Reflections of Fidel

Yesterday, Carmen Nordelo Tejera passed away. She was the selfless mother of Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, a Hero of the Republic of Cuba who is unjustly serving two life-sentences plus 15 years of imprisonment.

Significant events have taken place in our country lately.

I have been watching for hours now on television the tribute that the entire country is paying to Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque. I think that facing death was for him just another duty as so many others he discharged throughout his life. He did not know (neither did we) how much sadness the news of his physical absence would bring to us.

I would not have wished to utter any harsh criticism against any of the companies that manufacture medical equipment, whose profits do not derive from the production of weapons to kill, but from the combat of diseases, suffering and death. That is why I have always treated all of them with respect, and I liked to exchange with them about their scientific advances.

The United States owns the most patents in the world. It has stolen scientists from every country, developed or developing, who are undertaking research in a myriad of spheres, from the production of weapons of mass destruction to medicines and medical equipment. For that reason, the economic and technological blockade is not something that merely serves as a pretext for blaming the empire for our own difficulties.

The coup d’état in Honduras, promoted by the far right-wing of the United States –which in Central America was maintaining the structure set up by Bush – and backed by the Department of State, was evolving poorly on account of the energetic resistance by the people.The criminal venture, condemned unanimously by world opinion and international bodies, could not be sustained.
The memory of atrocities committed during recent decades by the tyrannies that United States organized, instructed and armed in our hemisphere was still fresh.

Yesterday I was listening to the Round Table TV program when it analyzed, among other topics, Operation Peter Pan, one of the most repugnant acts of moral aggression carried out against our country. Patria potestas is an extremely sensitive issue. That was a repugnant low trick. One of the novels by Mikhail Sholokhov that I read some years later included a reference to that kind of slander which had already been used against the Revolution of October 1917.

Yesterday on May 31st, an AFP dispatch read: “Cuba has accepted to reopen negotiations with the United States about migration and direct mail service, a new signal of the thaw that is happening just before an Organization of American States (OAS) Summit where the Cuban situation will dominate conversations.