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