Fidel: "We should propose to ourselves to be just a little bit better every day"

Rosa Miriam Elizalde

WE waited inside the little auditorium in the José Martí Memorial. We knew that Fidel was outside, quietly placing a wreath at the base of the monument to the national hero.

"It’s the 26th of July, so it isn’t any ordinary tribute," somebody observed, almost in a whisper so as not to break the silence in the room. Once second later his voice could be heard in the doorway.

"How many people I know are here!" he said and moved down the aisle, greeting those in the nearest seats. "There’s Rosa Miriam," he said to Marina Menéndez, deputy editor of Juventud Rebelde, who was sitting beside me. "You know she once asked me if we were going to survive the Special Period!" he laughed and squeezed my hand strongly. Incredible. I remembered an afternoon at the end of 1990, almost lost in the mists of memory. I had just graduated and by chance had to report on an event at the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Center, attended by Fidel. As if we had mounted a time machine, that day passed before my eyes like a film of what we Cubans were to live through in the next few years of the Special Period, after the disappearance of the USSR. I was so dismayed that when he was in front of me the only thing that I thought to ask him was, "Do you really think that we will survive?"

Fidel advanced. He greeted relatives of Comandante de la Revolución Juan Almeida, the Reverend Lucius Walker, members of the Pastors for Peace Caravan, the Reverend Raúl Suárez. And also, Silvio Rodríguez, Amaury Pérez, Sara González, Frank Fernández, Vicente Feliú; visual artists Nelson Domínguez, Kcho, Zaida del Río, Rancaño, Flora Fong. He joked with some of them, thanked others. He was wearing his khaki uniform. Then he sat down facing the auditorium, beside a table with papers on it. Randy Alonso, director of the "Roundtable" program on Cuban TV, was the moderator of the question and commentary session, which began with Alexis Leyva Machado (Kcho).

He had brought two flags, one of them the 26th of July banner that Comandante de la Revolución Juan Almeida presented to the artist and which accompanied the Marta Machado artistic brigade organized by Kcho, made up of prominent Cuban artists who performed for those affected by the terrible hurricanes of 2008 in Cuba and also the victims of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti. A flagpole immediately appeared and the flag was placed, with the national one, on the left wing of the theater.

Fidel grew animated and commented on the events of the assault on the Moncada Garrison exactly 57 years ago. "What I have said, and I will repeat it, is that if I had to do it again, I would do everything the same, except for paying attention to the Cossack Post. I should have gone on… If I had gone on, those people wouldn’t have fired on those who were at the post, and I wouldn’t have let myself been tempted to take those two machine guns, as a consequence of the scarcity of weapons."

"There were enough of us," he reaffirmed. "I’d say that there was no need for any more. We had three times the number of men needed to take that target. I am convinced of that."

Reverend Raúl Suárez, director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, asked the Comandante en Jefe for a reflection. "For us, it wasn’t easy to live our faith and practice our vocation in a revolutionary process of a socialist nature. American anti-communist ideology had been instigated in us to our bones… What really made us fall in love with the Revolution and share this process with our people, was what motivated you to go to the Moncada. I would like to hear some words from you… At this time an ethical, moral, spiritual sustenance for everything that we have to do is very important for our country," Raúl concluded.

Fidel had listened to him attentively: "Really, the only thing that we had was that: inspiration. You cannot explain what happened to Silvio and everyone here, without inspiration. One should propose to oneself, almost as a rule, to be just a little bit better every day." And to not abandon that line."

Explanations can be sought from everybody and all of them are legitimate, Fidel stated, acknowledging that there is no contradiction between believers and the Revolution, as Brazilian Frei Betto commented to him during the conversation that later comprised the book Fidel and Religion. He admitted that "science is penetrating and penetrating and reaching incredible limits. We are less than dust, and we know that from science."

"What did humanity know 200 years ago?" he asked and recalled the "Prayer to God" poem by Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés, "Plácido" (1809-1844), where he talks of the "helium star," and that Mary, the mother of Christ, "endured the pain. "That always caught my attention, because he already knew that there was helium in stars. But nothing more than that. Not much more. And what has happened to knowledge? It has exploded. At the time of the Moncada, 50 years ago, we didn’t know anything… and since then, in just a few years, how much science has advanced… All those little appliances, all those cameras, BlackBerries… which are all over the place now…" he smiled.

"I am not a fortune teller," he continued, "nor am I a prophet. But I look at things, logically and we should look at them with a little bit of serenity and be prepared. Our people are prepared for seeing them now. And seeing the dangers. The terrible thing is to face problems that have not passed through our minds."

These concerns, Fidel added, prompted him to write his most recent Reflections on the terrible situation being generated in the Middle East, which began with the article titled "The empire and war," published on June 1 in the wake of the Israeli attack on the humanitarian flotilla headed for Gaza, and in which he asks: "Will Obama be able to enjoy the emotions of a second presidential term without witnessing the Pentagon or the state of Israel – whose behavior demonstrates that it is not complying in any way with the decisions of the United States – using their nuclear weapons against Iran? What will life on our planet be like after that?"

He left the pages of his Reflections on the table and commented: "And Korea begins to appear in that and I thought that the conflict was going to break out there. They made people believe that North Korea had sunk the Cheonan with an old Soviet submarine that makes a tremendous noise and can almost be heard without any devices… And it fires a torpedo. And they have made half of the world believe that, that the North Koreans sunk the vessel…"

He did not invent that information. Fidel quoted a Global Research article that presented "veritably astounding details of what happened." When the situation began to deteriorate, the leader of the Revolution was systematically sharing his appreciations of it, derived from the clamor of daily news in Asia and in the Middle East and warnings disclosed by important specialists, until he discerned "The inevitable battle," the title of his Reflection of June 16.

On June 24 he published "How I wish I was wrong." "It’s strange – he paused and looked at the audience – I was wrong, but in another way," and went on to defend the need to be prepared for a tragedy that could be of vast proportions, if the vast arsenal currently in the hands of the superpowers is utilized against Iran and North Korea.

In order to demonstrate that this is a possibility, he recalled that the United States already threatened to utilize tactical nuclear weapons years ago, in the Nixon era, against Vietnam and Korea. However, "into that comes the problem of the oil spill… BP appears seeking oil at great depths, with modern technology, to a depth of 8,000 meters, which is where the spill was produced," and he added: "Now, 107 days since the spill occurred, they haven’t been able to solve the problem. And Obama knows, but is not accepting publicly, that it is a very serious danger."

The leader of the Revolution confirmed that it is not an irremediable situation: "What a coincidence that this company was looking for oil there!" he commented, recalling BP’s role in the coup d’état against Mossadegh in Iran. "Who would have thought it? It’s not the first time that something like this has happened. There have been other disasters, with ships coming from Alaska… But not even Bush dared to authorize these drillings. However, Obama authorized BP to drill because he has a blind belief in technology."

And if that BP accident hadn’t happened? "They would have continued drilling… They have 27,000 non-productive wells and the government’s concern – this is textual – is that gas is beginning to come out of the non-productive wells. And this disaster has no solution. That’s why they haven’t talked anymore about the matter, after they said that it had been solved."

This is the subject that Fidel is to cover in his Reflection of next August 3: "I have all the information, but I’m waiting for what they say today and will be saying tomorrow… But you’ll see, don’t be impatient. I only ask you to have trust.

He also announced that he is to ask for an extraordinary session of the National Assembly to talk about these very important issues.

Irma Shelton, a Cuban television news journalist, asked Fidel to comment on the no less critical situation of Latin America, with the U.S. military deployment in Costa Rica, authorized by the Parliament and president of that country, compounded by military exercises in Peru and the breaking off of relations between Venezuela and Colombia. "All of those things – he affirmed – demonstrate the degree of irresponsibility of the empire. They are not in control, they cannot control their instincts. I am saying in all seriousness, they belong to prehistory." He said, ironically: "All of that inspired by the ‘noble’ proposition of combating drug trafficking."

Then singer-songwriter Amaury Pérez asked, "There are forces supporting President Obama who had the impression that he was badly advised over authorizing BP to make the well deeper, so that that disaster calculated by those anti-Obama right-wing forces would provoke his non-reelection for a second term. Have you thought that that could be a possibility as well?

Fidel put his left hand to his forehead for a second and answered, "I think it would have been difficult for somebody to have deliberately advised that, with the aim of damaging him. What they can do is to take advantage of any little thing to attack him. But I don’t think that they could have provoked a situation whereby the man would fall for an error like that, in order to attack him. No."

He added, "Obama’s problem is the U.S. obsession of not depending on imported oil. It is the highest per capita consumer of oil and gas in the world. And it is trying to find a way not to be dependent on Venezuela, Iran or the Middle East. They have put that company in Saudi Arabia, which is producing 10 million barrels daily, and has the capacity to produce 20 million barrels daily. Do you know what that might do to the environment?

He spoke about the dramatic predictions posed by the documentary film Home, directed by Yann Arthus-Bertrand, and asked: "But is renewable energy maybe just a dream?" They have already completed the first test with a tiny little aircraft weighing 60 kilograms. The first time it flew for more than 10 hours on solar energy. In the latest test it was able to fly for 33 days. They don’t even know what could be taken advantage of… There are many ways in which science can help."