Reflections
by Comrade Fidel
I
HOPE I NEVER HAVE A REASON TO BE ASHAMED
These
words will be published tomorrow, on February 29th. A great many
tasks lie immediately ahead of us. The 10th International Meeting of
Economists on Globalization and Development Problems, a conference I had always
attended and in which I had always expressed different points of view, will
begin on Monday the 3rd. Judging from the international developments
we’ve witnessed, this conference will doubtless be of great importance, owing
to the presence of prestigious economists, some Nobel Prize Laureates and two
eminent heads of State.
I wish to address a specific issue
in this, today’s reflection.
In the course of these days of
voluntary rest, I have read numerous cables published by the traditional press
agencies or over the Internet. Among these, I found a dispatch dated in
Other important
Many picture our country as a steam
boiler about to burst. They are thrown off balance by how it has heroically
held its ground for half a century.
The wise and serene words Raúl spoke
after the 609 members of the National Assembly in attendance unanimously
elected him President of the State Council, his sincere arguments, unraveled
the tangle of illusions wove with regards to Cuba. Those who know me and Raul
well know that, out of a basic sense of dignity and respect, we could never
hold such a meeting. No few people still harbor hopes of seeing the sudden
collapse of a heroic revolution, which stood and continues to stand victorious
in spite of half a century of imperialist aggression.
Now, they howl like wolves whose
tails have been caught in traps. They seem particularly vexed by the election
of Machadito, Secretary of Organization of the Communist Party, as First
Vice-President entrusted by the Constitution with the most important tasks in
the leadership of the people towards socialism.
In the world of nebulous speculation
and protocol, what counts is the State leadership and the party organization is
considered a meddlesome intruder, an internal principle. In the specific case
of
Polito led the battle of Cuito
Cuanavale, to the southeast, and the counteroffensive, southwest, with over 40
thousand Cuban volunteer combatants and more than 30 thousand Angolan soldiers
under his command, troops that drove the last Apartheid army invaders out of
The
López Miera once had his own troops
bombed when, near
These were moves the chess board
itself suggested. They were not the fruit of Raúl’s alleged militaristic
tendencies, nor was it a question of different
generations or factions rabidly fighting over a mundane slice of power. With
respect to me, I say again that I cling to no position, as I expressed in my
message to the people of
One person who was left speechless
was the intellectual author of Kosovo’s “independence”. In my reflection of
February 21st, I described him as “an illustrious Spanish
personality, once an impeccable socialist and minister of Culture, who for some
time now and even today has been advocating for the war and the use of weapons”
(In addition to this, at various points, he was a government spokesman,
Minister of Education and Science and Minister of Foreign Affairs).
What did he say? That yesterday’s
news could have been more open and better. That what he is not certain of was
whether a transition had begun from the political point of view, and that
everything that could point to a political transition towards democracy is
welcome.
He spoke as though we lived in
Franco’s Spain, a close ally of the United States, and not in Cuba, where they
have invested over a hundred billion dollars, much more valuable than today’s
dollars, to blockade and destroy the country.
What a man! There’s no way he would
shut up! What is his name? The Round Table program already mentioned the sin
and the sinner two or three days ago: Javier Solana.
What party is he affiliated with?
Even Aznar, who advised Clinton to
bomb Serbian television, an action which caused the deaths of dozens of people,
understands that, right now, on the eve of elections, one cannot play with the
issue of nationalities, as everyone realizes that, with such precedents, the
Basque Country and Catalonia could invoke such a principle within the European
Community, and we are talking about two of Spain’s most industrialized nations.
The Scottish and the Irish could proceed in similar fashion.
With the fate of human species in
such hands, it is as if we danced happily at the edge of a precipice, where the
vanity of no few leaders of the globalized capitalist world reigns, putting all
countries at risk. The humanitarian, educational and artistic values that the
Cuban revolution they seek to destroy has created with its own resources means
nothing to them, for it does not submit to the tyranny of the free market. The
latter and its blind laws are miring the human species in an unsustainable
economic crisis and bringing about changes to natural living conditions that
could prove irreversible.
I write reflections to fight against
these things. Had I unlimited time, I would perhaps be willing to recall ideas
that are today dispersed across speeches, interviews, conversations,
declarations, meetings, reflections and things of this nature. I have invested
tons of paper and tons of sound – symbolically speaking – but I have no reason
to be ashamed.
Fidel Castro
Ruz