Reflections of Fidel

I promised I would continue the reflections today, using textual news and adding pertinent commentaries.

“NEW YORK, March 13 (ANSA) – The absence of Argentina in the itinerary of the new trip by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to South America is another sign of Washington’s annoyance with the authorities in Buenos Aires, according to The New York Times today.

“The newspaper recalled that Rice is visiting Brazil and Chile this week but ‘notably absent from her itinerary’ is Argentina, where Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wife of ex-President Néstor Kirchner, ‘became the first woman elected as the country’s president.’

“The omission underscores Washington’s disappointment with the new Kirchner government, which has continued to strengthen ties with the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, while ‘accusing the United States of political motives’ in the case of the $80,000 illegally brought into the country by Venezuelan officials.

“The New York Times describes this money as ‘suspected to be a secret contribution from Venezuela to the Kirchner campaign’.”

“BRASILIA, March 13 (EFE) –U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed her hope that Colombia’s neighbors would fulfill their commitment to prevent FARC guerrillas from using their territories ‘to continue killing innocent people.”

“‘We are very concerned with the regional situation (in South America)’, said Rice at a press conference today in Brasilia accompanied by Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Celso Amorim.”

“‘Countries cannot be threatened from within or from outside. And we must avoid that the terrorists continue killing innocent people,’ the head of U.S. foreign policy said after meetings with both Amorim and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.”

“BRASILIA, March 13 (ANSA) – [...] the official said that the U.S. government maintains good relations with left-wing leaders such as Brazilian President Luiz Lula da Silva and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.”

“After the press conference, Rice and Chancellor Celso Amorim had lunch together at the Itamaraty Palace.”

“BRASILIA, March 13 (AP) – [...] Rice made these declarations one day after President George W. Bush said that the recent crisis between Colombia and Ecuador was ‘the most recent step of a worrisome pattern of provocative behavior on the part of the Caracas government.”

“Washington is toughening its rhetoric against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, while at the same time praising its South American allies for firmly confronting terrorism.”

In Brazil, after dealing with the subject of the future composition of the Security Council, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice clearly explained that the United States would not be opposed to Brazil’s entry into that Council, but noted that its support was committed to Japan, its strategic and economic partner.

“SANTIAGO, March 13 (AFP) –U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a brief visit to Chile on Friday, where she will be meeting with President Michelle Bachelet to consolidate bilateral ties and review the regional situation.”

“Rice will arrive in Santiago Friday afternoon, coming from Brazil, where she arrived this Thursday. The chief of U.S. diplomacy will be in the Chilean capital for almost six hours, and will return to Washington the same day, just before taking off on a trip to Moscow.”

According to that same agency, the U.S. ambassador in Santiago, Paul Simons, stated:

“The fact that she is coming to Chile in the middle of a very busy schedule shows the importance she is giving to conversations with her colleague, Chancellor Foxley, and with the president, about our positive agenda.”

“Brazil and Chile ‘are countries that are friends and strategic regional partners of the United States,’ the diplomat added in a press conference.”

“With the Chilean authorities, Rice will be discussing the state of bilateral relations, but also the regional situation following the serious crisis created by the Colombian military incursion into Ecuadorian territory, resulting in the death of the second-in-command of the FARC guerrillas, Raúl Reyes.

“‘We shall be talking about the regional situation’, Simons disclosed.”

“In Santiago, Rice will also give the go-ahead to her Chilean colleague for the so-called ‘Chile-California Plan for the 21st Century’, an agreement that attempts to take advantage of similarities in geography, climate and productivity between the South American country and that U.S. state.”

“The agreement is unprecedented and came up following a personal conversation between Foxley and Rice, according to Ambassador Simons, who did not disclose any more details.”

Unquestionably, the U.S. ambassador in Chile, as is his habit, let too much slip out, speaking of a plan that the Chilean government still hasn’t even publicly mentioned, nor has there been any decision made about something that appears to be a fantasy from the Arabian Nights.

There is also much news on the Internet about the U.S. secretary of state’s tour. On March 13, the following headlines could be read:

BBC World – London, UK. “Rice: Borders, not hiding places.”

Terra – News Portal, Spain. “Rice Ratifies in Brazil U.S. commitment to Colombia and against the FARC.”

Alarde – Brazilian newspaper. “U.S. Defends South American Security Plan.”

El Observador – Venezuelan newspaper. “Rice emphasizes that U.S. is to study information about alleged Venezuelan ties with the FARC.”

Ansalatine – Italian News Agency. “Rice proposes joint action against FARC.”

BBC World – London, UK. “Rice visits ‘strategic’ partners.”

El Nuevo Diario – Nicaraguan newspaper. “U.S. toughens rhetoric against Chávez on Rice tour”

AFP – French News Agency. “Rice to visit Chile to consolidate ties and talk about the regional situation.”

EFE – Spanish News Agency. “Rice ratifies in Brazil U.S. commitment to Colombia and against the FARC.”

AFP – French News Agency. “Rice: U.S. examines ties between Chávez and FARC and will take action”.

La Prensa – Argentine newspaper. “Borders cannot be a hide-out, U.S. warns.”

On March 14, O Estado de Sao Paulo, a Brazilian news site, successively sends three articles titled: “Untimely interference”, “Rice discusses African tourism in Bahia” and “Amorim and ‘Condi’ make mistakes.”

O Globo on line – Digital site of the Brazilian TV channel. “Condoleezza: borders are not ‘hiding places.’”

El Mercurio – Chilean newspaper. “Rice, arriving today in the country, will discuss a request to send peace forces to Kosovo with the Chilean Government.”

Crónica Digital – Chilean News site. “Policy: sticks and carrots: Condoleezza Rice’s Chilean agenda.”

Condoleezza Rice herself should have to answer some questions: How many Americans have been killed by bombs sent by Cuba? Has one single brick ever been broken on account of an explosive device coming from our country? Why are we being included on the grotesque list of terrorist countries, the same one on which Venezuela’s inclusion is being arbitrarily threatened? Who used terrorism against our homeland to blow up planes in mid-air, commit acts of sabotage and launch mercenary invasions and threats of bombings and wars, economic blockade and actions that have cost thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars? Who is going to believe you or Bush? Why are you insisting on provoking fratricidal wars between the peoples of Latin America?

In Iraq, more than one million people have died. How many deaths is the United States of America offering Latin America, a region with over 500 million inhabitants, to defend its democracy and its empire?

It is a real fact that Bush and his group are much more trapped in their foreign policy errors than even Nixon when he resigned in 1972. The bloody Iraqi war and its rejection by the U.S. people, the toll in human lives, the extremely high number of wounded and maimed for every death in the military adventure, all reveal a situation full of contradictions: the deteriorated image of the United States and the impossibility of giving up the wars of conquest for raw materials, the dollar and the price of gold, currency devaluations and inflation, consumerism and the inability to supply itself with consumer goods, the production of ethanol and the world shortage of food, fascist methods and democratic demagoguery, torture practices and secret prisons and human rights, maximum environmental pollution of the country and the species’ right to survival, the benefits of science for health and the use of the same to massively liquidate or invalidate human beings, the brain drain and underdevelopment of poor countries, the price of oil and the ever-greater wasting of energy, the November elections and increasing numbers of Latinos dying on the border.

The list would be endless. It is, in essence, a contradiction between life and death.

Today, on Sunday March 16, we can read the dispatches that correspondents were writing in Havana last night, Saturday, about the material published today in Juventud Rebelde, received by that newspaper in advance on the previous day.

It is remarkable that none of the capitalist news agencies have published a single word on what was written about former guerrilla Pedro Pablo Montoya, who killed a leader of the FARC and cut off his hand in order to receive a bounty of 2.6 million dollars that was legalized by an attorney general of Colombia. He was probably an agent infiltrated by the Yankees. The issue has elicited much debate due to its ethical implications.

Condoleezza is off to Moscow, Bush has announced a trip to the Ukraine and Bucharest for the first days of April and he will conclude the tour in Croatia, Serbia’s neighbor, from which imperialism ripped its vital province of Kosovo, site of its culture and source of essential material resources that formed the basis of its development.

McCain has just arrived in Iraq for the eighth time, to offer his full support to Bush’s war, and to the 3 trillion dollars it has cost, to which millions of victims must be added, among the displaced and the dead, for the price of the fallen and mutilated Americans already mentioned.

What can the world expect from such a policy?

The imperialist leaders and officials are working feverishly, threatening everyone with their brutal strength, but the empire is unsustainable and it is not giving up. It is thirsty for blood. We must persistently denounce it!

Fidel Castro Ruz
March 16, 2008

These words will be published tomorrow, on February 29. A great many tasks lie immediately ahead of us. The 10th International Conference of Economists on Globalization and the Problems of Development, a conference I have always attended and in which I have always expressed different points of view, will begin on Monday the 3rd. Judging by the international developments we’ve witnessed, this conference will doubtless be of great importance, owing to the presence of prestigious economists, some Nobel Prize laureates and two eminent heads of State.I wish to address a specific issue in this, today’s reflection.

In the course of these days of voluntary rest, I have read numerous cables issued by the traditional press agencies or over the Internet. Among these, I found a dispatch, issued from Cuba and published on the BBC World web site, whose blatant personal attack is indeed repugnant. Published on February 25, one day following the election of the president of the Council of State, under the sub-headline of El Peso de las reflexiones (“The Importance of the Reflections”), it states:

Fidel Castro appears to want to reassure the new government and promises “to be cautious” in expressing opinions in his editorials, which are divulged by all of the country’s media, including the radio and television. In his reflections, it adds, he essays a new gesture of modesty, not only asking to be addressed as “comrade Fidel” but also that his articles not appear on the front page of the official newspaper and that the other media divulge a mere summary of these pieces. According to the article, this is strictly formal for, even if his reflections appear on the sports page, their significance will not, as a result, be lessened: nationally and internationally, any comment made by “comrade Fidel” will have immense repercussions. In a sense, the note alleges, it is a sword of Damocles hovering over the heads of the country’s leaders, for all of them know it would be extremely difficult to pursue any policy that is publicly condemned by Castro. The relationship between the Castro brothers, we learn, is a mystery seasoned by the most varied rumours. It is said they locked themselves up in a room and argued for several hours, and that their yelling could be heard outside of Fidel’s office. None of this, the article tells us, can be confirmed, for there is no proof, only alleged witnesses. In Cuba, however, as in no other country, wherever there’s smoke, there’s fire, and the “grapevine”, the oral transmission of information, is almost always in the right.

Other important US newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, expressed their frustration but did not resort to such vulgar insults.

Many picture our country as a steam cauldron that is about to burst. They are thrown off balance by how it has heroically held its ground for half a century.

The wise and serene words Raúl spoke after the 609 members of the National Assembly in attendance unanimously elected him president of the Council of State, his sincere arguments, disentangled the tangle of illusions that had been woven around Cuba. Those who know me and Raúl well know that, out of a basic sense of dignity and respect, we could never hold such a meeting. More than a few people still harbor hopes of seeing the sudden collapse of a heroic revolution, which stood and continues to stand victorious in spite of half a century of imperialist aggression.

Now, they are howling like wolves whose tails have been caught in traps. How particularly vexed they seem by the election, as First Vice President, of Machadito, the Organizational Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, to whom the Constitution entrusts the most important tasks as regards leading the people towards socialism.

In the world of nebulous speculation and protocol, what counts is state leadership and the party organization is considered a meddlesome intruder, an internal principle. In the specific case of Cuba, it should suffice to know that Raúl has all the legal and constitutional faculties and prerogatives he needs to govern our country. As he himself explained, I was consulted during the process of putting together a list of candidates for the position of first vice president that he held, and of which no one was stripped. I did not demand to be consulted. It was Raúl and the country’s top leaders who decided to consult me. Similarly, it was my decision to ask the Candidacy Commission to include Leopoldo Cintra Frías and Alvaro López Miera, who joined the Rebel Army combatants when they were only 15, on the list of candidates for the Council of State. The two are much younger than McCain and have more experience as military leaders, as demonstrated by their victorious internationalist feats.

Polito led the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, to the southeast, and the counteroffensive, southwest, with over 40,000 Cuban volunteer combatants and more than 30,000 Angolan soldiers under his command, troops that drove the last Apartheid army invaders out of Angola.

The U.S. government created the conditions that would permit racist South Africa, in certain circumstances, to use a nuclear weapon against those troops.

López Miera once bombed his own troops when, near Luanda, he ordered the multiple launch artillery to fire at his own positions, under attack and nearly occupied by the South African forces that invaded Angola for the first time in 1975.

These were the moves the chess board itself decided. They were not the fruit of Raúl’s alleged militaristic tendencies, nor was it a question of different generations or factions rabidly fighting over a mundane slice of power. With respect to myself, I say again that I cling to no position, as I expressed in my message to the people of February 18, 2008.

One person who was left speechless was the intellectual author of Kosovo’s “independence”. In my reflection of February 21st, I described him as “an illustrious Spanish personality, once an impeccable socialist and minister of culture, who for some time now an advocate of war and the use of weapons” (In addition to this, at various points in time, he was a government spokesman, minister of education and science and minister of foreign affairs).

What did he say? “Yesterday’s news could have been more open and better. I am not certain whether a transition has begun from the political point of view… Anything that could point to a political transition towards democracy is welcome.”

He spoke as though we lived in Franco’s Spain, a close ally of the United States, and not in Cuba, where they have invested more than 100 billion dollars, much more valuable than today’s dollars, to blockade and destroy the country.

What a man! There’s no way to shut him up! What is his name? The Roundtable program already mentioned the sin and the sinner two or three days ago: Javier Solana.

What party is he affiliated with? Spain’s Socialist Worker’s Party. He would not travel to our country because Cuba, in connection with the invasion of Serbia, urged the world to try him as a war criminal in an international court. As Spain’s Foreign Minister, he welcomed me at Madrid airport when the 2nd Latin American Summit was held in the Spanish capital. He seemed like an angel back then!

Even Aznar, who advised Clinton to bomb the Serbian television station, an action which caused the deaths of dozens of people, understands that, right now, on the eve of elections, one cannot play with the issue of nationalities, as everyone realizes that, with such precedents, the Basque Country and Catalonia could invoke such a principle within the European Community, and we are talking about two of Spain’s most industrialized nations. The Scots and the Irish could proceed in similar fashion.

With the fate of human species in such hands, it is as if we were dancing happily at the edge of a precipice, where the vanity of no few leaders of the globalized capitalist world reigns, putting all countries at risk. The humanitarian, educational and artistic values achieved with its own resources by the Cuban Revolution they seek to destroy means nothing to them, if it does not submit to the dictatorship of the free market. The latter and its blind laws are miring the human species in an unsustainable economic crisis and bringing about changes to the natural conditions of life that could prove irreversible.

It is to fight against that that I write Reflections. Had I unlimited time, I would be willing to write to recall ideas that are today dispersed in speeches, interviews, conversations, declarations, meetings, reflections and things of that nature. I have invested tons of paper and tons of sound – symbolically speaking – but I have no reason to be ashamed of that.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 28, 2008

Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message.

The moment has come to nominate and elect the State Council, its President, its Vice-Presidents and Secretary.

For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people.

There were those overseas who, aware of my critical health condition, thought that my provisional resignation, on July 31, 2006, to the position of President of the State Council, which I left to First Vice-President Raul Castro Ruz, was final. But Raul, who is also minister of the Armed Forces on account of his own personal merits, and the other comrades of the Party and State leadership were unwilling to consider me out of public life despite my unstable health condition.

It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-à-vis an adversary which had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply.

Later, in my necessary retreat, I was able to recover the full command of my mind as well as the possibility for much reading and meditation. I had enough physical strength to write for many hours, which I shared with the corresponding rehabilitation and recovery programs. Basic common sense indicated that such activity was within my reach. On the other hand, when referring to my health I was extremely careful to avoid raising expectations since I felt that an adverse ending would bring traumatic news to our people in the midst of the battle. Thus, my first duty was to prepare our people both politically and psychologically for my absence after so many years of struggle. I kept saying that my recovery “was not without risks.”

My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s all I can offer.

To my dearest compatriots, who have recently honored me so much by electing me a member of the Parliament where so many agreements should be adopted of utmost importance to the destiny of our Revolution, I am saying that I will neither aspire to nor accept, I repeat, I will neither aspire to nor accept the positions of President of the State Council and Commander in Chief.

In short letters addressed to Randy Alonso, Director of the Round Table National TV Program, — letters which at my request were made public — I discreetly introduced elements of this message I am writing today, when not even the addressee of such letters was aware of my intention. I trusted Randy, whom I knew very well from his days as a student of Journalism. In those days I met almost on a weekly basis with the main representatives of the University students from the provinces at the library of the large house in Kohly where they lived. Today, the entire country is an immense University.

Following are some paragraphs chosen from the letter addressed to Randy on December 17, 2007:

“I strongly believe that the answers to the current problems facing Cuban society, which has, as an average, a twelfth grade of education, almost a million university graduates, and a real possibility for all its citizens to become educated without their being in any way discriminated against, require more variables for each concrete problem than those contained in a chess game. We cannot ignore one single detail; this is not an easy path to take, if the intelligence of a human being in a revolutionary society is to prevail over instinct.

“My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.

“Like Niemeyer, I believe that one has to be consistent right up to the end.”

Letter from January 8, 2008:

“…I am a firm supporter of the united vote (a principle that preserves the unknown merits), which allowed us to avoid the tendency to copy what came to us from countries of the former socialist bloc, including the portrait of the one candidate, as singular as his solidarity towards Cuba. I deeply respect that first attempt at building socialism, thanks to which we were able to continue along the path we had chosen.”

And I reiterated in that letter that “…I never forget that ‘all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn.’”

Therefore, it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama.

Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution.

The path will always be difficult and require from everyone’s intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century.

This is not my farewell to you. My only wish is to fight as a soldier in the battle of ideas. I shall continue to write under the heading of ‘Reflections by comrade Fidel.’ It will be just another weapon you can count on. Perhaps my voice will be heard. I shall be careful.

Thanks.

Fidel Castro Ruz
February 18, 2008

The demise of the Soviet Union was to us like there were no more sunrises; a devastating blow for the Cuban Revolution. Not only did this translate into a total cessation of supplies of fuel, materials and foods; we lost markets and the prices that we had attained for our products in the difficult struggle for our sovereignty, integration and principles. The empire and the traitors, full of hatred, were sharpening their daggers with those who wanted to put the revolutionaries to the sword and recover the country’s riches.

The Gross Domestic Product progressively plummeted to 35 percent. What country could have withstood such a terrible blow? We were not defending our lives; we were defending our rights.

Many left-wing parties and organizations became discouraged in the wake of the collapse of the USSR after its titanic effort to build socialism during the course of more than 70 years.

The reactionaries’ criticisms coming from all platforms and mass media were ferocious. We did not add our voices to the chorus of capitalism’s apologists, beating a dead horse. Not one statue to the creators or followers of Marxism was demolished in Cuba. Not one school or factory had its name changed. And we decided to press ahead with unchangeable steadiness. That was what we had promised to do under such hypothetical and unbelievable circumstances.

Nor had we ever practiced personality cults in our country, something that we had taken the initiative to prohibit right from the first days after the triumph.

In peoples’ history, it has been subjective factors that have brought forward or delay outcomes, independently of the leaders’ worth.

I spoke to Lula about Che, briefly outlining his story for him. Che used to argue with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez about the self-financed or the budgetary method, things we didn’t consider that important then as we were involved in the struggle against the U.S. blockade, its aggression plans and the 1962 October Missile Crisis, a real survival issue.

Che studied the budgets of the big Yankee companies whose managers lived in Cuba, not their owners. He drew from this a clear idea about how imperialism worked and what was happening in our society and this enriched his Marxist ideas and led him to the conclusion that in Cuba we couldn’t use the same methods to build socialism. But this didn’t mean we were dealing with a war of insults; these were open exchanges of opinions that were published in a small magazine, with no intention of creating rifts or divisions among ourselves.

What happened in the USSR later would not have surprised Che. While he held important posts and carried out his duties, he was always careful and respectful. His language grew tougher when he collided with the horrible human reality imposed by imperialism; he became aware of this in the former Belgian colony of the Congo.

He was a self-sacrificing, studious and profound man; he died in Bolivia with a handful of combatants from Cuba and other Latin American countries, fighting for the liberation of Our America. He did not survive to experience the world of today, where problems unknown to us then have since come into play.

You didn’t know him, I told him. He was disciplined in voluntary work, in his studies and behavior. He was modest and selfless, and he set an example both in production centers and in combat.

I think that in building socialism, the more the privileged receive, the less will go to the neediest.

I repeat to Lula that time measured in years was now flying by very quickly; each one of them was multiplying. One can almost say the same about each day. Fresh news is published constantly, relating to the situations anticipated in my meeting with him on the 15th.

With plenty of economic arguments, I explained to him that when the Revolution triumphed in 1959, the United States was paying for an important part of our sugar production with the preferential price of 5 cents per pound; for almost half a century this would be sent to that country’s traditional marketplace which was always supplied, at critical moments, by a secure supplier just off their shores. When we proclaimed the Agrarian Reform Act, Eisenhower decided what had to be done, and we hadn’t yet nationalized their sugar mills – it would have been premature to do so – nor had we yet applied the agrarian law of May 1959 to the large estates. Because of that hasty decision, our sugar quota was suspended in December 1960, and later redistributed among other producers in this and other regions of the world as punishment. Our country became blockaded and isolated.

Worst of all was the lack of scruples and the methods used by the empire to impose its domination over the world. It brought viruses into the country and destroyed the best sugarcane; it attacked the coffee, potatoes and also the swine herds. The Barbados-4362 was one of our best varieties of sugar cane: early maturity, a sugar yield that sometimes reached 13 or 14 percent; its weight per hectare could exceed 200 tons of cane in 15 months. The Yankees resorted to pests to wipe out the best. Even worse: they brought in the hemorrhagic dengue virus that affected 344,000 people and took the lives of 101 children. We don’t know whether they used other viruses – perhaps they didn’t because they were afraid of the proximity of Cuba.

When due to these problems we couldn’t send to the USSR the sugar shipments under contract with that country, it continued sending us the goods we had agreed upon. I remember negotiating with the Soviets every cent of the sugar price; I discovered in practice what I had previously only known in theory: unequal exchange. It was securing a price that was above the world market price. The agreements were planned for five years; if at the beginning of the five-year period you were sending X amount of tons of sugar in payment for goods, at the end of that period the value of their products, in international prices, was 20 percent higher. It was always generous in negotiations: once the world market price temporarily shot up to 19 cents, we latched on to that price and the USSR accepted. Later this served as a basis for the application of the socialist principle which says that the more economically developed should support the less developed as they build socialism.

When Lula asked me what was the purchasing power of 5 cents, I explained that with one ton of sugar at that time we could by 7 tons of oil; today, the reference price of light oil, 100 dollars, will only buy one barrel. The sugar we export, at current prices, would only suffice to import oil that would be used up in 20 days. We would have to spend about 4 billion dollars per year to buy it.

The United States subsidizes its agriculture with tens of billions every year. Why does the U.S. not allow the ethanol you produce freely into the country? It subsidizes it brutally, thus denying Brazil income for billions of dollars every year. The wealthy countries do the same, with their production of sugar, oleaginous products and cereals for the production of ethanol.

Lula analyzes figures on Brazilian agricultural products that are of great interest. He tells me that he had a study made by the Brazilian press showing how world soy production will grow 2 percent annually until 2015, which means an additional production of 189 million tons of soy. Brazil’s soy production would have to grow at a pace of 7 percent annually to be able to meet the world’s needs.

What is the problem? Many countries already don’t have any more land available for crops. India, for example, has no more available land; China has very little and neither does the United States to grow more soy.

I add to his explanation that what many Latin American countries have are millions of people earning starvation wages and growing coffee, cacao, vegetables, fruits, raw materials and goods at low prices to supply U.S. society, which no longer saves and consumes more than it can produce.

Lula explains that they have set up an EMBRAPA research office –Agriculture and Livestock Research Company of Brazil– in Ghana, and he goes on to say that in February they are going to also open an office in Caracas.

“Thirty years ago, Fidel, that area of Brasilia, Mato Grosso, Goiás, was considered a part of Brazil that had nothing, it was just like the African savannah; in the course of 30 years, it was transformed into the major grain producing region in all of Brazil, and I think that Africa has an area that is very much like this region in our country; that’s why we set up the research office there in Ghana and we also would like to become associated with Angola.”

He told me that Brazil is in a privileged position. They have 850 million hectares of land; of these 360 million are part of the Amazon state; 400 million of good soil for agriculture, and sugarcane takes up only one percent.

I make the comment that Brazil is the largest coffee exporter in the world. For this product, Brazil is paid the same as the value of a ton in 1959: around 2,500 of today’s dollars. If in that country then they charged 10 cents a cup, today they charge 5 dollars or more for an aromatic cup of espresso, an Italian way of preparing coffee. That is GDP in the United States.

In Africa they cannot do what Brazil is doing. A large part of Africa is covered by deserts and tropical and subtropical areas where it is difficult to grow soy or wheat. Only in the Mediterranean region, to the north – where rainfall totals some eight inches a year or the land is irrigated with the waters of the Nile – in the high plateaus or in the south, in the lands wrested away by apartheid, cereals production is abundant.

Fish in the cool waters that mainly flow around its western coast feed the developed countries that sweep into their nets all the large and small species that feed on plankton in the ocean currents coming in from the South Pole.

Africa, having almost 4 times the surface area of Brazil (18.91 million square miles) and 4.3 times more population than Brazil (911 million inhabitants) is very far from being able to produce Brazil’s surplus foods, and its infrastructure is yet to be built.

The viruses and bacteria affecting potatoes, citrus, bananas, tomatoes, and livestock in general, swine fever, avian flu, foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease, and others that in general affect the livestock of the world, proliferate in Africa.

I spoke to Lula about the Battle of Ideas that we are waging. Fresh news arrives constantly that demonstrates the need for that constant battle. The worst media of our ideological enemies are bent on spreading throughout the world the opinions of some nasty gusanillos (worms) who cannot even stand to hear the term “socialism” in our heroic and generous country. On January 20, five days after the visit, one of these papers published the story of a young ne’er-do-well who, thanks to the Revolution, had attained a good level education, health and employment situation:

“Don’t even mention socialism to me”, he said, and went on to explain the cause of his anger: “many people were pawning their souls just to get a few dollars. Anything new that happens in this country, whatever it is, they should give it another name,” he declares. Quite the little wolf dressed up as a granny.

The very same reporter, who prints this, gleefully goes on: “Official propaganda telling the Cubans to go to the polls talks more about the Revolution than about socialism. For a start, Cuba is no longer a country in a bubble, like it was until the end of the 1980’s. The insular viewpoint is changing towards a global vision and the country, especially in the capital, is living through an accelerated mutation towards modernity. And one of its effects is that socialism, imported decades ago, is tearing at the seams.”

We are dealing with imperial capitalism’s vulgar appeal to individual egoism, as it was preached almost 240 years ago by Adam Smith as the cause of the nation’s wealth, meaning everything should be handled by the market. That would create limitless wealth in an idyllic world.

I think of Africa and its almost one billion population, victim of the principles of that economy. Diseases, flying at the speed of airplanes, proliferate at the speed of AIDS, and other old and new diseases are affecting its population and its crops, with not one of the former colonial powers being really capable of sending them doctors and scientists.

It is about these issues that I spoke with Lula.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 26, 2008

Lula warmly reminded me of the first time he visited our country in 1985 to take part in a meeting organized by Cuba to analyze the overwhelming problem of the foreign debt; participants representing a wide spectrum of political, religious, cultural and social tendencies presented and discussed their opinions, concerned about the asphyxiating drama.

The meetings took place throughout the year. Leaders of worker, campesino, student and other groups assembled to examine the various subjects. He was one of these leaders, already well known to us and abroad for his direct and vibrant message, that of a young worker leader.

At that time, Latin America owed $350 billion. I told him that in that year of intense struggle I had written long letters to the President of Argentina, Raúl Alfonsín, to persuade him discontinue the payments on that debt. I knew the position of Mexico, unmoved in the payment of its enormous debt, but not indifferent to the outcome of the battle, and the special political situation of Brazil. The Argentine debt was sufficiently large after the disasters of the military government to justify an attempt to open up a breach in that direction. I did not succeed. A few years later, the debt with the interests rose to $800 billion; it had doubled and it had already been paid.

Lula explained to me how that year was different. He says that Brazil has no debt today either with the International Monetary Fund or with the Paris Club, and that it has 190 billion US dollars in its reserves. I assumed that his country had paid enormous sums in order to comply with those institutions. I explained to him about Nixon’s colossal fraud on the world economy, when in 1971 he unilaterally suspended the gold standard that had limited the issuing of paper money. Until then the dollar had maintained a balance in relation to its value in gold. Thirty years earlier, the United States had almost all the reserves in that metal. If there was a lot of gold, they bought it up; if there was a shortage, they sold. The dollar played its part as an international exchange currency, under the privileges granted to the United States at Bretton Woods in 1944.

The most developed powers had been destroyed by the war. Japan, Germany, the USSR and the rest of Europe had barely any of this metal in their reserves. One ounce of gold could be bought for as little as 35 dollars; today you need 900 dollars.

The United States, I told him, has bought up assets all over the world by minting dollars, and exercises sovereign privileges over such properties acquired in other countries. Nevertheless, nobody wants the dollar to devaluate any further, because almost all countries accumulate dollars; that is, paper money, that devaluates constantly as a result of that unilateral decision made by the President of the United States.

Presently, the currency reserves of China, Japan, Southeast Asia and Russia combined amount to three trillion dollars; an astronomical figure. If you add the dollar reserves of Europe and the rest of the world, you will see that all that is equivalent to a mountain of money whose value depends on what the government of one country decides to do.

Greenspan, who for more than 15 years was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, would have died in a panic had he been faced with such situation. How high can U.S. inflation climb? How many new jobs can this country create this year? How long will its machinery to mint paper money last before its economy collapses, besides using war to conquer other nations’ natural resources?

As a result of the harsh measures imposed on the defeated German state at Versailles in 1918, when a republican regime came to power, the German mark devaluated to such an extent that you needed tens of thousands of them to buy one dollar. Such a crisis fed German nationalism and contributed extraordinarily to Hitler’s absurd ideas. He was looking for a scapegoat. Many of the most important scientific and financial talents as well as writers were Jewish. They were persecuted. Among them was Einstein, the author of the theory stating that energy is equal to mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light; it made him famous. Also Marx, who was born in Germany, and many of the Russian Communists were of Jewish descent, whether or not they actively practiced the Hebrew religion.

Hitler did not lay the blame for the human drama on the capitalist system; rather he blamed the Jews. Based on crude prejudices, what he really wanted was “vital Russian space” for his Teutonic master race, dreaming of building a millennial empire.

In 1917, through the Balfour Declaration, the British decided to create the state of Israel within its colonial empire, located on territory inhabited by the Palestinians, who had a different religion and culture; in that part of the world, other ethnic groups coexisted for many centuries before our era, among them the Jews. Zionism became popular among the Americans, who rightly detested the Nazis, and whose financial markets were controlled by representatives of that movement. That state today is practicing the principles of apartheid; it has sophisticated nuclear weapons and it controls the most important financial centers in the United States. It was used by this country and its European allies to supply nuclear weapons to that other apartheid, the one in South Africa, to use them against the Cuban internationalist combatants who were fighting the racists in the south of Angola if they crossed the Namibian border.

Immediately afterwards, I spoke to Lula about Bush’s adventurous policies in the Middle East.

I promised to send him the article that was to be published in Granma the next day, on January 16. I would personally sign the copy he would be getting. Before he left, I would also give him the article written by one of the most influential U.S. intellectuals, Paul Kennedy, about the connection between food and oil prices.

You are a food producer, I added, and you have just discovered important reserves of light crude. Brazil has an area of 5,333,750 square miles and 30 percent of the world’s water reserves. The planet’s population needs increasing amounts of food, and you are great food exporters. If you have grains rich in proteins, oils and carbohydrates — be they fruits like the cashew nuts, almonds, or pistachio; legumes such as peanut; soybean, with more than 35% protein, and sunflower seeds; or grains like wheat and corn — you can produce all the meat or milk you want. I didn’t mention others on a long list.

I continued with my explanation saying that in Cuba, we had a cow that broke the world record in milk production, a Holstein-Zebu hybrid. Right away Lula named her: “White Udder!” (Ubre Blanca), he exclaimed. He remembered her name. I went on to say that she would produce 110 liters of milk per day. She was like a factory, but she had to have more than 40 kilograms of fodder, the most she could chew and swallow in a 24-hour period, a mixture in which soy meal, a legume that is very difficult to grow in Cuban soil and climate, is a basic ingredient. You now have the two things: safe supplies of fuel, raw food materials and manufactured food products.

The end of cheap food has already been announced. I stated: “What do you think the dozens of countries with many hundreds of millions of inhabitants who have neither the one nor the other will do?” This means that the United States has a huge external dependency which is also a weapon. It could use all its reserves of land, but the people of that country are not ready for that. They are producing ethanol from corn; therefore, they are taking a great amount of this caloric grain off the market, I added, continuing my argument.

On the same subject, Lula tells me that Brazilian producers are already selling the 2009 corn crop. Brazil is not as dependent on corn as Mexico or Central America. I think that the United States cannot keep up fuel production from corn. This, I say, confirms a reality with regards to the sudden and incontrollable rise of food prices which will affect many peoples.

You, on the other hand, can rely on a favorable climate and loose soil; ours tends to be clayish and sometimes as hard as cement. When we received tractors from the Soviets and the other Socialist countries, they would break down and we had to buy special steel in Europe to manufacture them here. In our country we have lots of clay-based black or red soil. Working it with dedication, they can produce for the family what the campesinos in the Escambray call “high consumption”. They were receiving food rations from the state and also consuming their own production. The climate has changed in Cuba, Lula, I said.

Our soil is not suitable for the large-scale commercial production of cereals, as required to meet the necessities of a population of almost 12 million people, and the cost in machinery and fuel imported by the nation, at today’s prices, would be very high.

Our media prints news about oil production in Matanzas, reductions in costs and other positive aspects. But nobody says that the prices in hard currency must be shared with foreign partners who invest in the necessary sophisticated machinery and technology. Besides, we do not have the required labor force to intensively take part in cereal production as the Vietnamese and Chinese do, growing rice plant by plant and often reaping two or even three harvests a year. It has to do with the location and the historical tradition of the land and its settlers. They did not first go through the large-scale mechanization of modern harvesters.

In Cuba, for quite a while now, the sugarcane cutters and the workers in the mountain coffee plantations have abandoned the fields, logically. Also, a large number of construction workers, some from the same origins, have abandoned the work brigades and have become self-employed workers. The people are aware of the high cost of fixing up a home. There is the cost of the material, plus the high cost of the manpower. The first can be solved, the second has no solution — as some would believe — throwing pesos into the street without their due backing in convertible currency, which would not be dollars anymore but euros and yuans, increasingly expensive, if all together we succeed in saving international economy and peace.

Meanwhile, we have been creating and we should keep on creating reserves of foods and fuel. In case of a direct military attack, the manual work force would be multiplied.

In the short time Lula and I spent together, two and a half hours, I would have liked to summarize in just a few minutes the almost 28 years that have gone by, not since the time he first visited Cuba, but since I met him in Nicaragua. This time he was the leader of an immense nation whose fate, however, depends on many aspects that are common to all the peoples on this planet.

I asked his permission to speak about our conversation freely and at the same time, discreetly.

As he stands in front of me, smiling and friendly, and I listen to him speaking with pride about his country, about the things that he is doing and those he plans on doing, I think about his political instincts. I had just finished quickly looking over a 100-page report on Brazil and the growth of relations between our two countries. He was the man I met in the Sandinista capital, Managua; he was someone who connected closely with our Revolution. I neither spoke to him, nor would I ever speak to him, about anything that could be construed as interfering in the political process of Brazil, but he himself, right at the beginning, said: “Do you remember, Fidel, when we spoke at the Sao Paulo Forum, and you told me that unity among the Latin American left wing was necessary if we were to secure our progress? Well, we are now moving forward in that direction.”

Immediately he speaks to me with pride about what Brazil is today and its great possibilities, bearing in mind its advances in science, technology, mechanical industry, energy and other areas, bound up with its enormous agricultural potential. Of course, he includes the high level of Brazil’s international relations, which he describes enthusiastically, and the relations he is ready to develop with Cuba. He speaks vehemently about the social work of the Workers’ Party which today is supported by all the Brazilian left-wing parties, which are far from having a parliamentary majority.

There is no doubt that it was a part of the things we discussed years ago when we spoke. Back then time flew by quickly, but now every year is multiplied by ten, at a rate which is difficult to follow.

I wanted also to talk to him about that and about many other things. It’s hard to tell which one of us had the greater need to communicate ideas. As for me, I supposed that he would be leaving the next day and not early that same evening, according to the flight plan that had been scheduled before we met. It was approximately five o’clock in the afternoon. What happened was a kind of contest as to how we would be using the time. Lula, astute and quick-witted, took his revenge at a meeting with the press, when, mischievously smiling as you can see in the photos, he told the reporters that he had only talked for half an hour and Fidel had talked for two. Of course, with the privilege of seniority, I used up more time than he did. You have to discount the time taking photographs of each other, since I borrowed a camera and became a reporter again: he followed suit.

I have here 103 pages of dispatches reporting what Lula said to the press, the photos taken of him and the confidence he communicated about Fidel’s health. Truly, he left no space for the reflection published on January 16 that I had just finished writing the day before his visit. He took up the entire space and this is equivalent to his enormous territory, compared to the miniscule land surface of Cuba.

I told him how happy I was that he had decided to visit Cuba, even without the assurance that he would be able to see me. As soon as I knew that, I decided to sacrifice anything, like my exercises, rehab and recovery, just so I could be with him and talk extensively.

At that moment, even though I knew that he would be leaving that same day, I was unaware of the urgency of his departure. Evidently, the health condition of the vice president of Brazil, according to his own statement, urged him to take off so that he could arrive in Brasilia at around dawn the next day, in the middle of spring. Yet another long and hectic day for our friend.

A strong and persistent downpour fell on his residence while Lula waited for the photos and two other bits of material, together with my notes. He left that night for the airport in the rain. If he had seen the front page of Granma: “2007, the third rainiest year in more than 100 years,” that would have helped him to understand what I had told him about climate change.

Well then, the sugar harvest in Cuba has begun, along with the so-called dry season. The sugar crop yield is only at nine percent. How much would it cost to grow sugar for export at 10 cents per pound, when the purchasing power of one cent is almost fifty times less than at the triumph of the Revolution in January of 1959? Reducing the costs of these and other products to fulfill our commitments, to satisfy our consumption, to create reserves and develop other production, is highly commendable; but not even in our wildest dreams can we find easy solutions to our problems; the solutions are not just around the corner.

Among many other topics, we discussed the inauguration of the new president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom. I told him that I had seen the ceremony in its entirety and the social commitments made by the newly-elected president. Lula mentioned that what we can see today in Latin America was born in 1990 when we decided to create the Sao Paulo Forum: “We made a decision here, in a conversation we had. I had lost the election and you came to lunch at my home in San Bernardo.”

My conversation with Lula was just beginning, and I still have many things to relate and ideas to offer, which might perhaps be useful.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 23, 2008

He spontaneously decided to visit Cuba for the second time since he became president of Brazil, even though the state of my health did not guarantee that he would be able to meet with me.

In the past, as he himself said, he visited the Island almost every year. I met him on the occasion of the first anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution at the home of Sergio Ramírez who at that time was the vice president of that country. By the way, I would say that Ramírez fooled me, in some way. When I read his book, Divine Punishment –an excellent narrative– I came to believe that it was a real case that had happened in Nicaragua, with that legal nuisance so common in the former Spanish colonies; he himself told me one day that it was pure fiction.

There I also met with Frei Betto who today is a critic, but not an enemy, of Lula, as well as with Father Ernesto Cardenal, a militant leftist Sandinista and, today, an adversary of Daniel. The two writers were part of the liberation theology movement, a progressive trend which we always saw as a great step towards unity between revolutionaries and the poor, beyond their philosophy and their beliefs, in accordance with the specific conditions of struggle in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Nonetheless, I must confess that I perceived in Father Ernesto Cardenal, unlike others in the Nicaraguan leadership, an image of sacrifice and privations resembling that of a medieval monk. He was a true prototype of purity. I leave aside others less consistent, who were at one time revolutionaries, including militants of the far left in Central America and other areas, who later, out of a concern for their well-being and money, crossed over, part and parcel, to the ranks of the empire.

What does all this have to do with Lula? A lot. He was never a left-wing extremist, nor did he become a revolutionary through philosophical positions, but of those of a worker of very humble origins and of Christian beliefs, and he worked hard creating surplus value for others. Karl Marx saw the workers as the ones who would bury the capitalist system: “Workers of the world unite,” he proclaimed. He presents us with reasons and demonstrates this with irrefutable logic; he takes pleasure and makes fun of the cynical lies used to accuse Communists. If the ideas of Marx were just at that time, when everything seemed to depend on the class struggle and the growth of the productive forces, science and technology, which sustained the creation of essential goods to satisfy human necessities, there are absolutely new factors which say that he was right and which at the same time clash with his noble aims.

New necessities have arisen which could destroy the aims of a society with neither exploiters nor exploited. These new necessities include the emergence of human survival. No one had even heard about climate change in Marx’s day and age. He and Engels surely knew that one day the sun would be extinguished from with the consumption of all its energy. A few years after the Manifesto was written, other people were born who made inroads into science and knowledge about the laws of chemistry, physics and biology ruling the Universe, to then unknown. Into whose hands would this knowledge fall? Although it continues in its development and even improves, and again partially denies and contradicts its own theories, new knowledge is not in the hands of the poor nations who today make up three-quarters of the world’s population. It is in the hands of a privileged group of wealthy and developed capitalist powers, associated with the most powerful empire ever to exist, built on the bases of a globalized economy, governed by the very laws of capitalism described by Marx and thoroughly studied by him.

Nowadays, as humankind is still suffering from these realities due to the very dialectics of events, we must confront these dangers.

How did the revolutionary process in Cuba develop? Quite a bit has been written in our press in recent weeks about different episodes of that period. Great respect has been shown for various historical dates on the days corresponding to anniversaries that commemorate years ending in a five or a zero. That is fair, but we must be careful, in the sum-total of so many occurrences described in each newspaper or article, according to their criteria, lest we lose sight of them in the context of the historical development of our Revolution, despite the efforts of all those excellent analysts that we have.

For me, unity means sharing in the struggle, the risks, the sacrifices, the aims, ideas, concepts and strategies assumed after discussion and analysis. Unity means a common struggle against annexationists, quislings and corrupt individuals who have nothing in common with a militant revolutionary. It is to this unity revolving around the idea of independence and against the empire as it advances over the peoples of the Americas that I have always referred to. A few days ago, I once again read it when Granma published it on the eve of our election day, and Juventud Rebelde reproduced a facsimile of my thoughts on the idea, in my own handwriting.

The old pre-revolutionary slogan of unity has nothing to do with the concept, because in our country today we do not have political organizations seeking power. We have to avoid that, in the enormous sea of tactical criteria, strategic lines become diluted and we imagine nonexistent situations.

In a country invaded by the United States while involved in a solitary struggle for independence as the last Spanish colony, together with our sister Puerto Rico, — “birds of a feather” — nationalist feelings ran very deep.

The real producers of sugar, who were the recently freed slaves and the campesinos, many of whom fought in the Liberation Army, transformed into squatters or completely lacking any land of their own, who were pitched into the sugarcane harvests in the great estates created by United States companies or Cuban landowners who inherited, bought or stole land, were adequate material for revolutionary ideas.

Julio Antonio Mella, founder of the Communist Party together with Baliño –who knew Martí and who, with him, created the party that would lead Cuba to independence– took up the banner, brought to it all the enthusiasm derived from the October Revolution, and gave this cause his own blood, that of a young intellectual conquered by revolutionary ideas. The Communist blood of Jesús Menéndez would be added to that of Mella 18 years later.

We, teenagers and youths studying in private schools had not even heard of Mella. Our class or social group, having incomes greater that those of the rest of the population, condemned us as human beings to become the self-seeking and exploitative part of society.

I had the privilege of coming to the revolution through ideas, escaping the boring fate that life was leading me to. I explained why at another moment; now, I remember this only in the context of what I am writing.

Hatred of Batista’s repression and his crimes was so great that nobody paid heed to the ideas I expressed in my defense at the Court in Santiago de Cuba, where there was even a book by Lenin printed in the USSR — coming from the credit I had at the People’s Socialist Party bookstore at Carlos III in Havana — found among the combatants’ belongings. “Whoever hasn’t read Lenin, is an ignorant,” I blurted out during the interrogation at the first sessions of the hearing when they brought it up as a damning bit of evidence. They were still trying me together with all of the surviving prisoners.

It would be hard to understand what I am saying if one doesn’t keep in mind that at the time we attacked the Moncada, on July 26, 1953 — an action made possible by the organizational efforts of more than one year, with nobody on our side other than ourselves — the policies of Stalin, who had died suddenly a few months earlier, prevailed in the USSR. He was an honest and devoted Communist, who would later make serious errors leading him to extremely conservative and cautious positions. If a Revolution like ours had succeeded at that time, the USSR would not have done for Cuba what the Soviet leadership did years later — by then liberated from those murky and tortuous methods, and enthused by the Socialist Revolution that burst on the scene in our country. I understood that very well in spite of the fair criticisms I made of Khrushchev as a result of events that were well known at the time.

The USSR had the most powerful army among all those contending in World War II, but unfortunately it was purged and demobilized. Its leader underestimated Hitler’s threats and bellicose theories. From the very capital of Japan, an important and prestigious Soviet intelligence agent had communicated the imminence of the attack on June 22, 1941. This surprised the country, which was not in combat readiness. Many officers were on leave. Even without their most experienced unit leaders — who were replaced — if they had been alerted and deployed, the Nazis would have clashed with powerful forces from the very first second and they would not have destroyed most of the fighter planes on the ground. Even worse than the purge, was the surprise. The Soviet soldiers did not surrender when they were told about enemy tanks in the rearguard, the way the other armies from capitalist Europe did. In the most critical moments, with sub-zero temperatures, the Siberian patriots started the lathes in the weapons factories that Stalin had far-sightedly moved to the inner reaches of Soviet territory.

As the leaders of the USSR themselves told me when I visited that great country in April 1963, the revolutionary Russian combatants — well seasoned against foreign interventions aimed at destroying the Bolshevik Revolution, which was left blockaded and isolated — had established relations and exchanged experiences with German officers, those with a Prussian militarist tradition, humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles which put an end to World War I.

The SS intelligence services devised schemes against many who were, in their vast majority, loyal to the Revolution. Motivated by suspicions that turned pathological, Stalin purged 3 of his 5 Marshals, 13 of the 15 Army Commanders, 8 of the 9 Admirals, 50 of the 57 Army Corps Commanders, 154 of 186 Division Commanders, one hundred percent of Army Commissars, and 25 of 28 Army Corps Commissars of the Soviet Red Army in the years preceding the Great Patriotic War.

The USSR paid for those serious errors with enormous destruction and more than 20 million lives lost; some affirm 27 million.

In 1943, with some delay, the last Nazi spring offensive was launched at the famous and tempting Kursk Bulge, with 900 thousand soldiers, 2,700 tanks and 2,000 aircraft. The Soviets, experts in enemy psychology, laid in wait in that trap for the sure attack, with 1,200,000 men, 3,300 tanks, 2,400 planes and 20,000 artillery pieces. Led by Zhukov and Stalin himself, they destroyed Hitler’s last offensive.

In 1945, Soviet soldiers advanced unstoppably to capture the German Reich Chancellery in Berlin, where they hoisted the red flag stained with the blood of the many fallen.

I observe Lula’s red tie for a minute and I ask him, “Did Chávez give you that?” He smiles and answers: “Now I am going to send him some shirts because he’s complaining that the collars on his shirts are too hard, and I am going to look for them in Bahía so that I can make him a present of them.”

He asked me if I would give him some of the photos that I took.

When he said that he was very impressed with my health, I told him that I spent my time thinking and writing. Never in my life had I thought so much. I told him that, at the end of my visit to Córdoba, Argentina, where I had attended a meeting with many leaders, and he had been there as well, I came back, and then I took part in two ceremonies for the 26th of July Anniversary. I was revising Ramonet’s book. I had answered all his questions. I had not taken the thing too seriously. I had thought that it would be a quick thing, like the interviews with Frei Betto and Tomás Borge. And then I became a slave to the French writer’ book, when it was at the point of being published without my going over it, with some of the answers being a bit off the cuff. I barely slept during those days.

When I fell gravely ill on the night of the 26th and in the early morning of the 27th of July, I thought that would be the end, and while the doctors were fighting for my life, the head of the Council of State Office was reading me the text, at my insistence, and I was dictating the pertinent changes.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 22, 2008

I am referring to a Chilean woman, Elena Pedraza, a highly educated specialist in rehabilitation. More than 40 years ago she paid her first visit to Cuba. Allende, a medical doctor, was not yet the president of Chile. The Cuban Revolution was almost 8 years old and it was already training teachers, doctors, physical therapists and health specialists, full speed ahead.

I am writing this reflection partly as a summary of six pages printed in small letters that have landed in my hands. It is a bit longer than usual, but done with the thought that later the full version of the speech given by the Chilean specialist on the morning of March 15, 2002 at the Second International Congress of the Cuban Society for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation taking place in the capital of Cuba will be published by the press somewhere or in some magazine.

Let us listen to her explain in her own words:

I arrived in 1966 and Cuba was beginning an historic phase. Its beginnings were punctuated with great difficulties and shortages; they had to solve urgent problems, among which those dealing with health were considered to be a top priority…Personnel trained in this specialty were needed and so their education had to be addressed and time was of the essence; but it had to be done, despite all the limitations existing in the country.

Nevertheless, society was acquiring more and more awareness about the marginal world in which the disabled live. In Cuba, for example, there was only a small number of empirical therapists, some of whom had been trained in the United States during summer courses, and others had left the country.

The Health Minister at that time, Dr. Machado Ventura, told me upon meeting me: “we must train physical therapists for the entire country, and we have to do it soon”. I answered in the affirmative and when I asked him what such a mission would entail; he answered: “we need books” and without hesitating he emphasized: “We need books”. I never forgot that suggestion, for me it became a commitment that I have always tried to honor.

My training in kinesiology began in 1930…

My work experiences during 30 years in my country, Chile, were difficult…

I completed my working years in Chile, but I had no hesitations about returning to take up this commitment in Cuba, in 1966.

My first contacts took place in the Frank País Hospital. This center was very well equipped for treating both child and adult patients in the specialty of traumatology and orthopedics. It was explained to me that previously this center had offered very selective care and a very tiny portion of the neediest population was able to have access to these services.

As I was learning about the medium in which I was to be working, I could see the need for a very great undertaking that would also take a long time. At that time I was already able to see the state”s concern in taking on the population”s right to health throughout the entire country and in rehabilitation.

We had to begin. I visited much of the country, getting to know some of its parts: I was in Santiago de Cuba, a very beautiful colonial city. There I made my first attempt to give an elementary training course, in a small center for the treatment of patients suffering from various neurophysical disorders. It was headed by Dr. González Corona…

This doctor fabricated his own equipment to treat his patients. He was telling me how he himself had built the devices from scrap aluminum sheeting so that children suffering from polio could walk; he also made parallel bars and built a rustic swimming pool for water exercises.

In 1966, I officially begin to teach another more scheduled course on Kinesiology for physiotherapy students at the Frank País Hospital…

With that opportunity I understood how relevant it was to bring the most important books in order to teach correctly. There were no study materials; we had to do it all with whatever means we had. But the students’ interest to learn was so intense, as was mine to teach, having no references and outside of my specialty, but rather involving experiences acquired in my country and a sense of responsibility that I think I have had all my life in my work in hospital clinics.

This was the beginning that became my model for future courses that were to be given and with the experience accumulated we adjusted each year’s programs with great dedication. At the end of these, which ended up being three years, experience allowed us to go on to prepare comprehensive teaching material; in other words, the fundamental bases of a program of this type for regular courses.

In my time at this hospital I was able to accumulate a lot of experience that would be very valuable to me during the years I was developing my work in Cuba.

The path towards the development of what today is rehabilitation in Cuba was born in these episodes that I am telling you about, what this specialty was and how it grew year after year, throughout the entire island, until what we can appreciate today at this Congress.

…I made informational visits to hospitals and polyclinics located in peripheral areas, in all areas of the country, even in the most isolated of places. In some of them I discovered the existence of small modest physiotherapy departments which were being organized. Others which had already been installed were offering services to the people but to a large extent lacking trained staff able to provide care in this specialty.

…It was interesting to see everyone’s efforts to solve, step by step, this journey that we were all involved in. This experience was very important for me; I could see how from the Ministries of Health and Education, suitable departments were being created to offer more thorough training to future students; for example, raising the levels of instruction for enrolment in kinesiology courses, and also integrating courses in programs related to the specialty.

In 1979 I gave my first lectures as a professor of kinesiology in teaching programs for residents in the specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation…I taught them to always be in control of evaluation, to avoid being imprecise and making unfavorable comments in order to correctly carry out their plan of action. I was able to recognize that this must always be an ethical standard, and thus would prevent the patient from feeling diminished at the beginning of a treatment.

My years spent at Julio Díaz were very enriching and they allowed me to get to know all the situations experienced by people with disabilities; the center had hospital facilities, out-patient care and looked after a large population. As I am writing my memoirs, I return to that distant time. I must say that I was able to come to know a generous people who had a lot of solidarity. The hospital continued being better equipped with new equipment that would offer more complete patient care; every year new specialties were being treated, and the building as well continued to grow until it reached the size it is today, that of a small fortress.

…I came to realize that a therapist does not forget the theoretical basis and the practices s/he was taught, nor can s/he forget to keep on studying and at the same time updating.

I came to regard this center with the affection one has for one’s home. I cannot help but remember so many things that I experienced, with so many colleagues, therapists, doctors, auxiliary staff, everyone always respecting me with great warmth…

I must also recall spending time in other hospitals where I taught, organized conferences and training sessions, such as in the Hermanos Ameijeiras Hospital, and others. In the 1970’s, with the goal of contributing to the development of medicine in Cuba, we Chileans who were living in exile (even though I never felt like an exile in Cuba) decided to pitch in to acquire 23 volumes of books dealing with the specialty of kinesiology therapy. This happened as a response to the scant possibility of receiving foreign texts, which were so necessary to improve teaching and the training of professionals.

This Congress affords us a very complete view of what rehabilitation is doing throughout the country. This reflects the concern of the government and of the medical corps, and also the professional development desires of staff making up the rehabilitation teams who work in this specialty.

The motto of this Congress ‘Disability, Rehabilitation, Humanity,’ commits us to evaluate much more all that we are offering to people with disabilities. We make an effort to offer rehabilitation, but when this motto extends to the word ‘Humanity’, I realize that it is not just one simple word more, rather it is a very deep plea: humanity and dignity for human beings.

In this international Congress, the great volume of work being done by Cuban doctors and the other members of rehabilitation teams is recognized; their experiences are demonstrated in all areas of the medical specialties and this reveals the constant dedication and sense of responsibility in the national and foreign papers presented at the Congress.

I should like to send an affectionate and friendly greeting to the young people who were my students, who are now professionals overflowing with experience and prestige; with them I took part in such gratifying tasks as voluntary work, which in Cuba has always been a complement to the work of each citizen.

Havana, March, 2002.

When the fascist coup took place in Chile, funded by the government of the United States, and thousands of citizens were imprisoned, tortured, disappeared or murdered, within or outside the borders of their country, Elena Pedraza moved to Cuba, and from here she went to different countries, gathering world support for women. She continued to develop her research in our country as well as her training program. Later, she returned to her native land, and from there continues to collaborate with Cuba.

A few days ago I was able to leaf through an excellent book whose author, Dr. Debra Rose, is a citizen of the United States where rehabilitation is a very costly and elitist service, inaccessible to the poor. Cuba is forbidden access to this knowledge. Elena, who never tires of sending information that could raise the scientific levels of our specialists, sent that book, among other materials, which contains more than a hundred different simple and accessible exercises.

Nowadays rehabilitation acquires special and new meaning as it relates to life. Everyone increases their mental and physical potential up to the age of 35; some maintain that it is 30. From that age on, they can continue enjoying good health and physical performance for 20 to 30 years more, conserving that from the above mentioned age until advanced years at the end of which, life is extinguished. Human beings are always happy to do things for themselves until the end.

The service is of benefit to all the inhabitants of the country, where today they are born with a life expectancy rate of 77 years, which continues to increase. Not only adults who are younger than 35 or 40, victims of all kinds of accidents, but also more and more children require the noble care provided by rehabilitators.

Approximately 10,000 rehabilitators are working in more than 600 centers located in polyclinics and hospitals or offering their services abroad, while a 1,000 more are being trained with increasing thoroughness and rigor.

Elena Pedraza is 97 years old and continues to offer her professional services as a consultant. She is a fine example of an intellectual worker, of womanhood and a communist. She was a member of the same party as Ricardo Fonseca, Luis Corvalán, Volodia Teitelboim and Gladys Mar&ian, who recently passed away, and many others who dedicated their lives or died for their beliefs.

In the name of the people who, by challenging the empire, started out on the road of the Socialist Revolution more than half a century ago, I pay tribute to their work and to their example.

Fidel Castro Ruz
January 7, 2008

(to the Cuban National Assembly, December 28, 2007)

Comrades of the National Assembly:

You have no easy task on your hands. On January 1st, 1959, surrounded by the accumulated and deepening grievances that our society inherited from its neo-colonial past under U.S. domination, many of us dreamed of creating a fully independent nation where justice prevailed. In the arduous and uneven struggle, there came the moment when we were left completely alone.

Nearly 50 years since the triumph of the Revolution, we can justifiably feel proud of ourselves, as we have held our ground, for almost half a century, in the struggle against the most powerful empire ever to exist in history. In the Proclamation I signed on July 31, 2006, none of you saw any signs of nepotism or an attempt to usurp parliamentary powers. That year, at once difficult and promising for the Revolution, the unity of the people, the Party and State were essential to continue moving forward and to face the declared threat of a military action by the United States.

This past December 24, during his visit to the various districts of the municipality which honored me with the nomination of candidate to parliament, Raúl noted that all of the numerous candidates proposed by the people of a district famous for its combativeness, but with a low educational level, had completed their higher education. This, as he said on Cuban television, made a profound impression in him.

Party, State and Government cadres and grassroots organizations face new problems in their work with an intelligent, watchful and educated people who detest bureaucratic hurdles and inconsiderate justifications. Deep down, every citizen wages an individual battle against humanity’s innate tendency to stick to its survival instincts, a natural law which governs all life.

We are all born marked by that instinct, which science defines as primary. Coming face to face with this instinct is rewarding because it leads us to a dialectical process and to a constant and altruistic struggle, bringing us closer to Martí and making us true communists.

What the international press has emphasized most in its reports on Cuba in recent days is the statement I made on the 17th of this month, in a letter to the director of Cuban television’s Round Table program, where I said that I am not clinging to power. I could add that for some time I did, due to my youth and lack of awareness, when, without any guidance, I started to leave my political ignorance behind and became a utopian socialist. It was a stage in my life when I believed I knew what had to be done and wanted to be in a position to do it! What made me change? Life did, delving more deeply into Martí’s ideas and those of the classics of socialism. The more deeply I became involved in the struggle, the stronger was my identification with those aims and, well before the revolutionary victory I was already convinced that it was my duty to fight for these aims or to die in combat.

We also face great risks that threaten the human species as a whole. This has become more and more evident to me since I predicted, for the first time in Rio de Janeiro, –over 15 years ago, in June 1992– that a species was threatened with extinction as a result of the destruction of its natural habitat. Today, the number of people who understand the real danger of this grows every day.

A recent book by Joseph Stiglitz, former Vice-President of the World Bank and President Clinton’s chief economic advisor until 2002, Nobel Prize laureate and bestselling author in the United States, offers up-to-date and irrefutable facts on the subject. He criticizes the United States, a country which did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, for being the largest producer of carbon dioxide in the world, with annual emissions of 6 billion tons of this gas which disturbs the atmosphere without which life is impossible. In addition to this, the United States is the largest producer of other greenhouse gases.

Few people are aware of these facts. The same economic system which forced this unsustainable wastefulness on us impedes the distribution of Stiglitz’ book. Only a few thousand copies of an excellent edition have been published, enough to guarantee a margin of profit. This responds to a market demand, which the publishing house cannot ignore if it is to survive.

Today, we know that life on Earth has been protected by the ozone layer, located in the atmosphere’s outer ring, at an altitude between 15 to 50 kilometers, in the region known as the stratosphere, which acts as the planet’s shield against the type of solar radiation which can prove harmful. There are greenhouse gases whose warming potential is higher than that of carbon dioxide and which widen the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica, which loses as much as 70 percent of its volume every spring. The effects of this phenomenon, which is gradually taking place, are humanity’s responsibility.

Few people are aware of these facts. The same economic system which forced this unsustainable wastefulness on us impedes the distribution of Stiglitz’ book. Only a few thousand copies of an excellent edition have been published, enough to guarantee a margin of profit. This responds to a market demand, which the publishing house cannot ignore if it is to survive.

To have a clear sense of this phenomenon, suffice it to say that the world produces an average of 4.37 metric tons of carbon dioxide per capita. In the case of the United States, the average is 20.14, nearly 5 times as much. In Africa, it is 1.17, while in Asia and Oceania it is 2.87.

The ozone layer, in brief, protects us from ultraviolet and heat radiation which affects the immune system, sight, skin and life of human beings. Under extreme conditions, the destruction of that layer by human beings would affect all forms of life on the planet.

Other problems, foreign to our nation and many others under similar conditions, also threaten us. A victorious counterrevolution would spell a disaster for us, worse than Indonesia’s tragedy. Sukarno, overthrown in 1967, was a nationalist leader who, loyal to Indonesia, headed the guerrillas who fought the Japanese.

General Suharto, who overthrew him, had been trained by Japanese occupation forces. At the conclusion of World War II, Holland, a U.S. ally, re-established control over that distant, extensive and populated territory. Suharto maneuvered. He hoisted the banners of U.S. imperialism. He committed an atrocious act of genocide. Today we know that, under instructions from the CIA, he not only killed hundreds of thousands but also imprisoned a million communists and deprived them and their relatives of all properties or rights; his family amassed a fortune of 40 billion dollars -which, at today’s exchange rate, would be equivalent to hundreds of billions- by handing over the country’s natural resources, the sweat of Indonesians, to foreign investors. The West paid up. Texan-born Lyndon B. Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, was then the President of the United States.

The news on the events in Pakistan we received today also attest to the dangers that threaten our species: internal conflict in a country that possesses nuclear weapons. This is a consequence of the adventurous policies of and the wars aimed at securing the world’s natural resources unleashed by the United States.

Pakistan, involved in a conflict it did not unleash, faced the threat of being taken back to the Stone Age.

The extraordinary circumstances faced by Pakistan had an immediate effect on oil prices and stock exchange shares. No country or region in the world can disassociate itself from the consequences. We must be prepared for anything.

There hasn’t been a day in my life in which I haven’t learned something.

Martí taught us that “all of the world’s glory fits in a kernel of corn”. Many times have I said and repeated this phrase, which carries in eleven words a veritable school of ethics.

Cuba’s Five Heroes, imprisoned by the empire, are to be held up as examples for the new generations.

Fortunately, exemplary conducts will continue to flourish with the consciousness of our peoples as long as our species exists.

I am certain that many young Cubans, in their struggle against the Giant in the Seven-League Boots, would do as they did. Money can buy everything save the soul of a people who has never gone down on its knees.

I read the brief and concise report which Raúl wrote and sent me. We must not waste a minute as we continue to move forward. I will raise my hand, next to you, to show my support.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 27, 2007