Submission to imperial politics

Reflections
by Cuban President Fidel Castro                       Read Spanish Version


Of
all the presidents of the United States, and those who aspire to that
office, I only met one who, for ethical-religious reasons, was not an
accomplice to the brutal terrorism against Cuba: James Carter. That
assumes, of course, another President who forbade that United States
officials should be used to assassinate Cuban leaders. That was the
case of Gerald Ford who replaced Nixon after the Watergate scandal.
Given his irregular manner of ascending to the office,

one might
characterize him as a symbolic President.

It is to the
illustrious President Eisenhower, not in the least opposed to
anti-Cuban terrorism but rather its initiator, that we owe thanks for
at least providing a definition of the industrial-military
complex
which today, with its insatiable and incurable voracity, makes up the
motor that is driving the human species to its current crisis. More
than three billion years have gone by since planet Earth saw the
first forms of life springing up.

One day, Che [Guevara] and I
went to play golf. He had been a caddie once to earn some money in
his spare time; I, on the other hand, knew absolutely nothing about
this expensive sport. The United States government had already
decreed the suspension and the redistribution of Cuba’s sugar quota,
after the Revolution had passed the Agrarian Reform Law. The golf
game was a photo opportunity. The real purpose was to make fun of
Eisenhower.

In the United States, you can have a minimum of
votes and still become President. That is what happened to Bush.
Having a majority of electoral votes and losing the Presidency is
what happened to Gore. For that reason, the State of Florida is the
prize everyone aspires to, because of the presidential votes it
provides. In the case of Bush, an electoral fraud was also needed;
for this, the first Cuban emigrants, who were the Batista supporters
and the bourgeois, were best masters.

Clinton is not excluded
from all of this, neither is the Democratic Party’s candidate. The
Helms-Burton Act was passed with his support, with a ready-made
excuse: the downing of Brothers to the Rescue planes, those which on
more than one occasion had flown over the city of Havana and which
had violated Cuban territory dozens of times. The order to fend off
flights over the Capital had been given to the Cuban Air Force just
weeks earlier.

I must tell you that, close to that episode,
Congressman Bill Richardson had arrived on a visit to Cuba on January
19, 1996. As usual, he brought with him petitions asking that
several
counter-revolutionaries be released from prison. We
explained to him that we were by now tired of receiving such
petitions, and I talked to him about what was happening with the
Brothers to the Rescue flights. I also talked to him about the
unfulfilled promises regarding the blockade. Richardson returned a
few days later, on the 10th of February, and very earnestly told me,
to the best of my recollection, the following: "That will not be
happening again; the President has ordered those flights to be
suspended".

In those days, I believed that orders issued
by the President of the United States would be carried out. The
planes were brought down on February 24, some days after the reply.
The New Yorker Magazine supplies details about that meeting with
Richardson.

Apparently, Clinton gave the order to suspend
those flights, but nobody paid any attention to it. It was an
election year, and he took advantage of that excuse to invite the
Foundation leaders over and to sign that criminal Act, with the
approval of all.

Following the migratory crisis of 1994, we
learned that Carter wanted to do something to find a solution.
Clinton didn’t accept it and he called Salinas de Gortari, the
President of Mexico. Cuba had been the last nation to recognize his
electoral victory. He had contacted him on his inauguration as the
new President of Mexico.

Salinas informed me by phone of
Clinton’s decision to find a satisfactory solution, and in turn he
was asked for his cooperation in this effort. That was how an
agreement was reached in principle.
That agreement with Clinton
included the idea of putting an end to the economic blockade. The
only witness we could count on was Salinas. Clinton had thus left out
Carter. Cuba was not able to decide who the mediator would be.
Salinas relates this episode accurately. Anyone with an interest can
read about it in his books.

Clinton was really kind when we
informally crossed paths at a UN meeting attended by many heads of
state. Moreover, he was friendly, as well as intelligent, in
demanding adherence to the law in the case of the kidnapped boy, when
he was rescued by special federal agents sent from Washington.

The
candidates are now immersed in the Florida adventure: Hillary, the
Clinton successor; Obama, the popular African American candidate and
several of the other 16 who, up until the present, have proposed
their candidacy in both parties, with the exception of
Republican
Congressman Ronald Ernest Paul and the former
Democratic Senator from Alaska, Maurice Robert Gravel, and the other
three Democrats Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd and Bill
Richardson.

I don’t know what Carter said during his race to
the White House. Whatever his position was, I was right when I
guessed that his election could avoid a holocaust for the people of
Panama, and that is just what I said to Torrijos. He established the
U.S. Interests Section in Cuba and promoted an agreement about
jurisdictional maritime limits. The circumstances surrounding his
term prevented him from taking things any further and, in my opinion
he embarked on several imperial adventures.

Today, talk is
about the seemingly invincible ticket that might be created with
Hillary for President and Obama for Vice President. Both of them feel
the sacred duty of demanding "a democratic government in Cuba".
They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a
Sunday afternoon.

The media declares that this would be
essential, unless Gore decides to run. I don’t think he will do so;
better than anyone, he knows about the kind of catastrophe that
awaits humanity if it continues along its current course. When he was
a candidate, he of course committed the error of yearning for "a
democratic Cuba".

Enough of tales and nostalgia. This is
written simply to increase the consciousness of the Cuban
people.

Fidel
Castro Ruz
August
27, 2007