CARTER is the only ex-president of the United States that I have had the honor of knowing, apart from Nixon, who had not as yet become president.
I had visited Washington to take part in a press conference that represented a difficult challenge for me, given the questions that the expert reporters would ask. The president advised Nixon to invite me for talks in his office. He was deceitful and hypocritical. He emerged from his office with the idea of recommending the destruction of the Revolution in Cuba.
Advised by him, Eisenhower was the perpetrator of the first plots to physically eliminate me, the campaign of terror against Cuba and the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.
The perfidious history that, 18 years later, President Carter attempted to rectify, began in 1959.
I knew, or rather guessed, that he was a man of religious ethics, based on a lengthy interview in which difficult issues were put to him and which he approached with sincerity and modesty. At that time there was heavy tension between Panama and the United States. Omar Torrijos, the leader of that country, was an honest, nationalist and patriotic military man. He was persuaded by Cuba not to adopt extreme positions in his struggle for the return of the territory of the Canal which, like a sharp knife, divided his homeland in two. Perhaps that is why it was possible to avert a bloodbath in that little nation, which would subsequently be presented to the people of the United States and the world as an aggressor.
Later, and without talking to anybody in the United States, I could predict that maybe Carter was the only president of that country with whom an honorable agreement could be reached without spilling one drop of blood.
Not long afterward, Washington signed the agreement between the United States and Panama, in the presence of other heads of state, Cuba of course being excluded.
I mention the fact because Omar himself, during a visit to our country, recounted the efforts undertaken by Cuba in that context.
As president of the United States, he [Carter] agreed with Cuba on the creation of an Interests Section in Havana and another one in Washington. With that we spared the austere and meticulous Swiss diplomacy from being driven crazy by a large number of diplomatic procedures and papers. Maintaining the colossal building of the former U.S. embassy in Havana was in itself a heroic feat on Switzerland’s part.
Something else: Carter discussed with Cuba important issues such as territorial water limits and the rights of each party; the use of energy resources contained in the jurisdictional waters of Mexico, Cuba and the United States, as well as fishing resources and other points of unavoidable attention. Not all of the agreements were to Cuba’s benefit. Our fishing fleet, already established, operated in international waters and fished, as established, at a distance of 12 miles from the coasts of Canada, the United States and Mexico.
However, out of solidarity, Cuba supported the rights of Chile, Peru and other Latin American countries to exploit fishing resources on their respective platforms. The final result was that our modern and costly fishing boats finally stopped operating in those waters when that battle was finally won. Those were the requirements established by the U.S. authorities in the rich platforms where our boats used to fish in the proximity of that country’s coasts, and other limitations in light of the new law, which became unaffordable.
When Carter assumed the presidency of his country, many years of aggression, terrorism and blockade against the people of Cuba had gone by. Our solidarity with the peoples of Africa and many other poor and underdeveloped nations of the world could not be the subject of negotiations with the government of the United States. We would not leave Angola, nor would we suspend the already committed aid to the countries of Africa. Carter never reached the point of asking for that, but it is evident that many people in the United States were thinking along those lines.
On account of defending our sovereignty profound contradictions were unleashed not only with the United States but also with the USSR, which was our ally when, as a result of the October [Missile] Crisis and without consulting our country, the latter negotiated an agreement of mutual convenience with the former in which the blockade, acts of terrorism and the Guantánamo Base remained intact in exchange for strategic concessions on the part of the two superpowers. We did not seek unilateral advantages. Revolutionaries who act in that way do not survive their errors.
Complying with international regulations would never have constituted an obstacle for Cuba and, as we have said on many occasions, peace is also an essential objective of the Cuban Revolution. There are many forms of cooperation among peoples with different political concepts.
One example of that is the war on drug trafficking, organized crime and human trafficking, which can be spread to many forms of cooperation in combating epidemics, natural disasters and other problems.
The Revolution has never utilized terrorism against the United States.
That country invented the hijacking of aircraft in order to strike at Cuba. That action, in a society with so many social conflicts, turned into an epidemic. How could they have solved it without Cuba’s cooperation? We had adopted strict laws to punish those responsible, but it was useless. We finally took the decision to return them in the same aircraft that they had hijacked, after a prior warning.
In that way, the first airplane that we returned was the last one hijacked in the United States and that coincided precisely with the Carter years. I have talked extensively about that. I am not saying anything new.
After Carter, Reagan took the dirty war to Nicaragua, utilized drug income in order to get around the laws of Congress and to supply the counterrevolution with weapons, mined the ports; his policy cost thousands of Sandinista lives, in addition to the mutilated and wounded.
Bush Sr. carried out the horrific El Chorrillo massacre in order to punish Panama and erase the imprint of Carter’s gesture.
When the latter visited Cuba, from May 12 to 17, 2002, he knew that he would be welcomed here; I attended his lecture at the University of Havana; I invited him to an important baseball game – Cuba’s national sport – a game between the Occidentales and Orientales teams in the Latin American Stadium. We were both there for the first pitch, which he was invited to throw, without any bodyguard whatsoever, surrounded by a public of more than 50,000 people in the stands, perfect targets for any marksman hired by the CIA. Bush Jr. was already governing in the United States. I just wished to show Carter the relations of the leaders of the country with the people. He accepted with dignity the invitation I made him when we reached the stadium, to persuade his security chief to leave him on his own, and he did so.
What I know about silviculture in the United States was what Carter explained to me at the dinner that we gave him on his last day: planting, what varieties, how many years they take to grow, production per hectare, etc, etc, etc.
I observed his faith in the capitalist system in which he was raised and educated, which I respect.
When he was in government, the times were different. He had to shoulder the effects of an economic crisis, but he was austere, he did not indebt the future generations. His successor, Ronald Reagan squandered with both hands the savings made by Carter. He was a film actor and handed the teleprompter well, but he never asked himself where the money came from.
Former President Jimmy Carter stated yesterday to the Folha de São Paulo newspaper: "I would like it (the embargo) to end right now. There is no reason for the Cuban people to go on suffering," affirmed the ex-president, who is currently leading a human rights organization and visited Brazil this week to meet with president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva.
"I believe that Obama’s initiatives were not as good as those of the two houses of the U.S. Congress, which is now one step ahead of the president in relation to Cuba.
"The next step should be the immediate removal of all restrictions on travel to the island, not just for Cuban-American citizens. That was what I did when I was president 30 years ago. An end of the embargo should come immediately," the ex-president stated.
Finally, Carter stated that the results also depended on the Cuban leaders. That is correct, on us and on all the Cubans who have fought and are willing to fight.