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A basic idea had occupied my mind since my days as a utopian
socialist. I had begun from scratch, from the simple notions
of good and evil that society inculcates into every newborn,
replete with instincts and lacking in the values that
parents, particularly mothers, have imbued children within
all societies and throughout history.
Lacking a political precursor, chance events were
to play a constant and decisive role in my life. I began
forging an ideology, on my own, the very moment I had a real
opportunity to observe and reflect on the world around me,
as a child, teenager and young student. Education became,
for me, the instrument par excellence to bring about change
in the time it was my lot to live in, an instrument on which
the very survival of our fragile species would depend.
With many years of experience under my belt, what I
think today about this sensitive issue is totally congruous
with that idea. I need not excuse myself, as some choose to
do, for speaking the truth, no matter how ugly it is.
Speaking at public squares over two thousand years
ago, Demosthenes, a renowned Greek orator, fervently
defended a society in which 85 percent of its denizens were
slaves or individuals whose unequal status and lack of
rights were considered a natural condition. The philosophers
of the time shared this viewpoint. This is how the word
democracy was born. No one could expect more from them at
the time. Today, when a wealth of knowledge is at our
disposal, humanity's productive forces have proliferated
incalculably and the mass media deploys messages aimed at
millions of people. The immense majority, tired of
traditional politics, wants to know nothing about it. Public
figures are devoid of credibility, at a time the people,
facing dangers that threaten their survival, need them most.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Francis Fukuyama,
a U.S. citizen of Japanese origin, born and educated in the
United States, where he received his university degree,
wrote his book The End of History and the Last Man, a
work many doubtless have read, for it was amply publicized
by the leaders of the empire. He had become a
neoconservative hawk and a promoter of the one-idea system.
According to him, only one class, the U.S. middle
class, would remain. All others, I surmise, would be
condemned to vagrancy. Fukuyama was a staunch supporter of
the invasion of Iraq, as was Vice-President Cheney and his
entourage. For him, history comes to an end in what Marx saw
as the "end of human prehistory".
At the opening ceremony of the EU-Latin America and
the Caribbean Summit held in Peru this past 15th
of May, essential parts of the speeches delivered in
English, German and other European languages were not
translated by television broadcasters into Spanish or
Portuguese, as though the native, black, mixed blood and
white people of Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and other
countries —over 550 million people, most of them poor—spoke
English, German or another language foreign to them.
Now, however, the great meeting in Lima and its
final declaration are referred to with praise. There, among
other things, we were told that the weapons a country
acquires under the threat of extermination by the Empire, as
Cuba has been for many years and Venezuela is today, are no
different, from an ethical point of view, from those
employed by repressive forces to oppress the people and
defend the interests of the oligarchy, an ally of that same
empire. A nation cannot become yet another commodity, nor
can we place the present and future of new generations at
risk.
The 4th Fleet, of course, was not
referred to as an interventionist and dangerous force in the
speeches delivered and televised during the meeting. One of
the Latin American countries represented there has just
concluded joint manoeuvres with a U.S. Nimitz-type
aircraft carrier fitted with all manner of weapons of mass
destruction.
Not many years ago, that country's repressive
forces disappeared, tortured and murdered dozens of
thousands of people. The victims' children were expropriated
by the defenders of the properties of the wealthy. Their
main military leaders collaborated with the empire in its
dirty wars. They had faith in that alliance. Why fall into
the same trap once again? Though it is easy to infer what
country I am alluding to, I don't wish to mention it
directly, so as not to offend a sister nation.
The Europe that called the tune at that meeting is
the same Europe that supported the war on Serbia, the United
States' appropriation of Iraqi oil, the religious conflicts
in the Near and Middle East, the imprisonments and secret
landings, and the horrendous torture and assassination plans
hatched by Bush.
This Europe applies the same extra-territorial laws
the United States does, laws which, encroaching on the
sovereignty of their own territories, intensify the blockade
on Cuba and hinder the supply of technologies, components
and even medications to our country. Their advertising
mechanisms are linked to the empire's powerful mass media.
What I said at the first Europe-Latin America
Meeting held nine years ago in Rio de Janeiro has lost none
of its relevance today. Nothing has changed since then, save
for objective conditions, which make today’s atrocious forms
of capitalist exploitation even less sustainable.
The host of the meeting almost drove the European
crazy when, at the closing ceremony, it referred to some of
the points advanced by Cuba:
1.
Cancelling Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s foreign debt.
2.
Investing 10 percent of military spending each year on Third
World countries.
3.
Putting an end to the generous agricultural subsidies which
compete with our countries’ agricultural production.
4.
Allocating the portion of the 0.7 % of the GDP agreed to
which is due to Latin America and the Caribbean.
Observing the look on the faces of the European leaders, and
the glances they exchanged, I could tell they bit their lips
for a few seconds. But, why upset oneself? In Spain, it
would be even easier to deliver emotive speeches and
marvellous closing declarations. Much work had gone into
this. The banquet was next. This table would show no signs
of a food crisis. There would be no shortage of proteins and
liqueurs. Only Bush was missing, Bush who was working
tirelessly for peace in the Middle East, as is customary for
him. He was excused. Long live the market!
The prevailing spirit of the rich representatives
of Europe was a sense of ethnic and political superiority.
All were of a bourgeois capitalist and consumerist mindset,
and they spoke or applauded on its behalf. Many were
accompanied by the entrepreneurs who are the pillars and the
foundation of their "democratic systems, which guarantee
freedom and human rights”. One must be an expert in the
world of clouds to understand them.
Currently, the United States and Europe compete
among and between each other for oil, essential raw
materials and markets. In addition to this, all of this is
cloaked under the pretext of the struggle against terrorism
and organized crime which they themselves have spawned with
their voracious and insatiable consumer societies. Two
hungry wolves dressed up as kind-hearted grannies and one
little red riding hood.
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 18, 2008
10:32 p.m. |
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