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Reflections of Fidel
The yanki bases and Latin
American sovereignty
The
concept of nation emerged from the sum of common
elements like history, language, culture, customs,
laws, institutions and others related to the
material and spiritual life of human communities.
The peoples of America, for whose freedom Bolívar
undertook the great feats which made him the
liberator of the peoples, were called on by him to
create, as he said: “The greatest nation of the
world, less through its extension and wealth than
through its freedom and glory.”
In Ayacucho, Antonio José de Sucre waged the final
battle against the empire that had converted a large
part of this continent into the royal property of
the Spanish crown for more than 300 years.
It is the same America that dozens of years later,
and after it had already been encroached on by the
nascent yanki empire, Martí named Our
America.
It is worth noting once again that, before dying in
battle for the independence of Cuba, the last
bastion of the Spanish colony in America, on May 19,
1895, a matter of hours before his death, José Martí
prophetically wrote that everything that he had done
and would do was in order “…to prevent in time, with
the independence of Cuba, the United States
extending into the Antilles and falling, with that
additional force, upon our lands of America.”
In the United States, where the recently liberated
British colonies wasted no time in extending in a
disordered fashion toward the West in search of land
and gold, exterminating the indigenous population
until they reached the Pacific coast, the
agricultural slave states of the South were
competing with the industrialized states of the
North that were exploiting wage labor, by trying to
create other states in order to defend their
economic interests.
In 1848 they seized more than 50% of Mexico’s
territory in a war of conquest against that
militarily weak country, which resulted in them
taking the capital and imposing humiliating peace
conditions. The snatched territory contained large
oil and gas reserves that later would supply the
United States for more than a century and continues
in part to do so.
Encouraged by the “manifest destiny” proclaimed by
his country, the yanki filibuster William
Walker landed in
Nicaragua
in 1855 and proclaimed himself president, until he
was expelled by the Nicaraguans and other Central
American patriots in 1856.
Our national hero perceived how the destiny of Latin
American countries was being destroyed by the
nascent empire of the United States.
The military intervention in Cuba came after Martí’s
death in battle, when the Spanish army had already
been defeated.
The Platt Amendment, which conceded the powerful
country the right to intervene in the island, was
imposed on Cuba.
The occupation of Puerto Rico, which has lasted for
111 years and which today constitutes a so-called
free associated state, which is neither a state nor
free, was another of the consequences of that
intervention.
Worse things were to come for Latin America,
confirming Martí’s brilliant premonitions. The
growing empire had already decided that the canal
that was to link the two oceans would pass through
Panama and not through Nicaragua. The isthmus of
Panama, the Corinth dreamed of by Bolívar as the
capital of the greatest republic of the world as
conceived by himself, would become yanki
property.
Even so, the worst consequences were to come
throughout the 20th century. With the support of
national political oligarchies, the United States
subsequently took over the resources and economies
of the
Latin America
countries; interventions multiplied; military and
police forces fell under its aegis. Yanki
transnationals seized basic goods and services;
banks, insurance companies, foreign trade,
railroads, shipping, warehouses, electricity and
telephone services and others passed into their
hands to a greater or lesser degree.
It is a fact that the profundity of social
inequality led to the explosion of the Mexican
Revolution in the second decade of the 20th century,
and which became a source of inspiration for other
countries. The revolution prompted
Mexico’s advance in many areas. But the same empire
that devoured a large part of its territory
yesterday is today devouring important natural
resources taken from it (Mexico), a cheap labor
force, and is even making it spill its own blood.
The NAFTA is the most brutal economic agreement
imposed on a developing country. For the sake of
brevity, the U.S. government has just affirmed: “At
a moment when Mexico has suffered a double blow, not
only due to its failing economy but also the effects
of the A H1N1 virus, we would probably want to have
the economy more stabilized before having a long
discussion on new trade negotiations.” Of course,
not a single word has been said on how, as a
consequence of the war unleashed by drug
trafficking, in which Mexico is deploying 36,000
soldiers, close to 4,000 Mexican have died in 2009.
The
phenomenon is being repeated to a greater or lesser
degree throughout Latin America. Drugs not only
produce serious health problems, they produce the
violence that is tearing apart Mexico and Latin
America as a consequence of the insatiable U.S.
market, an inexhaustible source of hard currency
that foments the production of cocaine and heroin,
and it is the country from where the weapons are
supplied that are being utilized in that ferocious
and unpublicized war.
Those who are dying from the Rio Grande to the
limits of South America are Latin Americans. In this
way, generalized violence is beating the record in
deaths and its victims are in excess of 100,000 per
year in Latin America, basically engendered by drugs
and poverty.
The empire is not fighting a war on drugs within its
borders; it is waging it in Latin American
territories.
Neither coca nor poppies are cultivated in our
country. We are fighting efficiently against those
who are attempting to introduce drugs into our
country or to utilize Cuba as a transit point, and
figures of persons dying on account of violence are
falling every year. We do not need yanki
soldiers for that. Fighting drugs is a pretext for
establishing military bases throughout the
hemisphere. Since when did the ships of the 4th
Fleet and modern fighter planes serve for combating
drugs?
The real objective is control of economic resources,
domination of markets and fighting social changes.
What need is there to reestablish that fleet,
demobilized at the end of World War II, more than 60
years ago, when neither the USSR nor the cold war
exist any longer? The arguments being utilized for
establishing seven airbases in Colombia are an
insult to human intelligence.
History will not forgive those who commit such acts
of disloyalty to their peoples, nor those who
utilize the exercise of sovereignty as a pretext to
explain away the presence of yanki troops. To
which sovereignty are they referring? That conquered
by Bolívar, Sucre, San Martín, O’Higgins, Morelos,
Juárez, Tiradentes, Martí? Not one of them would
have ever accepted such an invalid argument for
justifying the concession of military bases to the
armed forces of the United States, an empire that is
more dominating, more powerful and more universal
that the crowns of the Iberian peninsula.
If as a consequence of those agreements being
promoted by the United States in an illegal and
unconstitutional manner, any government of that
country should use those bases — as was the case
with Reagan with his dirty war and Bush with that of
Iraq — to provoke an armed conflict between two
sister peoples, that would be a great tragedy.
Venezuela and Colombia were born together in the
history of America after the battles of Boyacá and
Carabobo, under the leadership of Simón Bolívar. The
yankis might promote a dirty war as they did
in Nicaragua, including the use of soldiers of other
nationalities trained by them, and might attack one
country or another, but the combative, courageous
and patriotic people of Colombia would not easily
allow themselves to be dragged into a war against a
sister people like that of Venezuela.
The imperialists would be committing an error if
they likewise underestimate the other peoples of
Latin America.
None of them will be in agreement with yanki
military bases; none of them will lose their
solidarity with any Latin American nation attacked
by imperialism.
Martí had an exceptional admiration for Bolívar and
was not mistaken when he stated: “… and so, there is
Bolívar, in the skies of
America, vigilant and with his brow furrowed… still
wearing his campaign boots, because what he did not
complete, is still incomplete today: because Bolívar
still has much to do in America.”
Fidel Castro Ruz
August 9, 2009
6:32 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
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