Archive | Reflections of Fidel

That Tuesday, there was no fresh international news. My modest message to the people of Monday, February 18 had no problem being widely circulated. I began to receive news from 11:00 a.m. The previous night I slept like never before. My conscience was at rest and I had promised myself a vacation. The days of tension, with the proximity of February 24, left me exhausted.

Last Friday, February 15, I promised you that in my next reflection I would deal with an issue of interest to many compatriots. Thus, this now is rather a message.

More than two weeks ago, on January 27, 2008, the digital publication Tom Dispatch reproduced an article translated for Rebelión by Germán Leyens: “Why the Debt Crisis is Now the Greatest Threat to the American Republic” by Chalmers Johnson. This American author has not been awarded the Nobel Prize, as has Joseph Stiglitz, the famous and well-known economist and writer, or even Milton Friedman himself, who inspired neoliberalism and led many countries down that disastrous path, including the United States.

When in the previous reflection I asked McCain what he thought of the Five antiterrorist Cuban Heroes, I did so because I remembered what he had published on page 206 of his book Faith of My Fathers, co-written with his assistant Mark Salter: “It’s an awful thing, solitary….”

Yesterday, I said that while Bush was speaking to Congress, McCain was being honored at the Versailles Restaurant of Little Havana.

It was there that most of the fiercest enemies of the Cuban Revolution and their families took up residence, Batista’s followers, the big landowners, owners of apartment buildings and millionaires who tyrannized and plundered our people. The United States government has used them at will, to organize invaders and terrorists who have shed our people’s blood through almost 50 years. Later, illegal emigrants joined that stream, along with the Cuban Adjustment Act and the brutal blockade imposed on the people of Cuba.

One of the most hostile U.S. newspapers when it comes to Cuba, headquartered in Florida, offers the following report:…

These reflections are self-explanatory.

On the now well-known Super Tuesday, a day of the week when many U.S. states selected the candidate of their choice from among a pool of aspirants to the presidency of the United States, one of the possible candidates to substitute George W. Bush was John McCain…

Some days ago I mentioned his name as an example of a militant communist, whose struggle gave his life meaning. For eight years he held the highest posts within his Party. He shared Allende’s faith in Chile and the beautiful vision that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues would again be opened “down which free humans could march toward the construction of a better society”.

On the day when hundreds of intellectuals coming from every continent are meeting in Havana to take part in an International Conference for World Equilibrium on the date of José Martí’s birth, on that same day, by some strange quirk, the President of the United States spoke. In his last State of the Union address to Congress, making use of the teleprompter, Bush tells us more with his body language than with the words arranged by his advisors.

The demise of the Soviet Union was to us like there were no more sunrises; a devastating blow for the Cuban Revolution. Not only did this translate into a total cessation of supplies of fuel, materials and foods; we lost markets and the prices that we had attained for our products in the difficult struggle for our sovereignty, integration and principles. The empire and the traitors, full of hatred, were sharpening their daggers with those who wanted to put the revolutionaries to the sword and recover the country’s riches.

Lula warmly reminded me of the first time he visited our country in 1985 to take part in a meeting organized by Cuba to analyze the overwhelming problem of the foreign debt; participants representing a wide spectrum of political, religious, cultural and social tendencies presented and discussed their opinions, concerned about the asphyxiating drama.

He spontaneously decided to visit Cuba for the second time since he became president of Brazil, even though the state of my health did not guarantee that he would be able to meet with me.

Iris Dávila has left us…

The wires made the announcement ahead of time. On January 6 we learned of Bush’s trip to the Middle East, just as soon as his very Christian Christmas holiday break was over. He would be going to Muslim territory, lands having a different religion and culture from that of the Europeans, who converted to Christianity, declared war on the infidels, in the 11th century A.D.

I am referring to a Chilean woman, Elena Pedraza, a highly educated specialist in rehabilitation. More than 40 years ago she paid her first visit to Cuba. Allende, a medical doctor, was not yet the president of Chile. The Cuban Revolution was almost 8 years old and it was already training teachers, doctors, physical therapists and health specialists, full speed ahead.

(to the Cuban National Assembly, December 28, 2007)

Comrades of the National Assembly:

You have no easy task on your hands…

I listened to the entire “Roundtable” program on Thursday the 13th without missing a single second of it. The news about the Bali Conference highlighted by Rogelio Polanco, editor-in-chief of Juventud Rebelde, confirms the importance of the international agreements and why they must be taken very seriously.

I am indebted to him. Yesterday marked another anniversary of his physical death. There are over forty different versions of how it occurred, but all coincide on several details that are of great interest.

Venezuela, whose people are heirs to Bolivar’s ideas which transcend his era, is today facing a world tyranny a thousand times more powerful than that of Spain’s colonial strength added to that of the recently born United States which, through Monroe, proclaimed their right to the natural wealth of the continent and to the sweat of its people.

For the first time, just before the UN discusses Cuba’s proposed resolution condemning the blockade, as it does every year, the president of the United States has announced that he is to adopt new measures to accelerate the “transition period” in our country, equivalent to a new conquest of Cuba by force.