Fidel praises China and Russia, rips U.S.
In a long article published Tuesday (July 22) in the Communist Party daily Granma, Fidel Castro speaks of a new global order in which “Russia and China [are] the two countries called upon to lead a new world that could permit human survival, if imperialism doesn’t first unleash a criminal and exterminating war.”
The article, titled “It is time to know reality a little better,” is intended — by Castro’s own admission — to give a more detailed account of the recent meeting of the BRICS economic bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) that took place in Brazil July 14-16.
But, before addressing that issue, Castro pointed to the behavior of the United States toward Cuba, saying that “the Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People’s Republic of China, and North Korea helped us to resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable economic blockade imposed by the United States, the most powerful empire that ever existed.”
“Despite its immense power,” Castro wrote, the U.S. “could not crush the small country that, a few miles from its shores, has resisted for more than half a century the piratical attacks, the hijackings of fishing ships and sinkings of merchant ships, the aerial destruction of the Cubana de Aviación airliner over Barbados, the arson of schools and other similar crimes.”
“When [the U.S.] attempted to invade our country with mercenary forces in the vanguard, carried by U.S. warships in the first stage, it was defeated in less than 72 hours,” Castro recalled. “Later, counter-revolutionary gangs, organized and equipped by [the U.S.], committed acts of vandalism that led to the loss of life or physical integrity of thousands of compatriots.”
“The state of Florida was the site of the largest base of activities against another country at that moment,” Castro said. “Our small country was denied not only its right to be an independent nation, like any of the numerous states of Latin America and the Caribbean exploited and plundered by [the U.S.], but also our homeland’s right to its independence.”
Referring to the summit meeting of BRICS and CELAC (Community of Latin America and Caribbean States), Castro wrote of the “important declaration” signed at the end of the event. A development bank has been created for all those nations, he said, with an initial capital of $50 billion that will rise to $100 billion.
A $100 billion common fund of hard-currency reserves for emergency situations will be set up, and the BRICS bank will “reaffirm its support for a multilateral system of open, transparent, inclusive and nondiscriminatory commerce.”
After spelling out most of the points of agreement at the summit, Castro commented that their “meaning is clear and categorical: Latin America is the geographical area of the world where the United States has imposed the most unequal system on the planet.”
The U.S. takes advantage of Latin America’s native riches, its cheap raw materials and goods and is “the privileged depositor of the gold and funds that escape from [Latin American] countries and are invested by U.S. companies in that country or anywhere else in the world,” the Cuban leader wrote. “The abuses committed in the course of history are repugnant.”
China and Russia hold the solution to Latin America’s problems, Castro believes.
“I haven’t the slightest doubt that, when President Xi Jinping ends his tour of this hemisphere, like the president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, both countries will be culminating one of the greatest feats in human history,” he wrote.
“In a few decades, China’s gross domestic product will exceed that of the United States; many states are already asking for yuans, not dollars. […] The contribution that Russia and China can make to science, technology and the economic development of South America and the Caribbean is decisive.”
Castro ended by saying that “the great events in history are not forged in one day. Enormous tests and challenges of growing complexity are foreseeable in the horizon. […] It is time to know the realities a little better.”
For the full text of Castro’s message, in Spanish, click here.
(Photos from Cubadebate of July 11.)
