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Castro refutes Bush’s charges against Cuba
It is hard to imagine what limits there are to the aggressiveness and
hypocrisy of the U.S. rulers when they face a threat to their
domination of
their “backyard.” There is a long history of open and covert U.S.
intervention in Latin America to defend the interests of U.S. big
business
there, including collusion with dictatorships that murdered tens of
thousands of people in the 1970s and 1980s.
However, the U.S. rulers remain completely shameless in citing
“humanitarian” and “democratic” principles to justify their attacks on
Latin
American governments that resist them. Cuba, as the only Latin America
country in the region that has achieved real independence and has
successfully stood up to U.S. pressures for nearly a half century, is
the
prime target of such campaigns.
The flood of poison against Cuba reached a new height on June 14, when
the
U.S. State Department issued a paper accusing the government of Fidel
Castro
of promoting “sex tourism” and even child prostitution. The outrage was
compounded on July 16, when President Bush played up the charge in a
campaign speech in Florida, obviously aimed at whipping up the Cuban
counterrevolutionary community in the state.
Reading an open letter to Bush at the June 21 Anti-Imperialist Forum,
Fidel
responded as follows to the State Department document: “No country in
the
world has given as much physical and moral protection, as much health
and
education to its children as Cuba has. You should know that a higher
proportion of children die in their first year of life in the United
States
than in Cuba. One hundred percent of children and adolescents in our
country, including those afflicted by some kind of physical or mental
disability, attend the appropriate schools and study.”
Although for 45 years, the rulers of the United States have done
everything
in their power to impoverish Cuba, Fidel said, class sizes are
one-third
smaller in Cuba than they are in the United States, where the decay of
education, especially for poor children, is notorious.
The Cuban leader cited the evidence of Cuba’s genuine concern for the
welfare of the world’s peoples, in contrast with the hypocritical
pretenses
of the White House: “You are trying to strangle our economy and are
threatening war against a country that has shown itself capable of
having
20,000 doctors currently offering their services in 64 countries of
the
Third World. Your administration, in spite of possessing the resources
of
the richest power on earth, has not sent a single doctor to the most
distant
corners of these countries, as Cuba does.”
Instead of showing any real concern for exploited people and in
particular
children, the U.S. rulers were the prop of a system that condemns tens
of
millions to misery and the most brutal forms of exploitation: “On your
conscience, and on those of the leaders of the world’s richest states,
lies
the genocide which is implicit in the death, every year, of more than
10
million children and tens of millions more people who could be saved.
These
deaths are the result of a vast assortment of pillage and robbery
practiced
against Third World countries through the unjust and no longer
sustainable
world economic order that the rich countries have imposed to the
detriment
of 80 percent of this planet’s population.”
The Cuban president pointed out that the U.S. government’s hypocritical
attacks on Cuba were an attempt to prepare an armed assault to destroy
the
Cuban revolution: “The worst thing about your ridiculous, clumsy
anti-Cuban
policy is that you and your closest advisors have brazenly proclaimed
your
goal of forcibly imposing what you call ‘political transition’ on Cuba
if I
die in office, a transition which you do not, of course, hesitate to
confess
you will try to hasten as much as possible. You are very well aware of
what
that means in the language of the mob.
”However, perhaps the most shameful thing you did was to announce that
the
first hours will be decisive, since the idea is to go to any lengths,
under
any circumstances, to prevent a new political and administrative
leadership
from taking charge of our country. This you would do completely
ignoring the
Cuban Constitution, the powers of the National Assembly and of our
Party’s
leadership and the powers that the Constitution and the highest
institutions
of the people have bestowed—as it is the case all over the world—on
those on
those whose responsibility it is to assume this task immediately.
“Since this you can only do by sending troops to occupy key positions
in the
country, you are announcing your intention of launching a military
intervention of our homeland.”
Facing this threat, Fidel declared the defiance of the Cuban
revolutionary
regime, reminding Bush that the U.S. rulers in the past broke their
teeth on
the resistance of the Cuban fighters:
“You should know that your march against Cuba will be anything but
easy. Our
people will stand up to your economic measures, whatever they may be.
Forty-five years of heroic struggle against the blockade and economic
war,
against threats, aggressions, plots to assassinate its leaders,
sabotage and
terrorism have not weakened but rather strengthened the Revolution. ...
Forty-three years ago the treacherous invasion by the Bay of Pigs was
routed
in less than 66 hours of relentless combat, against the estimates of
brilliant experts.”
Fidel concluded his open letter: “You will not win glory with military
action against Cuba. Our people will never give up its independence nor
will
it ever give up its political, social, and economic ideals.”
Bush’s electioneering exploitation of the State Department paper in
Florida
on July 16 came shortly before the anniversary of the Cuban revolution
on
July 26. It provoked Fidel to a more personal response, his speech to
the
Cuban people in the massive celebrations, in which he analyzed the
possible
effects of the U.S. president’s admitted 20 years of alcoholism.
Fidel’s July 26 speech concluded with a reiteration of the facts: “What
would Mr. Bush call the tens of millions of tourists who visit the
United
States every year where casinos, gambling dens, areas of male and
female
prostitution, and many other activities related to pornography and sex
abound, none of which exist in Cuba and all of which are alien to the
revolutionary culture of our people?…
“None of the aforementioned activities take place in Cuba. However, in
the
fevered and fundamentalist mind of the all-powerful gentleman in the
White
House and in those of his most intimate advisors, Cuba must now be
‘saved’
not only from ‘tyranny,’ Cuban children must now be ‘saved from sexual
exploitation and trafficking in persons,’ ‘the world must be freed from
this
dreadful problem which takes place 90 miles away from the United
States.’
“Has no one told him that in Cuba before the triumph of the revolution
in
1959 about 100,000 women were directly or indirectly involved in
prostitution for reasons of poverty, discrimination, and lack of work
and
that the revolution educated these women and found them jobs, and
outlawed
the so-called ‘tolerance zones’ which existed in the pseudo-republic
and the
neo-colony installed by the United States?”
Bush’s sanctimoniousness, paradoxically, may have gained him some
points
with the counterrevolutionary exiles, who include many former vice
lords, as
well as mass murderers and torturers, but its general effect can only
be to
remind the world of the crimes and the hypocrisy of the system of which
he
is a representative. His cynicism was a dark backdrop to the message
the
Cuban revolution has for the world, expressed in Fidel’s concluding
slogans:
“Long live truth!” “Long live human dignity!”
The article above first appeared in the August 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper, and was written by the editors of SA.
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