Federico Mayor Zaragoza. The New Crisis. Volume 107, Issue 5. September/October 2000.
MAYOR: With China, Vietnam and North Korea, Cuba is considered the last bulwark of socialism. Yet, ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, does the word “socialism” make sense anymore?
CASTRO: Today I am more convinced than ever that it makes a great deal of sense. What happened ten 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 the country. The world was left under the aegis of a single superpower, which has not contributed even 5 percent of the sacrifices made by the Soviets in the fight against fascism…
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 neo-liberal 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.
MAYOR: Forty-one years after the revolution, and despite all the difficulties it has had to confront, the regime that you established has endured. What could be the reason for its longevity?
CASTRO: 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 camp 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…
We acquired experience and efficiency on a par with the immense challenge facing us… 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.
MAYOR: In view of the vast movement toward globalization taking place worldwide, would it not perhaps be advisable to open up more the Cuban economy to the rest of the world?
CASTRO: We have opened up the economy to the extent that it has been possible and necessary. We have not gone for the same insanity and follies as in other places, where the recommendations of European and American experts have been followed as if they were Biblical prophets. We have not been driven by the insanity of privatization, and much less by that of confiscating state property to take it over ourselves or hand it out as gifts to relatives or friends. This happened, as we all know, in both former socialist countries and in others that never were socialists, under the pious, tolerant and complicit cover of the neo-liberal philosophy that has become a universal pandemic. The West is well aware of where the money is deposited and what has happened to the embezzled or stolen funds, but nobody has said a word about it…
MAYOR: Nobody questions Cuba’s social and cultural achievements. However, taking back my previous question, would these achievements not be better served by an increase in exchange with the outside world?
CASTRO: It is true that, as you say, we have achieved major social advances that can hardly be denied. There is schooling for all of our children and no illiteracy. The development of our universities is considerable. We have numerous research centers that carry out important high-quality work. Every child is given 13 vaccines, almost all of them produced in our own country, as is the case with most medicines used. At the same time, thousands of our doctors are providing their services, free of charge, in remote and impoverished areas of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa as part of comprehensive health-care programs. This is possible because we have plenty of human capital…
No one could imagine what a small Third World country with extremely limited resources could achieve when a true spirit of solidarity prevails. As to your question, there is no doubt that the efforts undertaken by our country could be boosted by an increase in the exchange with the outside world, to the benefit of both our own homeland and other nations.
MAYOR: The demise of the USSR suddenly deprived Cuba of previous aid. In your opinion, what was the United States’ purpose in maintaining the embargo despite the end of the East-West confrontation? Did they hope to influence your form of government?
CASTRO: They were not trying to influence the Revolution but to destroy it. Just as the Senate in ancient Rome proclaimed the destruction of Carthage in the times of Hannibal, the U.S. administrations’ obsessively pursued motto has been: Cuba must be destroyed.
The demise of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the European socialist bloc did not take us completely by surprise. We had warned our people of this possibility long before. The stupid mistakes and shameful concessions constantly made to their longstanding enemy clearly pointed to what was coming…
MAYOR: The United States is not the only country imposing all sorts of conditions to your country. The European Union has also tried to introduce a “democracy clause” in European– Cuban trade relations. What do you think of this action?
CASTRO: It is significant that the European Union shows much less “concern” about other countries, doubtlessly because they are of a greater economic interest than we ever could. In any case, all conditioning becomes unacceptable when the inalienable principles of our homeland are involved. The political organization adopted by a sovereign nation cannot be subjected to conditions. Cuba will neither negotiate nor sell out its Revolution, which has cost the blood and the sacrifice of many of its sons and daughters…
MAYOR: Since the days of McCarthyism, Washington has tended to consider that the only regimes that are harmful and must be eliminated are the communist regimes. But the White House has tolerated, without blinking, the likes of Somoza, Trujillo, Duvalier and others. What are your thoughts on this “double– standard” approach?
CASTRO: It would be better not to delve into the hypocrisy and indecency of that policy. It would take many hours and lengthy historical references. The market will dry up some day for the industry of lies. It is dying already If you really delve into the truth, you will realize that the political conception of imperialism, as well as the neo-liberal economic order and the globalization process imposed on the world, is orphaned and defenseless when it comes to ideas and ethics. It is in this field that the main struggle of our times will be decided. And the final result of this battle, with no possible alternative, will be on the side of truth, and thus on the side of humanity ..
MAYOR: How far can the privatization process go in Cuba? As for the “dollarization” of the economy, is it not an insult to both socialism and the country’s monetary sovereignty?
CASTRO: I have already said that privatization should be carried out with much common sense and wisdom, avoiding irrational actions. You need to make a clear distinction between different kinds of work. Some tasks are highly individual and often manual and craft-like; their large-scale production and technology are not fundamental. However, there are investments that require capital, technology and markets, in which associations with foreign companies can be highly advisable. The potential oil deposits in the 110,000-square-kilometers of the Gulf of Mexico belonging to Cuba could not be explored or exploited by our country without technology and capital from abroad…
When it comes to privatization, one should not be simplistic. The general principle in Cuba goes that nothing that is advisable and possible to preserve as the property of all of the people or of a collective of workers will be privatized… our ideology and our preference is socialistic, which bears no relation whatsoever to the selfishness, privileges and inequalities of capitalist society..
It is not possible to continue along the path that widens the gap between the poor and the rich countries and produces increasingly serious social inequities within them all. At the moment, Latin American and Caribbean integration is fundamental. It is only by joining together that we can negotiate our role in this hemisphere, and the same applies to the Third World countries vis-a-vis the powerful and insatiable club of the wealthy. I have often noted that such integration and joining of forces cannot wait for profound social changes or social revolutions to take place within these individual countries…
Because the current world economic order is unsustainable, it faces the very real danger of catastrophic collapse, infinitely worse than the disaster and prolonged crisis set off in 1929 by the crash of the U.S. stock markets, where stocks had been inflated beyond sustainable levels…
MAYOR: Is there any hope for the poor to achieve a better life in the next 20 years?
CASTRO: Humanity is beginning to gain awareness. Look at what happened in Seattle and in Davos. People frequently talk about the horrors of the holocaust and the genocide that have taken place throughout the century, but they seem to forget that every year, as a result of the economic order we have been discussing here, tens of millions of people starve to death or die of preventable diseases. They can wield statistics of apparently positive growth, but in the end things remain the same or even worse in the Third World countries. Growth often rests on the accumulation of consumer goods that contribute nothing to true development and a better distribution of wealth. The truth is that after several decades of neo-liberalism, the rich are becoming increasingly richer while the poor are both more numerous and increasingly poorer…
MAYOR: Looking at a world map, what changes would you like to make?
CASTRO: I would be thinking of a world worthy of the human species, without hyper-wealthy and wasteful nations on the one hand and countless countries mired in extreme poverty on the other; a world in which all identities and cultures were preserved; a world with justice and solidarity; a world without plundering, oppression or wars, where science and technology were at the service of humankind; a world where nature was protected and the great throng of people living on the planet today could survive, grow and enjoy the spiritual and material wealth that talent and labor could create. I dream of a world that the capitalist philosophy will never make possible.