FIDEL CASTRO ON THE FTAA
Excerpts from an article in Granma about an April 16 speech by Fidel Castro.
Cuban President Fidel Castro ... warned that the Latin American nations are at the point of being devoured by the United States, in a reference to the upcoming meeting in Quebec to discuss a free trade agreement for the hemisphere.
During the densely packed event--in the same historic corner in Havana when Fidel announced, 40 years ago, the definitive direction of the revolutionary process--the Cuban president, accompanied by the historical leaders of this process and youth leaders from the present generation, arrived bearing a rifle similar to the kind used at that time.
He affirmed that at the upcoming hemispheric meeting, the hegemonic superpower will try to dictate the conditions for the surrender of the Latin American governments.
He called attention to the fact that "the United States wishes to bring forward the feast, the privileges that are an attempt to close the way to commercial competition and investment from Europe and the industrialized countries of Asia."
He commented that the U.S. government prefers to negotiate separately with each country, exploiting economic weakness, unequal development, contradictions among those nations and the desperate situation that has provoked an enormous external debt.
He argued that given the region's relations of total dependence on the United States and the international financial institutions, "some of them are in no condition to put up resistance; others are unaware of the danger of absorption threatening them, or do not want to put up any resistance whatsoever." Nonetheless, not all of them are prepared to be simply gobbled up, and there will be resistance.
For the Cuban president the most urgent task for political and social leaders, economists and progressive intellectuals, all the forces of the left, is to create an awareness, to denounce the voracity of U.S. imperialism and the risk faced by the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
"We know that Latin America and the Caribbean can be devoured but not digested," Fidel noted in allusion to reactions to the consequences of the Free Trade Area of the Americas which would intensify the gravity of the region's social ills, "which can never be solved in that way and will become more dramatic."
In his speech, Fidel enumerated the massive social advantages of 42 years of socialism, but affirmed that Cuba aspires to higher goals. "The socialism that we conceive of today is far superior to our dreams at that time," he said.
"Without socialism, Cuba could not have resisted the hostility of nine U.S. presidents who ... were hostile or extremely aggressive toward our country."
Referring to the new resident of the White House, Fidel observed that, judging by the first steps taken in the international sphere and the language of his advisors and his allies among the Miami terrorist mafia, we could be facing a bellicose administration totally lacking in ethics.
And he warned that anyone attempting to take possession of Cuba would have no alternative other than to perish in the battle, thereby adapting the words of Antonio Maceo, a leader of the Cuban independence wars, to current conditions.
For Fidel Castro's writings on globalization, order his book, "Capitalism in Crisis: Globalization and World Politics Today," available from leftbooks.com
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