FIDEL: "The Struggle Has Barely Begun"

[magbana]

Reflections by Comrade Fidel
The Struggle Has Barely Begun

Governments can change but the instruments they used to turn us into a
colony are still the same.

For one president in the United States with a sense of ethics, in the
last 28 years we have had three who committed genocides and a fourth who
internationalized the blockade.

The OAS was the instrument for those crimes. Only its expensive
bureaucratic apparatus took its ICHR agreements seriously. Our nation
was the last of the Spanish colonies after four centuries of occupation
and it was the first to liberate itself from U.S. domination after more
than six decades.

“Freedom is very dear, and it is necessary, either to live without it or
to decide to buy it for its price”, the Apostle of Our Independence
taught us.

Cuba respects the opinions of the governments of sister nations in Latin
America and the Caribbean who think in a different manner, but it doesn’t
wish to be part of that institution.

Daniel Ortega who made a valiant and historic speech in Port of Spain
explained to the people of Cuba that the independent countries of Africa
did not invite the European former colonial powers to be part of the
African Unity. It is a position worthy of being taken into account.

The OAS was not able to prevent Reagan from unleashing the dirty war
against his people, mining their ports and resorting to drug trafficking
to acquire weapons to fight the war, with which he financed the death,
maiming or serious wounding of tens of thousands of young people in a
country as small as Nicaragua.

What did the OAS do to protect it? What did it do to prevent the
invasion of Santo Domingo, the hundreds of thousands of people murdered
or disappeared in Guatemala, the air attacks, the assassinations of
prominent religious leaders, the massive repression against the people,
the invasions of Grenada and Panama, the coup in Chile, the tortured and
disappeared there and in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and other places?
Did it ever accuse the United States? What is its historical evaluation
of these events?

Yesterday, on Saturday, Granma printed what I had written about the ICHR
agreement against Cuba. I was curious later about the stance it adopted
against Venezuela. It was more or less the same rubbish.

The Bolivarian Revolution’s access to power was different from that of
Cuba. In our country, the political process had been suddenly
interrupted by a treacherous military coup promoted by the United States
on March 10, 1952, a few weeks away from the general election that was to
be held on the first of June of that same year. In Cuba, once again, the
people had no other alternative but to resign themselves. Again the
Cubans fought, and this time the result was very different. Almost seven
years later, the Revolution emerged victorious for the first time in
history.

With a minimum of weaponry, more than 90% of which had been captured from
the enemy during 25 months of warfare backed by the people, and in the
final offensive with a general revolutionary strike, the revolutionary
combatants trounced the tyranny and took control of all its weapons and
power centers. The victorious Revolution became the source of law just
as in any other era in history.

That was not the case in Venezuela. Chávez, a revolutionary soldier like
others in our hemisphere, became president by the rules of the
established bourgeois Constitution as the leader of Movimiento V
República, allied to other leftist forces. The Revolution and its
instruments were yet to be created. After the military uprising led by
him had triumphed, the Revolution in Venezuela might have possibly taken
another route. However, he abided by the established legal norms within
his reach as the chief method for the struggle. He developed the habit
of consulting the masses as often as necessary.

He submitted the new Constitution to a popular referendum. It was not
long before he became aware of the methods of imperialism and its allies
in the oligarchy to recover and hold on to power.

The coup on April 11, 2002 was the counterrevolution’s response.

The people reacted and brought him to power again when, isolated and
incommunicado, he was at the point of being eliminated by the right wing
which was forcing him to sign his resignation.

He didn’t give up and resisted until the very Venezuelan navy released
him and air force helicopters brought him back to the Miraflores
Presidential Palace which had already been occupied by the people and
army soldiers in Fuerte Tiuna who had risen up against the senior
officers perpetrating the coup.

At the time I thought that his policy would become more radical; however,
concerned for unity and peace, at the moment of greatest strength and
support, he was generous and talked with his adversaries seeking their
cooperation.

The response given to that attitude by imperialism and its accomplices
was the oil coup. Perhaps one of the most brilliant battles he waged at
that time was the one he carried out to supply fuel to the people of
Venezuela.

We had talked many times since he visited Cuba in 1994 and he spoke at
the University of Havana.

He was a true revolutionary, but as he was gaining awareness of the
injustice rampant in Venezuelan society his thinking took on greater
depth until he arrived at the conviction that Venezuela had no
alternative other than radical and total change.

He knows even the smallest details of the Liberator’s ideas, a person he
profoundly admires.

His adversaries understand that it is not easy to win when faced with the
tenacity of a man who struggles without even a moment’s rest. They could
decide to take his life but his internal and external foes know what that
would mean for their interests. There can be irrational lunatics and
fanatics, but neither leaders, peoples or humanity itself are exempt from
such dangers.

Considering it calmly, today Chávez is a formidable adversary for the
capitalist production system and for imperialism. He has become a real
expert on many of human society’s basic problems. I have seen him in
these days as he inaugurated dozens of health services. He is
impressive. He forcefully criticizes what was happening with vital
services such as hemodialysis, which used to be provided in private
centers and paid by the State. The poor were condemned to die if they
lacked the money. The same was happening with many other services;
today, new facilities are available in the hospitals with the support of
the most modern equipment.

He masterfully handles even the most insignificant details concerning
national production and social services. He is on top of the theory and
practice of socialism needed by his country and he makes great efforts
through his most profound convictions. He defines capitalism for what it
is: he doesn’t draw caricatures of it; he reveals X-rays and pictures of
the system.

We are dealing with a peculiar and horrible ensemble of forms of
exploitation of human work: unjust, unequal, arbitrary. He doesn’t
simply talk about the worker; he shows him on television working with his
hands, showing his energy, his knowledge, his intelligence, creating the
goods or services that are essential to human beings; he asks them about
their children, their families, husbands or wives, their kin, where they
live, what they are studying, what they are doing to improve themselves,
their age, salary, future pension, all the grotesque lies about property
that are being spread by the imperialists and capitalists. He shows the
hospitals, schools, factories, boys and girls; he provides facts about
the factories being built in Venezuela, the machinery, figures on the
growth of employment, natural resources, plans, maps, and he provides
news on the latest gas discovery. The most recent measure adopted by
Congress: the law nationalizing the 60 key companies supplying services
each year to PDVSA, the state oil company, for a value of more than 8
billion dollars. They were not private property; Venezuela’s neo-liberal
governments created them with resources belonging to PDVSA.

I had not seen such a clear transformation into images of an idea,
broadcast by television. Chávez doesn’t just have a special talent to
capture and transmit the essence of the processes but he accompanies it
with a prodigious memory; it is rare for him to forget a word, a phrase,
a verse, a musical inflection; he combines words that express new
concepts. He speaks of a socialism that seeks justice and
equality; “while cultural colonialism continues to live in our minds, the
old will never die and the new will never be born”. He combines eloquent
verses and phrases in articles and letters. Above all else he has shown
himself to be the political leader in Venezuela who is capable of
creating a party, incessantly transmitting revolutionary ideas to its
members and educating them politically.

I especially observed the faces of the captains and other crew members of
the ships of the nationalized companies; their words reflect inner pride,
gratitude for the recognition, security in the future; the faces of the
jubilant young economy students who name him godfather of the promotion
at the point of finishing their university studies when he tells them
more than 400 of them are needed to move to Argentina, ready to work in
the management of 200 new factories in a program agreed to with that
country; they will be sent there at the end of their course to be trained
in the production processes.

Ramonet was with him; he was amazed at Chávez’ work. When about eight
years ago we started our revolutionary cooperation with Venezuela, he was
in the Palace of the Revolution, asking hundreds of questions. The
writer knows the subject and he racks his brains trying to guess what
will be replacing the capitalist production system. The Venezuelan
experience is certainly filling him with astonishment. I have been
witness to a unique effort in that direction.

It is a battle of ideas that has been lost beforehand by the adversary
who has nothing to offer humanity.

No wonder the OAS is hypocritically trying to present him as an enemy of
freedom of expression and democracy. Almost half a century has gone by
since those chipped and hypocritical weapons came up against the
steadfastness of the Cuban people. Today, Venezuela is not alone and it
has the experience of 200 years of exceptional patriotic history on its
side.

This struggle has barely begun in our hemisphere.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 10, 2009

1:36 p.m.

http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2009/0511reflexionfidel.htm