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Dear Alina,
My apologies for taking a few minutes of your time with this
letter. The reason I write you is altogether simple: I
devote a lot of my time to reading news and articles,
including some published by our own press.
In “Scratching Each Other's Backs" ("Tráfico de
regalías"), an editorial published by Juventud
Rebelde on June 8, you express admiration for the honest
conduct of two individuals: a doctor who operates a
diagnostic ultrasound machine and a young computer repairman
who, through arduous efforts, made your personal computer
work again.
These are good examples of young, revolutionary
professionals. Others, as we know well, are the tens of
thousands of Cuban doctors who, today, make up an
extraordinary legion of medical professionals that offers
humanitarian services in any corner of the world. They were
not trained to become private practitioners. From the very
beginning, in the course of half a century, the Revolution
has worked to create that force of doctors. Betraying this
noble profession is more repulsive than any other kind of
betrayal, inasmuch as human life and suffering are worthy of
respect. The same holds for those who are tasked with
educating children, developing culture, impelling scientific
work or promoting the practice of sports, for everyone's
benefit. Were they to turn their backs on their duties, the
human species to which they belong, in the world it was
their lot to live in, would be as short-lived as the
capitalist illusions of those who traffic in their services
are short-sighted.
The question we must all ask ourselves is whether
our conduct and our objectives are reconcilable with the
laws of nature and the fruits of human intelligence.
It is a moral duty to strike at the concepts and
attitudes of those who serve the empire that seeks to
destroy our dearest values.
You were completely honest in writing that you are
not interested in a grey, boring and flat form of socialism.
How boring, flat or grey our form of socialism becomes shall
depend, among many other things, on how our journalists use
the media that the Revolution has made available to them,
media that are not privately owned or seek to mould people's
minds.
There is nothing as alienating as much of the
content of the so-called "entertainment industry" developed
by imperialism, with which young people and children waste
countless hours, at a time when socialism has not yet
created sufficiently efficient antidotes to counter its
harmful effects.
People who get involved in corruption and the theft
of state resources end up defending free enterprise, through
which they transform the fruits of their thefts into
merchandise. They are not even aware of what would happen to
our people were the country to fall, again, in the hands of
the voracious and monstrous empire.
Science takes pride in its achievements. Many are
excited, as is to be expected, about science's capacity to
manipulate hereditary genes to improve human health, but few
are concerned over the racist concepts that accompany the
empire's political power and the latter's fascist idea of a
superior race that is to own the world of today and
tomorrow. Let us devote this due thought. Let us keep
abreast of new scientific discoveries and draw informed
conclusions.
Dozens of news about the food crisis, energy and
raw material prices, climate change and other, interelated
problems, reach us each day.
Soybean, preheated at 125 º C, is one of the most
wholesome and economical sources of protein and calories to
be found among industrial food products for direct
consumption. It has a broad range of uses. Transgenic
products, used to produce animal proteins and fats, are not
suitable for human consumption. Leguminous and gramineae
plants, in general, improved and tested over the years, are
the key source of wholesome and healthful foods. The
cultivation of each of these plants requires rigorous
climate controls and a human workforce, where temperature,
humidity and tradition have a decisive say in the
productivity of the available cropland in each country. The
production of these essential proteins and calories per
hectare, its energy cost and the CO2 injected
into the atmosphere by each harvest, are considerations to
be included in the manual of all politicians around the
world. Knowing these things are today as important as
knowing how to read and write. One cannot afford to be
illiterate about these issues.
Today, we no longer use an abacus for calculations,
as was the case when the first socialist revolution took
place 90 years ago. Along with nuclear, chemical, biological
and electromagnetic weapons, science has also since
developed computers. Two days ago, the U.S. press reported
on a military supercomputer capable of millions and millions
of calculations per second. They christened it with the name
of a bird indigenous to New Mexico: Roadrunner. It cost 133
million dollars. The cable adds: “if each of the world's 6
billion people worked on personal computers for 24 hours a
day, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner
computer can do in a single day.”
These figures, dear Alina, are mind-boggling and I
have no choice but to include the less than literary facts
in this letter.
The empire not only invests in the training of its
scientific personnel, it also brutally deprives other
countries in the world of their best minds. No one can
compete with it in terms of research resources.
I was pleased with the final lines of your article,
on Cintio Vitier's book "The Sun of the Moral World” (“Ese
sol del mundo moral”). He shows us that Marti’s ethics
and the history of our people are interwoven with the seeds
of justice and dignity which the Revolution brought to Cuba.
I believe that we must apply the principles of
socialism around the world right now. Later, it will be too
late.
I would like for this letter, though longer than
your article, to be published on the same page of
Juventud Rebelde where yours was published. There is no
need to waste the paper or space of other publications.
I would also like for someone to read it at the
congress of journalists that will soon be held. I remember
that, a few years ago, many of our journalists did not even
have a personal computer. Today, the government of the
United States attempts to block access to information. I
hope, nevertheless, that you can follow the avalanche of
news on the problems that plague the world up close.
A heartfelt and respectful farewell,
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 10, 2008
8:32 p.m. |
