Sunday, February 24, 2008

Fidel's First Post-Retirement Column From Granma


In his first comments since announcing he would step down as Cuba's president after almost 50 years, Fidel Castro lashed out Friday at US presidential hopefuls' calls for change here, saying the only change needed is in the United States.

In his column "Reflections of Comrade Fidel" in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the ailing Castro, 81, zeroed in on the international reaction, particularly by his US "adversary," to his announcement Tuesday of his official departure from Cuba's helm.

Castro was sidelined 19 months ago after major intestinal surgery, and handed power temporarily to his brother, interim president Raul Castro, 76.

US President George W. Bush "said my message was the beginning of the road to freedom in Cuba, in other words, to annexation" by the United States, Castro wrote.

The United States occupied Cuba in the early 20th century and refuses to abandon its controversial base at Guantanamo, on Cuba's southeastern tip.

That gives Havana plenty of political currency with which to warn almost daily that a US occupation or annexation effort could come at any time.

Reflections of Comrade Fidel

I have enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States. One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter.

It was as if I were a Pulitzer Prize winner questioning them on CNN about the most delicate political (even personal) issues from Las Vegas, a city ruled by the logic of the roulette and a place any candidate for the presidency needs to visit.

Half a century of blockade was not enough for the chosen few. "Change, change, change!" they shouted in unison.

I agree. Change! -- but in the United States. Cuba changed a long time ago and will continue on its dialectical course. "Let us never return to the past!" our people exclaim.

"Annexation, annexation, annexation!" the adversary responds. That's what he thinks, deep inside, when he talks about change.

Martí, breaking the secret of his silent struggle, denounced the voracious and expansionist empire his marvelous intelligence had already discovered and described, more than a century after the 13 colonies' revolutionary declaration of independence.

The end of a chapter is not the same as the beginning of the end of an unbearable system.

Immediately, the few European powers still allied to that system proclaimed the same demands.

In their opinion, the time had come to dance to the music of democracy and liberty, something that -- from the days of Torquemada -- they never really knew.

Their colonialism, and the neocolonialism of entire continents, from which they extract energy, raw materials and cheap labor, disqualify them from a moral standpoint.

A most illustrious Spanish personage, former minister of culture and an impeccable socialist, a man who today is -- and for a long time has been -- a spokesman for weapons and war, is the synthesis of pure unreason.

Kosovo and its unilateral declaration of independence pound on them like an impertinent nightmare.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, men of flesh and bone, wearing uniforms of the United States and NATO, continue to die. The memory of the U.S.S.R., disintegrated in party by its interventionist adventure in the second of the two countries, follows the Europeans like a shadow.

Bush Sr. chooses McCain as his candidate, while Bush Jr., in an African country -- yesterday, the origin of man; today, a martyr continent -- where nobody knows what he's doing there, said that my message was the start of the road to liberty in Cuba, in other words, the annexation decreed by his government in a voluminous and huge book.

One day earlier, international television showed a group of the latest-generation bombers performing spectacular maneuvers, totally guaranteeing that bombs of any type can be dropped without letting the radar installations detect the aircraft that carry them and without letting the attack be considered a war crime.

A protest by important countries opposed the imperial idea of testing a weapon with the excuse of preventing the possible fall over the territory of another country of a spy satellite, one of the many artifacts that the United States has placed in world orbit for military purposes.

Fidel Castro Ruz

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