Reflections of Fidel

The youth is more interested than anyone else in the future. Until very recently, the discussion revolved around the kind of society we would have. Today, the discussion centers on whether human society will survive. These are not dramatic phrases. We must get used to the true facts. Hope is the last thing human beings can relinquish. With truthful arguments, men and women of all ages, especially young people, have waged an exemplary battle at the Summit and taught the world a great lesson. (more…)

The news from the Danish capital gives a picture of chaos. After planning a conference with about 40 thousand people in attendance, the hosts find it impossible to honor their promise. Evo, the first of the two presidents of ALBA-member countries to arrive, stated some truths derived from the millennium-old culture of his people. (more…)

Dear Hugo:

Fifteen years ago to this day, on December 14, 1994 we met at the Main Hall of the University of Havana. The previous night I had waited for you at the steps of the plane that brought you to Cuba.

I was aware of your armed uprising against the pro-Yankee government of Venezuela. We had learned of your ideas when you were still in prison devoting your time –the same as we had done—to delve deeper into the revolutionary ideas which had led you to the uprising of February 4, 1992. (more…)

In the final paragraphs of a Reflection entitled “The Bells Are Tolling For the Dollar,” published two months ago, on October 9, I mentioned the climate change problem brought on humanity by imperialist capitalism. With regards to carbon emissions I said: “The United States is not making any real effort but accepting just a 4% reduction with respect to the year 1990.” At that moment, scientists were demanding a minimum of 25 to 40 percent by the year 2020. (more…)

The United States, in its struggle against the Revolution, had in the Venezuelan government its best ally: the choice specimen Mr. Romulo Betancourt Bello. We did not know it then. He had been elected President on December 7, 1958; he had not taken office yet when the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1st, 1959. Weeks later I had the privilege of being invited by the provisional government of Wolfgang Larrazabal to visit Bolivar’s homeland, which had been so supportive of Cuba.

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.

I know Chavez well, and no one could be more reluctant than him to allow a showdown between the Venezuelan and Colombian peoples leading to bloodshed. These are two fraternal peoples, the same as Cubans living in the east, center and west end of our island. I find no other way to explain the close relationship between Venezuelans and Colombians.

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

How I regret having to criticize Obama, knowing that in that country there are other potential presidents worse than him. I understand that in the United States that office is currently a tremendous headache. Perhaps nothing could explain it better than the information in yesterday’s Granma that 237 members of the U.S. Congress; in other words, 44% of them, are millionaires. That does not mean that every one of them is obliged to be an incorrigible reactionary, but it is very difficult to believe that they might think like any of the many millions of U.S. citizens who lack medical care, are unemployed or have to work hard to earn a living.

Obama, of course, is not a beggar, he possesses millions of dollars. As a professional he was outstanding; his domination of language, his eloquence and his intelligence are undisputed. Despite being an African American he was elected president for the first time in the history of his country in a racist society that is suffering from a profound international economic crisis, the responsibility for which falls upon itself.

It is not about being or not being anti-American, as the system and its colossal media try to describe its adversaries.

The U.S. people are not responsible for, but the victims of an unsustainable system and, what is worse, one that is now incompatible with the life of humanity.

The intelligent rebel Obama who had to endure humiliation and racism during his childhood and youth understands that, but the Obama who is educated and committed to the system and the methods that led him to the presidency of the United States cannot resist the temptation to pressure, threaten and even deceive others.

He is obsessive in his work; possibly no other president of the United States would be capable of committing himself to a program as intensive as the one that he proposes to undertake in the next eight days.

According to his program, a wide-ranging tour will take him to Alaska, where he is to talk with troops deployed there; to Japan, Singapore, the People’s Republic of China and South Korea; he is to take part in the meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN); he will have talks with the prime minister of Japan and His Majesty Emperor Akihito in the Land of the Rising Sun; the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang; of Russia, Dmitri Medvedev, and of the People’s Republic of China, Hu Jintao; he will give speeches and press conferences; he will carry his nuclear briefcase that we trust he will not need to use during his accelerated tour.

His security adviser has announced that he is to discuss with the president of Russia extending the START-1 Treaty, which expires on December 5, 2009. Certain reductions in the enormous nuclear arsenal will doubtless be agreed, without significance for the economy and world peace.

What is our illustrious friend thinking of taking on during his intensive voyage? The White House has solemnly announced it: climate change, economic recovery, nuclear disarmament, the war in Afghanistan, the risks of war in Iran and in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. There is enough material here to write a book of fiction.

But how is Obama going to resolve climate problems if the position of his representation in the preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen Summit on greenhouse gas emissions was the worst of all the industrialized and rich countries, both in Bangkok and in Barcelona, because the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol, nor is that country’s oligarchy disposed to genuinely cooperate.

How is he going to contribute to the solution of the grave economic problems affecting a large part of humanity, when the total debt of the United States – which includes federal government, state and local governments, companies and families – amounted at the end of 2008 to $57 trillion, equivalent to more than 400% of its GDP, and when that country’s budget deficit rose to close to 13% of its GDP in the fiscal year 2009, a figure that Obama is doubtless aware of.

What can he offer Hu Jintao when his policy has been openly protectionist in order to hit Chinese exports; when he is demanding at all costs that the Chinese government should revalue the yuan, which would affect growing Third World imports proceeding from China.

The Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff – who is not a disciple of Karl Marx, but an honest Catholic, one of those who is not prepared to cooperate with imperialism in Latin America – recently affirmed: “…we are risking our destruction and the devastation of the diversity of life.”
“…almost half of humanity is now living below the poverty level. The richest 20% consume 82.49% of all the Earth’s wealth and the 20% poorest have to sustain themselves with a miniscule 1.6%.” He quotes the FAO warning that “…in the coming years there will be between 150 and 200 million climate refugees.” And he adds that in his estimate: “humanity is now consuming 30% more than its reposition capacity… The Earth is showing unequivocal signs that it cannot take any more.”

What he affirms is a fact, but Obama and the U.S. Congress have not as yet heard that.

What is he leaving us in the hemisphere? The shameful problem of Honduras and the annexation of Colombia, in which country the United States is to install seven military bases. They also established a military base in Cuba more than 100 years ago and still occupy it by force. On it they installed the horrific torture center known worldwide, which Obama has been unable to close as yet.

I sustain the belief that before Obama concludes his mandate there will be six to eight rightist governments in Latin America allied to the empire. Likewise in the near future, the most right-wing sector in the United States will try to limit his mandate to a period of four years. A Nixon, a Bush or somebody like Cheney will once again be new presidents. Then one would see with all clarity the significance of those absolutely unjustifiable military bases that are now threatening all the peoples of South America on the pretext of combating drug trafficking, a problem created by the tens of billions of dollars from the United States being injected into organized crime and drug production in Latin America.

Cuba has demonstrated that in order to combat drugs what is needed is justice and social development. In our country, the crime figure per every 100,000 inhabitants is one of the lowest in the world. No other [country] in the hemisphere can show such low indices of violence. It is known that in spite of the blockade, none other possesses such high educational levels.

The peoples of Latin America will know how to resist the onslaughts of the empire!

Obama’s tour would seem to be a science fiction story.

Fidel Castro Ruz
November 11, 2009
7:16 p.m.

Anyone with some information can immediately see that the sweetened ‘Complementation Agreement for Defense and Security Cooperation and Technical Assistance between the Governments of Colombia and the United States’ signed on October 30, and made public in the evening of November 2, amounts to the annexation of Colombia by the United States.

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.