Fidel Castro On The 30th Sandinista
Anniversary and the San Jose Proposal
Havana - The leader of the Cuban Revolution,
Fidel Castro, stated that nobody doubt that
only the Honduran people will be able to
build their own history.
In an article posted on Wednesday in the
Cubadebate website entitled "The 30th
Sandinista Anniversary and the San Jose
Proposal," Fidel Castro said, "in the wake
of two weeks of growing popular struggle,
the United States maneuvered to gain time.
The Department of State appointed Oscar
Arias, president of Costa Rica, to the task
of helping along the military coup in
Honduras, besieged by the vigorous but
peaceful pressure exerted by the people.
Never had such a similar event in Latin
America received such a response."
"The people of Honduras are the ones who
will have the last word. Representatives of
the social organizations and the new forces
are not the instruments of anyone, inside or
outside the country," the Cuban leader
wrote.
Prensa Latina is posting below the full text
of Fidel Castro's reflection.
REFLECTIONS BY COMRADE FIDEL
THE 30TH SANDINISTA ANNIVERSARY AND THE SAN
JOSÉ PROPOSAL
The coup d'etat in Honduras, promoted by the
far right-wing of the United States -which
in Central America was maintaining the
structure set up by Bush - and backed by the
Department of State, was evolving poorly on
account of the energetic resistance by the
people.
The criminal venture, condemned unanimously
by world opinion and international bodies,
could not be sustained.
The memory of atrocities committed during
recent decades by the tyrannies that United
States organized, instructed and armed in
our hemisphere was still fresh.
The efforts of the empire were set in motion
during the Clinton administration and in the
following years in the plan to impose the
FTA on all the countries of Latin America
via the so-called Summits of the Americas.
The intention of committing the hemisphere
to a free trade agreement fell through. The
economies in other parts of the world grew
at a good clip and the dollar lost its
exclusive hegemony as the privileged
currency. The brutal world financial crisis
complicated the situation. Under those
circumstances, the military coup was
produced in Honduras, one of the poorest
countries in the hemisphere.
In the wake of two weeks of growing popular
struggle, the United States manoeuvred to
gain time. The Department of State appointed
Oscar Arias, president of Costa Rica, to the
task of helping along the military coup in
Honduras, besieged by the vigorous but
peaceful pressure exerted by the people.
Never had such a similar event in Latin
America received such a response.
In US calculations, the fact that Arias held
the title of Nobel laureate for peace held
some weight.
The real Oscar Arias story indicates that
the man we are dealing with is a neo-liberal
politician, talented and with a gift for
words, extremely calculating and a faithful
ally of the United States.
From the first years of the triumph of the
Cuban Revolution, the government of the
United States used Costa Rica and
apportioned it resources to present it as a
showcase of the social advances that could
be achieved under capitalism.
That Central American country was used as an
imperialist base for the piratical attacks
against Cuba. Thousands of Cuban technicians
and university graduates were stolen away
from our people who were already being
submitted to a cruel blockade, in order to
provide their services in Costa Rica.
Relations between Costa Rica and Cuba have
been restored in recent times; it was one of
the two last countries in the hemisphere to
do so, something that is of satisfaction for
us, but in spite of that I must express what
I am thinking at this historic moment for
our America.
Arias, originally from the wealthy and
leading class in Costa Rica, studied law and
economics at a university in his country and
later studied and graduated as master in
political sciences from the English
University of Essex where he finally
graduated as Doctor of Political Sciences.
Having such academic laurels, President Jose
Figueres Ferrer of the National Liberation
Party appointed him as advisor in 1970, at
the age of 30, and shortly after he was
appointed Minister of Planning, a position
ratified by the next president Daniel Oduber.
In 1978, he enters Congress as Deputy for
that party. He ascends to secretary general
in 1979 and is president for the first time
in 1986.
Years before the triumph of the Cuban
Revolution, an armed movement of the
national bourgeoisie of Costa Rica, under
the leadership of José Figueres Ferrer,
father of President Figueres Olsen, had
eliminated the small coup-perpetrating army
of that country and his struggle gained the
sympathies of the Cubans. When we were
fighting in the Sierra Maestra against the
Batista tyranny, we received some weapons
and ammunition from the Liberation Party
created by Figueres Ferrer, but he was too
much of a friend to the Yankees and he soon
broke with us. It cannot be forgotten that
the OAS meeting in San José Costa Rica gave
rise to the First Declaration of Havana in
1960.
All of Central America suffered for more
than 150 years and, since the days of the
filibusterer William Walker who made himself
president of Nicaragua in 1856, is still
suffering the problem of United States
interventionism which has been a constant,
even though the heroic people of Nicaragua
have now attained an independence that they
are ready to defend right up to their last
breath. Any support from Costa Rica is
unheard of since it was achieved, even
though there was a government in that
country which, on the eve of the victory in
1979, saw fit to show solidarity with the
Sandinista National Liberation Front.
When Nicaragua was being drained of its life
blood in Reagan's dirty war, Guatemala and
El Salvador had also paid a high price in
human lives due to the US interventionist
policy that provided money, weapons, schools
and indoctrination to the repressive troops.
Daniel told us about how the Yankees finally
promoted formulae that put an end to the
revolutionary resistance of Guatemala and El
Salvador.
On many occasions, Daniel had bitterly
commented to me that Arias, following US
instructions, had excluded Nicaragua from
the peace negotiations. He only met with the
governments of El Salvador, Honduras and
Guatemala to impose treaties on Nicaragua.
Therefore he was expressing great gratitude
to Vinicio Cerezo. He also told me that the
first treaty signed in the convent of
Esquipulas, Guatemala on August 7, 1987,
after two days of intense conversations
among the five Central American presidents.
I have never publicly spoken about that.
But this time, while commemorating the 30th
anniversary of the Sandinista victory on
July 19, 1979, Daniel explained it all with
impressive clarity, as he did with all
subjects throughout his speech that was
heard by hundreds of thousands of people and
broadcast on radio and television. I use his
exact words: "The Yankees appointed him as
mediator. We have deep sympathies with the
people of Costa Rica, but I cannot forget,
in those tough years the president of Costa
Rica called together the Central American
presidents and he didn't invite us�"
"But the other Central American presidents
were more sensible and they told him: There
can be no peace plan here if Nicaragua isn't
present. In the name of historical truth,
the president had the fortitude to break the
isolation the Yankees had imposed on Central
America - where they had forbidden the
presidents to talk with the president of
Nicaragua and they wanted a military
solution, they wanted to finish Nicaragua
off, finish off its revolution, with a war -
, the man who took that courageous step was
President Vinicius Cerezo of Guatemala. That
is the true story."
Right away he added: "The Yankees came
running to find President Oscar Arias,
because they already know him! They want to
find a way to gain some time, so that the
perpetrators of the coup begin to make
demands that are unacceptable. Who has ever
heard of a coup negotiating with the people
from whom it is ripping away their
constitutional rights? Those rights cannot
be negotiated; one simply has to reinstate
President Manuel Zelaya, just as the ALBA,
Rio Group, SICA, OAS and United Nations
treaties stated.
"We want peaceful solutions in our
countries. The battle being fought by the
people of Honduras at this time is a
non-violent battle, in order to avoid more
pain than that which has already been
inflicted on Honduras," concluded Daniel,
verbatim.
Because of the dirty war ordered by Reagan
and which in part - he told me - was funded
by drugs sent to the United States, more
than 60,000 persons lost their lives and
5,800 more were made invalid. Reagan's dirty
war gave rise to the destruction and
abandonment of 300 schools and 25 health
centres; 150 teachers were murdered. The
toll rose to tens of billions of dollars.
Nicaragua only had 3.5 million inhabitants,
it stopped receiving the fuel that the USSR
was sending them and the economy became
unsustainable. It called elections and even
had them earlier, and it respected what the
people decided, those people who had lost
all hope for holding on to the gains of the
Revolution. Nearly 17 years later, the
Sandinistas returned to the government in
victory; just two days ago they were
celebrating the 30th anniversary of the
first victory.
On Saturday, July 18th, the Nobel Laureate
proposed 7 points of the personal peace
initiative that was detracting from the
authority of the UN and OAS decisions and
was tantamount to an act of renunciation by
Manuel Zelaya that took away sympathies and
weakened poplar support. The constitutional
president sent what he described as an
ultimatum for the coup, which his
representatives were to present, announcing
at the same time his return to Honduras on
Sunday, July 19th via any department of that
country.
Around noon on that Sunday, a giant
Sandinista demonstration takes place, with
historical denunciations of US policy. They
were truths that could be nothing other than
tremendously significant.
The worst of the matter is that the United
States was running into resistance for its
sweetening manoeuvre from the coup
government. It would still need to be
pinpointed at what moment the Department of
State sends their strong message to
Micheletti, and whether the military chiefs
were warned about the positions of the US
government.
What is real is that for whoever would be
closely following the events, Micheletti was
against peace on Monday. His representative
in San Jose, Carlos Lopez Contreras, had
declared that the Arias proposal could not
be discussed because the first point, the
one dealing with Zelaya's reinstatement, was
not negotiable. The civilian government of
the coup had taken its role seriously and
did not even realize that Zelaya, divested
of his authority, would not represent any
risk to the oligarchy and would suffer a
politically hard blow if he accepted the
proposal made by the president of Costa
Rica.
That very same Sunday the 19th, when Arias
is asking for another 72 hours to explain
his position, Mrs. Clinton is speaking on
the phone with Micheletti and sustains what
the spokesperson Philip Crowley describes as
a "tough phone call." Some day we shall know
what she said to him, but it would be enough
just to see Micheletti's face when he spoke
at a meeting of his government on Monday
July 20th: he really looked like a kid in
kindergarten who had been scolded by his
teacher. I was able to see the images and
hear the speeches at the meeting on Telesur.
Other images broadcast were those of the OAS
representatives making their speeches in the
heart of that institution, committing
themselves to await the last word of the
Nobel Laureate on Wednesday. Did they or
didn't they know what Mrs.Clinton had said
to Micheletti? Maybe they did, maybe they
didn't. Perhaps some of them, not all of
them, knew. Men, institutions and concepts
had turned into instruments of the
high-handed and arrogant policy of
Washington. Never had a speech in the heart
of the OAS shone with such dignity as the
brief but brave words at that meeting spoken
by Roy Chaderton, the Venezuelan ambassador.
Tomorrow the stony image of Oscar Arias will
appear, explaining that they have drawn up
such and such a solution to avoid violence.
I think that even Arias himself has fallen
into the great trap set up by the Department
of State. Let's see what he does tomorrow.
Nevertheless, the people of Honduras are the
ones who will have the last word.
Representatives of the social organizations
and the new forces are not the instruments
of anyone, inside or outside the country.
They know the needs and suffering of the
people, their awareness and their mettle
have multiplied; many citizens who were
indolent have joined the cause; the very
members of the traditional parties who are
honest and who believe in freedom, justice
and human dignity will judge their leaders
on the position they will adopt at this
historical moment.
We still do not know what the attitude of
the military will be when faced with the
Yankee ultimata, and what messages will get
to the officers; there is only one patriotic
and honourable point of reference: loyalty
to the people who have heroically stood up
to the tear gas bombs, the blows and the
shooting.
Without anybody being able to be sure about
what the final whim of the empire will be,
whether Zelaya returns legally or illegally
as a result of the final decisions adopted,
without a doubt Hondurans will give him a
grand welcome because it will be a measure
of the victory that they have already won
with their struggles. Let nobody doubt that
only the Honduran people will be able to
build their own history!
Fidel Castro Ruz
July 21, 2009
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