U.S. Imperialism Keeps The Fire Burning

U.S. imperialism adds fuel to the fire, but from afar

Economic, commercial and financial sanctions, as a means to exert pressure on a country, do not solve the current crisis, but rather add fuel to the fire and aggravate the international economic situation

By Madeleine Sautié Rodríguez | informacion@granmai.cu

Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez Communist Party of Cuba Central Committee First Secretary and President of the Republic cited three elements that are sustaining and aggravating the world’s current difficulties, during his closing remarks at the Ministry of Culture’s annual review for the year 2021, held at José Martí National Library.

The tightened United States’ economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba; the aggressiveness of the United States internationally; and the uncertainty created by covid-19 were the three issues impacting the current situation he emphasized.

With regard to the blockade, the President said that we are now experiencing a different moment, a particular feature of recent years, "Things began to get very complicated in the second half of 2019, when the Trump administration adopted more than 240 measures that cut off our sources of financing.  They placed us on their list of countries that allegedly support terrorism.  And all this has been maintained under Joe Biden's administration," he explained.

The blockade, he recalled, has caused shortages, financial persecution, persecution of fuel suppliers, in particular, and to this was added the even greater aggressiveness of the U.S. government against Cuba, with a broad media campaign demonizing our country, in an attempt to discredit all elements of the Cuban Revolution, seeking to construct the appearance of total failure, that everything is wrong and everything the country does to mitigate current conditions does nothing to solve the problems, he stated.

The President pointed out that this aggressiveness can be seen in the way the events of July 11 were addressed and the way a play was staged, announcing to the world that on November 15 the Cuban Revolution would collapse, and now they are attempting to distort Cuba's position with respect to the current events in Europe.  This imperialist hostility is not only directed toward Cuba; it is evident at a global level, he noted.

He called for reflection on the fact that we live in a world that needs peace more than ever, at a time when more than twenty countries have not yet been able to vaccinate even 10% of their populations and do not know when they will be able to do so, reminding those present that only 61% of the population worldwide has been fully vaccinated.  We know, he said, that until the planet’s population is immunized, the pandemic will continue.

It is never the time to be starting wars, the President said, adding, "They have mounted this aggressive media campaign, attempting to distort the essences.  I understand very well that our people are following the current military conflict in Europe and the regrettable loss of human lives, in addition to the material damage and the general threat to peace and regional and international security, but Cuba has expressed itself clearly, firmly and repeatedly, in strict adherence to our foreign policy that is based on the principles of the Revolution, with careful and rigorous analysis of the facts from all angles," he said.

And this is a serious matter, of extreme complexity, with historical roots, including those of recent history, which cannot be ignored, just as the conditions that have led to this situation cannot be ignored, he said.  "Cuba firmly and consistently defends international law, the United Nations Charter and the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace," he reaffirmed, assuring that, "We defend peace under all circumstances and unambiguously oppose the use of force against any state."

As a small country we understand this better than anyone, besieged for more than 60 years.  Under constant threat, we have suffered state terrorism, military aggression, biological warfare and a brutal blockade, and we are absolutely clear about the value of the principles of international law that serve as protection against unilateralism, imperialism, hegemonic policies and attempts to dominate developing countries.  These are principles and norms that we have defended firmly and consistently in all scenarios.  On this occasion, we have denounced political manipulation and double standards, and we have spoken the truth, he said.

An offensive military encirclement has been established around Russia, he said, condemning the fact that, for decades, the U.S. government has progressively expanded its hegemony and military presence in the region, with the continued expansion of NATO in Eastern European countries, ignoring commitments made by U.S., European and Soviet leaders in the 1990s, after the unification of Germany and the disintegration of the USSR, he recalled.

This conflict could have been avoided if the Russian Federation's well-founded demands for security guarantee had been seriously and respectfully addressed, he said.

Díaz-Canel noted, "To think that Russia should remain passive in the face of NATO's offensive military encirclement is irresponsible, to say the least.  They have taken that country to an extreme situation," he said, pointing out that the continued use of economic, commercial and financial sanctions as a means to exert pressure on a country, does not solve the current crisis, but rather adds fuel to the fire and aggravates the international economic situation, which has been severely affected by these two difficult years of pandemic, he added.

U.S. imperialism is adding fuel to the fire, he said, but from afar, using European countries as its backyard.  Cuba has made this point regularly in different international events, he stated, and recalled the speech delivered by Army General Raúl Castro, on February 22, 2014, in which he emphatically addressed this issue.

As we have reiterated, we will continue to advocate for a serious and constructive diplomatic solution to the current crisis in Europe, advocating peaceful means that guarantee the security and sovereignty of all, as well as regional and international peace, stability and security, he stated.  Cuba has been obliged to confront the pandemic under the brutal economic, commercial and financial U.S. blockade, which has been qualitatively escalated since 2019 to an even more damaging level, he noted.

We will have the opportunity to review these highly sensitive issues in greater depth and trust that the people will continue to keep an eye on these events and make the effort required to distinguish truth from manipulation, he stated.

Source

Victory for the Cuban Revolution!

Michael BURKE

TODAY is the 56th anniversary of the overthrow of the Fulgencio Batista regime in Cuba by Fidel Castro and his militant supporters on January 1, 1959. It signalled the end of the tyrannical Batista dictatorship. It also signalled the end of the days of exploitation that Cuba was subjected to from the United States for several decades.

Fidel Castro made it abundantly clear that he was implementing a socialist order in Cuba. He did not start out as a communist, but was forced to go that route following the fallout with the USA when they refused to trade with Cuba. Fidel Castro then turned to the Soviet Union for help, which they gave, but with several conditions. The main condition was that Cuba should go communist.

However, American journalists who interviewed Castro in the 1960s reported that what obtained in Cuba was not communism in the classical sense, but Castro-type socialism, later known as the Cuban model. And many who travelled to Cuba and the Soviet Union also said that there were distinct differences between the two countries. Even before that, in the early 1960s, local journalist Evon Blake had a story in his monthly Newday magazine entitled 'Castro: dictator but not communist'.

By the 1970s, the United Nations statistics revealed that Cuba had progressed way above the average Third-World country in terms of agricultural output, health care and education. The anti-communists countered that it was only possible because the equivalent of a million US dollars was being pumped into Cuba on a daily basis from the Soviet Union. It never occurred to any of these anti-communists that, by even saying that, they were revealing the progress of communism in the Soviet Union as they showed that the communist superpower was able to do that.

There was much local opposition to Jamaica's then prime minister, Michael Manley, expanding diplomatic relations with Cuba. But the anti-socialist rhetoric only helped the Manley cause and the Manley rhetoric. It could have helped the return of the People's National Party to government in 1976.

The Cuban Government gave Jamaica four schools, the first of which was the Jose Marti School at Twickenham Park in St Catherine. Then there were the Cuban doctors -- who left when the Jamaica Labour Party Government led by Edward Seaga broke diplomatic relations with Cuba on October 29 1981. All sorts of allegations had been made against Paul Burke being in league with wanted men who had reportedly fled to Cuba, none of which were ever proven. Yet that was the basis on which ties were cut with Cuba.

I represented St Michael's Roman Catholic Seminary (now renamed theological college) at an ecumenical consultation on evangelism in Trinidad in 1975, which was held on the St Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies. At that conference, at least one Cuban Protestant minister complained that only Roman Catholics counted in the eyes of Fidel Castro.

Socialism and Catholicism

But some will ask how do I reconcile my socialist position with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In the writings of the popes going back to the earliest days of communism, the church taught that no one could be a good Catholic and a good socialist at the same time. This was when the words communism and socialism were used interchangeably. There was not yet a distinction made between Scientific Socialism or communism and the several other forms of socialism. In any event, the other forms of socialism had not yet fully developed to have a separate classification.

Four decades ago, the Roman Catholic Church explained that the meaning of the word socialism had evolved to include even the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. But in fairness to Norman Washington Manley -- who was never Roman Catholic -- he understood the distinction between the two words long before many others.

When Norman Manley was criticised in Catholic Opinion for expounding socialism, he countered by saying that he could not understand the criticism since everything he ever said was in line with the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. This at least showed that Norman Manley was reading the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.

Jamaican-born Mon-signor Gladstone Wilson, a Roman Catholic priest who was arguably the seventh most learned man in the world, was part of the so-called Drumblair circle of intellectuals that met regularly at Norman Manley's home. Monsignor Wilson, who knew 14 languages and had four doctorates, might have been the one to introduce Norman Manley to Roman Catholic social teaching.

The anti-communism rhetoric cost the PNP three elections, that of 1944, 1962 and 1980. In 1944, the rhetoric spoke to what obtained in Russia. In 1962, it was the Russian ship in the harbour. In 1980, it was all about Michael Manley and Castro.

Indeed, it was a strange irony when Bruce Golding, as prime minister, visited Cuba. It was a further irony that when Barack Obama announced that the embargo against Cuba would be lifted the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party welcomed the decision. I invite readers to do their research on the position of the JLP on Cuba as late as the 1980s.

Pope John Paul II visited Cuba in the 1990s. One of the statements made by Fidel Castro was that he and the pope were ideological twins. Pope John Paul II called for a lifting of the embargo against Cuba. In recent times, Pope Francis has also called for this and worked tirelessly behind the scenes to bring this about.

Classical communism in the Soviet Union came to a final end on December 25, 1992. There was no longer a Soviet Union but Russia and 14 other states with their own independent governments. Cuba was left isolated but did not surrender to anyone -- least of all the powerful and mighty USA, whether under Fidel Castro or his brother Raul. Yet the USA has lifted the embargo. The former Soviet Union lost the cold war against the USA but Cuba has won theirs.

Happy New Year to everyone!

ekrubm765@yahoo.com

January 01, 2015

Jamaica Observer

...celebrating the 54th Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution

Celebrating the triumph of Cuba's revolution

By YURI GALA LOPEZ

I'd like to thank you for joining us in celebrating the 54th Anniversary of the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, officially commemorated on January 1st. That day in the year 1959 marked a milestone for my homeland because the victory of the revolutionary forces allowed the Cuban people to attain true independence and sovereignty.

Since then, the Cuban people undertook their project of freedom, solidarity and social justice, facing hostility and aggressions of various kinds. The Cuban Revolution has overcome those obstacles and just started its 55th year of existence and counting.

Year 2012 was a very dynamic one for Cuba in many areas. Cuba held elections for its local government structures at the municipal level, a process which was implemented successfully. On February 3, Cubans will go to the polls to vote for provincial delegates and members of Parliament.

Despite the tensions associated with the global economic and financial crisis and other external challenges, the Cuban economy was expected to close year 2012 with a 3.1 per cent growth of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). For 2013, Cuba foresees a 3.7 per cent GDP growth.

The gradual updating of Cuba's economic model continued. Last December, Cuban President Raúl Castro Ruz pointed out that:

"The updating of the Cuban economic model is advancing at a firm pace and it now begins to address major, broader and more complex issues, based on the premise that everything we do is aimed at the preservation and development of a sustainable and prosperous Socialist society, the only guarantee for the independence and national sovereignty achieved by several generations of fellow countrymen in more than 140 years of struggle."

In 2012 Cuba had to face important natural challenges. In October, Hurricane Sandy caused significant losses for my country, mainly in its Eastern region, where Santiago de Cuba, the country's second largest city, was particularly hit. However, the recovery process of the storm-damaged provinces is underway. International solidarity was shown to us in a myriad of ways, something which we deeply appreciate.

Last year, Cuba managed to preserve important social achievements. For example, my country ended 2012 with an infant mortality rate of 4.6 per 1000 live births, the lowest in the Americas. For the fifth consecutive year, Cuba registered a child mortality rate under five, an expression of the human development index. Moreover, the country reported the second lowest maternal mortality rate in its history.

On the other hand, the new migratory measures recently announced by the Cuban Government show its willingness to continue strengthening the relations between the nation and its emigration.

Cuba continues to enjoy an increasing international recognition maintaining diplomatic relations with over 180 countries. We keep receiving the moral support of many governments and peoples of the world in our denunciation of the five-decade old blockade, while solidarity is growing in the case of the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly imprisoned in the United States.

By the end of this month, Cuba will assume the Pro tempore Presidency of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a step which entails an immense honour and a great responsibility to which my country will devote the greatest efforts and energies.

In spite of our economic challenges and convinced of the importance of globalising solidarity to build a better world, Cuba has continued to provide its modest cooperation to other sister nations of the South. For example, more than 29,000 youth from 115 countries are now studying in Cuba. Out of those, more than 18,000 scholarship holders come from Latin America and the Caribbean countries.

In December 2012, Cubans together with the Caribbean people again celebrated the Caricom-Cuba Day, but this time was special because we also commemorated the 40th anniversary of the joint decision adopted by four countries, Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba.

That brave and historic political decision taken in 1972 by those newly independent countries, in a climate of hostility and enormous pressures, was a breach in the isolation imposed on Cuba and marked the beginning of the close and excellent relations of friendship, solidarity and cooperation that Cuba enjoys today with all CARICOM member States.

The year 2012 was indeed very fruitful for Cuba-Jamaica relations, precisely the year when we celebrated four decades of bilateral diplomacy based on strong friendship, cooperation and solidarity.

More than 200 Jamaicans are studying medicine and other university courses in Cuba under the relevant scholarship programme. In addition to that, over 200 Cubans specialists are part of bilateral cooperation programmes implemented in Jamaica mainly in the fields of health and education.

Last year, the Cuba-Jamaica Ophthalmology Centre, located in Kingston, performed more than 1,400 surgeries. Since 2005 to date, more than 65,000 Jamaicans have been screened under that programme, while more than 9,000 patients have undergone eye surgery free of charge to them.

Both countries continued to exchange high level delegations during 2012. In January, a Cuban delegation headed by His Excellency Esteban Lazo, vice-president of the Council of State, visited Kingston to attend the swearing-in ceremony of the Most Hon Portia Simpson Miller as Prime Minister. In December, Jamaica was visited by a Cuban delegation led by parliamentarian Kenia Serrano, President of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples.

In the same line, Cuba received the official visit of a delegation headed by the Hon AJ Nicholson, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade. Cuba was also visited by other high-level Jamaican delegations, including those led by the Honourable Ministers of Youth and Culture, Health, Science and Technology, and by the Attorney General.

Both countries continued to support each other in international fora. Last October, at the UN General Assembly, the Government of Jamaica (along with 187 countries) supported again the resolution on the necessity of ending the unjust US blockade against Cuba. That position was also shared by the House of Representatives of Jamaica. Cuba deeply appreciates that solidarity. We also thank those Jamaicans who continue to be involved in friendship groups with Cuba.

I'd like you to join me in a toast to the 54th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, and to the further strengthening of the longstanding friendship between the peoples and governments of Jamaica and Cuba.

 

Yuri Gala Lopez is Cuba's Ambassador to Jamaica. The edited speech was delivered at a diplomatic reception on January 16 to mark the 54th anniversary of the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, officially commemorated on January 1.

January 31, 2013

Jamaica Observer

Bahamas Blog International

Cuba: A Black Spring and White Ladies!

By Rebecca Theodore


Lo! The paradox unfolds. The gleam of the golden morn of freedom pierces through the night of gloom and oppression. The old paradigms and systems are decaying, ready to be replaced with new, more evolved ideas and energies. There is a voracious indignation. At last! The Twitter Revolution comes to Cuba.

‘And the vultures circle overhead waiting for the old man to die.’

Cubans yearn for Wal-Mart and McDonald’s. They covet ATT, Coke, Nike, and Levi’s. The young stare in passion at iPhones and Apple computers. Pornography is the entertainment of choice. Evangelists lie in wait with a message of redemption hungry for the harvesting of souls. Old exiled Cubans chat in busy coffee shops on Miami’s boulevards. They long to touch the green, green grass of home and light cigars under the starry nights and reminisce of memories lost, long before a 1959 revolution usurped their world of contentment.

“Enough is enough they say”

The voices of Ladies in White -- "Las Damas de Blanco” -- wives, mothers, sisters, daughters, widows and fatherless brides waiting for their bridegrooms, lament in pain as political prisoners continue to die dehydrating deaths in dark dungeons of shame. Yet, they continue to rebel against a demagogue government. For them Cuba is not a Caribbean paradise, it is the gates of hell. They live in humble homes and buy food with ration books. They lay claim to the “freedom” that exists in Cuba.

Abuse of human rights dissipates the void. Freedom of assembly and expression sparkle the emptiness of reality and cease to derail on the frontline of time. Youthful endeavours are lost in dreams unknown. Beyond the smoking curtains, they no longer want to be like ‘Che Guevara’, for they seek deliverance from the oven of wrath.

It is true that Cuba has a better literacy rate than the United States, better maternity leave for mothers, better equality for women in the workplace and more doctors per capita than the US. These are economic factors that should make Cuba the envy of many countries, but Castro’s method of freedom and human rights inspire another revolution.

Moreover, in a new and technological zeitgeist, where communism is just an antiquated political philosophy, a footnote in history, and an unsuccessful ideological experiment, a technological revolution looms supreme.

In a country where Castro is the currency of real politics, Cubans are no longer afraid. Power is slowly being taken over by social media. Repression and internet censorship are gently peeping through their veils of suffocation. Gross darkness dispels into the light of liberty.

It is clear that ideology has failed.

Hark! The courier -- The Cuban Revolution is now an emblem on a T-shirt. Fidel Castro a man against capitalism and commodities is now a commodity sold for capital on the streets of America. St Castro is now the new patron saint of capitalism. Cuba is now gripped in the claw of ‘Manifest Destiny.’

Hereafter, there will be blood. There will be freedom. There will be a Cuban Spring.

October 12, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Revolutionary racism in Cuba

by Naomi Glassman, COHA Research Associate





Cuba’s economy has struggled during the fifteen years since the fall of the Soviet Union, bringing economic disparity of an increasingly racial nature. Cuba’s population is split primarily between whites, mestizos and Afro‑Cubans (blacks and mulattos), with the percentage of Afro-Cubans varying between 62 percent[i] and 33 percent[ii] depending on the source. Like most former colonies, Cuba’s history of racism originated with the arrival of colonial Spanish settlers and their subordinated African slaves. Cuba was the last Latin American country to abolish slavery, by means of a royal decree issued by the Spanish King in 1886.





In his 1891 essay “Nuestra América,” Cuban author and independence fighter José Martí stated that there is no racism in Cuba because there are no races.[iii] He argued that Cuban unity and identity depended on all Cubans identifying as Cubans, instead of racially. White Cubans have often cited Martí’s position subsuming race to national unity as an argument that racism is not an issue in Cuba because “we are all Cubans.” But the legacy of slavery lingered, and was exacerbated by Cuba’s semi-colonial status under U.S. hegemony. Interactions with wealthy, white, prejudiced visitors from the U.S. contributed to social and economic divisions along racial lines. Afro-Cubans endured segregated facilities, discrimination under the guise of eugenics, and blatant racism at the hands of groups as extreme as the Ku Klux Klan Kubano.[iv]





After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro acknowledged the prevalence of racism and launched a set of reforms intended to eliminate racial disparity in public spaces, education and employment. However, he failed to adequately address its cultural and societal roots. After a few years, he declared his policies a success and made any further discussion of race or racial inequality a counterrevolutionary crime, insisting that talk of race would divide the nation. During Castro’s reign, the silence on issues of racism made further debate or improvements impossible, countering the initial benefits of his reforms. Even though the Castro government achieved more for blacks in fifty years than previous administrations had in the last 400 years,[v] his policies only addressed issues of unequal access without changing structural biases underlying society. With a new wave of economic changes affecting the country, race and racism are once again becoming important issues in Cuba.





Race and the Revolution





When Castro first came to power in Cuba, the Afro‑Cuban population was disproportionately poor and marginalized, lacking sufficient medical care, social services and educational opportunities. Castro believed that such overt racism was in direct conflict with his commitment to social justice and equality and passed policies to desegregate beaches, parks, work sites and social clubs. He outlawed all forms of legal and overt discrimination, including discrimination in employment and education. Castro also worked to increase the number of Afro-Cuban political representatives, with the percentage of Black members on the Council of State expanding from 12.9% in 1976 to 25.8% by 2003. However, overall, Afro-Cuban representation decreased as the institutions become more powerful.[vi]





Castro’s redistributive social and economic reforms had a positive and measurable impact on the quality of life for Afro‑Cubans. The government’s great achievements in extending education and medical benefits to all Cubans have narrowed racial disparities in life expectancy and matriculation rates. Alejandro de la Fuente, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, used statistics from the 1981 census to illustrate the progress made during twenty years of Revolutionary rule. He found that by 1981 there was a gap of only one year in life expectancy rates between whites and non‑whites, which proved that Cuba had achieved relatively equal access to such indicators as “nutrition, health care, maternal care and education.”[vii] Moreover, educational reforms contributed to improved literacy and education levels across the island. By 1981, the percentage of blacks (11.2 percent) and mulattos (9.6 percent) who had graduated from high school were higher than those for whites (9 percent) leading to equivalent proportions of blacks, mulattos and whites in professional jobs.[viii] With education came improved opportunities for social mobility, as a mass exodus of wealthy white professionals to the United States after the Revolution, created many more professional opportunities for the previously marginalized Afro-Cuban.[ix] Similar social justice initiatives such as “wage increases, social security improvements, the provision of public services gratis or at nominal cost, and the gradual spread of rationing” further benefited the economically marginalized .[x] Government jobs were often distributed in a non-confrontational affirmative action style, giving “hiring preference to those who had the greatest family need and lowest income,” which again had a disproportional benefit for Afro‑Cubans.[xi] In areas with complete government control, such as education, employment and health care, social justice policies led to increased equality and improved services and opportunities for Afro-Cubans.





Three years into his rule, Fidel Castro declared that the Revolution had eliminated racism, making any further discussion of racial inequalities a taboo subject. Official discourse directly tied racism to capitalism, and thus the development of an egalitarian society officially ended racism. The government connected racial discrimination to the colonial and ‘semicolonial’ legacies[xii] and “to the capitalist elite, who had emigrated to Miami, officially making it a nonissue in Cuba.”[xiii] Castro’s government sought to develop a national Cuban identity and discussions of race and inequality were seen as creating divisions where none existed. For fifty years of Castro rule in Cuba, race and racism were taboo subjects, making debate, discourse, and study impossible.[xiv] Later developments have proven that racism was not actually eliminated, just improved and pushed underground.





Economic Reforms and Racial Inequality





The Special Period, the difficult decade following the fall of the Soviet Union, caused economic hardships for all Cubans. The government stopped numerous social services and the country struggled with widespread shortages. During this period, the structural legacy of racism meant that Afro‑Cubans faced a greater brunt of the economic challenges. Many of the economic reforms passed to bring the Cuban economy out of its deep recession served only to exacerbate these racial inequalities. When faced with a economic stagnation, the Revolution’s commitment to social justice lost ground to the need for economic recovery, especially given the official belief that racism was no longer an issue, the racist implications of economic reforms were not an issue for the Castro government.





Without Soviet sugar subsidies, Cuba’s economic development shifted to the growing tourist trade. While the tourist industry is currently the most profitable sector because of the availability of USD, it is also the industry with the greatest racial disparity in employment opportunities: Afro‑Cubans hold only five percent of jobs in the tourist sector.[xv] The tourist resorts hire primarily whites, drawing on the structural legacy of racism and the pervasive cultural belief that white is superior. Jobs in the tourist sector require less education and skills, meaning that Afro‑Cuban advances in education in the early years of the Revolution no longer translate to economic success.





Remittances -- transfers of money into Cuba from Cubans living and working abroad -- are a new source of unregulated USD in the Cuban economy. Remittances primarily benefit white Cubans, because the majority of Cubans who emigrated after the Revolution were white or lighter‑skinned mestizo. Statistically speaking, “83.5 percent of Cuban immigrants living in the US identify themselves as whites. Assuming that dollar remittances are evenly distributed among white and non‑white exiles and that they stay, roughly, within the same racial group of the sender, then about 680 out of the 800 million dollars that enter the island every year would end up in white hands.”[xvi] Cuba has limited data on the quantity and distribution of remittances, but a 2000 survey in Havana found that “although income levels were fairly even across racial groups before remittances, white households outspent black households in dollar stores and in the purchase of major household appliances.”[xvii] Both in the sending and consumption of goods, remittances provide greater economic benefit to white Cuban households.





The Castro government began legalizing personal enterprises for profit during the Special Period. Since then, more and more Cubans have opened their own restaurants or repair shops. However, in 2000, the Havana Survey found that 77 percent of the self‑employed were white, and that these white entrepreneurs were more economically successful in comparison to their Afro‑Cuban counterparts.[xviii] Once again, blacks face disadvantages because they lack the capital in USD from tourism and remittances: it often takes an initial investment, such as a bicycle for deliveries, or real estate that could be used as a storefront or neighborhood restaurant to start up a new business. Afro‑Cubans are also disadvantaged when it comes to the development of paladares, or small restaurants run out of the home. The quality of housing was not addressed in the original anti‑discriminatory reforms, and Afro‑Cubans are still concentrated in overcrowded and dilapidated housing areas, limiting their opportunities for owning and opening paladares.





Re‑opening Debate





Faced with growing racial inequality from the economic difficulties of the Special Period in a speech on September 8, 2000, Fidel Castro officially reestablished the issue of race as a subject for debate and improvement:





“I am not claiming that our country is a perfect model of equality and justice. We believed at the beginning that when we established the fullest equality before the law and complete intolerance for any demonstration of sexual discrimination in the case of women, or racial discrimination in the case of ethnic minorities, these phenomena would vanish from our society. It was some time before we discovered that marginality and racial discrimination with it are not something that one gets rid of with a law or even with ten laws, and we have not managed to eliminate them completely in 40 years.”[xix]





Castro recognized that he was premature when he declared racism eliminated and admitted that, despite progress, there were gaps in the original reforms. In the documentary RAZA, Cuban citizens remark that there are equal rights before the law, but equal rights do not mean social equality: society is still racist because of widespread ignorance.[xx] While notable achievements were made in education and employment, areas such as cultural representation, police discrimination and housing lagged behind. Cuba still suffers from the legacy of centuries of discrimination followed by decades of silence.





The growing Cuban rap and hip‑hop movements have been instrumental in bringing issues of racism and discrimination back into the public eye. They are often explicit in descriptions of racism as lived experiences, challenging the official silence and the popular belief that it no longer exists in Cuba. In 1964, Afro‑Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén wrote the poem “Tengo” (I have) to celebrate the end of racial discrimination, saying: “I have, let’s see / that being Black/ no one can stop me / at the door of a dance hall or bar … I have, let’s see / that I have learned to read / to count … I have, that now I have / a place to work / and earn.”[xxi] In 2009, with economic difficulties and the reemerging issue of racism, the Cuban hip‑hop group Hermanos de Causa rewrote the poem “to denounce the persistence of racial discrimination and the growing marginalization of blacks.”[xxii] In their rap, also titled “Tengo” the lyrics now say: “I have a race dark and discriminated against / I have a workday that’s exhausting and pays nothing / I have so many things I can’t even touch / I have so many places where I can’t even go.”[xxiii] The shift in music lyrics is paradigmatic of the shifting debate on racism in Cuba.





Conclusion





For Afro‑Cubans, the next step is to continue reopening debate and discussion, including the positive representation of Afro‑Cubans in television programs and classroom curriculum. Cuba must begin with the advances achieved by the Revolution and then work to deepen the Revolution’s commitment to social equality by rectifying the errors now evidenced in growing racial inequality.[xxiv] Television programs and educational materials on the island either completely ignore Afro‑Cuban culture or represent its negative stereotypes. Educational curricula teach the history of white Cuba, while ignoring the cultural roots of Africa, Afro‑Cubans and other marginalized groups. Esteban Morales, a PhD. at the University of Havana, says: “Whitening continues to be present and nourished in our education. We educate without mentioning color … we are teaching each other to be white. … it turns out that while we do not exclude blacks and mestizos from our classrooms, we do exclude them from the content of our curriculums.”[xxv] While the government succeeded early on in passing desegregation legislation, it has failed to effect any changes in the public media and educational representation of Afro‑Cubans, thus perpetuating racial ignorance.





Finally, although Afro‑Cubans are the largest non‑white population on the island, focusing on racism only against Afro‑Cubans ignores the issues faced by Chinese, Jewish and indigenous peoples. Discussions and studies of race and racism on the island have been limited by the official silence, and much more investigation and research is needed to provide an accurate picture of the racial divisions on the island. Afro‑Cubans are economically, politically, socially, criminally, and culturally marginalized, yet many Cubans still refuse to recognize racism on the island. The anti-discrimination advances of the Revolution deserve to be lauded, but they should not leave us blind to the racism that exists and the continuing struggles of Afro-Cubans.





The references for this article can be found here.





The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information, visit www.coha.org or email coha@coha.org

 






June 22, 2011




caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Political Blog

Communist Cuba's First Lady: The Caribbean woman debunked

By Rebecca Theodore


It is clear that the political movements of the last decade only continue to undermine revolutionary movements and social welfare programs. However, as nation states are regraphed and ethnic and religious groups continue to compete for power, the political and physical conditions of women come to light.

In this regard, the eminence of Vilma Lucila Espín, wife of Raul Castro, sister-in-law of Fidel Castro, and one of the most influential women in Cuban politics, beams the beholder into a mirrored reflection of a woman who turned herself into a revolutionary during the Cuban revolution. Her involvement in a group headed by Frank País in opposition to the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship -- an informal revolutionary group that later merged with Fidel Castro's 26th of July movement is of special note.

Under País's command, “Deborah”, as she became known, prepared first aid brigades to care for the wounded once the yacht Granma arrived in Cuba carrying Castro and his associates. Espín worked underground for the revolution in Santiago, transporting weapons to the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. When Frank País was killed by the Batista army, Espín worked as an aide to Raul Castro, helping him coordinate clandestine work and guerilla operations in Oriente Province. In 1958, she joined the Castro guerrillas in the mountains under the name of “Mariela.”

As an esteemed figure of the revolution, the image of Ms Espín shouldering rifle and wearing combat fatigues during the rebel war helped change the attitude about the role of women in Cuba. Sadly enough, an androcentric society in Cuba represses Ms Espin’s struggle for women’s leadership rights as reason continues to dominate the controlling aspect of self-embodiment, passions and even history itself.

The dichotomy between women and reform in Communist Cuba will never be understood without the illuminated portrayal of Ms Espín’s leadership role on the pages of Cuban history, because in the same way reason is that which is given as an understanding to reality, the split between objectivity and subjectivity to discern reality in the patriarchal regime that now defines Cuba still sees women on the side of the less valued.

The way in which reality is conceived and played out in the everyday life of Cuban women in Cuba is not only manifested in oppression, exclusion and exploitation, reducing them to mere stereotypes and registering reason as an instrument of oppression, but subjugation of the female body buried in socialist ideology must be liberated as well. Ms Espín has achieved for women in Cuba what liberal feminists in the west are still fighting for, yet her achievements remain concealed by the intricacies of language and male domination in Cuba.

Although the Federation of Cuban Women (La Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas) (FMC), the organization founded by Ms Espin, has been essential in advancing both gender equalization and health improvement for women, and its recognition as both an NGO and a national mechanism for women gains wide support, the vast majority of Cuban women, who represent 46 percent of the country’s work force, are still not government supported or financed.

Active participation and training of leaders at all levels, mobilizing women into political work and government administration and domination of human rights in Cuba is still needed to complete the work of Vilma Lucila Espín.

In a country where speaking about human rights is an ideological deviance, the traditional role of morality and justice that Ms Espín demonstrated during the Cuban revolution must be highlighted. Ms Espín not only occupied the role of relief and support to her revolutionary male leaders as has been documented in Cuban history, but is a beacon of hope to all the women who are presently suffering against gender inequalities in Cuba and the Caribbean at large and further strengthens the women’s movement in the Caribbean.

Moreover, if the mission of the FMC is strengthening women's rights, fighting for the incorporation, participation, and promotion of women in economic, political, social, and cultural life in Cuba based on equal rights and opportunities; then over fifty years of revolution must be enough to have produced a keenly politicized Cuban woman capable of deep analysis, and concise projection to take the reins of leadership in Cuba and to work out solutions collectively for the Cuban people.

If Cuba under the leadership of the FMC has obtained for women everything that the movement for women’s right is presently asking for in an open 21st century, then why are Cuban women equal yet different and still totally excluded from the public square?

March 30, 2011

caribbeannewsnow

Bahamas Blog International

Caricom in 'changing' Cuba

ANALYSIS

RICKEY SINGH





A communiqué was expected to be issued yesterday on the Third Caribbean Community-Cuba Ministerial Meeting that concluded in Havana on Friday.

It was expected to offer an explanation on future Caricom-Cuba co-operation and initiatives in economic and political co-ordination with Latin America in the context of new economic and political alliances and arrangements in response to international developments.

The two-day meeting occurred in the significantly changing Cuban environment compared to that of 1972, when four Caricom countries had played a vital role in helping to bring the then Fidel Castro-led revolutionary Government out of the diplomatic cold in a display of courageous defiance of the United States of America.

At that time, Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago chose to break Washington's crude isolationist policy against that small Caribbean nation with their unprecedented joint establishment of diplomatic relations with Havana.

The legendary Fidel Castro along with the administration he led for some half-a-century, before serious illness compelled him to hand over government leadership to younger brother Raoul Castro four years ago, has never failed to show his deep appreciation for that pace-setting diplomatic initiative by the quartet of Caricom states.

Caricom ministers who participated in the Havana meeting were expected to learn at first-hand why Cuba -- the only country to suffer from the longest and most punitive embargo enforced by the USA -- is now in the process of implementing serious adjustments to its economic model from total State control, based on socialist transformation, to embrace a widening experiment in private sector operations.

The announcement earlier in the week by President Raoul Castro that some half-a-million State workers are to be facilitated in new employment, mostly in a gradually expanding private sector — including tourism and construction industries — had followed a controversial interview by elder brother Fidel with an American journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg, published in The Atlantic magazine.

The "misinterpretation"


Castro lost no time in telling the media at the launch of his latest book that he was "misinterpreted on the economy" by Goldberg when he reported him as saying that "the economic model no longer works for us".

But the Cuban leader refrained from any criticisms of Goldberg, remarking that he would "await with interest" the journalist's promised "extensive article" to be published in The Atlantic.

Those in the US Congress and mainstream media, known for their anxieties to ridicule Cuba's economic model and governance system, can be expected to join in political jeerings.

Of course, they would have no interest in considering, for instance, that after 50 years of admirable struggles to survive the onslaughts of successive administrations in Washington, with their suffocating blockade as a core feature, Cuba does not have to apologise for tough, pragmatic decisions on adjustments to its economic model; not in this closing first decade of the 21st century — long after the disappearance of the once powerful superpower, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and not after the collapse of Wall Street, America's traditionally flaunted economic model of capitalism.

Indeed, the 'Wall Street crash' was a development that spawned the prevailing global economic and financial crisis still seriously impacting today on economies the world over.

Work force


Initially, as explained in Havana, the alternative employment programme will affect half-a-million of the five million-strong Cuban work force, with another half-million to follow over a phased period with State assistance in various private sector businesses.

This, according to reports out of Havana, is not an overnight development. The adjustments, linked to reassessments of policies and programmes over the past two years, are being made all the more necessary by the global crisis that has affected so many poor and developing nations.

Incidentally, as readers would know, none of the economically affected nations have had to contend with a 50-year-long spiteful blockade by Uncle Sam.

Yet, for all its domestic challenges, the Cuban Government continues to reach out, in offering assistance, though not as previously extensive, to countries in the Caribbean and other regions in various areas, including health, agriculture and construction.

The United Nations has long recognised the remarkable achievements of Cuba in health and education. And just last week, while President Raoul Castro was speaking about redeployment of sections of the labour force, Inter-Press Service was reporting on Cuba's success in making available in the world VA-MENGOCO-BC, the only vaccine against meningitis-B. This medication has been included, since 1991, in Cuba's national infant immunisation programme and is used successfully in South and Central America.

As we await the outcome of last week's Third Cuba-Caricom Ministerial Meeting, it is of relevance to recall here what Professor Norman Girvan noted when he accepted in 2009 an Honorary Doctor of Economic Sciences degree from the University of Havana.

In recalling the debt of gratitude owed to the people of that Caribbean island state by so many in the poor and developing world, Girvan, a former secretary general of the Association of Caribbean States, observed:

"The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration on the ability of a small Caribbean country to chart its own course of social justice, economic transformation and national independence by relying on the mobilisation of the entire population; on the will and energy of its people; and for its numerous actions of intensive international solidarity... The debt is unpayable."

September 19, 2010

jamaicaobserver

Bahamas Blog International

"The world of the future has to be shared by everyone"

Interview with Fidel Castro (Part 2)

(Taken from the Mexican La Jornada newspaper)
• Fidel answers questions from the editor, Carmen Lira Saade

HAVANA.—Although there is nothing to indicate any unease on his part, I think that Fidel is not going to like what I’m going to say to him:

"Comandante, the whole charm of the Cuban Revolution, the recognition, the solidarity from a large part of the world’s intelligentsia, the people’s tremendous achievements in the face of the blockade; in short, everything, everything went down the tubes as a result of the persecution of homosexuals in Cuba.

Fidel did not shy away from the subject. He neither denied nor rejected the statement. He only asked for time to recall, he said, how and when that prejudice broke out among the revolutionary ranks.

Five decades ago, and as a result of homophobia, homosexuals were marginalized in Cuba and many of them were sent to military-agricultural work camps, accused of being "counterrevolutionaries."

"Yes," he recalled, "those were times of tremendous injustice, tremendous injustice!" he repeated emphatically, "whoever was responsible for it. If we did it ourselves, ourselves… I’m trying to delimit my responsibility in all of that because, of course, on a personal level, I do not have that kind of prejudice."

It is known that some of his best and oldest friends are homosexuals.

"But then, how did that hatred of the "different" come about? "

Fidel believes that it was all generated as a spontaneous reaction within the revolutionary ranks, which stemmed from old customs. In pre-revolutionary Cuba, there was not only discrimination against blacks, but also against women and, of course, homosexuals.

"Yes, yes. But not in the Cuba of the ‘new’ morality, of which revolutionaries both within and outside the country were so proud…"

"And so, who was responsible, either directly or indirectly, for not putting a stop to what was happening in Cuban society? The Party? Because this occurred during a time when the statutes of the Communist Party of Cuba did not explicitly state the prohibition of discrimination based on sexual orientation."

"No," said Fidel. "If anyone was responsible, then it was me.

"It is true that, at that time, I did not concern myself with that issue… I was mainly immersed in the October (Missile) Crisis, in the war, in political matters…"

"But that became a serious and grave political problem, Comandante."

"I understand, I understand… We didn’t know how to assess it… systematic acts of sabotage, armed attacks, were happening all the time; we had so many terrible problems, problems of life or death, you know, that we didn’t pay sufficient attention to it."

"After all of that, it became very difficult to defend the Revolution outside the country… Its image had been irretrievably damaged among certain sectors, particularly in Europe."

"I understand, I understand," he repeated. "That was fair…"

"The persecution of homosexuals could have been taking place with greater or lesser protest in any part of the world. But not in revolutionary Cuba," I said to him.

"I understand: it’s like when the saint sins, right? It’s not the same as the sinner sinning, eh?"

Fidel gave a hint of a smile but then became serious again:

"Look, think about how our days were during those first months of the Revolution: the war with the yankis, the missile situation and, almost simultaneously, the assassination attempts against my person…"

Fidel revealed the tremendous influence on him of the assassination threats and the actual attempts of which he was victim, and which changed his life:

"I couldn’t be anywhere; I didn’t even have anywhere to live..." Betrayal was the order of the day and he was forced to move around in a haphazard way…

"Eluding the CIA, which was buying so many traitors, including one’s own people, was no simple matter; but, in short, in any case, if someone has to assume responsibility, then I will. I am not going to place the blame on other people..." affirmed the revolutionary leader.

He only regrets not having corrected the situation at the time.

Nowadays, however, the problem is being confronted. Under the slogan "Homosexuality is not a danger; but homophobia is," many cities throughout the country recently celebrated the 3rd Cuban Event for the International Day against Homophobia. Gerardo Arreola, La Jornada correspondent in Cuba, wrote a detailed report on the debate and the struggle underway on the island for respect for the rights of sexual minorities.

Arreola comments that it is Mariela Castro – a 47-year-old sociologist and daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro – who directs the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), an institution that, she says, has succeeded in improving Cuba’s image following the marginalization of the 1960s.

"Here we stand, Cuban women and men, in order to continue fighting for inclusion, so that this is the fight of all women and men, for the good of all women and men," stated Mariela Castro at the inauguration event, surrounded by transsexuals holding the Cuban flag and another rainbow one representing the gay pride movement.

Today in Cuba, efforts for homosexuals include initiatives such as the identity change for transsexuals and civil unions between same-sex couples.

Homosexuality on the island was decriminalized in the 1990s, although it did not immediately result in the end of police harassment. And since 2008, sex change operations have been offered free of charge.

THE BLOCKADE

In 1962, the United States decreed the blockade of Cuba. That was "a ferocious attempt at genocide," as Gabriel García Márquez, the writer who has best chronicled the period, described it.

"A period that has lasted up until today," Fidel informed me.

"The blockade is more than ever in force today, and with the aggravating factor at the present time, that it is constitutional law in the United States for the very fact that the president voted for it, the Senate did and the House of Representatives…"

The number of votes and its implementation could – or not – considerably alleviate the situation. But there it is…

"Yes, there is the interfering and pro-annexationist Helms-Burton Act… and the Torricelli Act, duly passed by the Congress of the United States.

"I very well remember Senator Helms on that day in 1996 when his initiative was passed. He was elated and repeated the aim of his plan to journalists:

"Castro has to leave Cuba. I don’t care how Castro leaves the country: whether he leaves in a vertical or horizontal position is up to them… but Castro has to leave Cuba."

THE SIEGE BEGINS

"In 1962, when the United States decreed the blockade, Cuba soon found itself with the proof that it had nothing more than six million determined Cuban people on a luminous and undefended island…

Nobody, no country, could trade with Cuba; there couldn’t be any buying or selling; heaven help that country or company which did not submit to the commercial harassment decreed by the United States. What always struck me was that CIA boat patrolling territorial waters until just a few years ago, there to intercept boats carrying merchandise to the island.

The greatest problem, however, was always been that of medicines and food, which continues up until today. Even today, no food company is allowed to trade with Cuba, not even taking into account the importance of the volumes that the island would acquire or because Cuba is always obliged to pay cash in advance.

Condemned to death by starvation, the Cubans had to "invent life all over again from the beginning," as García Márquez said.

They developed a "technology of need" and an "economy of scarcity", he related: a whole "culture of solitude."

There is no sign of regret, far less of bitterness, when Fidel Castro admits that a large part of the world simply abandoned the island. On the contrary…

"The struggle, the battle that we had to fight led us to make greater efforts that perhaps we would have done without the blockade," said Fidel.

He recalled with a touch of pride, for example, the immense mass operation undertaken by five million young people, grouped together in the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs). In just one eight-hour day, they achieved a mass vaccination program throughout the country, eradicating illnesses such as polio and malaria.

Or when more than 250,000 literacy teachers – 100,000 of whom were children – took on the responsibility of teaching the majority of the adult population, who were unable to read and write.

But the "great leap" forward is, without any doubt, in medicine and biotechnology:

"They say that Fidel himself sent a team of scientists and doctors for training in Finland, who would subsequently be responsible for the production of medicines."

"The enemy used the bacteriological warfare against us. It brought the Dengue Virus 2 here. In pre-revolutionary Cuba, not even the Dengue Virus 1 was known here. The Virus 2 appeared here; it is much more dangerous because it produces a hemorrhagic dengue that attacks children above all.

"It came in via Boyeros. The counterrevolutionaries brought it, those same individuals who went around with Posada Carriles, the same ones who were pardoned by Bush, the same ones who planned the sabotage of the [Cubana] aircraft over Barbados… Those same people were given the task of introducing the virus," Fidel denounced.

"They blamed Cuba because they said that there were lots of mosquitoes on the island," I told him.

"And how were we not going to have them if the only way to get rid of them was with Abate (Temefos, an insecticide) and we couldn’t get Abate? Only the United States produced it," he revealed.

The Comandante’s face saddened:

"Our children began to die," he recalled. "We didn’t have anything with which to attack the disease. Nobody wanted to sell us medicines or the equipment to eradicate the virus. One hundred and fifty people died from that disease. Almost all of them were children…"

"We had to resort to buying contraband goods, even though they were very expensive. Everywhere they prohibited them from even being brought in. Once, on compassionate grounds, they were allowed a little to be brought in."

On "compassionate grounds," said the strong man of the Revolution. I confessed that I was confused…

Not exactly on compassionate grounds, rather in solidarity, some friends of Cuba resorted to doing precisely that. Fidel mentioned Mexico, the Echeverría family, Luis and María Esther who – although not in government at that time – were able to secure some equipment that allowed Cuba to alleviate the epidemic to a certain degree.

"We will never forget them," he said, visibly moved.

"You see," I told him, "Not all your relationships with figures from Mexico’s power elite have been negative or difficult…"

"Of course not," he said, before we drew the interview-conversation to a close and went to have lunch with his wife, Dalia Soto del Valle.

From that terraced area where he sits to reflect and analyze the world and life itself, Fidel raised a toast to "a world of the future with just one homeland."

"What does it mean that some of us are Spanish, others English, others African? And that some have more than others?

"The world of the future has to be a shared one, and the rights of human beings have to be above individual rights…And it is going to be a rich world, where rights are going to be exactly equal for everybody…"

"How is that going to be to achieved, Comandante?"

"By educating… educating and creating love and trust."

Translated by Granma International

granma.cu

Havana. September 3, 2010

Bahamas Blog International

- “Obama has to be persuaded to avoid nuclear war” (Part 1)

“Obama has to be persuaded to avoid nuclear war” - (Interview with Fidel Castro Part 1)

• Fidel answers questions from Carmen Lira Saade, editor of Mexico’s La Jornada newspaper

(Taken from CubaDebate)

HAVANA. He was fighting for his life for four years. Entering and leaving the operating room, intubated, being fed intravenously, catheters, frequent lapses into unconsciousness…

“My illness is no state secret,” he would have said just before it became a crisis and forced him to “do what I had to do:” to delegate his functions as president of the Council of State and consequently, as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of Cuba.

“I cannot continue any longer,” he admitted then – as he reveals in this his first interview with a foreign newspaper since that time. He made the transfer of command, and handed himself over to the doctors.

That event shook the entire nation, friends from other parts; prompted his detractors to cherish revanchist hopes and put the powerful neighbor to the North on a state of alert. It was July 31, 2006 when the resignation letter of the maximum leader of the Cuban Revolution was officially announced.

What his most ferocious enemies failed to obtain in 50 years (blockades, wars, assassination attempts) was attained by an illness about which nobody knew anything and everything was speculated. An illness which that regime, whether he accepted it or not, was going to convert into a “state secret.”

(I am thinking about Raúl, about the Raúl Castro of those moments. It was not only the package that he was suddenly entrusted with, although he was always in agreement; it was the delicate state of health of his partner Vilma Espín – who died of cancer shortly afterward – and the highly possible death of his older brother and the only jefe in the military, political and family contexts.)

Forty days ago today, Fidel Castro reappeared in public in a definitive way, at least without any apparent danger of a relapse. In a relaxed atmosphere and when everything would make one think that the storm has passed, the most important man of the Cuban Revolution looks healthy and vital, while not fully dominating his leg movements.

For the approximately five hours that the conversation-interview with La Jornada lasted – including lunch – Fidel tackled the most diverse issues, although he is obsessed by some in particular. He allowed questions about anything – although he was the one who asked the most – and reviewed for the first time and with a painful frankness certain moments of health crises that he has suffered over the last four years.

“I came to the point of being dead,” he revealed with an amazing tranquility. He did not mention by name the diverticulitis that he was suffering from, nor the hemorrhages that led the specialists of his medical team to operate on various or many occasions, with a risk to his life every time.

What he did speak on at length was the suffering that he endured. And he showed no inhibition about describing that painful stage as a “Calvary.”

“I no longer aspired to live, or far less… I asked myself on various occasions if those people (his doctors) were going to let me live in those conditions or if they were going to let me die… Then I survived, but in very poor physical shape. I reached the point of weighing just over 50 kilos.”

“Sixty-six kilos,” clarifies Dalia, his inseparable compañera who was there for the conversation. Only she, two of his doctors and another two of his closest collaborators were present.

“Imagine: a guy of my height weighing 66 kilos. Now I’ve gone up to 85-86 kilos, and this morning I managed to take 600 steps on my own, without my stick, unaided.

“I am telling you that you are in the presence of a kind of re-sus-citat-ed man,” he stressed with a certain pride. He knows that, in addition to the magnificent medical team which attended him during all those years, thus putting to the test the quality of Cuban medicine, he has been able to count on his will and that steel discipline that is always imposed when he embarks on something.

“I never commit the slightest violation,” he affirmed. “Moreover, that means that I have become a doctor with the cooperation of doctors. I discuss things with them, ask questions (he asks many), learn (and he obeys)…”

He is fully aware of the reasons for his accidents and falls, although he insists that one hasn’t necessarily led to another. “The first time it was because I didn’t do the necessary warm-up before playing basketball.” Then came that of Santa Clara: Fidel was coming down from the statue to Che, where he had presided over a tribute, and fell head first. “That was influenced by the fact that those who look after you are also getting old, losing their faculties and didn’t take care,” he clarified.

That was followed by the fall in Holguín, likewise a severe one. All of these accidents before the other illness turned into a crisis, leaving him hospitalized for a long time.

“Laid out in that bed, I only looked around me, ignorant of all those machines. I didn’t know how long that torment was going to last and my only hope was that the world would stop;” surely in order not to miss anything. “But I rose from the dead,” he said proudly.

“And when you rose from the dead, Comandante, what did you find?” I asked him.

“A seemingly insane world… A world that appears every day on television, in the newspapers, and which nobody understands, but one that I would not have wanted to miss for anything in the world,” he smiled in amusement.

With a surprising energy for a human being rising from the dead, as he put it, and with exactly the same intellectual curiosity as before, Fidel Castro has brought himself up to date.

Those who know him well, say that every project, colossal or millimetric, which he undertakes he does so with a fierce passion, and even more so if he has to confront adversity, as had been and was the case.

“That is when he seems to be in the best humor.” Someone who claims to know him well told him: “Things must be going very badly, because you’re looking in fine health.”

This survivor’s task of accumulating daily news begins when he wakes up. He devours books with a reading speed obtained by nobody know what method; he reads 200-300 news cables every day; he is aware of and up to date on new communication technologies; he is fascinated by Wikileaks, “the deep throat of Internet,” famous for the leaking of more than 90,000 military documents on Afghanistan, on which this new ‘surfer’ is working.

“You see what this means, compañera?” he said to me. “Internet has placed in our hands the possibility of communicating with the world. We didn’t have any of that before,” he commented, while he delights in reviewing and selecting cables and texts downloaded from the net, which he has on his desk: a small item of furniture, two small for the size (even diminished by illness) of its occupant.

“The secrets are over, or at least would appear to be. We are in the face of a ‘high-technology research journalism,’ as The New York Times calls it, in the reach of everybody.

“We are in the face of the most powerful weapon that has ever existed, which is communication,” he interjects. “The power of communication has been and is in the hands of the empire and of ambitious private groups who used and abused it, that is why the media has fabricated the power that its boasts today.”

I listen to him and couldn’t help but think of Chomsky; any of the deceptions that the empire attempts must previously have the support of the media, principally newspapers and television, and today, naturally, with all the instruments offered by Internet.

It is the media that creates consensus before any action. “It is making the bed,” we would say… It is setting up the theater of operations.

However, Fidel added, although they have tried to preserve that power intact, they have been unable to. They are losing it day by day, while others, many, very many, are emerging every minute…

He went on to acknowledge the efforts of some websites and media in addition to Wikileaks: on the Latin America side, Telesur of Venezuela; Canal Encuentro, the Argentine TV cultural channel; and all the public and private media that are standing up to the region’s powerful private consortiums and the news, culture and entertainment transnationals.

Reports on the manipulation of information on the part of powerful national or regional business groups, their conspiracies to enthrone or eliminate governments or political figures, or on the “dictatorship” exercised by the empire via its transnationals, are now within the reach of all mortals.

But not of Cuba, which has just about one Internet port (ISP) for the entire country, comparable to that of any Hilton or Sheraton hotel.

That is why connecting in Cuba is a desperate business. It is like surfing in slow motion.

“Why is it like that?” I asked.

“Because of the categorical refusal of the United States to give the island Internet access via one of the underwater fiber optic cables that pass close to our coast. Cuba is obliged, instead, to download a satellite signal, which makes the service that the Cuban government has to pay much more expensive, and prevents the use of a wider band that could allow access to many more users and at the speed normal throughout the world with broadband.”

And that is why the Cuban government is giving connection priority not to those who can pay for the cost of the service, but to those who most need it, like doctors, academics, journalists, professionals, government ‘cadres’ and social use Internet clubs. It cannot do any more.

I think about the extraordinary efforts of the Cuban website CubaDebate to internally nourish and take the country’s information abroad under the current conditions. But, according to Fidel, Cuba could find a solution to this situation.

He was referring to the conclusion of underwater cables extending from La Guaira port in Venezuela to the outskirts of Santiago de Cuba. With these works being undertaken by the government of Hugo Chávez, the island could have broadband and possibilities for a huge amplification of the service.

“Cuba, and you in particular, have been pointed to many times as maintaining a strictly anti-U.S. position and you have even been accused of bearing hatred toward that nation,” I said to him.

“Nothing of the kind,” he clarified. “Why hate the United States if it is only a product of history?”

But, in real terms: barely 40 days ago, when he had not completely “risen,” he concentrated – as a variation – on his powerful neighbor in his new Reflections.

“The thing is that I began to see very clearly the problems of the growing world dictatorship…” and he presented, in the light of all the information that he was managing, the “imminence of a nuclear attack that would unleash a world conflagration.”

He was still unable to go out and talk, to do what he is doing now, he told me. He could just about write with some fluidity, because he not only had to learn how to walk again, but also, at the age of 84, he had learn to write again.

“I came out of hospital, I went home, but I walked, I exceeded myself. Then I had to do rehabilitation for my feet. By then I was already managing to relearn writing.

“The qualitative jump came when I could dominate all the elements that made it possible for me to do everything that I am doing now. But I can and must improve… I can get to the point of walking well. Today, as I told you, I walked 600 steps alone, without a stick, without anything, and I have to balance that with climbing up and going down, with the hours that I sleep, with work.”

“What is there behind this frenzy of work which, instead of rehabilitation could lead him to a relapse?”

Fidel concentrated, closed his eyes as if to sleep, but no… he returns to the charge:
”I do not wish to be absent in these days. The world is in the most interesting and dangerous phase of its existence and I am very committed to what is going to happen. I still have things to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like constituting a whole anti-nuclear war movement;” that is what he has been devoting himself to since his reappearance.

“Creating an international force of persuasion to avoid that colossal threat happening,” represents a tremendous challenge, and Fidel has never been able to resist a challenge.

“In the beginning I thought that the nuclear attack would be on North Korea, but I soon rectified that because I said to myself that China would stop that with its Security Council veto…

“But nobody is stopping that of Iran, because there is no Chinese or Russian veto. Then came the (UN) Resolution and although Brazil and Turkey vetoed it, Lebanon didn’t and so the decision was taken.”

Fidel is calling on scientists, economists, communicators, etc to give their opinions on what the mechanism might be via which the horror is going to be unleashed and the way that it might be avoided. He has even taken them to exercises of science fiction.

“Think, think!” he urges in discussions. “Reason, imagine,” exclaims the enthusiastic teacher that he has become in recent days.

Not everyone has understood his concern. More than a few people have seen his new campaign as preaching disaster or even delirious. To that must be added the fear of many that his health will suffer a relapse.

Fidel is not giving up: nothing or nobody is capable of even holding him back. He needs to convince as rapidly as possible in order to detain the nuclear conflagration that, he insists, is threatening to obliterate a large part of humanity. “We have to mobilize the world to persuade Barack Obama, president of the United States, to avoid a nuclear war. That is the only thing that he can do or not do, press the button.”

With the data that he handles like an expert and the documents backing up his words, Fidel is questioning and making a spine-chilling exposition:

“Do you know the nuclear power that is held by a good few countries in the world at present, compared to that of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki era?

“It is 470,000 times the explosive power of either of the two bombs that the United States dropped on those two Japanese cities; 470,000 times more,” he emphasizes, scandalized.

That is the power of each one of the 20,000-plus nuclear weapons calculated as being in the world today.

With much less than that power – with just 100 – a nuclear winter which would darken the world in its totality could be produced.

This barbarity could come about in a matter of days, to be more precise, on September 9, which is when the 90-day period given by the UN Security Council before inspecting Iran shipping expires.

“Do you think that the Iranians are going to give in? Can you imagine that? Courageous and religious men who see death as almost a prize… Well, the Iranians are not going to give in, that is a fact. Are the Yankis going to give in? And, what is going to happen if neither one gives in? And that could happen on September 9.”

Gabriel García Márquez wrote on the 41st anniversary of Hiroshima: “One minute after the explosion, more than half of human beings will have died, the dust and smoke of continents in flames will defeat sunlight and total shadows will return to reign in the world. A winter of orange-colored rain and icy hurricanes will invert the season of the oceans and turn around the course of the rivers, whose fish will have died of thirst in the boiling waters… the era of rock and heart transplants will revert to its ice infancy…”

“I DO NOT HARBOR THE LEAST DOUBT THAT THERE WILL BE GREAT CHANGES IN MEXICO”

“Tell me, tell me, what is all this that the “mafia” is saying about everything that I wrote?”

“It isn’t only the mafia, all right? There are more people disconcerted by those Reflections, Comandante. Not to mention the displeasure that you gave to the Mexican government.”

“I had no interest in criticizing the government… Why would I get involved with the Mexican government? For fun? If I devoted myself to getting involved with governments, to stating the bad or erroneous things that I consider they have done, Cuba wouldn’t have any relations.

“It is being said that with your praise and open acknowledgements, what you said to Andrés Manuel López Obrador was the “kiss of the devil”… and people are asking why it is that you are now making public both the statements of Carlos Ahumada to Cuban justice and details of your singular relationship with Carlos Salinas de Gortari. They suspect a hidden intention.”

“No, no, no. I had the good fortune to find Andrés Manuel’s book. Somebody gave it to me at the end of the (National) Assembly session. I read it rapidly and its reading inspired me to write what I wrote.”

“What inspired you?”

“Discovering what he had done with the land, with the mines; what he had done with the oil… Finding out about the theft, the plunder that that great country has suffered; about that barbarity that they have committed, and that (now has Mexico how it has…)”

“There are mistrustful people on one side or the other who are insisting that there are other intentions behind your chance words.”

“No. I hadn’t planned to write what I wrote; it wasn’t within my plans. I have a free agenda.”

“Well, it’s caused an uproar, I can tell you. They are accusing you of having unleashed a whole political scandal and the criticisms are raining down because they are saying that whether for good or bad, Comandante, you have gotten involved with the Mexican electoral process…”

“Ah! Yes?” he asks very animatedly. “So there is criticism of me? How good, how good! Send me them! And who are these criticisms coming from?”

“From many people, apart from one. The only one – of those involved – who has not said a single word is Carlos Salinas…

“Because he’s the most intelligent one, he always was, as well as being more skillful,” said Fidel with a mischievous smile. Judging by his expression, it would seem that he is already waiting for Salinas’ response. At best, even a book.

He went on to repeat some of the paragraphs of his Reflections: that Salinas had been in solidarity with Cuba, that he had acted as a mediator (appointed by Clinton in 1994) between the United States and the island “and conducted himself well and really acted as a mediator and not as an ally of the United States…”

He related that when Salinas obtained permission from the Cuban government to take refuge in that country and even “legally” acquire a house, that they saw “quite a lot of each other” and exchanged points of view, et cetera.

“I came to think that he never tried to deceive me,” Fidel said sarcastically.

“Really?” I asked. Did Salinas comment on or consult with him concerning his government’s decision to open up relations with self-declared terrorist organizations, such as the Cuban-American National Foundation, created with the exclusive purpose of overthrowing the regime and assassinating its president, Fidel Castro?

For the first time in the history of relations between the two countries, a Mexican government opened the doors of the presidential palace to Jorge Mas Canosa, at that time president of that paramilitary organization, and an old enemy of the Cuban Revolution.

“The man that you brought to this house was a killer,” I told Carlos Salinas on that occasion, during an interview with La Jornada. Salinas nodded, giving me the right. But he immediately justified himself by saying that his government was seeking participation with Cuban “plurality” in the “dialogue” that was taking place for a rapprochement between the two sides.

“I wish to state that Mexico is extremely respectful of the internal processes decided by the Cubans,” Salinas affirmed then.

“But what is happening to Cuba is not going to be at a remove from Mexicans; Mexicans cannot be absent from the transformations that might happen in that country because they will have repercussions in Mexico, in all of Latin America. We have to maintain this communication with the whole range of opinions… (La Jornada, August 1992).

“Opinions? Mexico needed the “opinion” of a criminal to enrich its dialogue with neighboring countries,” I enquired now.

Fidel had lowered his head and asked, as if to himself:

“Why did he do that to us? He had conducted himself as a friend of Cuba. Pending political and economic matters were being arranged with him, finally… He gave the impression that he didn’t have any problems with us.

“Why the hell did he have to receive that bandit?” he asked, somewhat disconcerted.

But he didn’t want to say anything more. He had turned the page a while back or had reserved it for the moment at which – after the obligatory balancing – he would decide to make public knowledge the termination of his relationship with the former Mexican president, as occurred with his Reflection “The giant with the seven-league boots.”

“Cuba never wanted to hand over the filmed documentation that confirmed the conspiracy against López Obrador, as the PRD was demanding at the time.

“In that we could not please them,” he explained. “We sent all the documentation to the authority asking for his extradition (the Mexican Foreign Ministry). Any other attitude would not have been serious,” he emphasized.

Then, Fidel became seriously ill and that matter, like many others, had had to wait.

“Why the mention of López Obrador at this pre-electoral moment?

“Because I had a debt with him. I wanted to tell him (although he did not agree to hand over the documentation asked for) that we were not in any conspiracy against him, nor (were we) or are we aligned with anybody in order to damage him. That, as I said in what I wrote, I am honored to share his points of view.

“That is precisely where they are saying that you gave him ‘the kiss of the devil,’ Comandante.”

“So we won’t even mention inviting him to Cuba, right?” he said with a roguish smile. “That would be risking too much, wouldn’t it? That whole gang would fall on top of him, to discredit him and take votes away from him.

“Like 50 years ago, in the early days of the Revolution, when traveling to Cuba was a totally daring undertaking. One photo arriving or leaving the Mexican airport for Havana could result in persecution, blows, prison…”

Fidel maintained his that little laugh of his, and advised:

“You Mexicans shouldn’t be so concerned about these things. All of that is going to change. I do not harbor the slightest doubt that there are going to be great changes in Mexico.”

To be continued...

Translated by Granma International

Havana. September 2, 2010

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- "The world of the future has to be shared by everyone" - Interview with Fidel Castro (Part 2)

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