We know that people living in industrialized and wealthy countries spend, on average, 25 percent of their income on food. Those who live in nations which were condemned to economic underdevelopment by the former destine up to 80 percent of their income to this end. Many go physically hungry and endure immense social disparities. Unemployment rates are usually two to three times higher; infant mortality rates are even higher, and life expectancy is as little as two-thirds that which is reported in rich countries. This system is simply genocidal.

         In the reflection I wrote three days ago, I stated: "Our country has demonstrated that it can stand up to all pressures and help other peoples”. Could Europe affirm the same thing?

         A UNESCO report published yesterday, June 20, states that a 2-year study conducted with over 200 thousand children from 16 countries places Cuba as Latin America's number one country in terms of third grade mathematics and reading and sixth grade mathematics and science, with over 100 points above the regional average. This is the second time Cuba is thus recognized by UNESCO.

         It is reasonable to assume that no country where human rights are systematically violated can reach such high educational levels.

         Why has Cuba been blockaded for 50 years?

         Why is it the object of slander?

         Why is it barred from all access to technical and scientific information?

         Why do they seek to take it back to an unsustainable economic and social system which offers no answers whatsoever to humanity's problems?

         There is a reason millions of Bolivian, Ecuadorian, Uruguayan, Argentinean, Brazilian, Central American and other Latin American citizens have migrated to Europe, whence now they can be brutally returned to their countries of origin if they fail to meet the requirements set down by the new anti-immigrant laws.

         What's worse: figures several times larger of Mexican, Central and South American citizens have emigrated to the United States, crossing borders, walls and seas, without any kind of documentation or any Adjustment Act that privileges them or encourages them to emigrate.  Of them, 500 die each year. In addition to this, thousands perish every year in Mexico and Central America, victims of organized crime, in the struggle to control the drugs market in the United States, where its highest authorities are unable and unwilling to combat drug use.

         Assistant attorney José Luis Santiago Vasconcelos declared that human trafficking is the second most profitable illegal activity in the world. In the case of Cubans, profits are comparable to those of drug-trafficking: "They charge as much as 10,000 dollars per person.”

         The money comes from the United States. I don't believe Mexico can become a haven for the trafficking of immigrants, as even US coast guards intercept and return those who are captured at sea.

         Mexico is not obliged to accept having a version of the dry-foot wet-foot policy imposed on it.

         There is no organized crime in Cuba or any kind of impunity for drug-trafficking. It has combated both efficiently, without resorting to a blood bath. Only hypocrisy explains why the United States hasn't acknowledged this fact.

         I did not write an anti-Europe diatribe, I simply wrote the truth. It is not my fault if the truth proves offensive.

         To keep yesterday's reflection short, I did not even mention weapons exports, military spending and NATO's military adventures, let alone the secret flights and Europe's complicity in the acts of torture perpetrated by the United States.

         I have no knowledge of anyone having been arrested anywhere in the country for breaking the law. That has nothing to do with the reflection which I asked be published exclusively on Cubadebate. Any connection is totally arbitrary. I will make use of this Internet site as I deem appropriate. I shan't try anyone's patience. I don't make a cent doing this, I work for free.

         I am not, nor will ever be, the leader of a faction or splinter group. No one has any reason to assume, therefore, that there are inner struggles in the Party. If I write, it is because I continue to struggle, in the name of the convictions I have defended all of my life.

Fidel Castro Ruz

June 21, 2008

1:34 p.m.