Reflections
by Comrade Fidel
THE GENIUS OF CHAVEZ
President Chavez presented his annual report on
activities carried out in 2011 and his program for 2012 to the Venezuelan
Parliament. After thoroughly carrying out the formalities required by this
important activity, he addressed the official state authorities, members of
parliament from all parties, and supporters and opposition members who had come
to the Assembly to participate in the country’s most solemn act.
As usual, the Bolivarian leader was gracious and
respectful to all those present. When anyone asked for the floor to make a
clarification, he granted it as soon as possible. When one of the members of
parliament, who had warmly greeted Chavez as did other opposition members,
asked to speak, in a great political gesture Chavez interrupted his report
presentation and gave her the floor. What surprised me was the extreme severity
of the rebuke, launched against the president with words that really put to
test Chavez’ chivalry and cold blood. The MPs statement was undoubtedly an
insult, although this was not her intention. He alone was capable of calmly
responding to the offensive word ‘thief’ that she had used to judge the
president’s conduct in terms of the adopted laws and measures.
After verifying
the exact term that was used, Chavez responded to the individual challenge for
debate with an elegant and sedated phrase, “An eagle does not hunt flies,” and
without adding another word he calmly proceeded with his report.
It represented an insurmountable test of mental
agility and self control. Another woman, of unquestionable humble origins,
expressed her astonishment in moving and heartfelt words over what she had just
witnessed and the overwhelming majority present broke out in applause. Judging
by the sheer volume, the applause seemed to be coming from all of Chavez’
friends and many of his adversaries as well.
Chavez’ report lasted more than nine hours without the
people ever losing interest. Maybe because of that incident, his words were
heard by an immeasurable number of people. Many times I have given extensive
speeches on difficult topics, always striving to make the ideas I was
transmitting understandable. And I was really at a loss to explain how that
soldier of humble origins was able to keep his mind so agile and his
incomparable talent to deliver such an address without losing his voice or
strength.
To me politics is an extensive and decisive battle of
ideas. Publicity is the work of publicists, who perhaps know the techniques to
get listeners, spectators and readers to do what they are told to do. If that
science, or art, or whatever they call it is employed for the good of human
beings, they deserve some respect; the same respect merited by those who teach
people how to think.
To promote a far-reaching Revolution in
Political leaders the likes of Romulo Betancourt and
Carlos Andres Perez lack the most minimal personal qualities to carry out such
a task. Furthermore, Betancourt was excessively vain and hypocritical. He had
many opportunities to learn about the situation in
As Chavez has explained many times, for more than half
a century
I remember when I visited
Afterwards when I went to Venezuela to take part in
the swearing-in ceremony for Chavez, the day he took an oath on the “dying
constitution” held by Calderas, oil was worth seven dollars a barrel, despite
40 years having passed since my first visit and almost 30 years since the
“distinguished” Richard Nixon had cancelled the direct convertibility of the
United States dollar to gold and the US began to buy the world with pieces of
paper. For a century,
Why did these repugnant situations dominate for more
than a century?
Latin American Armed Forces’ officials went to their
privileged schools in the
Even worse was that the sophisticated nature of
weapons, the complex workings and use of modern armaments that require years of
learning, the training of highly qualified specialists, and the almost prohibitive
cost of such weapons for the weak economies of the continent created a very
strong mechanism of subordination and dependence. The US Government, employing
mechanisms that did not require prior consultation with the other governments,
set guidelines and policies for the military. The most sophisticated techniques
of torture were passed on to the so-called security agencies to interrogate
those who rebelled against the dirty and repugnant system of hunger and
exploitation.
Despite all this, many honest officials, tired of so
many indignations, bravely attempted to eradicate that embarrassing treason
against the history of our independence struggles.
In
In Santo Domingo, Colonel Francisco Caamaño Deño; in
Peru, General Velazco Alvarado; in Panama, General Omar Torrijos; and in other
countries captains and officers who gave their lives anonymously were the antithesis
of the traitorous behavior embodied by Somoza, Trujillo, Stroessner and the
cruel tyrannies in Uruguay, El Salvador and other countries in Central and
South America. The revolutionary military personnel did not expound elaborate
theories, nor was this to be expected. They were not academicians educated in
political science, but rather men with a sense of honor who loved their
country.
But how far can honest men —who deplore injustice and
crime— go along the path of revolution?
Venezuela is an outstanding example of
the theoretical and practical role that the military can play in the
revolutionary struggle for the independence of our peoples, as they did two
centuries ago under the brilliant leadership of Simon Bolivar.
Chavez, a Venezuelan military officer
of humble origins, stepped into the political life of Venezuela inspired by the
ideas of the Liberator of America. On Bolivar, an inexhaustible source of
inspiration, Marti wrote: "he won sublime battles with soldiers barefoot
and half naked [...] who never fought so much, nor fought better, in the world
for freedom ..."
"... Of Bolivar, he said, you can
talk only after climbing up a mountain to use it as a platform [...] or after
freeing a bunch of peoples united in one fist ..."
"... what he did not do, still
remains undone today, because Bolivar still has things to do in the Americas."
More than half a century later the
famous, award-winning poet Pablo Neruda wrote a poem on Bolivar which Chavez
frequently quotes. The final stanza reads:
"I met Bolivar one long morning, in
Madrid, at the head of the Fifth Regiment, Father, I said, you are or not or
who you are? And looking at the Mountain Headquarters, he said:
'I wake up every hundred years when the
people awaken.' "
But the Bolivarian leader is not limited
to theoretical elaborations. His concrete measures are implemented without
hesitation. The English-speaking Caribbean countries, which have to
contend with modern and luxurious Yankee cruise ships for the right to receive
tourists in their hotels, restaurants and recreation centers, quite often
foreign-owned, but at least they generate employment, will always
welcome fuel from Venezuela, supplied by that country with special payment
facilities, when the barrel reached prices that sometimes exceeded US $100.
In the tiny state of Nicaragua, the
land of Sandino, the "General of Free Men", the Central Intelligence
Agency organized the exchange of guns for drugs through Luis Posada Carriles
after he was rescued from a Venezuelan prison. This operation resulted in thousands
of deaths and mutilations among that heroic people. Nicaragua has also
received the solidarity support of Venezuela. These are unprecedented examples
in the history of this hemisphere.
The ruinous Free Trade Agreement that
the Yankees intend to impose on Latin America, as they did with Mexico, would turn
Latin America and the Caribbean not only into the region with the world’s worst
distribution of wealth, which already is. It will turn it into a huge
market where corn and other staple foods that are traditional sources of plant
and animal protein would be displaced by subsidized U.S. crops, as is already
happening in Mexico.
Used cars and other goods are
displacing Mexican industry manufactures; job opportunities are decreasing in
both cities and the countryside; the drug and arms trades are escalating, growing
numbers of youngsters aged 14 or 15 years are turned into fearsome
criminals. Never before, buses or other vehicles full of people who even
paid to be transported across the border in search of employment, have been
kidnapped and mass murdered. Known figures grow from year to
year. More than ten thousand people are now losing their lives each year.
It is impossible to analyze the
Bolivarian Revolution without taking these realities into account.
The armed forces, in such social
circumstances, are forced into endless and wearisome wars.
Honduras is not an industrialized,
financial or commercial country, or even a major producer of drugs. However,
some of its cities break the record of drug-related violent deaths. There
instead stands the banner of a major base of the strategic forces of the United
States Southern Command. What is happening there, and is already happening
in more than one Latin American country, is the Dantesque picture painted
above, from which some countries have begun to escape. Among them and
first, Venezuela, not just because it has considerable natural resources, but
because it has been rescued from the insatiable greed of foreign corporations
and has sparked considerable political and social forces capable of great
achievements. Venezuela today is quite another from that I went to only 12
years ago, which had already deeply impressed me, seeing it as a Phoenix rising
again from the ashes of its history.
Mentioning the mysterious computer of
Raul Reyes, in the hands of the U.S. and the CIA after the attack organized and
supplied by them in full Ecuadorian territory, which killed Marulanda's
replacement as well as several unarmed American youths, a version has been released
that Chávez supported the "narco-terrorist organization
FARC." The true terrorists and drug traffickers in Colombia are the
paramilitaries that supplied drugs to American dealers to sell them in the
largest drug market in the world: the United States.
I never spoke with Marulanda, but I did
speak with honored writers and intellectuals who came to know him well. I
discussed his thoughts and history. He was undoubtedly a brave and
revolutionary man, which I do not hesitate to affirm. I explained that I
did not agree with him on his tactics. In my view, two or three thousand
men would have been more than enough to defeat a conventional army in the
territory of Colombia. His mistake was to devise a revolutionary army with
almost as many soldiers as the enemy. That was extremely expensive.
Today, technology has changed many
aspects of war; the forms of struggle also change. In fact, the clash of
conventional forces between powers possessing nuclear weapons has become
impossible. We do not have to have the knowledge of Albert Einstein,
Stephen Hawking and thousands of other scientists to understand that. It
is a latent danger and the result is known or should be known. Thinking
beings could take millions of years to repopulate the planet.
Nevertheless, I hold the duty to fight,
which in itself is something innate in man, to find solutions that will enable
a more reasoned and dignified existence.
Since I met Chavez, now as president of
Venezuela, from the final stages of the Pastrana administration, I always saw
him interested in promoting peace in Colombia. He facilitated meetings between
the Colombian government and the revolutionaries that took place in
Cuba, note well, on the basis of reaching a true peace agreement and not a
surrender.
I do not recall ever having heard
Chavez promote anything but peace in Colombia, nor mention Raul Reyes. We
always addressed other issues. He particularly appreciates the Colombians,
millions of them live in Venezuela and everyone benefits from the social measures
taken by the Revolution, and the people of Colombia appreciate that almost as
much as those of Venezuela.
I wish to express my solidarity and
appreciation to General Henry Rangel Silva, Head of Strategic Operational
Command of the Armed Forces, and newly appointed Minister of Defense of the
Bolivarian Republic. I had the honor of meeting him when he visited Chavez
in Cuba a few months ago. I could see in him an intelligent, well-meant,
capable, and yet modest man. I heard his calm, brave and clear speech,
which inspired confidence.
He led the organization of the most perfect parade of a Latin American military
force that I have ever seen. We hope it will serve
as encouragement and example to other brother armies.
The Yankees had nothing to do with that parade, and
would not be able to do better.
It is extremely unfair to criticize Chavez for the
resources invested in the excellent weapons which were
displayed there. I'm sure they will never be used to
attack a neighboring country. The weapons, resources
and knowledge must go along the paths of unity to see
America, as The Liberator dreamed, "... the greatest nation in the world, greatest not so much by virtue of her
area and wealth as by her freedom and glory.."
Everything unites us more than
Fidel Castro Ruz
January 25, 2012