Reflections of Fidel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This struggle has barely begun in our hemisphere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Revolution has never used terrorism against the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I could put together an endless list of abhorrent activities.

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

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

Bruno’s reply:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His words and deeds have honored our Revolution.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A worthy article by Kathleen Kennedy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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