Raúl welcomes top Chilean communists
President Raúl Castro met Thursday (May 29) with a delegation from the Chilean Communist Party headed by its president, Guillermo Tellier del Valle, the daily Granma reported.
“During the fraternal encounter, Raúl and Tellier dialogued about the relations between both parties and the readiness to continue to strengthen them,” Granma said. “They also exchanged views on international and regional topics.”
The group consisted of Tellier, Juan Andrés Lagos, the CP’s secretary general; Karol Cariola, secretary general of the Communist Youth, and Javier Oliveira, the CP’s chief of communications.
Welcoming the Chileans were José Ramón Machado Ventura, second secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban CP; Miguel Díaz-Canel, first vice president of the Councils of State and Ministers; and José Ramón Balaguer, chief of the department of International Relations of the Cuban CP.
The delegation also met with the president of Cuba’s National Assembly, Esteban Lazo Hernández, with whom it discussed “the economic and social changes being made by both nations and the transformations undertaken by the island with relation to the actualization of its economic model,” according to Granma.
“During the exchange, Tellier said that Chile is moving toward a true participatory democracy and acknowledged that there is still much to be done,” Granma reported. Lazo “underscored the importance of unity as the central axis in the defense of just causes, in the times marked by economic and social troubles that the world is facing.”
Not since President Salvador Allende’s administration (1970-73) has such a high-ranking delegation of the Chilean Communist Party traveled to Cuba. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro toured Chile for a month in 1971. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet visited Cuba in 2009 during her first term.
The Chileans’ visit comes at a time when Bachelet’s government is undertaking major changes of its own. Bachelet, a socialist, was re-elected last December to try to solve some of the social and political problems affecting Chile, one of 15 countries with the greatest inequality in the world.
A study by the University of Chile showed that the income of 0.1 percent of the wealthiest Chileans is 241 times greater that of the rest of the population.
Bachelet’s “to-do” list includes a fiscal reform that would raise taxes on the very rich and channel the money to social benefits, such as free education for all. Other structural reforms would include an updating of the nation’s 1980 Constitution, as last amended in 2010. Her task has been described as a “progressive transformation” of the government.
Bachelet was president of Chile from 2006 to 2010. During this second administration, he outlook for “progressive transformation” is brighter because of increased representation in Congress for leftist parties. As a result of the December elections, the number of Communist Party deputies rose from 3 to 6; the number of Socialist Party deputies from 11 to 16.
One of the new CP deputies is Karol Cariola, now visiting Cuba. The other is Camila Vallejo, former president of the Students Federation of Chile.
For the first time since the Allende administration in 1973, a communist was appointed to the president’s Cabinet: Claudia Pascual, current director of the National Service for Women.
One of the social campaigns that the Chilean CP is endorsing at this time is the legalization of marijuana for medical use, along the lines of Uruguay, which legalized the use of “pot” last December. Tellier, Cariola and Vallejo appear on TV spots promoting a march for the legalization of marijuana that will take place in Santiago on Sunday (June 1). Click here to watch it.
[Photo above shows President Raúl Castro chatting with Karol Cariola, head of Chile’s Communist Youth. Others in background are, from left, Juan Andrés Lagos, secretary general of Chile’s CP; Ramón Machado Ventura, second secretary of the Central Committee of Cuba’s CP; Guillermo Tellier, president of the Chilean CP; Miguel Díaz-Canel, Cuba’s vice president.]
