Fidel's Prologue to new book: "Fidel, Bolivia, and more"

[magbana]

Comment in parentheses below is from Walter Lippmann, editor of Cuba News.

(The international media wrote that Fidel took on Yoani Sanchez in this
preface, though without naming her specifically, and he certainly does.
In addition, he takes up other cases of supposed Cuban dissidents who
were shown to be simply opportunistic people who wanted to make money
from their pretences of being political critics of the Cuban Revolution.
This also features a terrific discussion of the origins of the famous
Henry Reeve Contingent in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as well
as Che Guevara's experiences I Bolivia. A great stand-alone commentary.)
==========================================================================

A PROLOGUE FOR OUR BOLIVIAN FRIENDS

SOURCE:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/ing/f040608i.html

SPANISH ORIGINAL:
http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/reflexiones/2008/esp/f040608e.html

The book FIDEL, BOLIVIA Y ALGO MÁS was given me as gift by President of
Bolivia Evo Morales during his last visit to Cuba, on May 22, 2008.

Both he and Rafael Dausá, Cuban Ambassador to Bolivia, who accompanied him
for this visit, informed me that the authors wished to launch a new edition,
for the 80th anniversary of Che's birth, which will be in two weeks, this
coming June 14. No sooner had I seen the photos, the press clippings, the
chapter index and a number of paragraphs than I asked Evo and Dausá to allow
me to include an introduction expressing my gratitude to the editors.
“That’s what they want from you, as the book’s author,” they replied.

I read the book in one sitting the following day. I confirmed that they were
my words, quoted verbatim. I was anxious to read what I had said in 1993,
now that the things I had then spoken about were transpiring. I didn’t even
remember how I had answered each of the numerous and serious questions, some
of them very clever, put to me on that occasion, questions which made me
externalize many concepts I had kept inside my head, at the risk of being
misunderstood. It was an extremely difficult journey for me. Che had died in
Bolivia 26 years before.

I recently saw Che’s evocative effigy, cast in bronze, on its way to
Rosario, the city where he was born. I started to remember and reflected, a
good while, on the things I had talked about with him, from the time I first
met him to the day he left for Ñancahuanzú, in Bolivia. Such images had
never crossed our minds and neither one of us had many reasons to suppose we
would enjoy a long life.

Today, I am duty-bound to reiterate what I said in that country at the time
of my visit. Then, I told you that our country had 40 thousand medical
doctors and expounded on the ideas that inspired our efforts. I shan’t
devote more lines to these, as many are contained in the book and I could
not express them better or with more spontaneity.

Eleven years later, the number of medical doctors had nearly doubled and the
Latin American School of Medicine, created in June 1999, had an enrolment of
over 10 thousand students from the region. We were already working, as part
of cooperative missions, in Third World countries, where thousands of health
specialists laboured, as we had promised the United Nations in 1979,
following the Non-Aligned Movement Summit held in Cuba then.

In August 2005, hurricane Katrina lashed the United States southeast and
brought the sea over the poorest neighbourhoods of New Orleans. Havana is
closer to that city than New York, Washington, Chicago, Boston and many
other U.S. cities. Adhering to the principle that disaster-related
assistance ought to be above ideological differences, we offered our help to
save human lives. We immediately approached the U.S. government with this
offer.

I shall limit myself to reproducing what Cuba was forced to explain, days
later, on the occasion of a gathering of the ‘Henry Reeve’ Contingent, on
September 4 of that year:

“It was clear to us that those who faced the greatest danger were these huge
numbers of poor, desperate people, many elderly citizens with health
situations, pregnant women, mothers and children among them, all in urgent
need of medical care.

“In such a situation, regardless of how rich a country may be, the number of
scientists it has or how great its technical breakthroughs have been, what
it needs are young, well-trained and experienced professionals, who have
done medical work in anomalous circumstances, and that, with a minimum of
resources, can be immediately transported by air or any other available
means to specific facilities or sites where the lives of human beings are in
danger.

“Cuba, a short distance away from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, was in
a position to offer assistance to the American people. At that moment, the
billions of dollars the United States could receive from countries all over
the world would not have saved a single life in New Orleans and other
critical areas where people were in mortal danger.

“Cuba would be completely powerless to help the crew of a spaceship or a
nuclear submarine in distress, but it could offer the victims of hurricane
Katrina, facing imminent death, substantial and crucial assistance. And this
is what it’s been doing since Tuesday, August 30, at 12:45 pm, when the
winds and downpours had barely ceased. We don’t regret it in the least, even
if Cuba was not mentioned in the long list of countries that offered their
solidarity to the US people. We had done this discretely and without any
publicity.

“Knowing that I could rely on men and women like you, I took the liberty of
reiterating our offer three days later, promising that in less than 12 hours
the first 100 doctors, carrying the necessary medical resources in their
backpacks, could be in Houston; that an additional 500 could be there 10
hours later and that, within the next 36 hours, 500 more, for a total of
1100, could join them to save at least one of the many lives at risk from
such dramatic events.

“Perhaps those unaware of our people’s sense of honour and spirit of
solidarity thought this was some kind of bluff or a ridiculous exaggeration.
But our country never toys with matters as serious as this, and it has never
dishonoured itself with demagogy or deceit (…) in this hall only three days
ago we observed a minute of silence for the victims of the hurricane which
battered that brotherly people (…) and not with 1100 but 1586 doctors,
including 300 additional doctors, in response to the increasingly alarming
news that keep coming in. (…) We’ve already announced that we are willing to
send thousands more if it were necessary. (…) In just 24 hours, all of the
doctors summoned to carry out this mission, coming from all parts of the
country, met in the capital. We have shown the utmost punctuality and
precision.

“You bring honour to the noble medical profession. With your quick,
unwavering response to the call of duty and your willingness to work in
uncharted and difficult conditions, you are writing a new page in the
history of solidarity among the peoples and are showing a course of peace to
the suffering and imperilled human species to which we all belong.

“(…) The average age of these health professionals is 32 years. Most of them
had not yet been born when the revolution triumphed and some had not even
been born 15 years after the triumph of the revolution, they are the product
of these hard years. The average work experience is of no less than 10
years. (…)

“U.S. Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, presently in New Orleans,
admitted that “doctors and nurses are doing a great job, but the
distribution of medical assistance continues to be a serious problem” and
“scores of people die every day”.

“According to the Boston Globe, Louisiana and Mississippi are facing the
worst public healthcare disaster the nation has known in decades.

The newspaper published declarations from Dr. Marshall Boulden, Director for
Diabetes and Metabolism at the University’s Medical Centre in Jackson,
Mississippi, who assistance: “We’re seeing things that we haven’t seen in
many years: cholera, typhoid fever, tetanus, malaria. We hadn’t seen such
conditions in 50 years. People are crammed together and wander around
surrounded by excrement”.

“(…)Our doctors’ backpacks contain precisely those resources needed to
address in the field problems relating to dehydration, high blood pressure,
diabetes Mellitus and infections in all parts of the body —lungs, bones,
skin, ears, urinary tract, reproductive system— as they arise. They also
carry (...) painkillers and drugs to lower fever (…) for treating bronchial
asthma and other similar complications, about forty products of proven
efficiency in emergencies such as this one. (…)

“Cuba has the moral authority to express its opinion on this matter and to
make this offer. Today, it is the country with the highest number of doctors
per capita in the world, and no other country cooperates with other nations
in the field of healthcare as extensively as it does. (…)

“The ‘Henry Reeve’ Brigade has been created, and whatever tasks you
undertake in any part of the world or our own homeland, you shall always
bear the glorious distinction of having responded to the call to assist our
brothers and sisters in the United States, and that nation’s humblest
children especially, with courage and dignity.

“Let’s go forward, generous defenders of health and of life, winners over
pain and death itself!” I concluded.

These were my words almost four years ago. The pages the ‘Henry Reeve’
Brigade has written in history wherever it has undertaken or undertakes a
mission, have honoured these words.

Historical events at times seem handcrafted to illustrate a particular human
conviction. Some days ago, I received a copy of the article the Namibian
Minister of Fisheries, who visited our country recently, published in
Europe. Including it in this preface is my way of expressing my gratitude
for his words. I shall quote only a number of key paragraphs, to save both
space and time:

"I am a product of the Cuban Revolution. Namibians are eternally indebted to
Cuba for being a caring nation with firm principles and a true friend of
Namibia. Cubans shed their precious blood for Namibia's freedom and
independence.

“In 1977, I left Namibia for Angola. I met Cuban internationalists for the
first time in Cassinga. At that time, I knew little about Cuba and its
people.

“As children, we were educated by the SWAPO leadership in exile, about why
Cuban internationalists were in Angola. As children, this made us to think
deeper.

“The Cubans had volunteered to assist a nation in need. They were
sacrificing their lives in order to save our lives and maintain peace in
Angola. This greatly inspired us, coming from a colonised Namibia. (…)

“While we were in Chibia, apartheid South African invaded Angola and
mercilessly attacked Cassinga, killing many defenceless Namibians. We
appreciated the care and bravery of the Cuban internationalist troops who
came to our rescue.

“I left for Cuba in 1978, together with other SWAPO pioneers. We were very
excited and curious. We had never seen Cuban children before and we were so
keen to meet them.

“We flew from Luanda, Angola's capital, to Havana. (…), some went to the
Island of Youth…in a school specifically meant for Namibian children to
pursue their studies. Some, though, attended different schools on the
Island, where they mixed with pupils from Nicaragua, South Africa,
Mozambique, Angola, Congo, Cape Verde and the Polisario Front. No other
country, big or small, has done what Cuba has done to educate young people
from different nations in real need.

“At the time, Comrade Helmuth Angula was the SWAPO chief representative to
Cuba. He had the responsibility to advise us on what to study and where. I
first wanted to become a pilot and cosmonaut. But Angula decided that I
should study food chemistry.

“When I completed food chemistry in 1981, I was honoured to have been
accorded the position of best student of the school. (…) I returned to
Angola in 1981. In 1984, SWAPO sent me to the UK to pursue studies in the
sciences. On my arrival in the UK, I realised that many of the students at
my university were misinformed about the situation in Cuba. I teamed up with
students from Cuba, Nicaragua and other Latin American countries to put the
record straight. I pursued studies in biochemistry with emphasis on marine
fisheries, and I obtained a BSc and PhD in the same field.

“I owe my current station in society to the people of Namibia who sacrificed
their lives and fought so bravely to liberate the country. But I owe
everything to the Cuban Revolution. (…) I then became minister of fisheries
and marine resources from 1997 till today. I couldn't have made it but for
the help I, and the others, received from Cuba (…)”

The April 2008 issue (472) of New African, a magazine on African issues
edited in Europe, recounts that, in the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba sent 350
thousand patriots, including civilians and doctors, to support Africa's wars
of liberation, particularly to Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau,
Cape Verde and Sao Tome e Principe. In the end, Cuba’s efforts hastened the
demise of apartheid in South Africa. Nelson Mandela was still in prison when
Cuba, on the other side of the Atlantic, sent those forces to Africa.

What should be one of the objectives of these lines I write for my old
Bolivian friends? To unmask the empire’s perfidious and hypocritical
methods.

The enemy is extremely vile. It rides along on the instincts, ambitions and
vanity of those it has never imbued with even a basic moral sense.

In our country, it committed all manner of crimes: it organized armed
groups, introduced weapons and explosives into the country on a massive
scale, invaded the nation with mercenaries who reached our coasts, escorted
by U.S. aircraft carriers, warships and infantry transporters, ready to go
into action as soon as the traitors secured a beachhead. It attacked our air
bases with bombers marked with Cuban insignias, so as to fake an uprising of
our Air Force. Hundreds of young revolutionaries lost their lives or were
wounded in their heroic struggle against the mercenaries who arrived by sea
or air. Captured en masse, not one of the invaders was killed or tortured.

Then came a long period of struggle against the empire’s dirty methods,
which included an economic blockade, the eternal threat of a direct military
action, attempts to assassinate the country's leaders, biological warfare
and the terrible menace of a thermonuclear war between the world's two
superpowers, a war which nearly did break out. Cuba, however, held its
ground and continues to do so after half a century of struggle.

We do not pretend to be a model for the construction of socialism, but we do
hope to set an example in the defence of the right to construct it.

Consider these concrete examples of the empire's cynicism:

A terrorist is sent to jail, the explosives in his possession are
confiscated and the needed evidence is gathered for his trial. He is
sentenced to a number of years in prison. He declares himself physically
unable to move. The Central Intelligence Agency is behind the scheme. They
write verses for him, publish a book of poems and present him to the world
as a disabled poet denied medical attention. He is such a good faker that he
manages to deceive even the jail officials. They confuse and deceive
international public opinion through their media, and there is no special
envoy representing “Western democracy” who does not call for the release of
the disabled poet, even though the medical doctors had assured them there
was absolutely nothing wrong with him physically.

Confronted with the truth, a video recording of his intense, daily exercises
in places that had gone unnoticed by the prison wardens, before the request
advanced by a powerful European country could be replied to, he sprung up
and twenty four hours later caught a plane, and walked, accompanied by the
last European emissary to meet with him, towards the paradise of democracy
and abundance. A position as a public official of the empire, at an
international human rights institution, awaited him. That was the price
Cuba, facing the United States’ brutal blockade, had to pay the bourgeois
governments so that they would maintain economic relations with our country.

Cubans have the privilege of being born in a country which, thanks to the
Revolution, was the first to reach the Millennium Development Goals in the
area of education: everyone knows how to read and write. There are no
children with disabilities, no deaf-mutes, visually impaired or blind
people, who are denied medical assistance. Educational and health services
combine to protect and encourage them to overcome the challenges with which
they were born.

An alleged counterrevolutionary author with narrative and communication
skills need not go to the trouble of getting books printed or looking for a
market. For the imperialist intelligence agencies, it is enough that he
invents any dramatic thing and blame the Revolution for it. He will have
money and fame. His works will earn him awards and will be divulged ad
libitum. It is a gross insult to our intelligence.

Cuba trains athletes, earns more gold medals per capita than any other
nation in the world, makes sports accessible to everyone to promote the
health of its citizens. Wealthy countries hunt down these athletes and offer
them all the money in the world, to gather players and fill their teams with
naturalized athletes with native, mixed blood or black skins which in no way
recall their supposedly superior races.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, the head of a rehabilitation centre,
thinking Cuba would soon follow, sought to become the owner of the
institution, as some of her colleagues there had done. Her intentions were
unmasked and she was dismissed. She invented the theory that she was
dismissed because she opposed the use of human stem cells in genetic
research. She had never spoken a word about that. A son of hers, a medical
doctor, hardly the brilliant type according to his employment record, worked
with her at the centre. He violated ethical norms that prohibit sexual
relations with patients or accompanying parties. Morally dubious, he
migrated to the mother's country of origin, where he became the renowned
physiotherapist of high officials. The empire couldn’t ask for better
material to blackmail Cuba with!

Her request to travel abroad was turned down. We cannot give in to
blackmail, that was our decision.

Che was to enrich revolutionary thought with a strategic principle when,
frowning and pointing to the little finger of his right hand, during a
speech before the United Nations, he stated: "We cannot afford to yield even
this little to imperialism!"

He was about to travel, with a handful of Cuban internationalists, to the
former Belgian Congo, where Lumumba had been murdered by imperialism under
the UN troop's very noses, to be replaced by a corrupt puppet. His ideas
about the world would be put to the test.

One day, at a mass rally held at Revolution Square on October 18, 1967 to
pay tribute to Che, who had been wounded in combat and put to death by a
murderous charge some days before, moved by the news, before the people, I
expressed a number of key ideas I want to quote here:

“(…) It was a day in July or August of 1955 when we first met El Che. And in
one night, as tell in his accounts, he became a future Granma expeditionary.
But at that time that expedition had neither ships, weapons, nor troops. And
this was the way El Che, together with Raul, joined the first two groups on
the Granma list.

“(…) he was one of the most familiar, one of the most admired, one of the
most beloved, and, without any doubt, the most extraordinary of our comrades
of revolution (...)

“Che was one of those persons whom everybody liked immediately because of
his simplicity, because of his character, because of his naturalness,
because of his comradeship, because of his personality, because of his
originality (…)

"He was soon to be impregnated with a profound spirit of hatred and contempt
for imperialism…he had had the opportunity to witness in Guatemala the
criminal imperialist intervention through the mercenary soldiers who
overthrew the revolution in that country.

“(…) The idea that men are of a relative value in history may have
profoundly influenced his conduct; the idea that causes cannot be defeated
when men fall and that the irrepressible march of history does not stop nor
will it stop because the commanders fall.

“(...) I would say that he is the type of man who is difficult to equal and
practically impossible to improve upon.

“(…) when we think about El Che, we are not thinking basically about his
military virtues. No! For war is a tool of revolutionaries. What is
important is revolution, what is important is the revolutionary cause, the
revolutionary ideas, the revolutionary objectives, the revolutionary
sentiments, the revolutionary virtues.”

“(…) Che was not only an incomparable man of action, but a man of profound
intellect, of visionary intelligence, a man of profound culture. I mean to
say he was a man of ideas and a man of action.

“(…) he had the virtues which could be defined as the most full-fledged
expression of the virtues of a revolutionary, and integral man in the
fullest sense of the word, a man of supreme honesty, of absolute sincerity
(…) a man in whose conduct practically no fault can be found.

“(…) A tireless worker in the years that he was at the service of our
country, he did not know one single day or rest.

“(…) he studied all the problems. He was a tireless reader. His thirst for
knowledge was practically insatiable, and the hours he did not sleep, he
studied. He dedicated regular days off to volunteer work. He was the
inspiration and the top promoter of that work (...)

“(…) this is the weak side of the imperialist enemy. Thinking that, along
with the physical man, it has liquidated his virtues; thinking that, along
with the physical man, it has liquidated his example.

“(...) we are absolutely convinced that the revolutionary cause in this
continent will recover from the blow, that the revolutionary cause in this
continent will not be defeated by that blow.

“(…) from the hearts, I say that the model, without a single blemish in its
conduct, without a single blemish in its attitude, without a single blemish
in its actions – that model is Che. If we want to know how we want our
children to be, we should say, with all our revolutionary mind and heart: We
want them to be like Che.

“No man like him in these times has raised the spirit of proletarian
internationalism to its highest level.

“In his mind and in his heart, the flags, the prejudices, the chauvinisms,
the egoisms had disappeared. He was willing to shed generously his blood for
the fortune of any people (...)

“His blood was shed in Bolivia for the redemption of the exploited and the
oppressed, the humble and the poor (…) That blood was shed for all the
peoples of America (…)

“(...) That is why we should look to the future with optimism (...)"

After the memorable night in which I spoke those words, the Cuban Children’s
Organization, grasping their essence, coined a new slogan: "Pioneers for
communism, we shall be like Che!”

Our Rebel Army had risen from the ashes of the detachment that had arrived
on the Granma yatch and won the war with the weapons it took from the enemy
in combat. Che was a privileged witness of and actor in the counteroffensive
that, led by the ‘José Martí’ Column Number 1, in the Sierra Maestra,
reinforced by small units from other columns whose numbers, all together,
did not exceed 300 men, destroyed that last offensive of Cuba's pro-Yankee
military government, which had deployed 10 thousand soldiers from its elite
troops to attack that bulwark.

It was as a result of those first combats, during that unequal battle, that,
seeing the enemy bombs fall on peasant homes, I realized that the struggle
against the empire was to become my true destiny.

I recalled the martyr of Dos Rios, our national independence hero, José
Martí, and I recalled Che when, in recent days, I read a cable published by
the special envoy of NOTIMEX, dated May 26, which quoted the declarations of
a young Cuban who had requested permission to travel and collect one of the
many awards imperialism hands out to keep the waterwheel turning:

“(…) If Cuban authorities thought that denying me permission to travel to
receive the award was some kind of punishment, I must say it has been far
from dramatic.

“I spent that day here at home, with my family and friends, who awarded me a
symbolic scroll I had made myself (...)

“I buy an Internet card, which costs between 5 and 7 dollars, to send out my
texts (...)

“I am not in the opposition, I don’t have a political program, I don’t have
a political hair in my body, and that is a characteristic of my generation
and today's world: people no longer define themselves as left or right.
These are increasingly obsolete concepts.

“I do not belong nor have I ever belonged to a political organization. I was
never a member of the Young Communists League, I never tried to join the
Communist Party. I was a Pioneer because all of us, until the age of 16, had
no choice but to be a Pioneer (...)

“My blog has a record of horrifying comments that startle me (…)

“I won’t enjoy social insurance or a pension when I'm old, but this gives me
economic independence. I give foreigners Spanish lessons and work as a
tourist guide in my city. I speak German very well. That's how I make a
living".

Comments of this nature, which are immediately spread by the imperialist
media, are not the true danger. What's dangerous is to make slogans out of
generalizations, or, what's worse, that there are young Cubans who think
this way, special envoys who weaken Cuba internally, whose journalistic work
recalls the neo-colonial press of the old Spanish metropolis, which today
awards these efforts.

Party members are the ones who have assumed the greatest number of
sacrifices, both inside and outside Cuba. They assume as a duty what others
see as a mere option. That is what the people demonstrate when they vote for
the candidates who aspire to be delegates of the People's Power Assembly.
Marti created a Party to lead the Revolution before Lenin did. That is the
reason we were not annexed by the United States. That is the reason Cuba,
with its roots and culture, exists.

Further proof of the confusion and the deceit sown by imperialism was the
declaration of a renowned Brazilian singer, made the same day the above
cable was published:

"If we speak about how rights and the questions of freedom and respect
towards individuals are observed in the two countries, I am one hundred
percent on the side of the United States and not of Cuba".

A European news agency reported that the musician justified the inclusion of
a new piece, Bahia de Guantánamo, in his live repertoire, which he performed
in Rio de Janeiro following the scandal sparked off by the human rights
violations perpetrated against those who had been detained on charges of
terrorism.

"Were I a typical pro-Cuban and anti-US leftist, I would feel no
disappointment about what happened in the jails of Guantanamo”, the singer
declared.

In a nutshell: the Brazilian singer asked the empire to forgive him for
criticizing the atrocities perpetrated in that naval base that operates on
occupied Cuban soil.

The month of June has just begun. Uncertainty and insecurity are in the air.

I ask Bolivian readers to show the same patience and sense of humour they
evinced in those days, when I spoke to them 15 years ago. To continue
impelling their educational and health programs. You can always rely on our
support.

Were it not for the new edition of this book, this long prologue would have
no reason to be.

Thank you.

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 4, 2008

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