Shun the Empire's Hypocritical Politics: Fidel Castro on Obama's Speech at the CANF

[XXPANTHAXX]

By Fidel Castro Ruz

Shun the empire’s hypocritical politics

IT Would be dishonest of me to remain silent after hearing the speech
United States Democratic party presidential candidate Barack Obama
delivered on the afternoon of May 23 at the Cuban American National
Foundation created by former US president Ronald Reagan. I listened to
his speech, as I did Republican party candidate John McCain’s and
President George W. Bush’s.

I feel no resentment towards him, for he is not responsible for the
crimes perpetrated against Cuba and humanity. Were I to defend him, I
would do his adversaries an enormous favour. I have, therefore, no
reservations about criticising him and about expressing my points of
view on his words frankly.

What were Obama’s statements?

"Throughout my entire life, there has been injustice and repression in
Cuba. Never, in my lifetime, have the people of Cuba known freedom.
Never, in the lives of two generations of Cubans, have the people of
Cuba known democracy . . . This is the terrible and tragic status quo
that we have known for half a century — of elections that are anything
but free or fair . . . I won’t stand for this injustice, you won’t stand
for this injustice, and together we will stand up for freedom in Cuba,"
he told annexationists, adding: "It’s time to let Cuban American money
make their families less dependent upon the Castro regime . . . I will
maintain the embargo."

The content of these declarations by this strong candidate for the US
presidency spares me the work of having to explain the reason for this
reflection.

José Hernandez, one of the Cuban American National Foundation directives
who Obama praises in his speech, was none other than the owner of the
50-calibre automatic rifle, equipped with telescopic and infrared
sights, which was confiscated, by chance, along with other deadly
weapons while being transported by sea to Venezuela, where the
Foundation had planned to assassinate the writer of these lines at an
international meeting held in Margarita, in the Venezuelan state of
Nueva Esparta.

Pepe Hernández’s group wanted to renegotiate a former pact with former
US president Bill Clinton, betrayed by Mas Canosa’s clan, who secured
Bush’s electoral victory in 2000 through fraud, because the latter had
promised to assassinate Castro, something they all happily embraced.
These are the kinds of political tricks inherent to the United States’
decadent and contradictory system.

Presidential candidate Obama’s speech may be formulated as follows:
hunger for the nation, remittances as charitable handouts and visits to
Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable way of life
behind it.

How does he plan to address the extremely serious problem of the food
crisis? The world’s grains must be distributed among human beings, pets
and fish, which become smaller every year and more scarce in the seas
that have been over-exploited by the large trawlers which no
international organisation could get in the way of. Producing meat from
gas and oil is no easy feat. Even Obama overestimates technology’s
potential in the fight against climate change, though he is more
conscious of the risks and the limited margin of time than Bush. He
could seek the advice of Al Gore, who is also a Democrat and is no
longer a candidate, as he is aware of the accelerated pace at which
global warming is advancing.

His close political rival Bill Clinton, who is not running for the
presidency, an expert on extra-territorial laws like the Helms-Burton
and Torricelli Acts, can advise him on an issue like the blockade, which
he promised to lift and never did.

What did he say in his speech in Miami, this man who is, doubtless, from
the social and human points of view, the most progressive candidate for
the US presidency? "For 200 years," he said, "the United States has made
it clear that we won’t stand for foreign intervention in our hemisphere.
But every day, all across the Americas, there is a different kind of
struggle — not against foreign armies, but against the deadly threat of
hunger and thirst, disease and despair.

"That is not a future that we have to accept — not for the child in Port
au Prince or the family in the highlands of Peru. We can do better. We
must do better. . . . We cannot ignore suffering to our south, nor stand
for the globalisation of the empty stomach."

A magnificent description of imperialist globalisation: the
globalisation of empty stomachs! We ought to thank him for it.

But, 200 years ago, Bolivar fought for Latin American unity and, more
than 100 years ago, Martí gave his life in the struggle against the
annexation of Cuba by the United States. What is the difference between
what Monroe proclaimed and what Obama proclaims and resuscitates in his
speech two centuries later?

"I will reinstate a Special Envoy for the Americas in my White House who
will work with my full support. But we’ll also expand the Foreign
Service, and open more consulates in the neglected regions of the
Americas.

"We’ll expand the Peace Corps, and ask more young Americans to go abroad
to deepen the trust and the ties among our people," he said near the
end, adding: "Together, we can choose the future over the past."

A beautiful phrase, for it attests to the idea, or at least the fear,
that history makes figures what they are and not all the way around.

Today, the United States has nothing of the spirit behind the
Philadelphia declaration of principles formulated by the 13 colonies
that rebelled against English colonialism. Today, they are a gigantic
empire undreamed of by the country’s founders at the time. Nothing,
however, was to change for the natives and the slaves. The former were
exterminated as the nation expanded; the latter continued to be
auctioned at the marketplace — men, women and children — for nearly a
century, despite the fact that "all men are born free and equal", as the
Declaration of Independence affirms. The world’s objective conditions
favoured the development of that system.

In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic
and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact
same argument which, almost without exception, US administrations have
used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The
blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don’t want to see
US children inculcated with those shameful values.

An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without
the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism
visited upon Cuba.

The revolution was the result of imperial domination. We cannot be
accused of having imposed it upon the country. The true changes could
have and ought to have been brought about in the United States. Its own
workers, more than a century ago, voiced the demand for an eight-hour
work shift, which stemmed from the development of productive forces.

The first thing the leaders of the Cuban revolution learned from Martí
was to believe in and act on behalf of an organisation founded for the
purposes of bringing about a revolution. We were always bound by
previous forms of power and, following the institutionalisation of this
organisation, we were elected by more than 90 percent of voters, as has
become customary in Cuba, a process which does not in the least resemble
the ridiculous levels of electoral participation which, many a time, as
in the case of the United States, stays short of 50 percent of the
voters.

No small and blockaded country like ours would have been able to hold
its ground for so long on the basis of ambition, vanity, deceit or the
abuse of power, the kind of power its neighbour has. To state otherwise
is an insult to the intelligence of our heroic people.

I am not questioning Obama’s great intelligence, his debate skills or
his work ethic. He is a talented orator and is ahead of his rivals in
the electoral race.

I feel sympathy for his wife and little girls, who accompany him and
give him encouragement every Tuesday. It is indeed a touching human
spectacle. Nevertheless, I am obliged to raise a number of delicate
questions. I do not expect answers; I wish only to raise them for the
record.

1. Is it right for the president of the United States to order the
assassination of any one person in the world, whatever the pretext may
be?

2. Is it ethical for the president of the United States to order the
torture of other human beings?

3. Should state terrorism be used by a country as powerful as the United
States as an instrument to bring about peace on the planet?

4. Is an Adjustment Act, applied as punishment on only one country,
Cuba, in order to destabilise it, good and honourable, even when it
costs innocent children and mothers their lives? If it is good, why is
this right not automatically granted to Haitians, Dominicans and other
peoples of the Caribbean, and why isn’t the same Act applied to Mexicans
and people from Central and South America, who die like flies against
the Mexican border wall or in the waters of the Atlantic and the
Pacific?

5. Can the United States do without immigrants, who grow vegetables,
fruits, almonds and other delicacies for US citizens? Who would sweep
their streets, work as servants in their homes or do the worst and
lowest-paid jobs?

6. Are crackdowns on illegal residents fair, even as they affect
children born in the United States?

7. Are the brain-drain and the continuous theft of the best scientific
and intellectual minds in poor countries moral and justifiable?

8. You state, as I pointed out at the beginning of this reflection, that
your country had long ago warned European powers that it would not
tolerate any intervention in the hemisphere, reiterating that this right
be respected while demanding the right to intervene anywhere in the
world with the aid of hundreds of military bases and naval, aerial and
spatial forces distributed across the planet. I ask: Is that the way in
which the United States expresses its respect for freedom, democracy and
human rights?

9. Is it fair to stage pre-emptive attacks on 60 or more dark corners of
the world, as Bush calls them, whatever the pretext may be?

10. Is it honourable and sound to invest millions and millions of
dollars in the military industrial complex, to produce weapons that can
destroy life on earth several times over?

Before judging our country, you should know that Cuba, with its
education, health, sports, culture and science programmes, implemented
not only in its own territory but also in other poor countries around
the world, and the blood that has been shed in acts of solidarity
towards other peoples, in spite of the economic and financial blockade
and the aggression of your powerful country, is proof that much can be
done with very little. Not even our closest ally, the Soviet Union, was
able to achieve what we have.

The only form of co-operation the United States can offer other nations
consists of the sending of military professionals to those countries. It
cannot offer anything else, for it lacks a sufficient number of people
willing to sacrifice themselves for others and offer substantial aid to
a country in need (though Cuba has known and relied on the co-operation
of excellent US doctors).

They are not to blame for this, for society does not inculcate such
values in them on a massive scale.

We have never subordinated co-operation with other countries to
ideological requirements. We offered the United States our help when
Hurricane Katrina lashed the city of New Orleans. Our internationalist
medical brigade bears the glorious name of Henry Reeve, a young man,
born in the United States, who fought and died for Cuba’s sovereignty in
our first war of independence.

Our revolution can mobilise tens of thousands of doctors and health
technicians. It can mobilise an equally vast number of teachers and
citizens, who are willing to travel to any corner of the world to fulfil
any noble purpose, not to usurp people’s rights or take possession of
raw materials.

The goodwill and determination of people constitute limitless resources
that cannot be kept and would not fit in a bank’s vault. They cannot
spring from the hypocritical politics of an empire.

-The writer is the former President of Cuba.