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(Part
Three)
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 of
self-financed and the budgetary method, things we didn’t
consider that important then as we were involved in the
struggle against the US blockade, their aggression plans and
the 1962 October Missile Crisis, a real survival issue.
Che
studied the budgets of the great 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 a 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 Land Reform Law, 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. They
brought viruses into the country and destroyed the best
sugarcane; they attacked the coffee, the potatoes and also
the swine. The Barbados-4362 was one of our best varieties
of sugarcane: 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 thousand
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, they 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 only known about in
theory: unequal exchange. They were 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 an X amount of tons of sugar in
payment for the goods, at the end of that period the value
of their products, in international prices, was 20 percent
higher. They were always generous in their negotiations:
once the world market price temporarily shot up to 19 cents,
we latched on to that price and they 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 the purchasing power was 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 each year. Why does the U.S. not allow the ethanol
you produce freely into the country? They subsidize 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 salaries and
growing coffee, cacao, vegetables, fruits, raw materials and
goods at low prices to supply US 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
Amazons 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 lands 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 the 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 ‘worms’ who cannot even stand to hear the term
“socialism” in our heroic and generous country. On January
20th, 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”, and he 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 to be 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. The diseases, flying at the
speed of airplanes, proliferate at the speed of AIDS, and
other old and new diseases affect 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
Part 4 |
