Between emigration and crime

Reflections of Fidel

Taken from CubaDebate

LATIN Americans are not innate criminals and neither did they invent drugs.

The Aztecs, Mayas and other pre-Columbian peoples of Mexico and Central America, for example, were excellent agriculturalists and knew nothing about coca cultivation.

The Quechuas and Aymaras were capable of producing nutritive foods on perfect terraces which followed the curves of the mountain levels. On altiplanos sometimes in excess of 3-4,000 meters high, they cultivated quinoa, a cereal rich in protein, and potatoes.

They also knew and cultivated the coca plant, the leaves of which they have chewed since time immemorial in order to alleviate the rigor of the heights. It was a millennial custom practiced by peoples with products such as coffee, tobacco, liquor and others.

Coca came originally from the steep mountain slopes of the Amazonian Andes. Their inhabitants knew it long before the Inca empire whose territory, in its maximum splendor, extended over the current territory of southern Colombia, all of Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, eastern Chile and northeastern Argentina; close to two million square kilometers.

The consumption of coca leaves became a privilege of the Inca emperors and the nobility in religious ceremonies.

When the empire disappeared after the Spanish invasion, the new masters encouraged the traditional habit of chewing coca leaves in order to extend the working days of the indigenous labor force, a right that lasted until the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs prohibited the use of coca leaves, except for medical or scientific purposes.

Almost all countries signed it. Barely any health related issue was discussed. The trafficking of cocaine had not yet reached its current enormous magnitude. Extremely serious problems have been created in the years that have passed since, which demand profound analyses.

On the thorny issue of the relationship between drugs and organized crime the UN itself delicately affirms that Latin America is inefficient in combating crime.

Information published by distinct institutions is varied, given that the matter is a sensitive one. The data are sometimes so complex and varied that they can lead to confusion. However, there is not the slightest doubt that the problem is rapidly worsening.

Almost six week ago, on February 11, 2011, a report published in Mexico City by that country’s Citizens’ Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, provided interesting data on the 50 most violent cities in the world, on the basis of homicides committed in 2010. It confirms that Mexico furnishes 25% of them. For the third consecutive year No. 1 falls to Juarez, on the border with the United States.

It goes on to say that, "… in that year the rate of criminal homicides in Juarez was 35% higher than that of Kandahar, Afghanistan – No. 2 in the ranking – and 941% higher than that of Baghdad…"; in other words, almost 10 times that of the Iraqi capital, a city at No. 50 on the list.

It almost immediately adds that the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras lies in third place with 125 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants; only exceeded by Juarez, in Mexico, with 229; and Kandahar in Afghanistan, with 169.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras, is in sixth place, with 109 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants.

Thus, it can be observed that Honduras, with the yankee Palmerola airbase, where a coup d’état took place during Obama’s presidency, has two cities among the six in which the most homicides in the world take place. The rate in Guatemala City stands at 106.

According to the abovementioned report, the Colombian city of Medellín, with 87.42 likewise figures among the most violent in the Americas and the world.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s speech in El Salvador and his subsequent press conference, obliged me to publish these lines on the issue.

In my March 21 Reflection I criticized his lack of ethics for not even mentioning in Chile the name of Salvador Allende, a symbol of dignity and courage for the world, who died as the consequence of a coup d’état promoted by a president of the United States.

As I knew that the following day he was to visit El Salvador, a Central American country symbolic of the struggles of the peoples of Our America, which has suffered the most as a result of U.S. policy in our hemisphere, I said, "There he will have to invent a lot, because in that sister Central American nation the weapons and advisors that it received from his country were responsible for much bloodshed."

I wished him bon voyage and "a little more good sense." I have to admit that, on his lengthy tour, he was a little bit more careful during the final stretch.

Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero was a man admired by all Latin Americans, believers or non-believers, as were the Jesuit priests cowardly assassinated by the henchmen that the United States trained, backed and armed to the teeth. In El Salvador, the FMLN, a militant left-wing organization, waged one of the most heroic struggles on our continent.

The Salvadorian people gave the victory to the Party which emerged from the heart of those glorious combatants, whose profound history remains to be constructed.

What is urgent is to confront the dramatic dilemma being experienced by El Salvador, just like Mexico, the rest of Central America and South America.

Obama himself stated that approximately two million Salvadorians live in the United States, equivalent to 30% of the country’s population. The brutal repression unleashed on patriots and the systematic plunder of El Salvador imposed by the United States obliged hundreds of thousands of Salvadorians to emigrate to that territory.

What is new is that the desperate situation of Central Americans has been compounded by the immense power of terrorist gangs, sophisticated weapons and the demand for drugs, created by the U.S. market.

In his brief remarks preceding those of the visitor, the President of El Salvador stated textually, "I insisted to him that the issue of organized crime, drug trafficking, citizen insecurity is not an issue that solely concerns El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras or Nicaragua, or even Mexico or Colombia; it is an issue which concerns us as a region, and in that context we are working on building a regional strategy, via the CARFI Initiative."

"…I insisted to him that this is an issue that cannot be approached solely from the perspective of pursuing crime by strengthening our police and armies, but also by emphasizing crime prevention policies and therefore, the best weapon for combating crime in itself, in the region, is by investing in social policies."

In his response, the U.S. leader said, "President Funes is committed to creating more economic opportunities here in El Salvador so that people don’t feel like they have to head north to provide for their families."

"I know this is especially important to the some 2 million Salvadoran people who are living and working in the United States."

"…I updated the President on the new consumer protections that I signed into law, which give people more information and make sure their remittances actually reach their loved ones back home.

"Today, we’re also launching a new effort to confront the narco-traffickers and gangs that have caused so much violence in all of our countries, and especially here in Central America. "

"…we’ll focus $200 million to support efforts here in the region, including addressing, as President Funes indicated, the social and economic forces that drive young people towards criminality. We’ll help strengthen courts, civil society groups and institutions that uphold the rule of law."

I do not need any more words to express the essence of a painfully sad situation.

The reality is that many young Central Americans have been led by imperialism to cross an inflexible and constantly more impassable border, or to provide services to the millionaire drug trafficking gangs.

Would it not be more just – I wonder – to have an Adjustment Act for all Latin Americans, like the one invented almost 50 years ago now to punish Cuba? Will the number of persons who die crossing the U.S. border and the tens of thousands who are dying every year in the nations to which you are offering an "Alliance of Equals" continue to grow ad infinitum?



Fidel Castro Ruz

March 25, 2011

8:46 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

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Turks and Caicos politics in a Caribbean context

By Oliver Mills



Local historians in the Turks and Caicos contend that these islands were the first to be discovered in the Caribbean region, although this is contested by others. However, Caribbean historians have maintained that the real value to Europeans of the West Indies was their mineral wealth, agricultural products, employment for Europeans, and as a training ground for their navies. Nothing is mentioned about the value of the islands to their own people, the local inhabitants.

Indeed, the local inhabitants were highly civilised, particularly the Mayans and Aztecs, while the Caribs and Arawaks on the other hand, who lived communally under a system of governance that suited their needs and circumstances at the time, were regarded by the Europeans as primitive. The latter sought to use the tribal chiefs against each other to maintain a divide and rule policy. This meant that, instead of confronting a common threat, the local inhabitants fought against themselves, urged on by outsiders, who benefitted from this local rivalry which they initiated.

The Turks and Caicos were important for their salt product, cotton, as a training area for sailors and their warships and, initially because of our many islands and cays, as a hide out for pirates, buccaneers, and smugglers. Later in this century we became military bases to maintain surveillance of Castro’s Cuba, and to listen to and track Russian submarines.

A prominent historian of Caribbean affairs describes the background to the contemporary challenges the Caribbean faces today. He states that the society was based on masters and slaves, and this made impossible any spirit of mutual trust between the two sides. The phrase that emerged from this situation was, ‘the worse you behave to a Negro, the better he behaves to you.’ Even now, we still say this about each other.

This perception of these two categories of master and slave later translated into divisions between those with money and resources, and those who had only their labour to offer. From here, developed the antagonistic relationship between labour and capital. And although later, as Caribbean society became more sophisticated through the development of science and technology, a managerial versus a technologically skilled class developed, with knowledge replacing capital as the important factor in workplace relationships.

This historian further states that a further characteristic of Caribbean society was the parochialism of its governing climate of opinion. Any opinions that differed from, or contested the way things were being done, were discouraged. The idea behind this was to maintain the political and social dominance of one group of persons who differed from the local inhabitants in social status, colour and interest.

The type of governance that existed, particularly in those islands with British influence, was Crown Colony government, or direct rule, where a governor and officials from the metropole were the main players, assisted by selected locals regarded as prominent members of the community. This same type of governance exists in the Turks and Caicos today. In the early colonial period, it was based on the contrived assumption that people who were culturally different had no real conception of how to govern themselves, or conduct their affairs in a civilised way. They therefore needed persons of a different and superior cultural orientation to ‘help’ them to become more civilised. To hold their hand and gently lead them, until they were deemed ready and fit to govern themselves.`

This historian rounds out his description of Caribbean society’s background by noting that the European mind failed to apply the idea of equality to subject Caribbean people. The fact is that, in many instances, this perception still remains of people of other races. In the Caribbean, we have absorbed these prejudices, and use them against our own to determine class and social status. People with a fair complexion are still preferred to those with darker skins, and the many races we have still discriminate against each other in various subtle and open ways. We have not as yet, in our Caribbean, despite chatter at various conferences, come to accept each other, trust each other, or see each other in an open-minded way, without race, class, island of origin, or even religion, playing a significant part with respect to how we perceive each other.

In the Caribbean’s quest for ever increasing control over its political affairs, leading to independence for some islands, again, the dominant power insisted that certain steps or stages be gone through, as if locals had to take examinations at different levels of difficulty. Crown Colony government was followed by more political representation through the extension of the vote. Through agitation, internal self-government came about with either a Chief Minister or Premier, based on the intensity of the agitation. This was then followed by independence. But at each stage, it was the colonial power that responded to challenges made on it. It was the local leaders who formed political organisations that over time contested the existing system, and got it to be changed to a more democratic system, representative of the majority.

This is where the Turks and Caicos is today, with demands for the reinstatement of the 2006 constitution, that many insist has nothing wrong with it. Some feel the newly considered constitution is meant to restrict the power of the elected representatives, and the newly proposed electoral system is designed to emasculate the political parties, and give further authority to the function of Governor as an institution.

What is often forgotten, or not realised, is the fact that the 2006 constitution can in many ways be regarded as really an independence constitution. The office of Premier had enormous power, and many international missions were undertaken by the elected government, although it was the UK government that was responsible for foreign affairs. The then Premier gave audience to many heads of state, and a minister of government had some responsibilities for national security. The UK government on a whole, allowed the Turks and Caicos to exercise authority in many areas, which could only be seen in an independent territory. Under the 2006 constitution, therefore, the islands could be described as really being independent where governance in the strict sense is concerned. Ministers exercised certain levels of authority to negotiate abroad on behalf of the country, met with their counterparts abroad, and entered into agreements after the proposals had gone through the cabinet process.

The independent Caribbean territories basically followed this same process. It appears, though, that the Turks and Caicos, although coming a little late on the scene, caught up quickly with these countries, even surpassing them in economic development, and becoming their equal in the level of political awareness and consciousness. As a matter of fact, our first Premier was even invited to an economic event in Jamaica to share ideas on how his country was able to achieve the level of economic growth it did. One of our Chief Ministers under the PDM government even attended important functions abroad, on an equal footing with other heads of state. Although not formally an independent country, the Turks and Caicos enjoyed equality of status with the other independent Caribbean countries. No other Caribbean country received this recognition when they were at the political stage the Turks and Caicos was at.

We all know the political story of what happened to the Turks and Caicos political system, and the accompanying economic challenges we now face. Many feel that the introduction of current revenue measures, and those impending, will result in further economic decline, and a further lowering of the standard of living in the islands, as well as discouraging foreign investment. Some feel that our economic progress began with the introduction of political parties that took various initiatives that secured agreements for growth and development to take place. Others feel that jealousy is responsible for the state the country is in now, and that there is no independent objective means of knowing what the real state of the economy is.

There is a segment of the population that also feels that whatever resources we have are not being used in a way significantly beneficial to the inhabitants, and that a new class of ‘others’ is calling the shots, and enjoying a certain lifestyle, while local people are mere spectators in their own country. If this is so, is this moral? Others feel that it is the Turks and Caicos political class and their associates that are responsible for the developments that led to where we currently are.

But there is also a view which is convinced that the profile of the Turks and Caicos as a country with people of colour who developed and managed a successful economy, and brought advantages not previously enjoyed to almost every island and its inhabitants, went against the previously held view of people of colour being unable to manage their political and economic institutions successfully, being always dependent on handouts from others, because they were lazy, carefree, and a bunch of freeloaders, incapable of anything serious or worthy of note. Certain activities therefore had to be initiated to restore the islands to the status it was felt they should really have, as a territory with people of colour as its majority, with a selected few of ‘others’ who feel themselves entitled, by virtue of their alleged cultural sophistication, to lead these people of colour into the light.

In the context of the wider Caribbean, then, it can be seen, that basically, the Turks and Caicos followed the same political and economic course, had the same historical elites that exercised power and authority over their destiny, and experienced the same condescending attitudes exhibited by these elites. The demonstrations for the restoration of democracy here were also carried out by other Caribbean territories in their quest for autonomy, and our politicians, although living in a more enlightened age, still behave in a way reminiscent of those Caribbean politicians at our stage of political development.

The independent countries got their way. Will the Turks and Caicos, through its party system, and other political groups achieve its objectives and soon join these territories as a fully sovereign and independent country?

March 16, 2011

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