Reflections
by the Commander in Chief:
IT
IS IMPERATIVE TO IMMEDIATELY HAVE AN ENERGY REVOLUTION
I hold nothing against
Brazil, even thought to more than a few Brazilians continuously bombarded with
the most diverse arguments, which can be confusing even for people who have
traditionally been friendly to Cuba, we might sound callous and careless about
hurting that country’s net income of hard currency. However, for me to keep silent would be to
opt between the idea of a world tragedy and a presumed benefit for the people
of that great nation.
I do not blame Lula and the
Brazilians for the objective laws which have governed the history of our
species. Only seven thousand years have
passed since the human being has left his tangible mark on what has come to be
a civilization immensely rich in culture and technical knowledge. Advances have not been achieved at the same
time or in the same geographical latitudes. It can be said that due to the
apparent enormity of our planet, quite often the existence of one or another
civilization was unknown. Never in thousands of years had the human being lived
in cities with twenty million inhabitants such as Sao Paulo or Mexico City, or
in urban communities such as Paris, Madrid, Berlin and others who see trains
speeding by on rails and air cushions, at speeds of more than
At the time of Christopher
Columbus, barely 500 years ago, some of these cities did not exist or they had
populations that did not exceed several tens of thousands. Nobody used one
single kilowatt to light their home.
Possibly, the population of the world then was not more than 500
million. We know that in 1830, world
population reached the first billion mark, one hundred and thirty years later
it multiplied by three, and forty-six years later the total number of
inhabitants on the planet had grown to 6.5 billion; the immense majority of
these were poor, having to share their food with domestic animals and from now
on with biofuels.
Humanity did not then have
all the advances in computers and means of communication that we have today,
even though the first atomic bombs had already been detonated over two large
human communities, in a brutal act of terrorism against a defenseless civilian
population, for reasons that were strictly political.
Today, the world has tens of
thousands of nuclear bombs that are fifty times as powerful, with carriers that
are several times faster than the speed of sound and having absolute precision;
our sophisticated species could destroy itself with them. At the end of World
War II, fought by the peoples against fascism, a new power emerged that took
over the world and imposed the absolutist and cruel order under which we live
today.
Before Bush’s trip to Brazil,
the leader of the empire decided that corn and other foodstuffs would be
suitable raw material for the production of biofuels. For his part, Lula stated that Brazil could
supply as much biofuel as necessary from sugar cane; he saw in this formula a
possibility for the future of the Third World, and the only problem left to
solve would be to improve the living conditions of the sugarcane workers. He
was well aware –and he said it-- that the United States should in turn lift the
custom tariffs and the subsidies affecting ethanol exports to that country.
Bush replied that custom
tariffs and subsidies to the growers were untouchable in a country such as the
United States, which is the first world producer of ethanol from corn.
The large American
transnationals, which produce this biofuel
investing tens of billion dollars at an accelerated pace, had demanded
from the imperial leader the distribution in the American market of no less
than thirty-five billions (35,000,000,000) of gallons of this fuel every year. The
combination of protective tariffs and real subsidies would raise that figure to
almost one hundred billion dollars each year.
Insatiable in its demand, the
empire had flung into the world the slogan of producing biofuels in order to
liberate the United States, the world’s supreme energy consumer, from all
external dependency on hydrocarbons.
History shows that sugar as a
single crop was closely associated with the enslaving of Africans, forcibly
uprooted from their natural communities, and brought to Cuba, Haiti and other
Caribbean islands. In Brazil, the exact
same thing happened in the growing of sugar cane.
Today, in that country,
almost 80% of sugar cane is cut by hand.
Sources and studies made by Brazilian researchers affirm that a
sugarcane cutter, a piece-work laborer, must produce no less than twelve tons
in order to meet basic needs. This worker needs to perform 36,630 flexing
movements with his legs, make small trips 800 times carrying 15 kilos of cane
in his arms and walk
I have cut cane myself more
than once as a moral duty, as have many other comrade leaders of the country. I
remember August of 1969. I chose a place
close to the capital. I moved there very early every day. It was not burned
cane but green cane, an early variety and high in agricultural and industrial
yield. I would cut for four hours non-stop. Somebody else would be sharpening
the machete. I consistently produced a minimum of 3.4 tons per day. Then I would shower, calmly have some lunch
and take a break in a place nearby. I
earned several coupons in the famous harvest of 1970. I had just turned 43
then. The rest of the time, until bedtime, I worked at my revolutionary
duties. I stopped my personal efforts
after I wounded my left foot. The sharpened machete had sliced through my
protective boot. The national goal was 10 million tons of sugar and
approximately 4 million tons of molasses as by-product. We never reached that
goal, although we came close.
The USSR had not disappeared;
that seemed impossible. The Special
Period, which took us to a struggle for survival and to economic inequalities
with their inherent elements of corruption, had not yet begun. Imperialism
believed that the time had come to finish off the Revolution. It is also fair
to recognize that during years of bonanza we wasted resources and our idealism
ran high along with the dreams accompanying our heroic process.
The great agricultural yields
of the United States were achieved by rotating the gramineae (corn, wheat,
oats, millet and other similar grains) with the legumes (soy, alfalfa, beans,
etc.). These contribute nitrogen and
organic material to the soil. The corn crop yield in the United States in 2005,
according to FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) data
was 9.3 tons per hectare.
In Brazil they only obtain 3
tons of this same grain in the same area.
The total production registered by this sister nation that year was
thirty-four million six hundred thousand tons, consumed internally as
food. It cannot contribute corn to the
world market.
The prices for this grain,
the staple diet in numerous countries of the region, have almost doubled. What
will happen when hundreds of millions of tons of corn are redirected towards
the production of biofuel? And I rather
not mention the amounts of wheat, millet, oats, barley, sorghum and other
cereals that industrialized countries will use as a source of fuel for its
engines.
Add to this that it is very
difficult for Brazil to rotate corn and legumes. Of the Brazilian states traditionally producing
corn, eight are responsible for ninety percent of production: Paraná, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Goiás, Mato
Grosso, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina y Mato Grosso do Sul. On the other
hand, 60% of sugarcane production, a grain that cannot be rotated with other
crops, takes place in the state of Sao Paulo, and also in the states of Paraná,
Pernambuco and Alagoas.
The engines of tractors,
harvesters and the heavy machinery required to mechanize the harvest would use
growing amounts of hydrocarbons. The increase of mechanization would not help
in the prevention of global warming, something which has been proven by experts
who have measured annual temperatures for the last 150 years.
Brazil does produce an
excellent food that is especially rich in protein: soy, fifty million one
hundred and fifteen thousand (50,115,000) tons.
It consumes almost 23 million tons and exports twenty-seven million
three hundred thousand (27,300,000). Is
it perhaps that a large part of this soy will be converted to biofuel?
As it is, the producers of
beef cattle are beginning to complain that grazing land is being transformed
into sugarcane fields.
The former Agriculture
Minister of Brazil, Roberto Rodrigues, an important advocate for the current
government position, --and today a co-president of the Inter American Ethanol
Commission created in 2006 following an agreement with the state of Florida and
the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) to promote the use of biofuel on the
American continent-- declared that the program to mechanize the sugarcane
harvest does not create more jobs, but on the contrary it would produce a
surplus of non-qualified manpower.
We know that the poorest
workers from various states are the ones who gravitate towards cane cutting out
of necessity. Sometimes, they must spend
many months away from their families. That is what happened in Cuba until the
triumph of the Revolution, when the cutting and hauling of sugarcane was done
by hand, and mechanized cultivation or transportation hardly existed. With the
demise of the brutal system forced on our society the cane-cutters, massively
taught to read and write, abandoned their wanderings in a few years and it
became necessary to replace them with hundreds of thousands of voluntary
workers.
Add to this the latest report
by the United Nations about climate change, affirming what would happen in
South America with the water from the glaciers and the Amazon water basin as
the temperature of the atmosphere continue to rise.
Nothing could prevent
American and European capital from funding the production of biofuels. They
could even send the funds as gifts to Brazil and Latin America. The United
States, Europe and the other industrialized countries would save more than one
hundred and forty billion dollars each year, without having to worry about the
consequences for the climate and the hunger which would affect the countries of
the Third World in the first place. They would always be left with enough money
for biofuels and to acquire the little food available on the world market at
any price.
It is imperative to
immediately have an energy revolution that consists not only in replacing all
the incandescent light bulbs, but also in massively recycling all domestic,
commercial, industrial, transport and socially used electric appliances that
require two and three times more energy with their previous technologies.
It hurts to think that 10
billion tons of fossil fuel is consumed every year. This means that each year
we waste what it took nature a million years to create. National industries are
faced with enormous challenges, including the reduction of unemployment. Thus we could gain a bit of time.
Another risk of a different
nature facing the world is an economic recession in the United States. In the
past few days, the dollar has broken records at losing value. On the other
hand, every country has most of its reserves in convertible currencies
precisely in this paper currency and in American bonds.
Tomorrow, May Day is a good
day to bring these reflections to the workers and to all the poor people of the
world. At the same time we should protest against something incredible and
humiliating that has just occurred: the liberation of a terrorist monster,
exactly when we are celebrating the 46th Anniversary of the
Revolutionary Victory at the Bay of Pigs.
Prison for the assassin!
Freedom for the Five Cuban
Heroes!
Fidel
Castro Ruz