DEAR Hugo,

Today is the 15th anniversary of our encounter at the University of Havana’s Aula Magna on December 14, 1994. The previous night, I had waited for you at the foot of the steps of the plane that brought you to Cuba.

I knew of your armed uprising against the pro-yanki government of Venezuela. News had reached Cuba of your ideas when you were still in prison and, like us, you devoted yourself to intensifying the revolutionary ideas which brought you to the uprising of February 4, 1992.

At the Aula Magna, in a spontaneous and transparent way, you voiced the Bolivarian ideas that you carried within you, and that led you, in the specific conditions of your country and our times, to the struggle for the independence of Venezuela against the tyranny of the empire. After the effort of Bolívar and other great men who, filled with dreams, fought against the yoke of Spanish colonialism, Venezuelan independence was merely a ridiculous pretense.

No moment in history is the same as any other; no idea or human event can be judged outside of its own era. Both you and I share concepts that have evolved throughout millenniums, but which have much in common with distant or recent history in that the division of society into masters and slaves, exploiters and the exploited, oppressors and the oppressed has always been antipathetic and odious. In the present day, it is the source of the most profound shame and the main cause of human suffering and unhappiness.

When productivity, now supported by science and technology, has increased tenfold and, in certain aspects, even hundreds or thousands of times more, such unjust differences should disappear.

You, I and millions of Venezuelans and Cubans share those ideas.

You started with the Christian principles that were instilled in you from an early age and a rebellious nature; I, from the ideas of Marx and a likewise rebellious nature.

There are universally recognized ethical principles which are valid for both Christians and Marxists.

From that starting point, revolutionary ideas are constantly enriched through study and experience.

It is appropriate to note that our sincere and revolutionary friendship emerged when you were not the president of Venezuela. I never asked you for anything. When the Bolivarian movement won its victory in the 1999 elections, the price of oil was less that $10 per barrel. I remember that well because you invited me to your inauguration ceremony.

Your support for Cuba was spontaneous, just as our cooperation with the sister people of Venezuela has always been.

In the midst of the Special Period, following the demise of the USSR, the empire intensified its brutal blockade of our people. At a certain point, fuel prices rose, thus making it difficult for us to obtain supplies. You then guaranteed a safe, steady commercial supply to our country.

We cannot forget that after the political coup against the Bolivarian Revolution in April 2002 and your brilliant victory in the oil coup at the end of that same year, oil prices rose to $60-plus per barrel. You then offered us fuel supplies and credit facilities. Bush was already president of the United States and the mastermind of those illegal and treacherous attacks on the Venezuelan people.

I remember how annoyed you were at his demand that I leave Mexico as a precondition for his landing in that long-suffering country, where you and I were attending a United Nations international conference in which he also should have participated.

They will never forgive the Bolivarian Revolution for its support for Cuba at a time when the empire imagined that our people, after almost half a century of resistance, would once again fall into their hands. In Miami, the counterrevolution demanded three days’ license to kill revolutionaries as soon as the transition government demanded by Bush was installed in Cuba.

Ten years of exemplary and fruitful cooperation between Venezuela and Cuba have passed. The ALBA was born in that period. The U.S-promoted FTAA had failed but the empire was once again on the offensive.

The coup d’état in Honduras and the installation of seven U.S. military bases in Colombia are recent events that occurred after the inauguration of the new president of the United States. His predecessor had reestablished the 4th Fleet, half a century after the end of the last World War, when the Cold War was over and the Soviet Union no longer existed. The real intentions of the empire are obvious this time, behind the amiable smile and African-American face of Barack Obama.

Yesterday, Daniel Ortega explained how the coup in Honduras determined the weakening and conduct of the members of the Central American Integration System.

The empire is mobilizing the right-wing forces of Latin America to strike at Venezuela and, with that, the other ALBA member states. If the considerable oil and gas resources of Bolívar’s homeland were once again seized, the English-speaking Caribbean countries and other nations in Central America would lose the generous supply conditions today offered by revolutionary Venezuela.

Just a few days ago, after President Barack Obama’s speech at the West Point military academy announcing the deployment of a further 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan, I wrote a Reflection in which I described as "an unprincipled act" his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize when he had already adopted that that decision.

On December 10, during his acceptance speech in Oslo, he made statements that were an example of imperialist logic and thinking. "… I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land. Some will kill. Some will be killed," he affirmed in trying to present as a "just war" the brutal carnage taking place in that distant land, in which the majority of those who perish are defenseless villagers struck by bombs dropped from drone planes.

After those phrases, which were among the first that he spoke, he devoted more than 4,600 words to presenting his massacre of civilians as a just war. "In today's wars," he affirmed, "many more civilians are killed than soldiers."

More than one million non-combatant civilians have now died in Iraq, Afghanistan and along the Pakistan border.

In that same speech, he praises Nixon and Reagan as distinguished individuals, without stopping to recall that one of them dropped more than one million tons of bombs on Vietnam, and the other one had the Siberian gas pipeline blown up by electronic means so that it would look like an accident. The blast was so great and devastating that nuclear test monitoring equipment registered it.

The speech he gave in Oslo differs from that of West Point because the latter was better crafted and recited. In the Norwegian capital, the speaker’s face demonstrated that he was aware of the insincerity of his words.

Neither the timing nor the circumstances were the same. Oslo is located close to Copenhagen. In that city, the extremely important Climate Change Conference, which I know that you and Evo are planning to attend, is taking place. The most important political battle in human history is being fought there at this very moment. There, one can appreciate in all its magnitude the scope of the damage that developed capitalism has inflicted on humanity. Today, the conference must desperately fight not just for justice but also for the survival of the species.

I have closely followed the ALBA meeting. I congratulate you all. I very much enjoyed seeing so many beloved friends outlining ideas and fighting in a united way. I congratulate you all.

¡Hasta la victoria siempre!

A warm embrace.

Fidel Castro Ruz
December 14, 2009

Speech by General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers at the opening of the ALBA Summit

Dear heads of state and government;
Dear delegates and invited guests;

IN giving you the most cordial welcome on behalf of the Cuban government and people, I transmit to you greetings from the leader of the Cuban Revolution, compañero Fidel Castro Ruz, who is closely following our meeting.

In the first place, I will take advantage of the occasion to express on behalf of everyone present the delight that we felt at the overwhelming victory of the Bolivian people last Sunday with their reelection, by an ample majority, of compañero Evo Morales Ayma for a new mandate as president.

Lamentably, we do not have with us the physical presence of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. The people of that Latin American nation have been deprived of their constitutional rights and, with the support of the U.S. government, have had imposed on them a usurping coup government, which an electoral farce tried to make legitimate. 

History will record with due recognition the attitude assumed by the member countries of the ALBA-TCP and by the majority of Latin American and Caribbean governments in their unequivocal condemnation of the military coup in Honduras. The record will also reveal the attitude of those who, bowing down to imperialism, ended up accepting the coup maneuver.

We send our warmest greeting to the Honduran people via Patricia Rodas, their legitimate representative as secretary of state, and present here.

Dear colleagues:
This 8th Summit of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, which we are officially opening today, begins its sessions coinciding with the 15th anniversary of the first visit to Cuba of the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution and the 5th anniversary of the Venezuela-Cuba Joint Declaration, signed in 2004 by Presidents Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro, which marked the official birth of the ALBA, known as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.

There have been five years of intensive work, of common searching, in which we have achieved encouraging results in the social order, which we can still surpass, and which it is just to mention and celebrate at this particular moment.

The tremendous significance represented by the declaration of a territory free of illiteracy in three ALBA member countries: Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela, is one step in the ongoing battle to eradicate that social disaster in all the member countries of this new kind of integration mechanism.

Operation Miracle has improved or restored the sight of more than one million patients within the ALBA. At the same time, more than 2,000 doctors from our countries have graduated from the Latin America School of Medicine and 6, 653 young people are currently studying under the new Medical Training Program, with concepts of integrality, internationalism and humanism.

Currently underway in Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Bolivia is a genetic, psycho-social study for people with disabilities, a project of exceptional human value that pursues direct attention, the search for solutions and the social integration of the afore-mentioned persons.

The last summit in Cochabamba saw the signing of the Single Regional Payment Compensation System (SUCRE) Agreement, a financial mechanism that, from 2010, will begin to operate to promote trade via payment compensations without having to use the dollar, via an accounting unit called the SUCRE. A prior step was the constitution in June 2007 of the Bank of ALBA, with the objective of financing programs and projects of economic and social development. Various grannacional (grand-national) enterprises are today a reality, and others are in the starting-up process, to the benefit of our peoples.

The agenda that we have proposed gives us the possibility of deliberating – beyond the successes and results of ALBA during these last five years – ways of making more profound the development, improvement and impact of our alliance.

 • ON leaving the courthouse in Miami, William Norris stated that “although it is not what we wanted, we are to an extent satisfied,” given the reduction in the sentence handed down to Ramón Labañino Salazar, one of the five Cuban anti-terrorists unjustly incarcerated in the United States for more than 11 years.

- MIAMI 5 
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Corruption in the empire’s media campaign against Latin America

• VOICE of the Americas (VOA) is “expanding its penetration” in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, a Miami newspaper has revealed. With this objective, the radio station that broadcasts U.S. propaganda worldwide is to requisition Radio/TV Martí production facilities.

“Our focus is on the Andean region, because of the upheavals that are going on there,” Cuban-American Alberto Mascaró, director of VOA’s Spanish division, informed El Nuevo Herald collaborator Juan O. Tamayo.

That information has to be true. Several Nuevo Herald journalists have been exposed in the past for their well paid collaborative work with Radio/TV Martí.

For his part, Juan O. Tamayo has been contracted for the last few months by ICCAS, an organization directed by former CIA analyst Jaime Suchlicki and heavily subsidized by USAID to carry out “studies” on Cuba.

VOA is already penetrating the geographical region with its Made in the USA information that favors oligarchical interests.

According to Tamayo, “It has 319 affiliated radio stations in the Andean region which broadcast its free programs: 199 in Bolivia, 77 in Colombia, and seven each in Ecuador and Peru.” VOA is obliged to observe standards of “accuracy, balance, comprehensiveness and objectivity,” the article assures, citing Pedro Roig’s relative.

There is no doubt that this “impartial” State Department agency has dedicated itself to that aim of “objectivity,” for years in Venezuela, “attacking the economy by circulating false information about supply shortages, confiscation programs on the part of the Bolivarian government, movements in the barracks, and news on the ‘documented’ corruption of officials,” as Web Apporrea’s online site notes.

To achieve its objectives, VOA is to utilize the Radio/TV Martí’s production facilities, which, according to the Miami Mafioso newspaper, has fuelled “speculation that the Martí stations are to be taken over by VOA.” Radio and TV Martí have been shaken by various corruption scandals over the last few years.

The most interesting piece of information is that Alberto Mascaró, who announced VOA’s new direction, is none less than the nephew of the wife of Pedro Roig, director general of Radio/TV Martí, a corporation notorious for hiring friends of its capos.

Former director of the Inter-American Military Academy in Miami, Roig was trained by the CIA in Fort Benning alongside the international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, as a hired killer for Operation 40, involved in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

In August, Pedro Roig, who has always found jobs for his clan, fired 35 of the corporation’s employees, whose job content was to manufacture anti-Cuba slander which he subsequently was unable to broadcast.

Incredibly, the anti-Cuba propaganda stations Radio/TV Martí have some 170 employees and a 2009 budget of $34.8 million. Yet they have not been able to broadcast their programming in Cuba despite frequent ridiculous attempts. However, the Spanish division of VOA has 21 employees and a 2009 budget of $3.1 million to transmit imperial propaganda to the whole of Latin America.

While the United States is experiencing its worst crisis since the 1930s, it is still providing plenty of money for the dirty imperial war on Latin America. •

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• "VENEZUELA and Cuba have a duty to resist; that is a commitment to our history, to Bolívar and Martí, to the peoples of our America," affirmed General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers, who headed, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, the closing session of the 10th Inter-Governmental Commission between the two countries.

"We are approaching a decade of joint construction in which Cuba and Venezuela have raised, with the will of their governments and the efforts of our finest sons and daughters, an example of humane integration in solidarity," stated Raúl during the event at the capital’s International Conference Center.

The South American nation is currently the island’s first trade partner," he noted, a result that has been made possible on account of the role of the social missions, which he described as an unprecedented model of social justice in favor of the most dispossessed.

For his part, Chávez commented that the changes coming about today in Latin America are not a second independence. "It is the same thing, which has not ended. It befalls us to crown a 200-year process and we shall do so, nobody can avert that," he confirmed.

"Fidel never tires of reiterating to me that if the Bolivarian Revolution should fail, the whole of this continent would once again fall into the hands of the yanki empire, and I feel obliged to contribute to that phrase from the most profound truth: the Venezuelan Revolution would not have existed without the Cuban one; thus, we are obliged to work for our revolutions because, in essence, they are the same, we cannot fail," he stated.

Chávez also noted that this meeting has produced results unprecedented in the history of integration, in allusion to the 285 projects to be executed by 52 institutions in the two countries for the benefit of their peoples.

The two leaders agreed that bilateral links have grown qualitatively and quantitatively on a basis of altruistic cooperation and mutual benefit.

As a result of the Joint Commission, the 11 technical tables that met on December 11 and 12, drew up and approved the working program for 2010, which takes in, among others, the health, education, sports, culture, energy, agriculture, informatics and communications, mining, and heavy iron and steel sectors, and the pharmaceutical and sugar industries.

The delegations stressed the need to take into account the intensification of the current economic crisis, which is particularly affecting the Third World nations, victims of neoliberal policies.

Ricardo Cabrisas, vice president of the Council of Ministers, on the Cuban side, and Vice President Rafael Ramírez Carreño, minister of People’s Power for energy and oil, on the Venezuelan side, signed the final minutes of the 10th Session of the Inter-Governmental Commission.

During the meeting its elevated symbolism was highlighted, given that it coincided with the 15th anniversary of Chávez’ first visit to the island, during which he met with the leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro; and the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the political declaration signed by the two leaders on December 14, 2004, a text that became the founding document of the ALBA. •