| June 23, 2000
Cuba will neither
negotiate nor sell out its revolution, which has cost the blood and
sacrifice of many of its sons and daughters
At the beginning of
the month of June, a French magazine published a summary of the notes
taken by Mr. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former Director General of UNESCO,
during a conversation with President Fidel Castro last January 28 while
he visited Cuba to take part in the II International Economists Workshop
held in Havana from the 24th to the 28th of that month.
A few days before June 1,
Mr. Mayor had forwarded a copy of that summary as well as a number of
questions on similar subjects intended for another publication. However,
even before the aforementioned synthesis was published, some press
dispatches were already printing phrases taken out of context and wrong
interpretations of his notes.
Later, the premature
publication of that incomplete text with the wrong interpretations –
at a time when our country was involved, as it is still today, in an
intensive activity associated with the struggle against the criminal
kidnapping of the Cuban child Elián González – forced Comrade Fidel
to find the minimum time indispensable to accurately respond, one by one,
to the 33 questions submitted by Mr. Mayor. That text was immediately
forwarded to him.
He then expressed his idea
of using the full content in a book he is planning to publish at the end
of this year. But, aware that many of the subjects touched upon by the
questions and answers relate to current issues that might not bear the
same interest several months from now, Comrade Fidel has decided to
publish the full text in Granma. Of course, he previously informed his
respected and distinguished friend Mr. Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former
Director-General of UNESCO, of this decision.
Following are the questions
and answers.
FEDERICO MAYOR.- With
China, Vietnam and North Korea, Cuba is considered the last bulwark of
socialism. Yet, 10 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, does the
word "socialism" make sense any more?
FIDEL CASTRO.- Today I am
more convinced than ever that it makes a great deal of sense.
What happened 10 years ago
was the naive and unwitting destruction of a great social historical
process that needed to be improved, but not destroyed. This had not been
achieved by Hitler’s hordes, not even by killing over 20 million
Soviets and devastating half of the country. The world was left under
the aegis of a single superpower, which had not contributed even five
percent of the sacrifices made by the Soviets in the fight against
fascism.
In Cuba, we have a united
country and a Party that guides but does not nominate or elect. The
people, gathered in open assemblies, put up candidates, nominate and
elect delegates from 14,686 districts; these are the foundation of our
electoral system. They make up the assemblies of their respective
municipalities, and nominate candidates to the provincial and national
assemblies, the highest bodies of state power at those levels. The
delegates, who are chosen through a secret ballot, must receive over 50%
of the valid votes in their corresponding jurisdictions.
Although voting is not
compulsory, over 95% of eligible voters take part in these elections.
Many people in the world have not even bothered to look into these
facts.
The United States, such a
vocal advocate of multi-party systems, has two parties that are so
perfectly similar in their methods, objectives and goals that they have
practically created the most perfect one-party system in the world. Over
50% of the people in that "democratic country" do not even
cast a vote, and the team that manages to raise the most funds often
wins with the votes of only 25% of the electorate. The political system
is undermined by disputes, vanity and personal ambition or by interests
groups operating within the established economic and social model and
there is no alternative for a change in the system.
When the small
English-speaking nations of the Caribbean achieved independence, they
put into place a more efficient parliamentary system where the ruling
party remains in power as long as it enjoys consensus. This is much more
stable than the presidential regime imposed to the rest of Latin America,
which copied the U.S. model. And, nothing has changed in almost two
centuries.
Under capitalism it is the
large national and international companies that actually govern, even in
the most highly industrialized nations. It is they who make the
decisions on investment and development. It is they who are responsible
for material production, essential economic services, and a large part
of social services. The state simply collects taxes and then distributes
and spends them. In many of these countries, the entire government could
go on vacation and nobody would even notice.
The developed capitalist
system, which later gave rise to modern imperialism, has finally imposed
a neoliberal and globalized order that is simply unsustainable. It has
created a world of speculation where fictitious wealth and stocks have
been created that have nothing to do with actual production, as well as
enormous personal fortunes, some of which exceed the gross domestic
product of dozens of poor countries. No need to add the plundering and
squandering of the world’s natural resources and the miserable lives
of billions of people. There is nothing this system can offer humanity.
It can only lead to its own self-destruction and perhaps along with it
to the destruction of the natural conditions that sustain human life on
this planet.
The end of history, as
predicted by a few euphoric dreamers, is not here yet. Perhaps it is
actually just beginning.
F.M.- Forty-one years after
the Revolution, and despite all of the difficulties it has had to
confront, the regime that you established has endured. What could be the
reason for this longevity?
F.C.- The tireless struggle
and work alongside the people and for the people. The fact that we have
settled for convictions and acted accordingly; that we believe in
humankind and in being our country’s slaves and not its masters. We
believe in building upon solid principles, in seeking out and producing
solutions, even in apparently impossible and unreal conditions; in
preserving the honesty of those with the highest political and
administrative responsibilities, that is, in transforming politics into
a priesthood. This could be a partial answer to your question, setting
aside many other elements particularly related to our country and this
historical era.
Of course, everybody thought
that Cuba would not survive the collapse of the socialist bloc and the
USSR. One could certainly wonder how it was possible to withstand a
double blockade and the economic and political warfare unleashed against
our country by the mightiest power ever, without the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank, without credits. However, we managed
to achieve this feat. At a summit meeting recently held in Havana, I
somewhat ironically said to our guests that it had been possible because
we had the privilege of not being IMF members.
There were times when we
were swimming in a sea of circulating money. Our national currency
experienced an extraordinary devaluation, and the budget deficit reached
35% of our gross domestic product. I could see intelligent visitors
almost faint from shock. Our peso, the national currency, dropped to a
value of 150 to the dollar in 1994. In spite of this, we did not close
down a single health care center, a single school or daycare center, a
single university, or a single sports facility. Nobody was fired and
left on his own without employment or social security, even when fuel
and raw materials were most scarce. There was not even a trace of the
customary and hideous shock policies so highly recommended by the
Western financial institutions.
Every measure adopted to
confront the terrible blow was discussed not only in the National
Assembly, but also in hundreds of thousands of assemblies held in
factories, centers of production and services, trade unions,
universities, secondary schools and farmers’, women’s and neighbors’
organizations as well as other social groups. What little was available,
we distributed as equitably as possible. Pessimism was overcome both
inside the country and outside.
During those critical years,
the number of doctors was doubled, and the quality of education was
improved. The value of the Cuban peso increased sevenfold, from 150 to
the dollar to 20 to the dollar, between 1994 and 1998, and has since
remained consistently stable. Not a single dollar fled the country. We
acquired experience and efficiency on a par with the immense challenge
facing us. Although we have still not reached the production and
consumption levels we had before the demise of socialism in Europe, we
have gradually recovered at a steady and visible pace. Our education,
health and social security rates, as well as many other social features,
which were the pride of our country, have been preserved, and some have
even been improved.
The great hero in this feat
has been the people, who have contributed tremendous sacrifices and
immense trust. It was the fruit of justice and of the ideas sowed
throughout over 30 years of Revolution. This genuine miracle would have
been impossible without unity and without socialism.
II PART
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