My meeting with Leonel Fernández, president of the Dominican Republic

It took place last Monday March 2, at the 4 and 58 of the afternoon.

I met him in the Dominican Republic when he was chose for the first time as President. It was particularly deferential with me. He spoke of their first efforts to increase the capacity to generate electricity with much less consumption of fuel oil whose prices grew quickly.

Nobody gave him the position; it arrived to him through kind of a natural selection by virtue of which ascended politically as the historical events were developed.

A woman's of the Dominican Republic son that, as other many of his countrymen, had emigrated to United States, he was taken in company of his brother to the city of New York, where he learned how to read and to write.

He had the luck that the mother followed the problems of her homeland closely, and she transmitted him opinions and revolutionary approaches that conditioned it for the new times that the town of the Dominican Republic lived.

For different roads to mine arrived to own approaches that determined his attitude before situations that were similar, and at the same time very different, to those that I lived before 23 years in Cuba, where without having turned 6 years of age, a young Cuban teacher, next to two sisters, without a doubt of extraction small bourgeois of Santiago city, lived under conditions of enough poverty, after studying, a medicine, another teaching and the third piano in an university of Haiti, the next neighboring country to Cuba and the homeland of Leonel Fernández.

It corresponded me the hard experience of the hunger, without knowing it consisted on what, confusing it with a ferocious and unusual appetite, in Santiago City, where a city, and the teacher that assisted the school of Birán, in the middle of machado state was astonished for the first time she didn't receive sure wage and yes a good pension of my house, persuading to the family that sent me to Santiago.

I learned how to add, to subtract and to multiply, thanks to the red lining of a school notebook, before to read and to write. I began this way to exercise the imagination, but they retarded me two years that with effort, I recovered later.

Perhaps this way it is understood my interest better in conversing with Leonel by the light of the current times.

I knew Juan Bosch, historian and illustrate personality of the Dominican Republic in 1946, when he had not still completed 20 years,was student of the second year of the career of Right and the students of that Ability leader, president besides of the organization of solidarity with the democracy of the Dominican Republic, in that brave town fight against the tyranny trujillista, erected by the North American forces that had intervened the island in 1928.

Bosch and I were in the battalion Sandino, Nicaraguan hero that fought against the inspectors yankis and was murdered for this reason, soon after another imperialistic intervention in that Central American country.

The noted intellectual of the Dominican Republic was not the boss of that expedition. Other politicians of the Dominican Republic directed it. Almost all acting in good faith, but moved by ideas and class interests, even oligarches and bourgeois.

The worst thing is that in what refers to Cuba, it was directed it the most rotten in the Cuban Revolutionary Party (Authentic), name stolen the Cuban Revolutionary Party created by Martí to fight for the independence of Cuba and Puerto Rico, both last you pierce colonial of Spain in Latin America at the end of the XIX century.

Nobody understood the Professor of Physiology confused Grau San Martin,gibberish of the Revolution loosened by Antonio Guiteras Holmes, Secretary of Government of the Revolutionary Government that arose after the machado`s government, after the tyrant's fall in 1933.

The innocent hunger to which I already referred completed the square.

When the Revolution triumphs January of 1959, 1 on the other hand Leonel had hardly turned 6 years.

Jiménez Moya that landed next to other revolutionaries of the Dominican Republic in the vicinity of the Sierra Maestra in a Venezuelan civil airplane, driving 150 semiautomatic rifles Garand that shot 9 cartridges 30.06 for comb, and a rifle FAL that personally the admiral sent me Larrazábal who the Provisional Venezuelan Government presided over, to the dictator pro yanki fall Pérez Jiménez, incorporated to our forces in his countrymen's union, when we liberated the last combats in the oriental region of Cuba.

In the fence of an enemy battalion of well trained special troops, he was hurt of graveness. Assisted by our campaign doctors he recovered and was clever for the operation June 14 in Sacred Domingo, in the year 1959.

That day, at the 6 and 20 of the afternoon, 56 combatants of the Dominican Republic landed in Constanza's airport military trujillista, without another alternative was at that hour that to make it in that point and not in the chosen place. Almost in their entirety died after heroic fight.

Other 169 arrived later for sea days and they ran the same luck. The coordinated idea and elaborated by the own combatants could not be orchestrated. The opponent, as always, went to the torture and the terror. It is a history that would be to write.

The common blood spilled in our fights by the independence and in the decades of the 50 and the 60 it united forever to our towns.

Already triumphant the Revolution in Cuba, under the government from Eisenhower, the country was subjected to strong economic blockade, a ferocious terrorist campaign and attacked later on by Girón, with Cuban mercenary troops.

The colonel Francisco Caamaño Deñó rebels against the headquarters military trujillista in the year 1965 and he demands Juan's Bosch return that had been elect President for the town in December of 1961. To him and their officials and soldiers he joins to a group of revolutionaries that had trained in Cuba.

The Congress of the Dominican Republic chooses him President of that country.

The imperialistic government of United States, scared by the events, sends the 82 airborne division and more than 40 thousand men of the infantry of marine to occupy the island.

Caamaño maintained to line those powerful ones invasor forces and harassed them without rest, forcing them to negotiate. He had sworn that he would not never surrender. When those had subscribed an agreement, with guarantees that completed never, the colonel Caamaño abandoned the national territory and it was designated by the government like military attaché in London.

But he was not man that resigned to that task. He wanted to return to Santo Domingo to fight against those that oppressed to their town. He went to us requesting our cooperation.

Neither we wanted that he gave his life in any moment, we would have wanted more favorable circumstances, but our word was sacred.

He lived among us a time, supported so soon in the promise of facilitating him the return with the weapons in the hand he decided it.

We will always keep as a great honor the trust that deposited in our town.

It is another history that is to write with all the necessary rigor.

He knew that Leonel, among other things, admired the culture of our town. I allowed myself to introduce him a page with 26 lines that contains the black poet's brief history Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, well-known as Plácido that, on March 1, 2009 completed an anniversary more than his arrest, next to others of their race. He was accused of conspiring against the targets and after 4 months of prison he was shot June 29, 1844.

Such an era the concept of justice that the Spanish empire during centuries applied in Quisqueya and in Cuba.

I had known, when hestudied the 6th grade of primary in the School Dolores of the Jesuit, the famous Prayer to god of the brilliant poet that I always remembered.

Leonel read it, with him was the partner Esteban Lazo, Member of the Political Desk, designated recently by the Party to organize the 200 anniversary of the poet's birth that begins in 15 days.

It encourages me to know that our town will be able to know the life, the thought and Plácido's unbeatable verses.

Where the conversation with Leonel acquires its biggest dimension is when he enters in the topic of the cost of the current crisis. Starting from that instant,his mind doesn't cease one minute of elaborating reasonings, to express with exact figures each one of the main chapters of the cost of the current crisis.

It begins to clarify the doubt, almost universal, and the confusion between the meaning of the English trillion and the Spanish trillion.

An English trillion means only 1000 millions.

A trillion in Spanish means for us a million millions.

In the notes and in the figures of cables and articles an enormous confusion is believed.

For it Leonel uses the word quintillion, he qualifies this way to the North American trillion. It exact meaning is equal to the million of millions.

If wants to point out the GDP of United States that reaches the figure of almost 15 million millions,he expressed thing affirming that the GDP of that powerful nation approaches to 15 quintillion dollars.

Formulated the explanation, doesn't stop one minute in explaining to how much it ascends that spent by Bush in the war of Iraq, added to the annual deficit in the budget of that country, what calculates one by one, until the next one March 19; he adds it immediately the plan of rescue of Bush; act followed sum the plan of rescue of Obama and so forth.

In this case it is limited to what the crisis costs in United States. The calculation begins of that that in turn costs to the countries of Europe, first to those of the eurozona that are supported by the European Central Bank, later those of all the countries of the This European and lastly Great Britain and Sweden.

Without stopping, Leonel passes to revise the costs in the countries of the rest of the world.

He makes comparisons between the GDP of United States and the other nations. The sum all. He calculates the deficit outlined in each one of them. He passes to calculate the loans that carry out the banks to sustain the production of each one of the productive companies, the times that lend the money deposited in the banks, the sums of the total of loans, generators of having derived toxic, and the ascent to figures that are equal at hundred of quintillion dollars.

The financial speculation reigns everywhere, Leonel affirms.

“In the speculation people that don't take place act.”

“Somebody sells a petroleum that doesn't take place and somebody purchase a petroleum that he doesn't plan to consume.”

“It happens the same thing with the foods.”

“It happens this way with everything.”

The mortgage becomes a title that is marketed in the market, it continues, without the owner of the house knows it. It can lose his housing by virtue of an operation that is carried out in a distant country.

“The neoliberalism crumbles for itself.”

“To return to the principles of the keynesianismo doesn't solve the current crisis.”

“That implies the search of new ideas.”

Leonel knows that the figures are overwhelming, he worries about the necessity such sums to be understood although they seem absurd and he promises to continue giving data.

I would define the thesis of Leonel just as him you see the things: the capitalism is a system that he sweats poisonous toxins for all the pores.

With the passion with which their voice is listened, I deduce that the yankis will curse the arithmetic that taught to Leonel in New York, when he learned how to read and to write.

On the other hand, the powerful organ of the international finances, The Wall Street Journal, publishes March 2 an article of Tunku Varadarajan, affirming that Nouriel Roubini, the economic guru, sustains firmly that a temporary intervention is the best solution to the financial crisis.

“Nouriel Roubini, always gets dressed of white and black, I know him for almost 2 years and I have seen him in different situations, in route to class in the School of Business Stern, of the University of New York, where he is a professor; taking a glass of wine in his lobby, in the neighborhood of Tribeca, in Manhattan; in an academic conference, sat down wisely in the platform; in a bohemian party in the neighborhood of Greenwich Village at 3 in the morning.”

“It always shines a black suit with a white linen shirt.”

Roubini is owner of the consultancy signature Global Roubini Economics, located in the center of New York. He is at the present time the person whose opinion on the crisis is the more requested by the main organs of press of United States.

“The idea that the government pays millions of millions of dollars to rescue financial institutions and to continue spending in active irretrievable it is not attractive, because then the fiscal cost is much bigger, instead of being seen as something Bolshevik, the nationalization is view like pragmatic. Paradoxically, the proposal is more guided to the market that the alternative of the banks zombies.”

“Will the highest level belong then, from the receptive American government to the idea of nationalizing the banks? ´Creo that sí´, Roubini affirms without doubting. ´Personas like Lindsey Graham (the republican senator of court conservative) and Alan Greenspan (former president of the federal reservation) they already gave him an explicit blessing. That in some way protects Obama.´”

“Then, which is it exactly the economic philosophy of Nouriel Roubini? I belive in the economy market, affirms, with something of emphasis. ´Creo that people react to the incentives that the incentives are important, and that the prices reflect the form in that the things should be distributed. But I also believe that the economies of having bought sometimes have market flaws, and, when they take place, there is space for a wise regulation (not excessive) of the financial system ´”

Two things in those that Greenspan made a mistake completely were to believe that, in the first place, the market is autoregulated, and in second place, there are not market flaws.

In two words, for the journalist of The Wall Street Journal, Tunku Varadarajan and the eminent expert Nouriel Roubini, the capitalist system cannot work without the market, but the market cannot stop to be regulated; therefore, the State should guarantee the two things.

I understand the anguish of Leonel when he meditates seriously on the cost of the crisis. The own society that has impelled to the developed capitalist system doesn't know now how to face the problem, and its more grateful theories launch ideas like those that we have just informed.

With the biggest serenity in the world he returns to Santo Domingo`s more concrete problems and he goes pointing out each one of the measures that intends to take in next years. In this point, his battle horse is the social funds. Enarbol with force the idea that in the social funds of the countries of Latin America the discounts of the real wages of the workers constitute a capital source that, managed by the State, accumulates resources that don't lose value, since this grows every year.

Invested in housings and the population's decisive services, discounting a real part of the alive work that every year is invested in them, the value of such funds would grow continually.

Observing the development of the International Encounter of Economists has more than enough Globalization and Development I have appreciated in the first two days a strong accent of the economists of international prestige gathered in Cuba that puts on in the search from a source of capital accumulation to the service of the society with hope of liberating this of the crises that is suffering.

Suddenly, before the heap of theories and saving solutions, other realities come to mind and I wonder.

Could be the science be able to give an urgent answer of the circles polar Antarctic and Ártico that is taking place to eyes seen, and that the atmosphere reaches the highest levels of heat in the last 700 thousand years, something that United Nations and do other noted institutions know?

I understand that such figures can discourage to some few ones, but would not be worse to ignore them?

There however it didn't conclude the conversation with Leonel. He told me that it would travel to Santiago de Cuba to put some flowers to the foot of the tablet that he keeps our National Hero's remains. It was this who declared that the final battle began against the Spanish colonial power in Montecristi, to liberate Cuba and Puerto Rico. With him Maximum Gómez traveled who he taught us and perfected in the fields of Cuba the loads to the machete.

Martí in Dos Ríos the watchword that he presided over the future fights of our town against the imperialistic domain in the countries of Latin America rushed.

Before saying goodbye to me he said: “Do you know a thing? I don't want to leave of Cuba without visiting the barracks Moncada.” I had not even remembered that strength amid so much history. I didn't make him many comments and I thanked him the for his deference. He wanted a picture of digital camera. A was looked for and he took the image. When he told me that he didn't want to be exposed to that denied it, I answered him joking that nobody foray that risk, because they knew that I could mount by plane and to land in a neighboring country.

It lapsed this way nicely the time. While he wrote these lines on Wednesday 4, I listened Manuel Zelaya lit words , President of Honduras that attended the Encounter has more than enough Globalization and Development, and yesterday he had pronounced a great speech in that event. Lit they were still his words with which it condemned the blockade to Cuba; their oratorical one is impressive. Pity that leaves today without greeting him. It is the second time that Cuba visits. But what do I make, of where do I take out time?

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 4 of 2009

3 and 35 p.m.