A message from Fidel

Cuban Radar                                                                              Read Spanish Version

A message from Fidel

A service by the Radio Progreso Alternativa Havana Bureau

Cuban media on Jan. 29 published a manuscript letter written by Fidel Castro in which he greets the 400 intellectuals participating in the 2nd International Conference for World Balance, held in Havana, as a tribute to the 155th anniversary of José Martí, Cuba’s national hero. Written the previous day, Martí’s birthdate in 1853, the letter mentions a speech Castro delivered in 2003 celebrating of the 150th anniversary.

“What I expressed that day… has been the basis for the reflections I wrote during the convalescence stage that befell me,” Castro wrote. Observers point out the fact that in his letter Castro mentioned that stage in the past.  

Failure of a U.S. project

Speaker of the Cuban parliament Ricardo Alarcón said in an interview with the Spanish daily,
El Público, that the U.S. political and economic project for control of Latin America has failed.

According to Alarcón, who is also a Politburo member of the Cuban Communist Party, the region is characterized by the search for independence and integration models, as well as of new formulas for coordinating its economies.
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In the interview, Alarcón mentioned the positions on Cuba by aspiring presidential nominees in the U.S., and said that Democrat Barack Obama “is the only one that has suggested a new approach and even a dialogue with every one, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuba, and that he is against banning travel to the island.” But he also pointed out that “that is what they say while campaigning. We’ll see what happens in reality.”

(For further information on the interview, see Manuel A. Ramy’s blog at Progreso Semanal with the title “Fidel ‘puede decir, no jodas, no’…”, published on January 28 [only in Spanish].)

Juggling the food on the table puzzle

Juventud Rebelde (JR) published in its Sunday edition the third of a series of articles about the difficulties that Cubans face when buying agricultural products.
 
According to JR, at the Cuban free markets, ruled by offer and demand, prices are well beyond the buying power of the majority of the population, but the situation is nothing more than a reflection of more basic questions, such as low production and low productivity in agriculture. The key is to increase production and productivity, as well as (according to a farmer interviewed by the daily) “organizing (middlemen)… and taxing them.”

Armando Novoa, a researcher with the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy (CEEC), argues that “we are not producing enough, neither in quantity nor in time nor space.” Novoa acknowledged that there is a problem of property, which does not place the socialist system in danger, depending on the manner in which it is handled.”

According to JR, Novoa suggests giving room to other forms of property of the land, as well as not denying the existence of the market, but rather the taking advantage of it.  
 

Frei Betto and the Cuban Revolution

According to Radio Habana Cuba (RHC), Brazilian theologian Frei Betto claimed that the Cuban revolutionary and socialist experience does not have the right to fail.

Betto gave a conference to more than 400 delegates from 35 countries attending the 2nd International Conference for World Balance held in the island’s capital, and inspired by the thinking of José Martí, Cuba’s national hero.

Pierre Sané, UNESCO assistant director, who attended the event, stressed that “in José Martí’s thinking there is an extraordinary critical force, and in his ethics there exists the keys to solving poverty and pollution of the environment.”