cuba– after the failure of its sophisticated actions against the Venezuelan people because it would have meant blockading itself given its foreign energy dependence. But it has not abandoned its purpose to do away with the Bolivarian process and the generous support this gives the Caribbean and Central American peoples in terms of oil resources, and its extensive trade relations with South America, China, Russia and numerous countries of Asia, Africa and Europe. Large segments of the population in every continent sympathize with the Bolivarian Revolution whose relations with Cuba are especially upsetting for the empire which for half a century has sustained a criminal blockade against our country. Through the ALBA, Bolivar’s Venezuela and Marti’s Cuba are promoting a new type of relationship and exchange on rational and fair basis.

The Bolivarian Revolution has been particularly generous with the Caribbean countries in times of an exceptionally grave energy crisis.

In the current new stage, the Venezuelan Revolution is facing entirely new problems which did not exist almost exactly 50 years ago, when our Revolution triumphed in Cuba.

At that time, drug-trafficking, organized crime, social violence and the paramilitaries were barely known. The United States had yet to become the huge drug market that capitalism and the consumer society have turned it into. It was not so difficult for the Revolution to fight drug-trafficking in Cuba and to prevent the country from being drawn to its production and consumption.

Today, such scourges have brought to Mexico, Central America and South America a growing tragedy which is far from beaten. The unequal terms of trade, protectionism and the plundering of their natural resources has been compounded by drug-trafficking and the violence of organized crime that underdevelopment, poverty, unemployment and the huge US drug market have created in the Latin American societies. The incompetence of that imperial and wealthy nation to prevent drug-trafficking and abuse has paved the way for the cultivation in many places of Latin America of plants whose value as raw material for drug production often exceeds that of the rest of the farm products, thus creating a very serious social and political quagmire. In Colombia, the paramilitary is today imperialism’s frontline force to combat the Bolivarian Revolution.

It is precisely thanks to his military background that Chavez knows that the struggle against drug-trafficking is a vulgar pretext used by the United States to justify a military agreement that fully responds to the US post-cold war strategic concept of extending its world domination.

The air bases, the means, the operational rights and total impunity granted to the Yankee military and civilian personnel by Colombia in its own territory have nothing to do with fighting drug cultivation, production and trafficking. This is currently a world problem spreading not only to South American countries, but also to Africa and other regions. It already prevails in Afghanistan despite the massive presence of the Yankee troops.

Drugs should not be used as a pretext to set up bases, invade countries and bring violence, war and plundering to Third World nations. This is the worst environment to sow good qualities among the people and to bring education, healthcare and development to other nations.

Those who think that division between Venezuelans and Colombians can lead to the success of their counterrevolutionary plans are deceiving themselves. Many of the best and most humble workers in Venezuela are Colombians; the Revolution has given them and their immediate family education, healthcare, employment, the right to citizenship and other benefits. Together, Venezuelans and Colombians shall defend the great Homeland of the Liberator of the Americas; together, they shall fight for peace and freedom.

The thousands of Cuban doctors, educators and other collaborators carrying out their internationalist duty in Venezuela shall be with them!

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 18, 2009
2:30 PM

The post The Bolivarian Revolution and Peace appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

The agreement puts theoreticians and politicians in a predicament. It wouldn’t be honest to keep silent now and speak later on sovereignty, democracy, human rights, freedom of opinion and other delights, when a country is being devoured by the empire as easily as lizards catch flies. This is the Colombian people; a self-sacrificing, industrious and combative people. I looked in the hefty document for a digestible justification and I found none whatsoever.

Of 48 pages with 21 lines each, five are used to philosophize on the background of the shameful absorption that turns Colombia into an overseas territory. They are all based on the agreements signed with the United States after the murder of the distinguished progressive leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan on April 9, 1948, and the establishment, on April 30, 1948, of the Organization of American States debated by the foreign ministers of the hemisphere meeting in Bogota, with the US as the boss, during the dramatic days when the Colombian oligarchy cut short the life of that leader thus paving the way to the onset of the armed struggle in that country.

The Agreement on Military Assistance between the Republic of Colombia and the United States of April 1952; the one related to Army, Naval and Air Missions from the US Forces, signed on October 7, 1974; the 1988 UN Convention against the Illegal Trafficking of Drugs and Psychotropic Substances; the 2000 UN Convention against Organized Transnational Delinquency; the 2001 Security Council Resolution 1373 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter; the Democratic Security and Defense Policy resolution and others referred to in the above-mentioned document, none of them can justify turning a 713,592.5 square miles country located in the heart of South America into a US military base. Colombia’s territory is 1.6 times that of Texas, the second largest state of the Union taken away from Mexico and later used as a base to conquer with great violence more than half of that country.

On the other hand, over 59 years have passed since Colombian soldiers were sent to distant Asia, in October 1950, to fight alongside the Yankee troops against Chinese and Korean combatants. Now, the empire intends to send them to fight against their brothers in Venezuela, Ecuador and other Bolivarian and ALBA countries, to crush the Venezuelan Revolution as they tried to do with the Cuban Revolution in April 1961.

For more than one and a half year before the invasion of Cuba, the Yankee administration fostered, armed and used counterrevolutionary bandits in the Escambray the same way it is now using the Colombian paramilitary forces against Venezuela.

At the time of the Giron [Bay of Pigs] attack, the Yankee B-26 aircrafts piloted by mercenaries operated from Nicaragua. Their fighter planes were brought to the theater of operations in an aircraft carrier and the invaders of Cuban descent who landed in our territory were escorted by US warships and by the American marines. This time their war equipment and troops will be in Colombia posing a threat not only to Venezuela but to every country in Central and South America.

It is really cynical to claim that the infamous agreement is necessary to fight drug-trafficking and international terrorism. Cuba has shown that there is no need of foreign troops to prevent the cultivation and trafficking of drugs and to preserve domestic order, even though the United States –the mightiest power on Earth—has promoted, financed and armed the terrorists who for decades have attacked the Cuban Revolution.

The preservation of domestic peace is a basic prerogative of every government and the presence of Yankee troops in any Latin American country to do it on their behalf constitutes a blatant foreign interference in their internal affairs that will inevitably elicit the peoples’ rejection.

A simple reading of the document shows that not only the Colombian airbases will be in the Yankees’ hands but also the civilian airports and ultimately any facility that may be useful to their armed forces. The radio space is also available to that country with a different culture and other interests that have nothing in common with those of the Colombian people.

The US Armed Forces will have exceptional prerogatives.

The occupants can commit any crime anywhere in Colombia against Colombian families, property and laws and still be unaccountable to the country’s authorities. Actually, they have taken diseases and scandalous behavior to many places like the Palmerola military base in Honduras. In Cuba, when they came to visit the neo-colony, they sat astride the neck of Jose Marti’s statue, in the capital’s Central Park. The limit set with regards to the total number of soldiers can be modified as requested by the United States, and with no restriction whatsoever. The aircraft carriers and warships visiting the naval bases given to them can take as large a crew as they choose, and this can be thousands in only one of their large aircraft carriers.

The Agreement, which will remain in force for successive 10-year periods, can’t be modified until the end of every period, with a one-year prior notice. What will the United States do if an administration as that of Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, Bush sr. or Bush jr., and others like them, is asked to leave Colombia? The Yankees have ousted scores of governments in our hemisphere. How long would a government last in Colombia if it announced such intentions?

Now, the politicians in Latin America are faced with a sensitive issue: the fundamental duty of explaining their viewpoints on the annexation document. I am aware that what is happening in Honduras at this decisive moment draws the attention of the media and the foreign ministers of this hemisphere, but the Latin American governments cannot overlook the extremely serious and transcendental events taking place in Colombia.

I have no doubts about the reaction of the peoples; they will be sensitive to the dagger being shoved deep inside them, especially in Colombia: They will oppose! They will never cave in to such ignominy!

Today, the world is facing serious and pressing problems. The entire humanity is threatened by climate change. European leaders are almost begging on their knees for some kind of agreement in Copenhagen that will prevent the catastrophe. They practically concede that the Summit will fail to meet the objective of reaching an agreement that can drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions and promise to continue struggling to attain it before 2012; however, there is a true risk that an agreement cannot be reached until it is too late.

The Third World countries are rightly claiming from the richest and most developed nations hundreds of billion dollars a year to pay for the climate battle.

Does it make sense for the United States government to invest time and money in building military bases in Colombia to impose on our peoples their hateful tyranny? Along that path, if a disaster is already threatening the world, a greater and faster disaster is threatening the empire and it would all be the consequence of the same exploiting and plundering system of the planet.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 6, 2009
10:30 a.m.

The post The Annexation of Colombia by the United States appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective ethnic groups has won the presidency.

I had said several times that Obama is a smart and cultivated man in a social and political system he believes in. He wishes to bring healthcare to nearly 50 million Americans, to rescue the economy from its profound crisis and to improve the US image which has deteriorated as a result of genocidal wars and torture. He neither conceives nor wishes to change his country’s political and economic system; nor could he do it.

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three American presidents, one former president and one candidate to the presidency.

The first one was Theodore Roosevelt elected in 1901. He was one of the Rough Riders who landed in Cuba with his riders but with no horses in the wake of the US intervention in 1898 aimed at preventing the independence of our homeland.

The second was Thomas Woodrow Wilson who dragged the United States to the first war for the distribution of the world. The extremely severe conditions he imposed on a vanquished Germany, through the Versailles Treaty, set the foundations for the emergence of fascism and the breakout of World War II.

The third has been Barack Obama.

Carter was the ex-president who received the Nobel Prize a few years after leaving office. He was certainly one of the few presidents of that country who would not order the murder of an adversary, as others did. He returned the Panama Canal, opened the US Interests Section in Havana and prevented large budget deficits as well as the squandering of money to the benefit of the military-industrial complex, as Reagan did.

The candidate was Al Gore – when he already was vice president. He was the best informed American politician on the dreadful consequences of climate change. As a candidate to the presidency, he was the victim of an electoral fraud and stripped of his victory by W. Bush.

The views have been deeply divided with regards to the choice for this award. Many people question ethical concepts or perceive obvious contradictions in the unexpected decision.

They would have rather seen the Prize given for an accomplished task. The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been presented to people deserving that distinction. On occasions it has been received by resentful and arrogant persons, or even worse. Upon hearing the news, Lech Walesa scornfully said: “Who, Obama? It’s too soon. He has not had time to do anything.”

In our press and in CubaDebate, honest revolutionary comrades have expressed their criticism. One of them wrote: “The same week in which Obama was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Senate passed the largest military budget in its history: 626 billion dollars.” Another journalist commented during the TV News: “What has Obama done to deserve that award?” And still another asked: “And what about the Afghan war and the increased number of bombings?” These views are based on reality.

In Rome, film maker Michael Moore made a scathing comment: “Congratulations, President Obama, for the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please, earn it.”

I am sure that Obama agrees with Moore’s phrase. He is clever enough to understand the circumstances around this case. He knows he has not earned that award yet. That day in the morning he said that he was under the impression that he did not deserve to be in the company of so many inspiring personalities who have been honored with that prize.

It is said that the celebrated committee that assigns the Nobel Peace Prize is made up of five persons who are all members of the Swedish Parliament. A spokesman said it was a unanimous vote. One wonders whether or not the prizewinner was consulted and if such a decision can be made without giving him previous notice.

The moral judgment would be different depending on whether or not he had previous knowledge of the Prize’s allocation. The same could be said of those who decided to present it to him.

Perhaps it would be worthwhile creating the Nobel Transparency Prize.

Bolivia is a country with large oil and gas depots as well as the largest known reserves of lithium, a mineral currently in great demand for the storage and use of energy.

Before his sixth birthday, Evo Morales, a very poor native peasant, walked through The Andes with his father tending the llama of his native community. He walked with them for 15 days to the market where they were sold in order to purchase food for the community. In response to a question I asked him about that peculiar experience Evo told me that “he took shelter under the one-thousand stars hotel,” a beautiful way of describing the clear skies on the mountains where telescopes are sometimes placed.

In those difficult days of his childhood, the only alternative of the peasants in his community was to cut sugarcane in the Argentinean province of Jujuy, where part of the Aymara community went to work during the harvesting season.

Not far from La Higuera, where after being wounded and disarmed Che [Guevara] was murdered on October 9, 1967, Evo – who had been born on the 26th of that same month in the year 1959 – was not yet 8 years old. He learned how to read and write in Spanish in a small public school he had to walk to, which was located 3.2 miles away from the one-room shack he shared with his parents and siblings.

During his hazardous childhood, Evo would go wherever there was a teacher. It was from his race that he learned three ethical principles: don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t be weak.

At the age of 13, his father allowed him to move to San Pedro de Oruro to study his senior high school. One of his biographers has related that he did better in Geography, History and Philosophy than in Physics and Mathematics. The most important thing is that, in order to pay for school, Evo woke up a two in the morning to work as a baker, a construction worker or any other physical job. He attended school in the afternoon. His classmates admired him and helped him. From his early childhood he learned how to play wind instruments and even was a trumpet player in a prestigious band in Oruro.

As a teenager he organized and was the captain of his community’s soccer team.

But, access to the University was beyond reach for a poor Aymara native.

After completing his senior high school, he did military service and then returned to his community on the mountain tops. Later, poverty and natural disasters forced the family to migrate to the subtropical area known as El Chapare, where they managed to have a plot of ground. His father passed away in 1983, when Evo was 23 years old. He worked hard on the ground but he was a born fighter; he organized the workers and created trade unions thus filling up a space unattended by the government.

The conditions for a social revolution in Bolivia had been maturing in the past 50 years. The revolution broke out in that country with Victor Paz Estensoro’s Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR, by its Spanish acronym) on April 9, 1952, that is, before the start of our armed struggle. The revolutionary miners defeated the repressive forces and the MNR seized power.

The revolutionary objectives in Bolivia were not attained and in 1956, according to some well-informed people, the process started to decline. On January 1st, 1959, the Revolution triumphed in Cuba, and three years later, in January 1962, our homeland was expelled from the OAS. Bolivia abstained from voting. Later, every other government, except Mexico’s, severed relations with Cuba.

The divisions in the international revolutionary movement had an impact on Bolivia. Time would have to pass with over 40 years of blockade on Cuba; neoliberalism and its devastating consequences; the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela and the ALBA; and above all, Evo and his MAS in Bolivia.

It would be hard to try summing up his rich history in a few pages.

I shall only say that Evo has prevailed over the wicked and slanderous imperialist campaigns, its coups and interference in the internal affairs of that country and defended Bolivia’s sovereignty and the right of its thousand-year-old people to have their traditions respected. “Coca is not cocaine,” he blurted out to the largest marihuana producer and drug consumer in the world, whose market has sustained the organized crime that is taking thousands of lives in Mexico every year. Two of the countries where the Yankee troops and their military bases are stationed are the largest drug producers on the planet.

The deadly trap of drug-trafficking has failed to catch Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador, revolutionary countries members of ALBA like Cuba which are aware of what they can and should do to bring healthcare, education and wellbeing to their peoples. They do not need foreign troops to combat drug-trafficking.

Bolivia is fostering a wonderful program under the leadership of an Aymara president with the support of his people. Illiteracy was eradicated in less than three years: 824,101 Bolivian learned how to read and write; 24,699 did so also in Aymara and 13,599 in Quechua. Bolivia is the third country free of illiteracy, following Cuba and Venezuela.

It provides free healthcare to millions of people who had never had it before. It is one of the seven countries in the world with the largest reduction of infant mortality rate in the last five years and with a real possibility to meet the Millennium Goals before the year 2015, with a similar accomplishment regarding maternal deaths. It has conducted eye surgery on 454,161 persons, 75,974 of them Brazilians, Argentineans, Peruvians and Paraguayans.

Bolivia has set forth an ambitious social program: every child attending school from first to eighth grade is receiving an annual grant to pay for the school material. This benefits nearly two million students.

More than 700,000 persons over 60 years of age are receiving a bonus equivalent to some 342 dollars annually.

Every pregnant woman and child under two years of age is receiving an additional benefit of approximately 257 dollars.

Bolivia, one of the three poorest nations in the hemisphere, has brought under state control the country’s most important energy and mineral resources while respecting and compensating every single affected interest. It is advancing carefully because it does not want to take a step backward. Its hard currency reserves have been growing, and now they are no less than three times higher than they were at the beginning of Evo’s mandate. It is one of the countries making a better use of external cooperation and it is a strong advocate of the environment.

In a very short time, Bolivia has been able to establish the Biometric Electoral Register and approximately 4.7 million voters have registered, that is, nearly a million more than in the last electoral roll that in January 2009 included 3.8 million.

There will be elections on December 6. Surely, the people’s support for their President will increase. Nothing has stopped his growing prestige and popularity.

Why is he not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

I understand his great disadvantage: he is not the President of the United States of America.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 15, 2009
4:25 PM

The post A Nobel Prize for Evo appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.

As horrifying news arrives from all over the world about the scarcity and cost of food, the price of energy, climate change and inflation, problems that are being presented in unison for the first time as vital questions, imperialism is bent on breaking up Bolivia and subjecting it to alienating work and hunger.

In that country, four of the economically-strongest departments, with the Santa Cruz oligarchies in the vanguard, are aspiring to proclaim their independence, and have projected, with the help of the empire, a program of referendums, for which the mass media has prepared the ground and the opinions of voters with all kinds of illusions and deception.

The armed forces, by virtue of their historic role in a country that has been attacked and divested of access to the sea and other vital resources, do not want Bolivia’s disintegration, but the Yankee plan, perfidiously conceived, is to utilize certain anti-patriotic military groups to get rid of Evo in the interest of unity, something that would be a merely formal gesture once the transnational corporations take over basic productive industries. Imperialism’s dictate is to punish and get rid of Evo.

This is the moment for denunciation and truth.

For not having foreseen and reflected on the factors that have led to a profound international crisis, “every man for himself!” would seem to be the cry currently heard in many parts of the world.

For the peoples and governments of Latin America, it will be an acid test. For our doctors and educators, anything that happens in the country where they are carrying out their noble and peaceful work, it will be one as well. They, in situations of danger, they will not abandon their patients or students.

Fidel Castro Ruz
April 30, 2008

The post An acid test appeared first on Reflections of Fidel.