I could not understand the cause of the euphoria that some of the participants in the Port of Spain Summit are expressing.
I made a great effort and read the famous Declaration of Commitment approved in that "Summit of the Americas." I had listened to the press conference led by Prime Minister Patrick Manning of Trinidad and Tobago, and composed of the eminent Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada, and the presidents of Mexico and Panama, Félipe Calderón and Martín Torrijos. According to them it has been the most extraordinary Summit that ever took place.
Some kind of miracle must have occurred, I thought. The philosopher’s stone must have been discovered. Why worry for a single second more? Nobody thinks that it was a work of chance. Do we not know how to read and write? It is the OAS that has saved us all. That is confirmed in 13 of the 97 points of the final declaration.
I shall only take up six pages of the eight of this Reflection to likewise acknowledge the glories of the OAS:
"We reaffirm the principles and values of the Charter of the United Nations, the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS), the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the Monterrey Consensus on Financing for Development and the Millennium Declaration; and we are determined to intensify our fight against poverty, hunger, social exclusion, discrimination and inequality, and promote social inclusion and cohesion to improve the living conditions of our people to achieve development and social justice.
"We reaffirm the importance of promoting cooperation among our States on the basis of solidarity in the different spheres of inter-American relations in accordance with the principles and essential purposes of the Charter of the OAS, recognising our social, political and economic diversity.
"…We instruct our Ministers, in particular those responsible for finance, planning and social development, to initiate or strengthen the review of national social protection, inclusion and poverty eradication programmes… We call on the OAS, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and other relevant regional and subregional development and financial institutions to support these efforts within the scope of their mandates."
"…We call upon the Ministers of Labour, within the context of the OAS
Inter-American Conference of Ministers of Labour (IACML), in collaboration with their workers’ and employers’ consultative bodies and with the support of the ILO, as appropriate, to endorse, at the 16th IACML to be held in 2009, a work programme that advances these objectives."
"…We call on the Ministers of Education, with the support of the OAS, specialised international and regional institutions and civil society organisations, to develop strategies to make quality secondary education accessible to all our young people by 2015, especially the most vulnerable groups and those with special education needs."
"We will increase our efforts to prevent and combat all aspects of the global drug problem and related crimes, with strengthened international cooperation and an integral and balanced approach based on the principle of common and shared responsibility, in accordance with the principles enshrined in the United Nations and OAS Charters, international law and our applicable legal frameworks.
"We request that the General Secretariat of the OAS submit to the next Summit of the Americas a progress report on the implementation of commitments made at the Meetings of Ministers Responsible for Public Security in the Americas (MISPA) and at the Meetings of Ministers of Justice or other Ministers or Attorneys General of the Americas (REMJA)… We look forward to advancing further cooperation at these meetings and the work of the OAS in support of the MISPA and the REMJA. We express appreciation for the ongoing technical support of the OAS in matters covered by these meetings.
"…We will encourage OAS efforts to prepare a comprehensive hemispheric strategy to promote inter-American cooperation in dealing with criminal gangs."
"…We renew our commitment to fight poverty, inequality, hunger and social exclusion in order to raise the standard of living of our peoples and strengthen democratic governance in the Americas, and we will uphold the principles of and fully implement the Inter-American Democratic Charter.
"We reiterate our support for the objectives of the Social Charter of the Americas and its Plan of Action, which seek to offer all of our citizens more opportunities to benefit from sustainable development with equity and social inclusion. We encourage the OAS to conclude the drafting of these instruments and will endeavour to conclude negotiations and adopt these documents before the end of 2009."
"We recognize the important role of the OAS in the peaceful resolution of our differences, its participation in the promotion of a culture of democracy, peace, dialogue and non-violence in the region, as well as its role in the implementation of the Inter-American Democratic Charter."
"Our countries will aim to continue to provide annual national reports to the OAS on the actions and progress made towards achieving the specific objectives set at the Summits of the Americas."
Why should we be surprised, with the support and inspiration of such a meritorious institution, that it is affirmed in the final point on Page 67 of the declaration:: "We, the Heads of State and Government of the Americas, hereby approve the contents of this ‘Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain’ on this the 19th day of April, 2009."?
Is the OAS perchance the guarantor of the sovereignty and integrity of the peoples of Latin America? Always!
Did it at any point intervene in the internal affairs of any country in the hemisphere? Never!
Is it true that it has always represented a docile instrument of the United States? Never!
Did one single Latin American or Caribbean die on its account? Not one! Those are calumnies of Castro-Communism emanating from Cuba, a country expelled from the OAS because its government proclaimed Marxism-Leninism, a country where there was never an election, nobody votes or is elected, and in which a dictatorship reigns that has had the effrontery to confront a country as weak, defenseless and poor as the United States throughout half a century. If its does not mend its ways, the selfless and noble government of that country will not even sell Cuba an aspirin. The OAS is the guarantor of the suffering Cuban people and their democratic rights.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Summit and the Lie
SOME of the things that Daniel told me would be hard to believe if it was not him who told me them and it was not at a Summit of the Americas where they occurred.
The unusual thing is that there was no such consensus on the final document. The ALBA group did not sign it; that was confirmed in the last exchange with Obama in the presence of Manning and the other leaders in the morning of April 19.
At that meeting, Chávez, Evo and Daniel spoke on the issue with total clarity.
It had seemed to me that Daniel had expressed a bitter complaint when, on the day of the Summit’s opening, he said in his speech: "I think that the time I am taking is far less than that I had to spend – three hours – waiting at the airport inside a plane."
I asked him about that and he told me that six high-level leaders had to wait on the runway: Lula of Brazil, Harper of Canada, Bachelet of Chile, Evo of Bolivia, Calderón of Mexico and himself, the sixth. The reason? In an act of adulation, the organizers decided it that way in order to receive the president of the United States. Daniel remained inside the hot LACSA aircraft for three hours under the radiant sun of the Tropics.
He explained to me the conduct of the principal leaders in the Summit, the fundamental and specific problems of each one of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. He did not seem in any way resentful. He was direct, calm and comprehensive. I recalled the times of Reagan’s dirty war, the thousands of weapons launched against Nicaragua in that context, the tens of thousands of dead, the mining of the ports, the utilization of drugs by the U.S. government in order to get around Congress decisions banning funds to finance that cynical war.
We did not overlook the criminal invasion of Panama ordered by Bush Senior, the horrific El Chorrillo massacre, the thousands of dead Panamanians, the invasion of little Grenada with the complicity of other governors in the region, relatively recent events in the tragic history of our hemisphere.
In each one of those crimes was the hand of the OAS, the principal accomplice of the brutal actions of the great military and economic power against our impoverished peoples.
He informed me of the damage that drug trafficking and organized crime is inflicting on the Central American countries, the trafficking of U.S. weapons, the vast market that impels that activity, so harmful for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
He told me of the geothermic potential of Central America as a natural resource of great value. He is of the opinion that, in that way, Nicaragua could reach a generation capacity equivalent to two million kilowatt/hours. At present its total electricity generation, including various energy sources, barely amounts to 700,000 kilowatt/hours and power cuts are frequent.
He spoke of Nicaragua’s capacity for producing food, of the price of milk, distributed at one third of what it costs in the United States, although wages in the latter country are dozens of times higher.
Out conversation gravitated around this and other practical issues. At no point did he seem resentful, and far less suggest extremist measures on economic issues. He is well informed and analyzes what can and should be done with great realism.
I explained that many people in our country had not been able to hear his speech given issues of time and the lack of opportune information on the Summit, and for that reason, I was asking him to agree to explain, in a television program, the issues of most interest related to the Summit of the Americas, to a panel made up of three young journalists, which would certainly be of interest to many Latin Americans, Caribbean people, U.S. Americans and Canadians.
Daniel knows of many concrete possibilities for improving the living conditions of the people of Nicaragua, one of the five poorest nations in the hemisphere as a consequence of U.S. interventions and plunder. Obama’s victory pleased him and he observed him closely in the Summit. He did not like his behavior during the meeting. "He was moving everywhere," he told me, "seeking out people who he could influence, putting ideas into their heads with his power and his praises."
Naturally, for an observer at a distance, as was my case, one could observe a concerted strategy to exalt positions closest to U.S. interests and most opposed to policies favoring social change, unity and the sovereignty of our peoples. In my view, the worst thing was to present a declaration supposedly supported by everybody.
The blockade of Cuba was not even mentioned in the Final Declaration and the president of the United States utilized that to justify his actions and cover up his administration’s alleged concessions to Cuba. We could better understand the new president of the United States’ real limitations in terms of introducing changes in his country’s policy toward our homeland, than the use of a lie to justify his actions.
Should we perchance applaud the aggression of our television and radio space, the use of sophisticated technologies to invade that space from great heights and implement the same Bush policy against Cuba? Should we accept the right of the United States to maintain the blockade during a geological period until bringing capitalist democracy to Cuba?
Obama has admitted that the leaders of the Latin America and Caribbean countries are speaking to him all over the place about the services of Cuban doctors but, nevertheless, stated: "…this is a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have -- have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region."
In his subconscious mind, Obama understands that Cuba enjoys prestige on account of its doctors in the region, attaching more importance to it than we do ourselves. Perhaps he hasn’t even been informed that Cuba has sent its doctors, not only to Latin America and the Caribbean, but to countless African countries, Asian countries; in situations of disaster to little islands of Oceania such as Timor Leste and Kiribati, threatened with being left under water if the climate changes; and even offered to send – in a matter of hours – a complete medical brigade to rescue the Katrina victims when a large part of New Orleans was left defenseless under water and many lives could have been saved. Thousands of young people selected from other countries have been trained as doctors in Cuba, tens of thousands more are currently being trained.
But we have not only cooperated in the field of health, also in those of education, sport, science, culture, energy savings, reforestation, environmental protection and others. A number of UN agencies can testify to that.
Something more: the blood of Cuban patriots was spilled in the struggle against the last bastions of colonialism in Africa and the defeat of apartheid, an ally of the United States.
The most important thing of all, Daniel already said it at the Summit, is the total absence of any conditions in the contribution of Cuba, the little island that the United States is blockading.
We did not do what we did seeking influence and support. They were the principles that sustain our struggle and our resistance. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than that of the United States; there has been no illiteracy for a long time; white, black or mixed race children attend school every day, and have equal possibilities of studying, including those who require special education. We have achieved not only justice, but the maximum of justice possible. All the members of the National Assembly are nominated and elected by the people, more than 90% of the population with the right to vote, use their vote.
We have not asked for the capitalist democracy in which you were educated and in which you sincerely and with every right believe.
We do not aspire to export our political system to the United States.
Fidel Castro Ruz
The unusual thing is that there was no such consensus on the final document. The ALBA group did not sign it; that was confirmed in the last exchange with Obama in the presence of Manning and the other leaders in the morning of April 19.
At that meeting, Chávez, Evo and Daniel spoke on the issue with total clarity.
It had seemed to me that Daniel had expressed a bitter complaint when, on the day of the Summit’s opening, he said in his speech: "I think that the time I am taking is far less than that I had to spend – three hours – waiting at the airport inside a plane."
I asked him about that and he told me that six high-level leaders had to wait on the runway: Lula of Brazil, Harper of Canada, Bachelet of Chile, Evo of Bolivia, Calderón of Mexico and himself, the sixth. The reason? In an act of adulation, the organizers decided it that way in order to receive the president of the United States. Daniel remained inside the hot LACSA aircraft for three hours under the radiant sun of the Tropics.
He explained to me the conduct of the principal leaders in the Summit, the fundamental and specific problems of each one of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. He did not seem in any way resentful. He was direct, calm and comprehensive. I recalled the times of Reagan’s dirty war, the thousands of weapons launched against Nicaragua in that context, the tens of thousands of dead, the mining of the ports, the utilization of drugs by the U.S. government in order to get around Congress decisions banning funds to finance that cynical war.
We did not overlook the criminal invasion of Panama ordered by Bush Senior, the horrific El Chorrillo massacre, the thousands of dead Panamanians, the invasion of little Grenada with the complicity of other governors in the region, relatively recent events in the tragic history of our hemisphere.
In each one of those crimes was the hand of the OAS, the principal accomplice of the brutal actions of the great military and economic power against our impoverished peoples.
He informed me of the damage that drug trafficking and organized crime is inflicting on the Central American countries, the trafficking of U.S. weapons, the vast market that impels that activity, so harmful for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean.
He told me of the geothermic potential of Central America as a natural resource of great value. He is of the opinion that, in that way, Nicaragua could reach a generation capacity equivalent to two million kilowatt/hours. At present its total electricity generation, including various energy sources, barely amounts to 700,000 kilowatt/hours and power cuts are frequent.
He spoke of Nicaragua’s capacity for producing food, of the price of milk, distributed at one third of what it costs in the United States, although wages in the latter country are dozens of times higher.
Out conversation gravitated around this and other practical issues. At no point did he seem resentful, and far less suggest extremist measures on economic issues. He is well informed and analyzes what can and should be done with great realism.
I explained that many people in our country had not been able to hear his speech given issues of time and the lack of opportune information on the Summit, and for that reason, I was asking him to agree to explain, in a television program, the issues of most interest related to the Summit of the Americas, to a panel made up of three young journalists, which would certainly be of interest to many Latin Americans, Caribbean people, U.S. Americans and Canadians.
Daniel knows of many concrete possibilities for improving the living conditions of the people of Nicaragua, one of the five poorest nations in the hemisphere as a consequence of U.S. interventions and plunder. Obama’s victory pleased him and he observed him closely in the Summit. He did not like his behavior during the meeting. "He was moving everywhere," he told me, "seeking out people who he could influence, putting ideas into their heads with his power and his praises."
Naturally, for an observer at a distance, as was my case, one could observe a concerted strategy to exalt positions closest to U.S. interests and most opposed to policies favoring social change, unity and the sovereignty of our peoples. In my view, the worst thing was to present a declaration supposedly supported by everybody.
The blockade of Cuba was not even mentioned in the Final Declaration and the president of the United States utilized that to justify his actions and cover up his administration’s alleged concessions to Cuba. We could better understand the new president of the United States’ real limitations in terms of introducing changes in his country’s policy toward our homeland, than the use of a lie to justify his actions.
Should we perchance applaud the aggression of our television and radio space, the use of sophisticated technologies to invade that space from great heights and implement the same Bush policy against Cuba? Should we accept the right of the United States to maintain the blockade during a geological period until bringing capitalist democracy to Cuba?
Obama has admitted that the leaders of the Latin America and Caribbean countries are speaking to him all over the place about the services of Cuban doctors but, nevertheless, stated: "…this is a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have -- have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region."
In his subconscious mind, Obama understands that Cuba enjoys prestige on account of its doctors in the region, attaching more importance to it than we do ourselves. Perhaps he hasn’t even been informed that Cuba has sent its doctors, not only to Latin America and the Caribbean, but to countless African countries, Asian countries; in situations of disaster to little islands of Oceania such as Timor Leste and Kiribati, threatened with being left under water if the climate changes; and even offered to send – in a matter of hours – a complete medical brigade to rescue the Katrina victims when a large part of New Orleans was left defenseless under water and many lives could have been saved. Thousands of young people selected from other countries have been trained as doctors in Cuba, tens of thousands more are currently being trained.
But we have not only cooperated in the field of health, also in those of education, sport, science, culture, energy savings, reforestation, environmental protection and others. A number of UN agencies can testify to that.
Something more: the blood of Cuban patriots was spilled in the struggle against the last bastions of colonialism in Africa and the defeat of apartheid, an ally of the United States.
The most important thing of all, Daniel already said it at the Summit, is the total absence of any conditions in the contribution of Cuba, the little island that the United States is blockading.
We did not do what we did seeking influence and support. They were the principles that sustain our struggle and our resistance. The infant mortality rate in Cuba is lower than that of the United States; there has been no illiteracy for a long time; white, black or mixed race children attend school every day, and have equal possibilities of studying, including those who require special education. We have achieved not only justice, but the maximum of justice possible. All the members of the National Assembly are nominated and elected by the people, more than 90% of the population with the right to vote, use their vote.
We have not asked for the capitalist democracy in which you were educated and in which you sincerely and with every right believe.
We do not aspire to export our political system to the United States.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Obama and the Blockade
YESTERDAY I referred to the comic angle of the "Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain."
Today we could refer to the dramatic angle. I hope that our friends will not be offended. Between the document that reached us as a draft to be submitted to the Summit hosts and the definitive one that was published, there were differences. In the last-minute rush, there was no time for anything. Certain points had been discussed in long meetings in the weeks leading up to the event. At the last minute, proposals such as the one presented by the Bolivian delegation complicated things even more. It was included as a note in the document and stated:
"Bolivia is of the view that the development of cooperative policies and arrangements intended to expand biofuels in the Western Hemisphere could adversely affect and impact on the availability of foods and raise food prices, increase deforestation, displace populations due to the demand for land, and ultimately aggravate the food crisis. It would directly affect low-income persons, especially the poorest economies of the developing countries. Thus, while the Bolivian government recognizes the need to seek and use alternative, environmentally-friendly sources of energy, such as geothermal, solar, wind energy and small and medium-sized hydroelectric plants, it proposes an alternative vision based on living well and in harmony with nature, developing public policies aimed to promote safe, alternative energies that guarantee the preservation of the planet, our "Mother Earth."
Analyzing this note from Bolivia, it should be borne in mind that the United States and Brazil are the two major producers of biofuels, opposed by a growing number of people on the planet and whose resistance has been growing since the murky days of George W. Bush.
Obama’s advisors posted on the Internet their English version of the president of the United States’ interview with journalists in Port of Spain. At one point he affirmed:
"One thing that I thought was interesting – and I knew this in a more abstract way but it was interesting in very specific terms – hearing from these leaders who when they spoke about Cuba talked very specifically about the thousands of doctors from Cuba that are dispersed all throughout the region, and upon which many of these countries heavily depend.
"And it's a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have -- have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region.
"And I think that's why it's so important that in our interactions not just here in the hemisphere but around the world, that we recognize that our military power is just one arm of our power, and that we have to use our diplomatic and development aid in more intelligent ways so that people can see very practical, concrete improvements in the lives of ordinary persons as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy."
Journalist Jake: Thank you, Mr. President. You've heard from a lot of Latin America leaders here who want the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba. You've said that you think it's an important leverage to not lift it. But in 2004, you did support lifting the embargo. You said, it's failed to provide the source of raising standards of living, it's squeezed the innocent, and it's time for us to acknowledge that this particular policy has failed. I'm wondering, what made you change your mind about the embargo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, 2004, that seems just eons ago. What was I doing in 2004?
Jake: Running for Senate.
PRESIDENT: …and the fact that you had Raul Castro say he's willing to have his government discuss with ours not just issues of lifting the embargo, but issues of human rights, political prisoners, that's a sign of progress.
"…There are some things that the Cuban government could do. They could release political prisoners. They could reduce charges on remittances to match up with the policies that we have put in place to allow Cuban American families to send remittances. It turns out that Cuba charges an awful lot, they take a lot off the top. That would be an example of cooperation where both governments are working to help Cuban families and raise standards of living in Cuba."
Without any doubt, the president misinterpreted Raúl’s statement.
On affirming that Cuba is prepared to discuss any issue with the president of the United States, the president of Cuba stated that he has no fear of approaching any issue whatsoever. That is a demonstration of courage and confidence in the principles of the Revolution. It should not come as a surprise to anybody that he spoke of pardoning those sentenced in March 2003 and sending them all to the United States, if that country would be prepared to release the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes. The former individuals, as was the case with the Bay of Pigs mercenaries, are in the service of a foreign power that is threatening and blockading our homeland.
On the other hand, the statement that Cuba charges an "awful lot" and "takes a lot off the top" [of remittances] is an attempt on the part of his advisors to cause a rift and divide Cubans. Every country charges certain sums for hard currency transfers. If they are dollars there is all the more reason to do so, because it is the currency of the state that is blockading us. Not all Cubans have families abroad who send remittances. Redistributing a relatively small part to the benefit of those most in need of food, medicine and other goods is absolutely fair. Our homeland does not have the privilege of converting into hard currency the bills that leave state printers, what the Chinese have frequently called "junk dollars," as I have repeated on various occasions, and which has been one of the causes of the current economic crisis. With what money is the United States saving its banks and multinationals, in its turn indebting future generations of U.S. citizens? Would Obama be disposed to discuss those issues?
Daniel Ortega put it very clearly when he recalled his first conversation with Carter, which I will repeat again today:
"I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter and when he told me that now that the Somoza dictatorship had gone, that the Nicaraguan people had defeated the Samoza dictatorship, ‘it was time for Nicaragua to change.’ "I said to him: ‘No, Nicaragua does not have to change, it is you that have to change, Nicaragua has never invaded the United States; Nicaragua has never mined U.S. ports; Nicaragua has never thrown a single stone against the U.S. nation; Nicaragua has not imposed governments on the United States; you are the ones who have to change, not the Nicaraguans.’"
During the press conference and the final meetings of the Summit, Obama showed signs of smugness. The abject positions of certain Latin American leaders were not far removed from that attitude of the U.S. president. I said a few days ago that what everyone said or did at the Summit would be made known.
When he stated, responding to Jake, that today, 2004 seemed like eons ago, that was superficial. Do we have to wait that many years for him to suspend his blockade? He didn’t invent it, but he has made it his just like the other 10 presidents of the United States. Going down that road a definite failure can be augured for him, like that of all his predecessors. That was not the dream of Martin Luther King, whose role in the struggle for human rights will more and more illuminate the way of the U.S. people.
We are living in new times. Changes are inevitable. Leaders pass, the peoples remain.
We will not have to wait for thousands of years, just eight will be enough, until – in a more heavily armored car, a more modern helicopter and a more sophisticated aircraft – another president of the United States, doubtless less intelligent, promising and admired in the world than Barack Obama, occupies that inglorious office.
Tomorrow we shall have more news of the Summit.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Today we could refer to the dramatic angle. I hope that our friends will not be offended. Between the document that reached us as a draft to be submitted to the Summit hosts and the definitive one that was published, there were differences. In the last-minute rush, there was no time for anything. Certain points had been discussed in long meetings in the weeks leading up to the event. At the last minute, proposals such as the one presented by the Bolivian delegation complicated things even more. It was included as a note in the document and stated:
"Bolivia is of the view that the development of cooperative policies and arrangements intended to expand biofuels in the Western Hemisphere could adversely affect and impact on the availability of foods and raise food prices, increase deforestation, displace populations due to the demand for land, and ultimately aggravate the food crisis. It would directly affect low-income persons, especially the poorest economies of the developing countries. Thus, while the Bolivian government recognizes the need to seek and use alternative, environmentally-friendly sources of energy, such as geothermal, solar, wind energy and small and medium-sized hydroelectric plants, it proposes an alternative vision based on living well and in harmony with nature, developing public policies aimed to promote safe, alternative energies that guarantee the preservation of the planet, our "Mother Earth."
Analyzing this note from Bolivia, it should be borne in mind that the United States and Brazil are the two major producers of biofuels, opposed by a growing number of people on the planet and whose resistance has been growing since the murky days of George W. Bush.
Obama’s advisors posted on the Internet their English version of the president of the United States’ interview with journalists in Port of Spain. At one point he affirmed:
"One thing that I thought was interesting – and I knew this in a more abstract way but it was interesting in very specific terms – hearing from these leaders who when they spoke about Cuba talked very specifically about the thousands of doctors from Cuba that are dispersed all throughout the region, and upon which many of these countries heavily depend.
"And it's a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction, if our only interaction is military, then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence and have -- have a beneficial effect when we need to try to move policies that are of concern to us forward in the region.
"And I think that's why it's so important that in our interactions not just here in the hemisphere but around the world, that we recognize that our military power is just one arm of our power, and that we have to use our diplomatic and development aid in more intelligent ways so that people can see very practical, concrete improvements in the lives of ordinary persons as a consequence of U.S. foreign policy."
Journalist Jake: Thank you, Mr. President. You've heard from a lot of Latin America leaders here who want the U.S. to lift the embargo against Cuba. You've said that you think it's an important leverage to not lift it. But in 2004, you did support lifting the embargo. You said, it's failed to provide the source of raising standards of living, it's squeezed the innocent, and it's time for us to acknowledge that this particular policy has failed. I'm wondering, what made you change your mind about the embargo?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, 2004, that seems just eons ago. What was I doing in 2004?
Jake: Running for Senate.
PRESIDENT: …and the fact that you had Raul Castro say he's willing to have his government discuss with ours not just issues of lifting the embargo, but issues of human rights, political prisoners, that's a sign of progress.
"…There are some things that the Cuban government could do. They could release political prisoners. They could reduce charges on remittances to match up with the policies that we have put in place to allow Cuban American families to send remittances. It turns out that Cuba charges an awful lot, they take a lot off the top. That would be an example of cooperation where both governments are working to help Cuban families and raise standards of living in Cuba."
Without any doubt, the president misinterpreted Raúl’s statement.
On affirming that Cuba is prepared to discuss any issue with the president of the United States, the president of Cuba stated that he has no fear of approaching any issue whatsoever. That is a demonstration of courage and confidence in the principles of the Revolution. It should not come as a surprise to anybody that he spoke of pardoning those sentenced in March 2003 and sending them all to the United States, if that country would be prepared to release the five Cuban anti-terrorist heroes. The former individuals, as was the case with the Bay of Pigs mercenaries, are in the service of a foreign power that is threatening and blockading our homeland.
On the other hand, the statement that Cuba charges an "awful lot" and "takes a lot off the top" [of remittances] is an attempt on the part of his advisors to cause a rift and divide Cubans. Every country charges certain sums for hard currency transfers. If they are dollars there is all the more reason to do so, because it is the currency of the state that is blockading us. Not all Cubans have families abroad who send remittances. Redistributing a relatively small part to the benefit of those most in need of food, medicine and other goods is absolutely fair. Our homeland does not have the privilege of converting into hard currency the bills that leave state printers, what the Chinese have frequently called "junk dollars," as I have repeated on various occasions, and which has been one of the causes of the current economic crisis. With what money is the United States saving its banks and multinationals, in its turn indebting future generations of U.S. citizens? Would Obama be disposed to discuss those issues?
Daniel Ortega put it very clearly when he recalled his first conversation with Carter, which I will repeat again today:
"I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter and when he told me that now that the Somoza dictatorship had gone, that the Nicaraguan people had defeated the Samoza dictatorship, ‘it was time for Nicaragua to change.’ "I said to him: ‘No, Nicaragua does not have to change, it is you that have to change, Nicaragua has never invaded the United States; Nicaragua has never mined U.S. ports; Nicaragua has never thrown a single stone against the U.S. nation; Nicaragua has not imposed governments on the United States; you are the ones who have to change, not the Nicaraguans.’"
During the press conference and the final meetings of the Summit, Obama showed signs of smugness. The abject positions of certain Latin American leaders were not far removed from that attitude of the U.S. president. I said a few days ago that what everyone said or did at the Summit would be made known.
When he stated, responding to Jake, that today, 2004 seemed like eons ago, that was superficial. Do we have to wait that many years for him to suspend his blockade? He didn’t invent it, but he has made it his just like the other 10 presidents of the United States. Going down that road a definite failure can be augured for him, like that of all his predecessors. That was not the dream of Martin Luther King, whose role in the struggle for human rights will more and more illuminate the way of the U.S. people.
We are living in new times. Changes are inevitable. Leaders pass, the peoples remain.
We will not have to wait for thousands of years, just eight will be enough, until – in a more heavily armored car, a more modern helicopter and a more sophisticated aircraft – another president of the United States, doubtless less intelligent, promising and admired in the world than Barack Obama, occupies that inglorious office.
Tomorrow we shall have more news of the Summit.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Secret Summit (Taken from CubaDebate)
WHILE neither represented at nor excommunicated from the Port of Spain Summit we were able to find out what has been discussed there up until today. We were led to fully expect that the meeting would not be private, but the stage managers deprived us of that highly interesting intellectual exercise. We would be informed of the essence, but not the tone of voice, nor the eyes, nor the faces which so much reflect people’s ideas, ethics and characters. A Secret Summit is worse than the silent movies. To Obama’s left was a man whom I could not identify very well when he placed his hand on Obama’s shoulder, like an eight-year-old school student to a compañero in the first row. Beside him, standing, another member of the retinue who interrupted him to talk with the president of the United States; I could see in those persons importuning him the stamp of an oligarchy that has never experienced hunger and which, in the powerful nation of Obama, expect to have the shield to protect the system from the feared social changes.
Up to that point, there was a strange atmosphere at the Summit.
The artistic show organized by the host country really sparkled. I have only seen anything like it on a very few occasions, if ever. A good speaker, seemingly a Trinidadian, had proudly stated that it was unique.
It was a veritable extravaganza of both culture and luxury. I meditated a while. I calculated what all that would have cost and I suddenly realized that no other country in the Caribbean could give itself the luxury of presenting such a spectacle, that the venue of the Summit is immensely wealthy, a species of the United States surrounded by small poor countries. Could the Haitians with their extremely rich culture, or Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica, Guyana, Belize or any other, be the venue of such a luxurious Summit? Their beaches might be marvelous, but they are not surrounded by the towers that characterize the Trinidadian landscape and, with that non-renewable raw material, accumulate the copious resources that currently sustain that country’s wealth Almost all the other islands integrating the Caribbean community, located further to the north, are directly lashed by the hurricanes of growing intensity that scourge our beautiful Caribbean islands every year.
Might somebody at that meeting have remembered that Obama promised to invest whatever money is required in order to make the United States self-sufficient in fuel? Such a policy would directly affect many of the states meeting there who will not possess the technology and the vast investments required for an effort in that or another direction.
Something really made an impact on me on the stage of the Summit that has taken place up until today, Saturday, April 18, at 11:47, when I am writing these lines: Daniel Ortega’s speech. I have promised myself not to publish anything until Monday, April 20 in order to observe what happened in the famous Summit.
He did not speak as an economist, a scientist, an intellectual or a poet. Daniel did not select over-elaborate words in order to impress his audience. He spoke as the president of one of the five poorest countries in the hemisphere, as the revolutionary combatant, on behalf of a group of Central American and countries and the Dominican Republic that are members of the SICA (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana).
It would suffice to be one of the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who learned to read and write in the initial stage of the Sandinista Revolution, during which the illiteracy rate was reduced from 60% to 12%, or when Daniel returned to power in 2007, when illiteracy had risen to 35%.
His speech lasted approximately 50 minutes, delivered in a measured and calm voice, but if it was to be reproduced in full, it would make this reflection too extensive.
I will synthesize his unique speech using his own words in each of the basic ideas that he transmitted. I won’t use dot, dot, dot and I will only use quotation marks when Daniel refers to the textual words of another person or institutions:
Nicaragua had recourse to the International Court of Justice in the Hague: it filed its case against the policy of war, the terrorist policy that President Ronald Reagan was developing on behalf of the United States.
Our crime: having liberated ourselves from the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, imposed by the intervention of yanki troops in Nicaragua.
Central America has been shaken since the century before last by what have been expansionist policies, policies of war that led us to unite as Central Americans to defeat them.
Then came the interventions, which extended from 1912 to 1932 and left as a result the imposition of the dictatorship of the Somozas, armed, financed and defended by U.S. governors.
I had the opportunity to meet with President Reagan in full wartime; we shook hands and I asked him to end the war on Nicaragua.
I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter and when he told me that “now that the Somoza dictatorship has gone, it was time for the Nicaraguan people to change Nicaragua.” I said to him: No, Nicaragua does not have to change, it is you that have to change, Nicaragua has never invaded the United States; Nicaragua has never mined U.S. ports; Nicaragua has never thrown a single stone against the U.S. nation; Nicaragua has not imposed governments on the United States; you are the ones who have to change, not the Nicaraguans.
Nicaragua was still subjected to the war imposed by the United States; in response to the case that Nicaragua brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Court found and ruled; it said with total clarity that: “The United States should stop all military action, the mining of ports, funding the war; that it should indicate where the mines were that it had placed and refused to give that information;” it also instructed the United States to compensate Nicaragua for the economic-commercial blockade that it had imposed on it.
The struggles that we are waging in Nicaragua, in Central America and in Latin America to liberate our peoples from illiteracy are struggles that we are waging with the unconditional, generous solidarity of the sister people of Cuba, of Fidel, who was the one who promoted those cooperative literacy processes, and its President Raúl Castro, who has given continuity to these programs, open to all of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
Then the Bolivarian people, the people of Venezuela, with their President Hugo Chávez Frías, joined in.
Present here are a large majority of the presidents and heads of government of Latin America and the Caribbean; the president of the United States, the prime minister of Canada are participating; but here there are two major absentees: one, Cuba, whose crime has been to fight for its independence, for the sovereignty of the peoples; lending solidarity, without conditions, to our peoples, and for that it is being sanctioned, for that it is being punished, for that it is being excluded. For that reason, I do not feel comfortable at this Summit, I feel ashamed of participating in this Summit in Cuba’s absence.
Another nation is not present here because, unlike Cuba, an independent nation of solidarity, that other nation is still being subjected to colonialist policies: I am referring to the sister people of Puerto Rico.
We are working to build a great alliance, a grand unity of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples. The day will come when the people of Puerto Rico will also be here in that great alliance.
In the decade of the 50s racial discrimination was institutionalized, it was part of the American way of life: black people could not enter white restaurants, or white bars; children of black families could not go to the schools in which white children studied. In order to break down that wall of racial discrimination – and President Obama knows that better than we do – Martin Luther King said; “I have a dream.” The dream was made real and the wall of racial discrimination was brought down in the United States of America, thanks to the struggles of that people.
This meeting, this encounter is beginning precisely on the day that the invasion of Cuba was initiated in 1961. Talking with the president of Cuba, Raúl Castro, Raúl gave me some information: “Daniel, President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, he was three-and-a-half months old when the Bay of Pigs victory was won on April 19 of that year; evidently, he had no responsibility for that historic event. On April 15, the bombardments; on the 16th, socialism was proclaimed, by Fidel, at the burial of the victims; the invasion started on the 17th; the fighting continued on the 18th and the 19th, the victory, in less than 72 hours. Raúl.” (Raúl told me on his return from Cumaná, that when he wrote a note for Daniel, he made a rapid calculation and made an error on affirming that the Bays of Pigs invasion happened when Obama was three-and-a-half months old, when he should have said that he was born three-and-a-half months afterward; that he was responsible for that error).
That is history. In 2002, likewise in the month of April, on April 11, came the coup d’état with the intention of assassinating a president-elect of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; President Hugo Chávez was captured, and the order went out to assassinate him. When the puppet government emerged, the U.S. government – via its spokesman – recognized the coup leaders and gave the right to the coup leaders. We have the right to say that that is not history; barely seven years ago came those acts of violence against the institutionality of a people, of a progressive nation, in solidarity and revolutionary.
I think that the time I am taking is far less than that I had to spend – three hours – waiting at the airport inside a plane.
Freedom of expression has to be for the large and the little: Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic as an associate. The territorial area is 568, 988 square kilometers. The population adds up to a little more than 41.7 million inhabitants.
We propose that TPS (Temporary Protection Status) is given to all immigrants in the United States, but the causes of emigration lie in underdevelopment, in the poverty in which Central American peoples live.
The only way of halting the flow of emigrants toward the United States is not by raising walls, reinforcing military patrols on the borders is not the only way.
The United States needs the Central American labor force, like it needs the Mexican labor force; when that labor force reaches beyond the demands of the U.S. economy, then come the repressive policies; it is contributing funds without political conditions, without the conditioning of the International Monetary Fund.
We have the thankless task of having to look after the borders with the United States on account of drug consumption.
In Nicaragua alone, last year, the national police seized more than 360 tons of cocaine. That, at the market price in the United States, certainly adds up to more than $1 billion.
How much is the United States contributing to Nicaragua for looking after its borders? It is contributing $1.2 million.
It is not just, it is not equitable, it is not moral that it is the G-20 that keeps on making the major decisions; the hour has come for it to be the G-192; in other words, every country in the United Nations.
Those who have had negotiations with the Fund (IMF) know perfectly well what the Fund has signified, how they have sacrificed social programs, agricultural programs, productive programs, in order to pull out the resources and pay the debt, the debt imposed by the regulations established by global capitalism.
It has been no more than an instrument for establishing and developing – from the metropolises – colonial, neocolonial and imperialist policies.
In that heroic struggle that Mahatma Gandhi waged for India’s dependence from Britain, he said: “Britain has utilized one quarter of the planet’s resources to reach its present state of development. How many resources will India need to reach that same development?”
Now in the 21st century, and since the end of the 20th century, it wasn’t only Britain but all of the developed capitalist countries establishing their hegemony at the cost of the destruction of the planet and of the human species, by imposing the consumer values of their model.
The only way of saving the planet and with that the sustainable development of humanity, will be to establish the bases of a new international economic order, of a new social, political economic model, which is genuinely just, cooperative and democratic.
In the project known as PETROCARIBE and in the ALBA – virtually all the Caribbean countries are in PETROCARIBE – but some Central American countries are also in it. There are SICA countries that are in PETROCARIBE: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama.
“The heads of state and government of the Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, member countries of ALBA, consider that the draft declaration of the 5th Americas Summit is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons:
(He immediately reads the ALBA statement on the document proposed for the Americas Summit.)
"It does not give any response to the issue of the Global Economic Crisis, despite this constituting the greatest challenge that humanity has had to confront in decades.
"It unjustifiably excludes Cuba, without mentioning the general consensus that exists in the region for condemning the blockade and the attempts at isolation to which its people and government have been incessantly subjected in a criminal manner.
"What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature and not just another cyclical crisis.
"Capitalism has provoked the ecological crisis by submitting the necessary conditions for life on the planet to the predominance of the market and profits."
In order to avoid this outcome it is necessary to develop an alternative model to the capitalist system. A system in harmony with our Mother Earth and not of the plunder of natural resources; a system of cultural diversity and not of the crushing of cultures and the imposition of cultural values and lifestyles that are far from the realities of our countries; a system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist politics and wars; a system that does not reduce them to mere consumers or merchandise.
In relation to the U.S. blockade of Cuba and the exclusion of this country from the Americas Summit, the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America reiterate the declaration that all the Latin American and Caribbean countries adopted last December 16, 2008, on the need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the government of the United States, including the application of the so-called Helms-Burton Act, widely known to everybody.
In my country, Nicaragua, the governments that preceded me fulfilled neoliberal policies to the letter. From 1990, when the Sandinista Front left government, to January 10, 2007, when the Sandinista Front returned to government; it was applied for 16 years.
When the Revolution triumphed in Nicaragua in 1979, the dictatorships and governments imposed and sustained by U.S. governors in Nicaragua, the democrats who had called themselves democrats, left Nicaragua with 60% illiteracy.
Our first great battle was to do away with illiteracy and we began that great battle and managed to reduce illiteracy to 11.5-12%. We were unable to go any further because a policy of war was imposed on us by the Reagan administration.
We handed over government in 1990 with a 12.5% illiteracy rate in the country and received the country, in January 2007, with an illiteracy rate of 35%.
These are not figures invented by the government, they are data worked out by specialized educational and cultural agencies.
That is the result of the neoliberalism applied to Nicaragua, of the privatizations applied in Nicaragua, because public health was privatized, education was privatized, the poor were excluded; for other people the change was good, because they grew rich; the model has demonstrated that it is very successful in terms of accumulating wealth, successful in terms of expanding poverty. It is a great concentrator of wealth and a great multiplier of destitution and poverty.
It is a problem of an ethical order, a problem of a moral order on which the future rests, not only that of the most impoverished countries, like the five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that I have mentioned here, in which we have nothing much more to lose than our chains, if there is not a change of values that allows us to be really sustainable.
It is no longer a matter of ideology, it is not a political matter; it is a matter of survival. And all of us are going there, from the G-20 to the G-5, we, the most impoverished of Latin America and the Caribbean.
I think that we have to take on this crisis that is affecting the world and which is leading to discussions, debates, the search for solutions, taking into account that the current model of development is no longer possible, is no longer sustainable.
The only way of saving all of ourselves is by changing the model.
Thank you very much.
Daniel’s phrases at the opening of the Summit resembled the pealing of a bell tolling for a politics of centuries applied up until recently to the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is 19:58. I have just listened to the words of President Hugo Chávez. It would seem that Venezolana de Televisión smuggled a camera into the "Secret Summit" and transmitted some of his words. Yesterday, we saw him amiably returning Obama’s gesture of going over to where he was and greeting him, doubtless an intelligent gesture on the part of the president of the United States.
This time Chávez got up from his chair, went over to Obama’s chair at the head of a rectangular room together with Michelle Bachelet, and presented him with the well-known book by Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America, systematically brought up to date by the author. I don’t know at which point in the day that took place, I’m simply mentioning the time when I heard it.
It was announced that the Summit is to end tomorrow at midday.
The president of the United States has been very active. According to the news he not only met with the Summit plenary, but also with all the sub-groups in the region.
His predecessor went to bed early and slept for many hours. It would seem that Obama works a lot and sleeps little.
Today, the 19th, at 11:57, I haven’t seen anything new. The CNN channel is without fresh news. I heard the 12 chimes of the clock; at that moment the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago took the Summit platform. I dedicated myself to listening to him, and noticed some rather strange things. Manning’s face was tense. After a while, Obama spoke and then responded to questions from the press; I saw him brusquer, although calm. What most caught my attention is that a press conference was organized, made up of various leaders, at which none of those who opposed the [final] documents spoke.
Manning had previously stated that the document was prepared two years ago when there was not a profound economic crisis and thus the current problems were not approached with total clarity. Undoubtedly, I thought, McCain was missing. Definitely the OAS, Leonel and the Dominican Republic recalled the surname of the military chief of the 1965 invaders and the 50,000 soldiers that occupied it to prevent the return of Juan Bosch, who was not a Marxist Leninist.
Those present at the press conference were prime minister of Canada, an openly rightist man and the only one to have been ill-mannered toward Cuba; Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico; Martin Torrijos of Panama; and, logically, Patrick Manning. The Caribbean leader and the two Latin American ones were respectful toward Cuba. None of them attacked it and they had expressed their opposition to the blockade.
Obama spoke of the military might of the United States, which could help in the war on organized crime and the importance of the U.S. market. He likewise acknowledged that the programs being carried out by the Cuban government, such as sending medical contingents to Latin American and Caribbean countries, could be more effective than Washington’s military strength at the hour of winning influence in the region.
As Cubans, we do not do that in order to win influence; it is a tradition that began in Algeria in 1963, when it was fighting against French colonialism, and we have done so in dozens of Third World countries.
He was brusque and evasive in relation to the blockade in his interview with the press; but he was already born and will be 48 on August 4.
That same month, nine days later, I shall be 83, almost double his age, but now I have much more time to think. I wish to remind him of an elemental ethical principle related to Cuba: any injustice, any crime, in any epoch has no excuse whatsoever for lasting; the cruel blockade against the Cuban people costs lives, costs suffering; it also affects the economy on which a nation is sustained and limits its possibilities of cooperating with services in health, education, sport, energy savings and environmental protection with many poor countries of the world.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Up to that point, there was a strange atmosphere at the Summit.
The artistic show organized by the host country really sparkled. I have only seen anything like it on a very few occasions, if ever. A good speaker, seemingly a Trinidadian, had proudly stated that it was unique.
It was a veritable extravaganza of both culture and luxury. I meditated a while. I calculated what all that would have cost and I suddenly realized that no other country in the Caribbean could give itself the luxury of presenting such a spectacle, that the venue of the Summit is immensely wealthy, a species of the United States surrounded by small poor countries. Could the Haitians with their extremely rich culture, or Jamaica, Grenada, Dominica, Guyana, Belize or any other, be the venue of such a luxurious Summit? Their beaches might be marvelous, but they are not surrounded by the towers that characterize the Trinidadian landscape and, with that non-renewable raw material, accumulate the copious resources that currently sustain that country’s wealth Almost all the other islands integrating the Caribbean community, located further to the north, are directly lashed by the hurricanes of growing intensity that scourge our beautiful Caribbean islands every year.
Might somebody at that meeting have remembered that Obama promised to invest whatever money is required in order to make the United States self-sufficient in fuel? Such a policy would directly affect many of the states meeting there who will not possess the technology and the vast investments required for an effort in that or another direction.
Something really made an impact on me on the stage of the Summit that has taken place up until today, Saturday, April 18, at 11:47, when I am writing these lines: Daniel Ortega’s speech. I have promised myself not to publish anything until Monday, April 20 in order to observe what happened in the famous Summit.
He did not speak as an economist, a scientist, an intellectual or a poet. Daniel did not select over-elaborate words in order to impress his audience. He spoke as the president of one of the five poorest countries in the hemisphere, as the revolutionary combatant, on behalf of a group of Central American and countries and the Dominican Republic that are members of the SICA (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana).
It would suffice to be one of the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who learned to read and write in the initial stage of the Sandinista Revolution, during which the illiteracy rate was reduced from 60% to 12%, or when Daniel returned to power in 2007, when illiteracy had risen to 35%.
His speech lasted approximately 50 minutes, delivered in a measured and calm voice, but if it was to be reproduced in full, it would make this reflection too extensive.
I will synthesize his unique speech using his own words in each of the basic ideas that he transmitted. I won’t use dot, dot, dot and I will only use quotation marks when Daniel refers to the textual words of another person or institutions:
Nicaragua had recourse to the International Court of Justice in the Hague: it filed its case against the policy of war, the terrorist policy that President Ronald Reagan was developing on behalf of the United States.
Our crime: having liberated ourselves from the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, imposed by the intervention of yanki troops in Nicaragua.
Central America has been shaken since the century before last by what have been expansionist policies, policies of war that led us to unite as Central Americans to defeat them.
Then came the interventions, which extended from 1912 to 1932 and left as a result the imposition of the dictatorship of the Somozas, armed, financed and defended by U.S. governors.
I had the opportunity to meet with President Reagan in full wartime; we shook hands and I asked him to end the war on Nicaragua.
I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter and when he told me that “now that the Somoza dictatorship has gone, it was time for the Nicaraguan people to change Nicaragua.” I said to him: No, Nicaragua does not have to change, it is you that have to change, Nicaragua has never invaded the United States; Nicaragua has never mined U.S. ports; Nicaragua has never thrown a single stone against the U.S. nation; Nicaragua has not imposed governments on the United States; you are the ones who have to change, not the Nicaraguans.
Nicaragua was still subjected to the war imposed by the United States; in response to the case that Nicaragua brought before the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the Court found and ruled; it said with total clarity that: “The United States should stop all military action, the mining of ports, funding the war; that it should indicate where the mines were that it had placed and refused to give that information;” it also instructed the United States to compensate Nicaragua for the economic-commercial blockade that it had imposed on it.
The struggles that we are waging in Nicaragua, in Central America and in Latin America to liberate our peoples from illiteracy are struggles that we are waging with the unconditional, generous solidarity of the sister people of Cuba, of Fidel, who was the one who promoted those cooperative literacy processes, and its President Raúl Castro, who has given continuity to these programs, open to all of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
Then the Bolivarian people, the people of Venezuela, with their President Hugo Chávez Frías, joined in.
Present here are a large majority of the presidents and heads of government of Latin America and the Caribbean; the president of the United States, the prime minister of Canada are participating; but here there are two major absentees: one, Cuba, whose crime has been to fight for its independence, for the sovereignty of the peoples; lending solidarity, without conditions, to our peoples, and for that it is being sanctioned, for that it is being punished, for that it is being excluded. For that reason, I do not feel comfortable at this Summit, I feel ashamed of participating in this Summit in Cuba’s absence.
Another nation is not present here because, unlike Cuba, an independent nation of solidarity, that other nation is still being subjected to colonialist policies: I am referring to the sister people of Puerto Rico.
We are working to build a great alliance, a grand unity of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples. The day will come when the people of Puerto Rico will also be here in that great alliance.
In the decade of the 50s racial discrimination was institutionalized, it was part of the American way of life: black people could not enter white restaurants, or white bars; children of black families could not go to the schools in which white children studied. In order to break down that wall of racial discrimination – and President Obama knows that better than we do – Martin Luther King said; “I have a dream.” The dream was made real and the wall of racial discrimination was brought down in the United States of America, thanks to the struggles of that people.
This meeting, this encounter is beginning precisely on the day that the invasion of Cuba was initiated in 1961. Talking with the president of Cuba, Raúl Castro, Raúl gave me some information: “Daniel, President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, he was three-and-a-half months old when the Bay of Pigs victory was won on April 19 of that year; evidently, he had no responsibility for that historic event. On April 15, the bombardments; on the 16th, socialism was proclaimed, by Fidel, at the burial of the victims; the invasion started on the 17th; the fighting continued on the 18th and the 19th, the victory, in less than 72 hours. Raúl.” (Raúl told me on his return from Cumaná, that when he wrote a note for Daniel, he made a rapid calculation and made an error on affirming that the Bays of Pigs invasion happened when Obama was three-and-a-half months old, when he should have said that he was born three-and-a-half months afterward; that he was responsible for that error).
That is history. In 2002, likewise in the month of April, on April 11, came the coup d’état with the intention of assassinating a president-elect of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; President Hugo Chávez was captured, and the order went out to assassinate him. When the puppet government emerged, the U.S. government – via its spokesman – recognized the coup leaders and gave the right to the coup leaders. We have the right to say that that is not history; barely seven years ago came those acts of violence against the institutionality of a people, of a progressive nation, in solidarity and revolutionary.
I think that the time I am taking is far less than that I had to spend – three hours – waiting at the airport inside a plane.
Freedom of expression has to be for the large and the little: Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic as an associate. The territorial area is 568, 988 square kilometers. The population adds up to a little more than 41.7 million inhabitants.
We propose that TPS (Temporary Protection Status) is given to all immigrants in the United States, but the causes of emigration lie in underdevelopment, in the poverty in which Central American peoples live.
The only way of halting the flow of emigrants toward the United States is not by raising walls, reinforcing military patrols on the borders is not the only way.
The United States needs the Central American labor force, like it needs the Mexican labor force; when that labor force reaches beyond the demands of the U.S. economy, then come the repressive policies; it is contributing funds without political conditions, without the conditioning of the International Monetary Fund.
We have the thankless task of having to look after the borders with the United States on account of drug consumption.
In Nicaragua alone, last year, the national police seized more than 360 tons of cocaine. That, at the market price in the United States, certainly adds up to more than $1 billion.
How much is the United States contributing to Nicaragua for looking after its borders? It is contributing $1.2 million.
It is not just, it is not equitable, it is not moral that it is the G-20 that keeps on making the major decisions; the hour has come for it to be the G-192; in other words, every country in the United Nations.
Those who have had negotiations with the Fund (IMF) know perfectly well what the Fund has signified, how they have sacrificed social programs, agricultural programs, productive programs, in order to pull out the resources and pay the debt, the debt imposed by the regulations established by global capitalism.
It has been no more than an instrument for establishing and developing – from the metropolises – colonial, neocolonial and imperialist policies.
In that heroic struggle that Mahatma Gandhi waged for India’s dependence from Britain, he said: “Britain has utilized one quarter of the planet’s resources to reach its present state of development. How many resources will India need to reach that same development?”
Now in the 21st century, and since the end of the 20th century, it wasn’t only Britain but all of the developed capitalist countries establishing their hegemony at the cost of the destruction of the planet and of the human species, by imposing the consumer values of their model.
The only way of saving the planet and with that the sustainable development of humanity, will be to establish the bases of a new international economic order, of a new social, political economic model, which is genuinely just, cooperative and democratic.
In the project known as PETROCARIBE and in the ALBA – virtually all the Caribbean countries are in PETROCARIBE – but some Central American countries are also in it. There are SICA countries that are in PETROCARIBE: Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Panama.
“The heads of state and government of the Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua and Venezuela, member countries of ALBA, consider that the draft declaration of the 5th Americas Summit is insufficient and unacceptable for the following reasons:
(He immediately reads the ALBA statement on the document proposed for the Americas Summit.)
"It does not give any response to the issue of the Global Economic Crisis, despite this constituting the greatest challenge that humanity has had to confront in decades.
"It unjustifiably excludes Cuba, without mentioning the general consensus that exists in the region for condemning the blockade and the attempts at isolation to which its people and government have been incessantly subjected in a criminal manner.
"What we are experiencing is a global economic crisis of a systemic and structural nature and not just another cyclical crisis.
"Capitalism has provoked the ecological crisis by submitting the necessary conditions for life on the planet to the predominance of the market and profits."
In order to avoid this outcome it is necessary to develop an alternative model to the capitalist system. A system in harmony with our Mother Earth and not of the plunder of natural resources; a system of cultural diversity and not of the crushing of cultures and the imposition of cultural values and lifestyles that are far from the realities of our countries; a system of peace based on social justice and not on imperialist politics and wars; a system that does not reduce them to mere consumers or merchandise.
In relation to the U.S. blockade of Cuba and the exclusion of this country from the Americas Summit, the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America reiterate the declaration that all the Latin American and Caribbean countries adopted last December 16, 2008, on the need to put an end to the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the government of the United States, including the application of the so-called Helms-Burton Act, widely known to everybody.
In my country, Nicaragua, the governments that preceded me fulfilled neoliberal policies to the letter. From 1990, when the Sandinista Front left government, to January 10, 2007, when the Sandinista Front returned to government; it was applied for 16 years.
When the Revolution triumphed in Nicaragua in 1979, the dictatorships and governments imposed and sustained by U.S. governors in Nicaragua, the democrats who had called themselves democrats, left Nicaragua with 60% illiteracy.
Our first great battle was to do away with illiteracy and we began that great battle and managed to reduce illiteracy to 11.5-12%. We were unable to go any further because a policy of war was imposed on us by the Reagan administration.
We handed over government in 1990 with a 12.5% illiteracy rate in the country and received the country, in January 2007, with an illiteracy rate of 35%.
These are not figures invented by the government, they are data worked out by specialized educational and cultural agencies.
That is the result of the neoliberalism applied to Nicaragua, of the privatizations applied in Nicaragua, because public health was privatized, education was privatized, the poor were excluded; for other people the change was good, because they grew rich; the model has demonstrated that it is very successful in terms of accumulating wealth, successful in terms of expanding poverty. It is a great concentrator of wealth and a great multiplier of destitution and poverty.
It is a problem of an ethical order, a problem of a moral order on which the future rests, not only that of the most impoverished countries, like the five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean that I have mentioned here, in which we have nothing much more to lose than our chains, if there is not a change of values that allows us to be really sustainable.
It is no longer a matter of ideology, it is not a political matter; it is a matter of survival. And all of us are going there, from the G-20 to the G-5, we, the most impoverished of Latin America and the Caribbean.
I think that we have to take on this crisis that is affecting the world and which is leading to discussions, debates, the search for solutions, taking into account that the current model of development is no longer possible, is no longer sustainable.
The only way of saving all of ourselves is by changing the model.
Thank you very much.
Daniel’s phrases at the opening of the Summit resembled the pealing of a bell tolling for a politics of centuries applied up until recently to the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is 19:58. I have just listened to the words of President Hugo Chávez. It would seem that Venezolana de Televisión smuggled a camera into the "Secret Summit" and transmitted some of his words. Yesterday, we saw him amiably returning Obama’s gesture of going over to where he was and greeting him, doubtless an intelligent gesture on the part of the president of the United States.
This time Chávez got up from his chair, went over to Obama’s chair at the head of a rectangular room together with Michelle Bachelet, and presented him with the well-known book by Galeano, The Open Veins of Latin America, systematically brought up to date by the author. I don’t know at which point in the day that took place, I’m simply mentioning the time when I heard it.
It was announced that the Summit is to end tomorrow at midday.
The president of the United States has been very active. According to the news he not only met with the Summit plenary, but also with all the sub-groups in the region.
His predecessor went to bed early and slept for many hours. It would seem that Obama works a lot and sleeps little.
Today, the 19th, at 11:57, I haven’t seen anything new. The CNN channel is without fresh news. I heard the 12 chimes of the clock; at that moment the prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago took the Summit platform. I dedicated myself to listening to him, and noticed some rather strange things. Manning’s face was tense. After a while, Obama spoke and then responded to questions from the press; I saw him brusquer, although calm. What most caught my attention is that a press conference was organized, made up of various leaders, at which none of those who opposed the [final] documents spoke.
Manning had previously stated that the document was prepared two years ago when there was not a profound economic crisis and thus the current problems were not approached with total clarity. Undoubtedly, I thought, McCain was missing. Definitely the OAS, Leonel and the Dominican Republic recalled the surname of the military chief of the 1965 invaders and the 50,000 soldiers that occupied it to prevent the return of Juan Bosch, who was not a Marxist Leninist.
Those present at the press conference were prime minister of Canada, an openly rightist man and the only one to have been ill-mannered toward Cuba; Felipe Calderón, the president of Mexico; Martin Torrijos of Panama; and, logically, Patrick Manning. The Caribbean leader and the two Latin American ones were respectful toward Cuba. None of them attacked it and they had expressed their opposition to the blockade.
Obama spoke of the military might of the United States, which could help in the war on organized crime and the importance of the U.S. market. He likewise acknowledged that the programs being carried out by the Cuban government, such as sending medical contingents to Latin American and Caribbean countries, could be more effective than Washington’s military strength at the hour of winning influence in the region.
As Cubans, we do not do that in order to win influence; it is a tradition that began in Algeria in 1963, when it was fighting against French colonialism, and we have done so in dozens of Third World countries.
He was brusque and evasive in relation to the blockade in his interview with the press; but he was already born and will be 48 on August 4.
That same month, nine days later, I shall be 83, almost double his age, but now I have much more time to think. I wish to remind him of an elemental ethical principle related to Cuba: any injustice, any crime, in any epoch has no excuse whatsoever for lasting; the cruel blockade against the Cuban people costs lives, costs suffering; it also affects the economy on which a nation is sustained and limits its possibilities of cooperating with services in health, education, sport, energy savings and environmental protection with many poor countries of the world.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Officers with Sound Beliefs (Taken from Cubadebate)
IT is not known how many people in the United States write to Obama and how many different issues they put to him. Obviously, he cannot read all the letters and tackle every issue, because neither the 24 hours of the day and the 365 days of the year would be enough. What is a fact is that advisors, backed up by computers, electronic equipment and cell phones, reply to all the letters. Their content is recorded and the replies, supported by many statements made by the new president during his nomination and election campaign, exist beforehand.
In any event, letters have their influence and weight in U.S. policy given that, in this case, it does not concern a corrupt, lying and ignorant politician like his predecessor, who despised the social advances of the New Deal.
That is why my attention was caught by a dispatch from Washington, published yesterday, April 14, by the DPA news agency.
"A group of retired high-ranking U.S. officers have urged President Barack Obama to support and sign a Congressional initiative to end the ban on travel to Cuba for all Americans, arguing that the embargo of the island does not serve Washington’s political and security aims.
"’The embargo has inspired a significant diplomatic movement against U.S. policy,’ note the 12 high-ranking retired officers, who include Barry McCaffrey, the ‘drug tsar’ during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson, in a letter made public in Washington today.
"’As military professionals, we understand that America's interests are best served when the United States is able to attract the support of other nations to our cause,’ the officers state in the letter, sent to Obama on Monday, the day that the U.S. president announced the end of restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuban Americans, but not for all of the country’s citizens, as progressive sectors are demanding.
"In the view of these officers, the bill called the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, submitted to the House of Representatives by Democrat Bill Delahunt, is an important first step toward lifting the embargo.
"A type of policy, they add, ‘more likely to bring change to Cuba’ and also to change Washington’s international image.
"’Around the world, leaders are calling for a real policy shift that delivers on the hope you inspired in your campaign,’ the officers sustain.
"’Cuba offers the lowest-hanging fruit for such a shift and would be a move that would register deeply in the minds of our partners and competitors around the world,’ they add.
The news, located among 315 pages of cables seemed to be somewhat insignificant. However, it approaches the crux of the problem that promoted four Reflections in less than 24 hours related to the Americas Summit, which begins in 48 hours.
In the United States, politicians launch wars and the military has to make them.
Kennedy, inexperienced and young, decreed the blockade and the Bay of Pigs invasion, organized by Eisenhower and Nixon, who knew less about wars than he did. The unexpected setback led him to new and misguided decisions which culminated in the October Missile Crisis, from which, however, he emerged gracefully but traumatized by the risk of a thermonuclear war, which was very close, as the French journalist Jean Daniel told me. "He’s a thinking machine," he added, in praise of the president, who had deeply impressed him.
Later on, enthused with the Green Berets, he sent them to Vietnam, where the United States was supporting the restoration of the French colonial empire. Another politician, Lyndon Johnson, took that war to its final consequences. In that inglorious adventure, more than 50,000 soldiers lost their lives, the Union squandered no less than $500 billion when their value in gold fell 20 times, killed millions of Vietnamese and multiplied solidarity with that poor Third World country. Military service had to be replaced by professional soldiers, distancing the public from military training, which debilitated that nation.
A third politician, George W. Bush, protected by his father, executed the genocidal Iraq war that accelerated the economic crisis, making it more acute and profound. Its cost in economic figures rises to trillions of trillions of dollars, a public debt that will fall on new generations of U.S. citizens in a convulsed world full of risks.
Are those affirming that the embargo affects the security interests of the United States right or not?
The officers who wrote the letter are not appealing for the use of arms, but to the battle of ideas, something diametrically opposed to what the politicians have done.
In general, U.S. military personnel who defend the economic, political and social system of the United States, have privileges and are very well remunerated, but they are concerned at not becoming involved in the theft of public funds, which would result in discredit and a total lack of authority in terms of their military undertakings.
They do not believe that Cuba constitutes a threat to U.S. security, as others have attempted to portray us to U.S. public opinion. It was the governors of that country who converted Guantánamo base into a refuge of counterrevolutionaries or émigrés. Worse than that, they converted it into a torture center which they made famous as a symbol of the most brutal negation of human rights.
The military is also well aware that our country is a model in the war on drug trafficking and that no act of terrorism against the United States has ever been permitted from our territory.
As the Congressional Black Caucus was able to confirm, including Cuba on the list of terrorist countries is the most dishonest act ever made.
As well as Senators Lugar, Delahunt, the Caucus and other influential members of Congress, we thank those who wrote the letter to Obama.
We do not fear dialogue; we do not need to invent enemies; we do not fear a debate of ideas; we believe in our convictions and with them, we have learned to defend and will continue to defend our homeland.
With the fabulous advances in technology, war has turned into one of the most complex sciences.
That is something that U.S. soldiers understand. They know that it is not a matter of order and command in the style of the old wars. Today the adversaries quite probably never see each other’s faces; they can find each other at thousands of kilometers of distance; the most lethal weapons are fired by programs. Man barely participates. Decisions are calculated beforehand and lacking in emotion.
I have met a number of them, now retired, who have dedicated themselves to the study of military science and wars.
They do not express hatred or antipathy toward the little country that has fought and resisted confronting such a powerful enemy.
There currently exists in the United States a World Security Institute with which our country has contacts and academic exchanges. The one that existed 15 years ago was the Center for Defense Information (CDI). A CDI delegation made its first visit to Cuba at the end of June 1993. From that date to November 19, 2004, there have been nine visits to Cuba.
Up until 1999 the delegations were, in the main, made up of retired military officers.
In the October 1999 visit the composition of the delegations began to vary, reducing the presence of military personnel. From visit No. 5, all the delegations were led by the eminent researcher Bruce Blair, a security policy expert, specialized in control and command nuclear forces. A consultant professor at Yale and Princeton Universities. He has published countless books and hundreds of articles on the subject.
In that way, I came to know officers who assumed important roles in the U.S. armed forces. We didn’t always agree with their points of view, but they were always amiable. We had wide-ranging exchanges on historical events in which they had participated as soldiers.
The visits continued in 2006, but I had had the accident in Santa Clara and later fell gravely ill.
Of the 12 retired officers who signed the letter to Obama, one of them took part in those meetings.
I knew that in the last meeting that took place they said, in all frankness, that the military had no intention of attacking Cuba militarily; that there was a new political situation in the United States, derived from the weakness of the administration given its failure in Iraq.
It was clear to the compañeros who met with the U.S. delegation that they felt badly led and were ashamed at what was happening, although nobody could offer any guarantees on the political adventurism of the president of the United States, which he maintained up until the last day of his administration. That meeting took place at the beginning of March 2007, 14 months ago.
Bruce Blair must know much more than me on the thorny issue. His brave and transparent conduct always impressed me.
I did not want these data to remain in the archives awaiting the time when they would be of no interest to anybody.
Fidel Castro Ruz
In any event, letters have their influence and weight in U.S. policy given that, in this case, it does not concern a corrupt, lying and ignorant politician like his predecessor, who despised the social advances of the New Deal.
That is why my attention was caught by a dispatch from Washington, published yesterday, April 14, by the DPA news agency.
"A group of retired high-ranking U.S. officers have urged President Barack Obama to support and sign a Congressional initiative to end the ban on travel to Cuba for all Americans, arguing that the embargo of the island does not serve Washington’s political and security aims.
"’The embargo has inspired a significant diplomatic movement against U.S. policy,’ note the 12 high-ranking retired officers, who include Barry McCaffrey, the ‘drug tsar’ during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and Colin Powell’s former chief of staff Lawrence B. Wilkerson, in a letter made public in Washington today.
"’As military professionals, we understand that America's interests are best served when the United States is able to attract the support of other nations to our cause,’ the officers state in the letter, sent to Obama on Monday, the day that the U.S. president announced the end of restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuban Americans, but not for all of the country’s citizens, as progressive sectors are demanding.
"In the view of these officers, the bill called the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, submitted to the House of Representatives by Democrat Bill Delahunt, is an important first step toward lifting the embargo.
"A type of policy, they add, ‘more likely to bring change to Cuba’ and also to change Washington’s international image.
"’Around the world, leaders are calling for a real policy shift that delivers on the hope you inspired in your campaign,’ the officers sustain.
"’Cuba offers the lowest-hanging fruit for such a shift and would be a move that would register deeply in the minds of our partners and competitors around the world,’ they add.
The news, located among 315 pages of cables seemed to be somewhat insignificant. However, it approaches the crux of the problem that promoted four Reflections in less than 24 hours related to the Americas Summit, which begins in 48 hours.
In the United States, politicians launch wars and the military has to make them.
Kennedy, inexperienced and young, decreed the blockade and the Bay of Pigs invasion, organized by Eisenhower and Nixon, who knew less about wars than he did. The unexpected setback led him to new and misguided decisions which culminated in the October Missile Crisis, from which, however, he emerged gracefully but traumatized by the risk of a thermonuclear war, which was very close, as the French journalist Jean Daniel told me. "He’s a thinking machine," he added, in praise of the president, who had deeply impressed him.
Later on, enthused with the Green Berets, he sent them to Vietnam, where the United States was supporting the restoration of the French colonial empire. Another politician, Lyndon Johnson, took that war to its final consequences. In that inglorious adventure, more than 50,000 soldiers lost their lives, the Union squandered no less than $500 billion when their value in gold fell 20 times, killed millions of Vietnamese and multiplied solidarity with that poor Third World country. Military service had to be replaced by professional soldiers, distancing the public from military training, which debilitated that nation.
A third politician, George W. Bush, protected by his father, executed the genocidal Iraq war that accelerated the economic crisis, making it more acute and profound. Its cost in economic figures rises to trillions of trillions of dollars, a public debt that will fall on new generations of U.S. citizens in a convulsed world full of risks.
Are those affirming that the embargo affects the security interests of the United States right or not?
The officers who wrote the letter are not appealing for the use of arms, but to the battle of ideas, something diametrically opposed to what the politicians have done.
In general, U.S. military personnel who defend the economic, political and social system of the United States, have privileges and are very well remunerated, but they are concerned at not becoming involved in the theft of public funds, which would result in discredit and a total lack of authority in terms of their military undertakings.
They do not believe that Cuba constitutes a threat to U.S. security, as others have attempted to portray us to U.S. public opinion. It was the governors of that country who converted Guantánamo base into a refuge of counterrevolutionaries or émigrés. Worse than that, they converted it into a torture center which they made famous as a symbol of the most brutal negation of human rights.
The military is also well aware that our country is a model in the war on drug trafficking and that no act of terrorism against the United States has ever been permitted from our territory.
As the Congressional Black Caucus was able to confirm, including Cuba on the list of terrorist countries is the most dishonest act ever made.
As well as Senators Lugar, Delahunt, the Caucus and other influential members of Congress, we thank those who wrote the letter to Obama.
We do not fear dialogue; we do not need to invent enemies; we do not fear a debate of ideas; we believe in our convictions and with them, we have learned to defend and will continue to defend our homeland.
With the fabulous advances in technology, war has turned into one of the most complex sciences.
That is something that U.S. soldiers understand. They know that it is not a matter of order and command in the style of the old wars. Today the adversaries quite probably never see each other’s faces; they can find each other at thousands of kilometers of distance; the most lethal weapons are fired by programs. Man barely participates. Decisions are calculated beforehand and lacking in emotion.
I have met a number of them, now retired, who have dedicated themselves to the study of military science and wars.
They do not express hatred or antipathy toward the little country that has fought and resisted confronting such a powerful enemy.
There currently exists in the United States a World Security Institute with which our country has contacts and academic exchanges. The one that existed 15 years ago was the Center for Defense Information (CDI). A CDI delegation made its first visit to Cuba at the end of June 1993. From that date to November 19, 2004, there have been nine visits to Cuba.
Up until 1999 the delegations were, in the main, made up of retired military officers.
In the October 1999 visit the composition of the delegations began to vary, reducing the presence of military personnel. From visit No. 5, all the delegations were led by the eminent researcher Bruce Blair, a security policy expert, specialized in control and command nuclear forces. A consultant professor at Yale and Princeton Universities. He has published countless books and hundreds of articles on the subject.
In that way, I came to know officers who assumed important roles in the U.S. armed forces. We didn’t always agree with their points of view, but they were always amiable. We had wide-ranging exchanges on historical events in which they had participated as soldiers.
The visits continued in 2006, but I had had the accident in Santa Clara and later fell gravely ill.
Of the 12 retired officers who signed the letter to Obama, one of them took part in those meetings.
I knew that in the last meeting that took place they said, in all frankness, that the military had no intention of attacking Cuba militarily; that there was a new political situation in the United States, derived from the weakness of the administration given its failure in Iraq.
It was clear to the compañeros who met with the U.S. delegation that they felt badly led and were ashamed at what was happening, although nobody could offer any guarantees on the political adventurism of the president of the United States, which he maintained up until the last day of his administration. That meeting took place at the beginning of March 2007, 14 months ago.
Bruce Blair must know much more than me on the thorny issue. His brave and transparent conduct always impressed me.
I did not want these data to remain in the archives awaiting the time when they would be of no interest to anybody.
Fidel Castro Ruz
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Days that Cannot be Forgotten (Taken from CubaDebate)
FORTY-EIGHT years ago, mercenary forces in the service of a foreign power invaded their own homeland, escorted by a U.S. squadron, including an aircraft carrier and dozens of fighter planes. That date cannot be forgotten. The superpower to the North could apply the same prescription to any Latin American country. It has already occurred on many occasions throughout history in our hemisphere. Is there any declaration where it has been promised that such an action is never to be repeated in a direct form or via their own armies, as was the case in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and other countries?
The cunning and surprise Girón attack [Bay of Pigs] cost us more than 150 lives and hundreds of severely wounded. We should like to hear some self-criticism from the powerful country and the guarantee that it will never happen again in our hemisphere.
Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the failed coup d’état against the Revolution in Venezuela.
For the good of democracy and human rights, a voice is needed to tell us from Washington that the School of the Americas, which specializes in coup d’états and torture, is to be closed down for ever.
We cannot forget that this April, the leader of ARENA, an oligarchic ally of Bush in the Iraq genocide, is still governing in El Salvador. With a million human lives sacrificed, there is sufficient blood to drown all the accomplices.
I am maybe offending in recalling this, or is it also prohibited, in the name of decency, ingenuity, and complicity, to mention the subject?
The measure to ease restrictions on travel is positive in itself, although minimal. Many others are needed, including the elimination of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act, which is applied exclusively to just our country. We would like a response to the question as to whether the immigration privileges utilized to combat the Cuban Revolution and divest it of human resources might be also conceded to all Latin American and Caribbean peoples. But everything in Port of Spain will be secret. Prohibited to listen to the debate and the pronouncements of heads of state and government. In any event, what each one of them states will become known.
I do not wish to hurt Obama in the slightest degree, but he will be president for one or two terms. He has no responsibility for what has happened and I am convinced that he would not commit Bush’s atrocities. After him, however, someone similar to or worse than his/her predecessor could come along. Humans pass; peoples endure.
There are other extremely grave problems such as climate change, and the current president of the United States has decided to cooperate in that problem which is vital to humanity. We should acknowledge that.
Enough for today. I do not wish to add another word.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 14, 2009
11:15 a.m.
The cunning and surprise Girón attack [Bay of Pigs] cost us more than 150 lives and hundreds of severely wounded. We should like to hear some self-criticism from the powerful country and the guarantee that it will never happen again in our hemisphere.
Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of the failed coup d’état against the Revolution in Venezuela.
For the good of democracy and human rights, a voice is needed to tell us from Washington that the School of the Americas, which specializes in coup d’états and torture, is to be closed down for ever.
We cannot forget that this April, the leader of ARENA, an oligarchic ally of Bush in the Iraq genocide, is still governing in El Salvador. With a million human lives sacrificed, there is sufficient blood to drown all the accomplices.
I am maybe offending in recalling this, or is it also prohibited, in the name of decency, ingenuity, and complicity, to mention the subject?
The measure to ease restrictions on travel is positive in itself, although minimal. Many others are needed, including the elimination of the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act, which is applied exclusively to just our country. We would like a response to the question as to whether the immigration privileges utilized to combat the Cuban Revolution and divest it of human resources might be also conceded to all Latin American and Caribbean peoples. But everything in Port of Spain will be secret. Prohibited to listen to the debate and the pronouncements of heads of state and government. In any event, what each one of them states will become known.
I do not wish to hurt Obama in the slightest degree, but he will be president for one or two terms. He has no responsibility for what has happened and I am convinced that he would not commit Bush’s atrocities. After him, however, someone similar to or worse than his/her predecessor could come along. Humans pass; peoples endure.
There are other extremely grave problems such as climate change, and the current president of the United States has decided to cooperate in that problem which is vital to humanity. We should acknowledge that.
Enough for today. I do not wish to add another word.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 14, 2009
11:15 a.m.
Monday, April 13, 2009
On the Blockade, Not One Word was Said (Taken from CubaDebate)
On the blockade, not one word was said
(Taken from CubaDebate)
VIA CNN, the government of the United States announced that Obama is to visit Mexico this week, initiating his visit en route to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where he will be within four days to participate in the Americas Summit. He announced the easing of certain odious restrictions imposed by Bush on Cubans resident in the United States in order to visit their families in Cuba. In response to inquiries as to whether such prerogatives extended to other U.S. citizens, the answer was that they were not authorized.
On the blockade, which is the cruelest of the measures, not one word was said. That is how they piously refer to what constitutes a genocidal measure. The damage is not only measured by its economic effects. It constantly costs human lives and causes painful suffering for our citizens.
Untold diagnostic equipment and vital medicines are not accessible for our patients even when they come from Europe or Japan, or another country, if they utilize certain U.S. components or programs.
Restrictions related to Cuba have to be applied by U.S. companies producing goods or services in any part of the world, in virtue of the blockade’s extraterritorial nature.
Richard Lugar, an influential Republican senator, and various others from his party with the same post in Congress, plus a number of important Democratic senators are in favor of eliminating the blockade. The conditions have been created for Obama to employ his talent in a constructive policy that would put an end to the one that has failed for almost 50 years.
On the other hand, our country, which has resisted and is prepared to resist as long as necessary, does not blame Obama for the atrocities committed by other U.S. governments. Neither does it question his sincerity and his desires to change the policy and the image of the United States. It understands that he waged a very hard battle in order to be elected, despite centennial prejudices.
Starting from that reality, the president of the Council of State of Cuba expressed his disposition to dialogue with Obama and, on the basis of the strictest respect for sovereignty, to normalize relations with the United States.
At 2:30 p.m. the head of the Cuban Interests Section, Jorge Bolaños, was called to the State Department by Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state [for Western Hemisphere Affairs]. Nothing that they talked about was any different from that reported by CNN.
At 3:15 p.m. a long press conversation began. The essence of what was stated there is contained in the textual words of Dan Restrepo, presidential advisor for Latin America, who stated [in Spanish]:
"Today, President Obama has directed that a series of steps be taken to reach out to the Cuban people to support their desire to enjoy basic human rights and to freely determine their country’s future. The President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce to carry out the actions necessary to lift all restrictions on the ability of individuals to visit family members in Cuba, and to send them remittances. He’s further directed that steps be taken to enable the freer flow of information among the Cuban people and between those in Cuba and the rest of the world, as well as to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian items directly to the Cuban people.
"In taking these steps to help bridge the gap among divided Cuban families and to promote the increased flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people, President Obama is working to fulfill the goals he identified both during his presidential campaign and since taking office.
"All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects the basic human, political and economic rights of all of its citizens. President Obama believes the measure he has taken today will help make that goal a reality. He encourages all who share it to continue their steadfast support for the Cuban people.
"Thanks."
At the end of the conference he confided in all frankness: "Everything is being done for the freedom of Cuba."
Cuba does not applaud the ill-named Americas Summits, where our countries do not discuss on an equal level. If they serve for anything, it would be to make critical analyses of policies which are dividing our peoples, plundering our resources and placing obstacles on our development.
Now, all that is missing is for Obama to persuade all the Latin American presidents there that the blockade is inoffensive.
Cuba has resisted and will resist. It will never stretch out its hands asking for alms. It will continue advancing with its head held high, cooperating with the sister peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, whether there are Americas Summits or not, whether Obama, a man or a woman, a white or black citizen presides over the United States.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 13, 2009
6:12 p.m.
(Taken from CubaDebate)
VIA CNN, the government of the United States announced that Obama is to visit Mexico this week, initiating his visit en route to Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, where he will be within four days to participate in the Americas Summit. He announced the easing of certain odious restrictions imposed by Bush on Cubans resident in the United States in order to visit their families in Cuba. In response to inquiries as to whether such prerogatives extended to other U.S. citizens, the answer was that they were not authorized.
On the blockade, which is the cruelest of the measures, not one word was said. That is how they piously refer to what constitutes a genocidal measure. The damage is not only measured by its economic effects. It constantly costs human lives and causes painful suffering for our citizens.
Untold diagnostic equipment and vital medicines are not accessible for our patients even when they come from Europe or Japan, or another country, if they utilize certain U.S. components or programs.
Restrictions related to Cuba have to be applied by U.S. companies producing goods or services in any part of the world, in virtue of the blockade’s extraterritorial nature.
Richard Lugar, an influential Republican senator, and various others from his party with the same post in Congress, plus a number of important Democratic senators are in favor of eliminating the blockade. The conditions have been created for Obama to employ his talent in a constructive policy that would put an end to the one that has failed for almost 50 years.
On the other hand, our country, which has resisted and is prepared to resist as long as necessary, does not blame Obama for the atrocities committed by other U.S. governments. Neither does it question his sincerity and his desires to change the policy and the image of the United States. It understands that he waged a very hard battle in order to be elected, despite centennial prejudices.
Starting from that reality, the president of the Council of State of Cuba expressed his disposition to dialogue with Obama and, on the basis of the strictest respect for sovereignty, to normalize relations with the United States.
At 2:30 p.m. the head of the Cuban Interests Section, Jorge Bolaños, was called to the State Department by Thomas Shannon, assistant secretary of state [for Western Hemisphere Affairs]. Nothing that they talked about was any different from that reported by CNN.
At 3:15 p.m. a long press conversation began. The essence of what was stated there is contained in the textual words of Dan Restrepo, presidential advisor for Latin America, who stated [in Spanish]:
"Today, President Obama has directed that a series of steps be taken to reach out to the Cuban people to support their desire to enjoy basic human rights and to freely determine their country’s future. The President has directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury and Commerce to carry out the actions necessary to lift all restrictions on the ability of individuals to visit family members in Cuba, and to send them remittances. He’s further directed that steps be taken to enable the freer flow of information among the Cuban people and between those in Cuba and the rest of the world, as well as to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian items directly to the Cuban people.
"In taking these steps to help bridge the gap among divided Cuban families and to promote the increased flow of information and humanitarian items to the Cuban people, President Obama is working to fulfill the goals he identified both during his presidential campaign and since taking office.
"All who embrace core democratic values long for a Cuba that respects the basic human, political and economic rights of all of its citizens. President Obama believes the measure he has taken today will help make that goal a reality. He encourages all who share it to continue their steadfast support for the Cuban people.
"Thanks."
At the end of the conference he confided in all frankness: "Everything is being done for the freedom of Cuba."
Cuba does not applaud the ill-named Americas Summits, where our countries do not discuss on an equal level. If they serve for anything, it would be to make critical analyses of policies which are dividing our peoples, plundering our resources and placing obstacles on our development.
Now, all that is missing is for Obama to persuade all the Latin American presidents there that the blockade is inoffensive.
Cuba has resisted and will resist. It will never stretch out its hands asking for alms. It will continue advancing with its head held high, cooperating with the sister peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, whether there are Americas Summits or not, whether Obama, a man or a woman, a white or black citizen presides over the United States.
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 13, 2009
6:12 p.m.
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