Reflections of Fidel

Is there a margin for hypocrisy and lies?

(Taken from CubaDebate)

IN its battle against the Cuban Revolution, the United States had its finest ally in the government of Venezuela: that of the illustrious Don Rómulo Betancourt Bello. We did not know that then. He had been elected president on December 7, 1958 and, prior to him taking office, the Revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959. A few weeks later, I had the privilege of being invited by the provisional government of Wolfgang Larrazábal to visit the homeland of Bolívar, who had demonstrated such solidarity toward Cuba.

Not many times in my life have I seen a more impassioned people. The footage has been conserved. I advanced along the wide highway that had replaced the asphalt path from Maiquetía to Caracas, along which I had been led the first time that I traveled to Venezuela in 1948, with the most reckless drivers of vehicles that I have ever known.

This time I heard the most sonorous, prolonged and embarrassing jeering of my long life when I dared to mention the name of the recently elected and as yet non-inaugurated president. The most radicalized masses of heroic and combative Caracas had voted overwhelmingly against him.

The "illustrious" Rómulo Betancourt was mentioned with interest in the political circles of the Caribbean and Latin America.

How is that to be explained? He had been highly radical in his youth when, at 23, he became a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Costa Rica, from 1931 to 1935. Those were the difficult times of the Third International. From Marxism-Leninism he learnt the structure of class societies, the exploitation of humans by humans throughout history and the development of colonization, capitalism and imperialism in the most recent centuries.

In 1941, together with other left leaders, he founded the Democratic Action Party in Venezuela.

He was provisional president of Venezuela from October 1945 to February 1948, in virtue of a civil-military coup d’état. He went into exile again when the eminent Venezuelan writer and intellectual Rómulo Gallegos was elected constitutional president and over thrown almost immediately.

His Party’s well-oiled machinery elected him president in the elections of December 7, 1958, after the Venezuelan revolutionary forces under the leadership of the Patriotic Junta headed by Fabricio Ojeda, defeated the dictatorship of General Pérez Jiménez.

When I spoke at the end of January 1959 in the Plaza del Silencio before the hundreds of thousands of people present there and mentioned Betancourt out of pure courtesy, that was what prompted the colossal jeering against the president-elect which I related above. For me, that was a veritable lesson in political realism. I then had to visit him, given that he was the president-elect of a friendly country. I met with a bitter and resentful man. He was already the model of a "democratic and representative" government that the empire needed. He collaborated as much as he could with the yankis prior to the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.

Fabricio Ojeda, a sincere and unforgettable friend of the Cuban Revolution, whom I had the privilege of meeting and conversing with at length, subsequently explained to me many aspects of the political process of his homeland and the Venezuela of which he dreamed. He was one of the numerous people that that regime, totally at the service of imperialism, assassinated.

Since then almost half a century has passed. I can testify to the exceptional cynicism of the empire that we, as Cuban revolutionaries, as the worthy heirs of Bolívar and Martí, have indefatigably confronted.
During the intervening period, since the days of Fabricio Ojeda, the world has changed considerably. The military and technological might of that empire has grown; likewise its experience and total absence of ethics. Its media resources are more costly and less subordinated to moral standards.

Accusing the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, of promoting war on the people of Colombia, of unleashing an arms race, presenting him as the producer and promoter of drug trafficking, of repressing freedom of expression, of violating human rights and other such imputations, are repugnantly cynical actions, as is everything that the empire has done, is doing and is promoting. The reality should never be forgotten, and has to be reiterated; objective and reasoned truth is the most important weapon with which to hammer tirelessly on the consciousness of the peoples.

The government of the United States, it is necessary to recall, promoted and backed the fascist coup d’état of April 11, 2002, in Venezuela and, after its failure, placed all its hopes on a oil strike, supported with programs and technical resources capable of liquidating any government, but underestimating the people and revolutionary leadership of that country. From then, it has conspired without ceasing against the Venezuelan revolutionary process, as it has done over 50 years and continues to do against the Revolution in our homeland. The United States is much more interested in controlling Venezuela, with the vast energy resources and other raw materials that it possesses, obtained at negligible cost, and the transnational ownership of its large installations and services, than it is in Cuba.

With the Revolution in Central America violently crushed and, via bloody and repressive coup d’états, the democratic and progressive advances in South America, the empire could not resign itself to the construction of socialism in Venezuela. This is a real, undeniable fact that cannot be concealed from anyone in Latin America or in the world who possesses a minimum of political culture.

It is worth recalling that the Venezuelan government did not arm itself even after the coup d’état promoted by the United States in April 2002. Oil was worth barely $20 per barrel, already devalued since Nixon suspended its conversion into gold in 1971, almost 30 years before Chávez reached the presidency. When he took possession, Venezuelan oil had not reached $10 per barrel. Later, when prices rose, he dedicated the country’s resources to social programs, investment and development plans, and to cooperation with many Caribbean and Central American nations and others in South America with the poorest economies. No other country offered such generous cooperation.

He did not buy one single gun during the initial years of his government. He even did something that no other country had done in conditions of danger for his integrity: he legally suspended the obligation of every honest and revolutionary citizen to defend his or her country with arms.

I think that the Bolivarian Republic delayed rather too long in acquiring new weapons. It had not changed its infantry rifles in more than 50 years; the provisional government of Admiral Larrazábal gave me an FAL automatic rifle in the penultimate month of the war, in November 1958. Venezuela continued with that type of infantry weapon for a number of years after the investiture of Chávez.

It was the government of the United States that decreed the disarming of Venezuela when it prohibited the supply of parts for all the yanki military equipment that it had traditionally sold to that country, from combat aircraft and military transport to communications and radars. It is supremely hypocritical to now accuse Venezuela of an arms race.

On the contrary, the United States supplied billions of dollars in weapons, combat means, air transportation and training to the Armed Forces of neighboring Colombia. The pretext was combating the guerrilla movements. I can testify to the efforts of President Hugo Chávez in the search for internal peace in that sister country. The yankis not only supplied weapons, but injected sentiments of hatred of Venezuela in the troops that it was training, as it did in Honduras via the Task Force based in Palmerola.

The United States is supplying combat units, where it has military bases, with the same uniform and equipment as its interventionist troops in any part of the world. It does not need its own soldiers, as in Iraq, Afghanistan or the north of Pakistan, to plan acts of genocide against our peoples.

The imperialist ultra-right, which controls the fundamental reins of power, is using bare-faced lies to disguise its plans.

Venezuelan-American lawyer and analyst Eva Golinger has demonstrated how the strategic arguments employed in the May 2009 message sent to the U.S. Congress to justify investments in the Palanquero base, have been completely altered in the agreement via which the United States receives that same base along with countless other civilian and military facilities.

The document sent to Congress on November 16, entitled: "Addendum to Reflect the Terms of the Defense Cooperation Agreement between the United States and Colombia, signed on October 30, 2009, has been completely altered", the analyst explains. "There is no more talk of the "mobility mission" that "guarantees access to the whole continent of South America, with the exception of Cape Horn." They have also changed all reference to operations of "global reach", "theaters of security" and an increase in the capacity of the U.S. forces to wage an "expeditious war" in the region, writes the astute and well-informed analyst.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the president of the Bolivarian Republic is arduously battling to overcome the obstacles the United States has created for the Latin American countries; including social violence and drug-trafficking. American society has not been able to prevent drug consumption and its trafficking. Its consequences are currently affecting many countries in the area. Violence has been one of the most exported products of the capitalist society of the United States throughout the past half-century, via the growing employment of the mass media and the so-called entertainment industry. These are new phenomena that human society had not encountered before. That media could be used to create new values in a more humane and just society.

Developed capitalism created the so-called "consumer societies" and, in that way, engendered problems that now it is not capable of controlling.

Venezuela is the country that is most rapidly developing social programs that can counteract those extremely negative tendencies. The colossal successes achieved in the last Bolivarian Games are demonstrating that.

At the UNASUR meeting, the Bolivarian Republic’s foreign minister clearly presented the problem of peace in the area. What is the position of each country on the installation of yanki bases on South American territory? This does not only constitute an obligation on the part of every state, but also the moral obligation of every honest and aware man and woman in our hemisphere and in the world. The empire must know that, under any circumstances, the Latin American people will tirelessly fight for their most sacred rights.

There are still more serious and immediate problems for all the peoples of the world: climate change; perhaps the worst and most urgent of them all.

Prior to December 18, each state must make a decision. Once again, the eminent Nobel Peace laureate Barack Obama will have to define his position on this thorny issue.

Given that he has accepted the responsibility that goes with receiving the prize, he will now have to comply with the ethical demand of Michael Moore when he heard the news: "Now earn it!" Is he actually able to do it? I ask myself. While the unanimous demand from scientific circles is that carbon dioxide emissions must be reduced by no less than 30% in relation to the 1990 figures, the United States is offering to reduce just 17% of its emissions in 2005, which is barely the equivalent of 5% of the minimum reduction required by science for all the inhabitants of the planet by the year 2020. The United States consumes double the per capita amount of Europe, and its emissions exceed those of China, despite the 1.34 billion inhabitants in the latter country. One inhabitant from the largest consumer society in the world emits 10 times more CO2 per capita that a citizen from the poorest country of the Third World.

In just 30 years time, the planet will be populated by no less than nine billion human beings, thus requiring that carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere will have to be reduced by 80% of the volume emitted in 1990. Figures such as this are bitterly understood by a growing number of leaders of rich countries; but the hierarchy that leads the most powerful and rich country on the planet – the United States – is consoling itself by affirming that such forecasts are the fabrications of scientists. It is known that in Copenhagen – at most – those present will agree to continue discussions in order for the 200-plus states and institutions to reach an agreement to resolve their commitments, including one extremely important one: which of the rich countries and with what resources will contribute to the development and energy-saving programs of poorest nations.

Is there a margin for hypocrisy and lies?

Fidel Castro Ruz

November 29, 2009

7:15 p.m.