...Notes From Monterrey...
ON Wednesday, March 21, 2002, Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, president of the Republic of Cuba, addressed the International Conference on Financing for Development holding in Monterrey, Mexico. Organised by the United Nations, the conference, which had many Heads of State in attendance, was another in a series of UN-sponsored meetings aimed at appealing to the rich nations of the world to increase financial assistance to the poor ones. The conference, as expected, achieved nothing. Why? Because America, the undisputed ruler of the world, would do nothing beyond lecturing the poor nations on "democracy", "war on terrorism" and, in the case of South America, "war against drugs". President Castro's speech was short by the man's record. But not only was it strong, it effectively telescoped the grossly unjust social and economic order that has been imposed on the world. Castro started by regretting that "not everyone here will share my thoughts," but insisted that he would "respectfully" say what he thought. And he said it: "The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history." As he said this, several participants closed their files. These included those who, through sheer ignorance, arising from American leaders' relentless disinformation and propaganda, look at Castro with fear and hatred, and those who helplessly look on America for the very survival of their people. But Castro, as expected, went on to demonstrate his charge, and invited opponents to refute it.
"The world economy is today a huge casino," he said. Why? Because, according to him, "recent analyses indicate that for every dollar that goes into trade, one hundred end up in speculative operations completely disconnected from the real economy." The world population was estimated at 6 billion in the year 2000. Of this number, 75 per cent or 4.5 billion people, live in underdevelopment; 1.2 billion people in the Third World live in extreme poverty. The income of the richest nations of the world (that is, the G-8) which was 37 times larger than that of the poorest nations in 1960 is now 74 times larger. In other words, the gap has doubled. The assets of the three wealthiest persons in the world amount to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest countries combined. To conclude Castro's global statistics: In the year 2001, more than 826 million people were actually starving; there are "854 million illiterate adults; 325 million children do not attend school, 2 billion people have no access to low cost medications and 2.4 billion people lack the basic sanitation conditions. Not less than 11 million children under age of 5 perish every year from preventable causes, while half a million go blind for lack of vitamin A; the life span of the population in the developed world is 30 year higher than that of the people living Sub-Saharan Africa." This, according to Castro, is genocide.
Perhaps, there is nothing really new in these figures: they are contained, you would say, in the publications of the World Bank. But summarised and presented to a conference on economic assistance by Fidel Castro in his usually powerful and "combative" manner, they raised a stir, to say the least. Many participants became visibly uncomfortable; many others were embarrassed; not a few were sad. But several were angry, very angry. Among them, President George W. Bush who was not, at the time, in attendance. His plane was about to land at Monterrey Airport as Castro was concluding his speech. Suddenly strange movements began in the conference room; officials talked in whispers; some others removed their earphones and replaced them with cell phones into which they whispered. The Mexican hosts went out by one door and re-entered through another. They whispered to Cuban delegates who, in turn, whispered to Castro. Everyone knew that something was wrong. But what? At last Castro stood up to end the suspense: [/red]"I beg you all to excuse me, since I am not able to continue in your company due to a special situation created by my participation in this summit and I am obliged to return immediately to my country". [/red]He announced that Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba's National Assembly, would now lead the Cuban delegation and requested the summit not to prevent Alarcon from continuing as his replacement. After this, Castro withdrew from the conference, drove to the airport and flew back to Havana. Close to the airport, Castro's motorcade crossed that of President Bush. Castro out, Bush in! It was an invisible encounter between a defender of the wretched of the earth and the leader of the global dictatorship, the modern enslavers.
What actually happened? Why did President Fidel Castro hurriedly leave Mexico after his speech? Simple. President Bush had demanded the withdrawal of Castro as a condition for his even stepping on Mexican soil. The hosts must have thought it was a mere diplomatic statement not meant to be taken literally. But when Bush threatened from Monterrey Airport to fly back to Washington, the Mexicans pleaded, not with Bush, but with Castro. And the latter agreed to withdraw. President George W. Bush did not want to meet, or even see, Castro. What a hatred! It even surpasses the man's hatred for Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. To George W. Bush, Fidel Castro is satan himself.
But why did President Castro agree to withdraw from the Monterrey conference? Why did he not ignore the Mexican pleas and stay put? Afterall, both he and his country were officially invited to the conference. Several reasons can be suggested. In the first place, he did not want to disrupt the conference: for it was clear that had he resisted the subtle pressures mounted on him, President Bush would have boycotted the conference. And the gathering would have ended abruptly, going by the hold America has on most of the participating countries including, unfortunately, Mexico. Neither Castro, nor Cuba, nor indeed their admirers across the globe would have gained anything by allowing American president's pathological hatred for the truth to disrupt an international conference. In the second place, Castro has a sentimental attachment to Mexico: it was, afterall, from this same country that Castro and his comrades-in-arms set sail in 1956 to engage the American-backed dictatorship in Cuba. The relation between the two Latin American countries had remained very warm until recently when Mexico started to move "closer economically and politically to the United States." In the third place Castro did not want to descend to the openly terroristic and thoroughly cowboyish and barbaric level of President Bush. This would have disappointed millions of exploited and starving people across the globe for whom Castro had just spoken. Beyond this, Castro would have played into the hands of global dictators who use any pretext to destroy and commit murder and then use their complete control of the media to lie and disinform. Finally, I believe Castro withdrew from Monterrey because he had, in any case, delivered his speech which - before the demand for his withdrawal - was the only newsworthy event at the summit.
I would like to end this piece with two other statements from Monterrey, one made by President Castro, the other by Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly. Ending the speech earlier referred to, Castro said: "In the face of the present deep crisis, a still worse future is offered where the economic, social and ecological tragedy of an increasingly ungovernable world would never be resolved and where the number of the poor and the starving would grow higher, as if a larger part of humanity were doomed. As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, poverty and hunger. It should definitely be said: farewell to arms. Something must be done to save humanity; a better world is possible." And asked by reporters to comment on the sudden departure of his president, Alarcon said: "Bush had made it clear he does not want to meet Castro. It is his problem and it is up to his psychiatrist to help him deal with it". As the Monterrey drama was playing itself out, Jimmy Carter, a former American President, was applying to Bush for permission to visit Cuba. Fidel Castro welcomed the report. "We want him to see our country," he said, "not so that he supports us or anything like that, indeed so that he may make all the criticisms he wants. If he wants, we'll fill Revolution Square so they can criticise as much as they want, because we are so convinced of the moral, ethical, ideological, political and human strength of our revolution". Let the world judge between the two men: George Bush and Fidel Castro.