The struggle has barely begun

GOVERNMENTS might change, but the instruments with which they converted us into colonies 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 of those crimes. Only its costly bureaucratic apparatus takes the IACHR agreements seriously. Our nation was the last of the Spanish colonies after four centuries of occupation and the first to liberate itself from the dominion of the United States after more than six decades.

"Freedom comes at a very high price, and it is necessary either to live without it or to decide to buy it at its price", the Apostle of our Independence taught us.

Cuba respects the opinions of governments of the sister nations of Latin America and the Caribbean who think differently, but it does not wish to be part of this institution.

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

The OAS did not prevent Reagan from unleashing the dirty war against his [Ortega’s] people, mining their ports, resorting to drug trafficking in order to acquire weapons of 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 that country? What did it do to prevent the invasion of the Dominican Republic, the hundreds of thousands of people murdered or disappeared in Guatemala, the air attacks, the assassination of prominent religious figures, the mass repression of the people, the invasions in Granada and Panama, the coup d’état in Chile, the torture and disappearances there, in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and other places? Did it ever accuse the United States? What is its historic evaluation of these events?

Yesterday, Saturday, Granma published what I wrote on the IACHR anti-Cuba agreement. Afterward, I felt a curiosity to discover the one it had adopted against Venezuela. It was more or less the same garabage.

The Bolivarian Revolution’s accession to power was different from that of Cuba. In our country, the political process had been abruptly interrupted by a cunning military coup promoted by the U.S. government on March 10, 1952, just a few weeks before the general elections that should have taken place on June 1 of that year. In Cuba, once again, the people had no other option but to resign themselves to the situation. The Cuban people fought again, on this occasion the outcome 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 was seized from the enemy during 25 months of war backed by the people - and in the final offensive a revolutionary general strike, the revolutionary combatants trounced the dictatorship and took control of all its weapons and centers of power. The victorious Revolution became the source of law as in any other historical era.

That was not the case in Venezuela. Chávez, a revolutionary soldier like others in our hemisphere, came to power under the rules of the established bourgeois constitution, as leader of the 5th Republic Movement allied with other left-wing forces. The Revolution and its instruments were yet to be created. If the military uprising led by him had triumphed, the Revolution in Venezuela would possibly have taken another course. However, he abided by the established legal regulations already within his reach as the principal course of struggle. He developed the habit of consulting the public as often as was 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 recoup and hold on to power.

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

The people reacted and brought him once again to power when, isolated and incommunicado, he was on the point of being eliminated by the right, who were forcing him to sign his resignation.

He did not submit; he resisted until the Venezuelan marines themselves freed him and Air Force helicopters took him back to Miraflores Palace, which had been occupied by the people and the army in Fuerte (Fort) Tiuna, who rose up against the senior officers perpetrating the coup.

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

The response to that attitude by imperialism and its accomplices was the oil industry coup. Perhaps one of the most brilliant battles he fought during that period was the one to supply fuel to the people of Venezuela.

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

He was a genuinely revolutionary man, but as he gained awareness of the injustice rampant in Venezuelan society his thinking became more profound, until he arrived at the conviction that Venezuela had no alternative other than radical and total change.

He knows the most minuscule details of the ideas of the Liberator [Simón Bolívar], whom he profoundly admires.

His adversaries know that it is not easy to win when faced with the tenacity of a man who does not rest for a minute. They could opt to take his life, but both internal and external enemies know what that would mean for their interests. Irrational lunatics and fanatics may exist, but neither leaders, the peoples, nor humanity itself are exempt from such dangers.

Thinking objectively, Chávez today is a formidable adversary of the capitalist system of production and imperialism. He has become a veritable expert on many fundamental problems within human society. I have seen him in the last few days, while he was opening dozens of healthcare facilities. He is impressive. He forcefully criticizes what was occurring with vital services such as hemodialysis, which were in the hands of private centers paid by the state. Poor people were condemned to die if they did not have the money available. This also happened with many other services; today, they are available at new facilities that have been fitted out with state of the art equipment.

He masterfully handles even the smallest details of national production and social services. He dominates the theory and practice of socialism that his country requires, and he strives for his most profound convictions. He defines capitalism as it is: he does not paint caricatures, he demonstrates X-rays and images of the system.

It is about a peculiar and odious ensemble of exploitation of forms of human labor: unjust, unequal and arbitrary. He does not just talk about the workers, he shows them on television producing with their own hands, demonstrating their energy, their knowledge, their intelligence, creating essential goods or services for human beings: he asks them about their children, their families, wives or husbands, close relatives, where they live, what they are studying, what they are doing to improve themselves, their ages, wages, future retirement, the grotesque lies about property circulated by the imperialists and capitalists. He shows hospitals, schools, factories, boys and girls, he offers details on factories that are being built in Venezuela, mechanisms, employment growth figures, natural resources, designs, maps and news about the latest discovery of natural gas. The most recent measure adopted by Congress: the law nationalizing the 60 key companies lending their services every year to PDVSA, the state oil company, to the tune of more than $8 billion dollars. They were not private property but created by neoliberal governments of Venezuela with resources that belonged to PDVSA.

I had never seen an idea so clearly transformed into images and broadcast on television. Chávez not only possess a special talent for capturing and transmitting the essence of processes; he accompanies that with a privileged memory; it would be difficult for him to forget a word, a phrase, a verse, a musical intonation; he combines words that express new concepts. He speaks of a socialism that seeks justice and equality; "while cultural colonialism continues to live in people’s minds, the old will never die and the new will never be born." He combines eloquent verses and phrases in articles and letters. Most of all, he has demonstrated that he is the political leader in Venezuela capable of creating a party, incessantly transmitting revolutionary ideas to his followers and politically educating them.

Above all, I observed all the faces of the captains and other crew members of the ships of the nationalized companies; their words reflect an inner pride, gratitude for the recognition, security in the future; the faces of 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, who must be ready to work in the management of the 200 new factories of the program agreed with that country, where they will be dispatched when their course ends to be trained in production processes.

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

It is a battle of ideas lost beforehand by the adversary, which 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.

It is a struggle that has barely begun in our hemisphere.

Fidel Castro Ruz

May 10, 2009

1:36 p.m.