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Fidel Castro: The Struggle has Barely
Begun
Havana (Prensa Latina) Leader of the
Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, affirmed
today that Venezuela is not alone and has
the experience of 200 years of exceptional
patriotic history.
In an article titled "The Struggle Barely
Begins", Fidel Castro highlights that the
president of that country, Hugo Chavez, "is
today a formidable adversary of the
capitalist production system and
imperialism. He has become a real expert on
many fundamental problems of human society."
"Not by chance the OAS hypocritically tries
to present him as an enemy of the freedom of
expression and democracy", expresses the
Cuban leader in the text published by
digital website Cubadebate.
Prensa Latina transmits as follows the whole
text: 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 Venezulean 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
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