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(Part Two)
Lula
warmly reminded me of the first time he visited our country
in 1985 to take part in a meeting organized by Cuba to
analyze the overwhelming problem of the foreign debt;
participants representing a wide spectrum of political,
religious, cultural and social tendencies presented and
discussed their opinions, concerned about the asphyxiating
drama.
The
meetings took place throughout the year. Leaders of worker,
peasant, student and other groups assembled to examine the
various subjects. He was one of these leaders, already well
known to us and abroad for his direct and vibrant message,
that of a young worker leader.
At that
time, Latin America owed 350 billion dollars. I told him
that in that year of intense struggle I had written long
letters to the President of Argentina, Raúl Alfonsín, to
persuade him discontinue the payments on that debt. I knew
the position of Mexico, unmoved in the payment of its
enormous debt, but not indifferent to the outcome of the
battle, and the special political situation of Brazil. The
Argentine debt was sufficiently large after the disasters of
the military government to justify an attempt to open up a
breach in that direction. I did not succeed. A few years
later, the debt with the interests rose to 800 billion; it
grew twofold and it had already been paid.
Lula
explains to me how that year was different. He says that
Brazil has no debt today either with the International
Monetary Fund or with the Paris Club, and that it has 190
billion US dollars in its reserves. I assumed that his
country had paid enormous sums in order to comply with those
institutions. I explained to him about Nixon's colossal
fraud on the world economy, when in 1971 he unilaterally
suspended the gold standard that had limited the issuing of
paper money. Until then the dollar had maintained a balance
in relation to its value in gold. Thirty years earlier, the
United States had almost all the reserves in this metal. If
there was a lot of gold, they bought it up; if there was a
shortage, they sold. The dollar played the part of
international exchange currency, under the privileges
granted to the US at Bretton Woods in 1944.
The
most developed powers had been destroyed by the war. Japan,
Germany, the USSR and the rest of Europe had barely any of
this metal in their reserves. One ounce of gold could be
bought for as little as 35 dollars; today you need 900
dollars.
The
United States, I said, bought up properties all over the
world minting dollars, and exercise sovereign privileges
over such properties acquired in other countries.
Nevertheless, nobody wants the dollar to devaluate any
further, because almost all countries accumulate dollars,
that is, paper money, that devaluates constantly as a result
of that unilateral decision made by the President of the
United States.
Presently, the currency reserves of China, Japan, Southeast
Asia and Russia combined amount to three trillion dollars
(3,000,000,000,000); it’s an astronomical figure. If you
add the dollar reserves of Europe and the rest of the world,
you will see that this all comes to a mountain of money
whose value depends on what the government of one country
decides to do.
Greenspan, who for more than 15 years was the chairman of
the Federal Reserve, would have died in a panic had he been
faced with such situation. How high can U.S. inflation
climb? How many new jobs can this country create this
year? How long will its machinery to mint paper money last
before its economy collapses, besides using the war to
conquer other nations’ natural resources?
As a
result of the harsh measures imposed on the defeated German
state at Versailles in 1918, when a republican regime came
to power, the German Mark devaluated to such an extent that
you needed tens of thousands of them to buy one dollar.
Such crisis fed German nationalism and contributed
extraordinarily to Hitler’s absurd ideas. He was looking
for a scapegoat. Many of the most important scientific and
financial talents as well as writers were Jewish. They were
persecuted. Among them was Einstein, the author of the
theory stating that energy is equal to mass multiplied by
the square of the speed of light; it made him famous. Also
Marx, who was born in Germany, and many of the Russian
Communists were of Jewish descent, whether or not they
actively practiced the Hebrew religion.
Hitler
did not lay the blame for the human drama on the capitalist
system, rather he blamed the Jews. Based on crude
prejudices, what he really wanted was “vital Russian space”
for his Teutonic master race, dreaming of building a
millennial empire.
In
1917, by the Balfour Declaration, the British decided to
create the State of Israel within its colonial empire,
located on territory inhabited by the Palestinians who had a
different religion and culture; in that part of the world,
other ethnic groups coexisted for many centuries before our
era, among them the Jews. Zionism became popular among the
Americans, who rightly detested the Nazis, and whose
financial markets were controlled by representatives of that
movement. That state today is practicing the principles of
apartheid; it has sophisticated nuclear weapons and it
controls the most important financial centers in the United
States. It was used by this country and its European allies
to supply nuclear weapons to that other apartheid, the one
in South Africa, so that they might be used against the
Cuban internationalist combatants who were fighting the
racists in the south of Angola if they were to cross the
Namibian border.
Immediately afterwards, I spoke to Lula about Bush’s
adventurous policies in the Middle East.
I
promised to send him the article that was to be published in
Granma the next day, on January 16th. I
would personally sign the copy he would be getting. Before
he left, I would also give him the article written by one of
the most influential U.S. intellectuals, Paul Kennedy, about
the connection between food and oil prices.
You are
a food producer, I added, and you have just discovered
important reserves of light crude. Brazil has an area of
5,333,750 square miles and 30 percent of the world’s water
reserves. The planet’s population needs increasing amounts
of food, and you are great food exporters. If you have
grains rich in proteins, oils and carbohydrates –be they
fruits like the cashew nuts, almonds, or pistachio; legumes
such as peanut; soybean, with more than 35% protein, and
sunflower seeds; or grains like wheat and corn— you can
produce all the meat or milk you want. I didn’t mention
others on a long list.
I
continued with my explanation saying that in Cuba, we had a
cow that broke the world record in milk production, a
Holstein-Zebu hybrid. Right away Lula named her: “White
Udder!” (Ubre Blanca), he exclaimed. He remembered her
name. I went on to say that she would produce 110 litres of
milk a day. She was like a factory, but she had to have
more than 40 kilograms of fodder, the most she could chew
and swallow in a 24-hour period, a mixture where soy meal, a
legume that is very difficult to grow in Cuban soil and
climate, is a basic ingredient. You now have the two
things: safe supplies of fuel, raw food materials and
manufactured food products.
The end
of cheap food has already been announced. I ask him, What
do you think will do the dozens of countries with many
hundreds of millions of inhabitants who have neither the one
nor the other? This means that the United States has a huge
external dependency which is also a weapon. It could use
all its reserves of land, but the people of that country are
not ready for that. They are producing ethanol from corn,
therefore, they are taking a great amount of this caloric
grain off the market, I added making my point.
On the
same subject, Lula tells me that Brazilian producers are
already selling the 2009 corn crop. Brazil is not as
dependent on corn as Mexico or Central America. I think that
the United States cannot keep up fuel production from corn.
This, I say, confirms a reality with regards to the sudden
and incontrollable rise of food prices which will affect
many peoples.
You, on
the other hand, can rely on a favorable climate and loose
soil; ours tends to be clayish and sometimes as hard as
cement. When we received tractors from the Soviets and the
other Socialist countries, they would break down and we had
to buy special steel in Europe to manufacture them here. In
our country we have lots of clay-based black or red soils.
Working them with dedication, they can produce for the
family what the peasants in the Escambray call “high
consumption”. They were receiving food rations from the
State and also consuming their own production. The climate
has changed in Cuba, Lula, I said.
Our
soil is not suitable for the large scale commercial
production of cereals, as required to meet the necessities
of a population of almost 12 million people, and the cost in
machinery and fuel imported by the nation, at today’s
prices, would be very high.
Our
media prints news about oil production in Matanzas,
reductions in costs and other positive aspects. But nobody
says that the prices in hard currency must be shared with
foreign partners who invest in the necessary sophisticated
machinery and technology. Besides, we do not have the
required labor force to intensively take part in cereal
production as the Vietnamese and Chinese do, growing rice
plant by plant and often reaping two or even three harvests
a year. It has to do with the location and the historical
tradition of the land and its settlers. They did not first
go through the large scale mechanization of modern
harvesters.
In
Cuba, quite a while ago now, the sugarcane cutters and the
workers in the mountain coffee plantations have abandoned
the fields, logically. Also, a large number of construction
workers, some from the same origins, have abandoned the work
brigades and have become self-employed workers. The people
are aware of the high cost of fixing up a home. There is the
cost of the material, plus the high cost of the manpower.
The first can be solved, the second has no solution –as some
would believe– throwing pesos into the street without their
due backing in convertible currency, which would not be
dollars anymore but Euros and Yuans, increasingly expensive,
if all together we succeed in saving international economy
and peace.
Meanwhile, we have been creating and we should keep on
creating reserves of foods and fuel. In case of a direct
military attack, the manual work force would be multiplied.
In the
short time Lula and I spent together, two and a half hours,
I would have liked to summarize in just a few minutes the
almost 28 years that have gone by, not since the time he
first visited Cuba, but from the time I met him in
Nicaragua. This time he was the leader of an immense nation
whose fate, however, depends on many aspects that are common
to all the peoples on this planet.
I asked
his permission to speak about our conversation freely and at
the same time, discretely.
As he
stands in front of me, smiling and friendly, and I listen to
him speaking with pride about his country, about the things
they are doing and those they plan on doing, I think about
his political instincts. I had just finished quickly
looking over a hundred-page report on Brazil and the growth
of relations between our two countries. He was the man I
met in the Sandinista capital, Managua; he was someone who
connected closely with our Revolution. I neither spoke to
him, nor would I ever speak to him, about anything that
could be construed as interfering in the political process
of Brazil, but he himself, right at the beginning, said: Do
you remember, Fidel, when we spoke at the Sao Paulo Forum,
and you told me that unity among the Latin American
left-wing was necessary if we were to secure our progress?
Well, we are now moving forward in that direction.
Immediately he speaks to me with pride about what Brazil is
today and its great possibilities, bearing in mind its
advances in science, technology, mechanical industry, energy
and other areas, bound up with its enormous agricultural
potential. Of course, he includes the high level of
Brazil’s international relations, which he describes
enthusiastically, and the relations he is ready to develop
with Cuba. He speaks vehemently about the social work of
the Workers' Party which today is supported by all the
Brazilian left-wing parties, which are far from having a
parliamentary majority.
There
is no doubt that it was a part of the things we analyzed
years ago when we spoke. Back then time flew by quickly, but
now every year is multiplied by ten, at a rhythm which is
difficult to follow.
I
wanted also to talk to him about that and about many other
things. It’s hard to tell which one of us had the greater
need to communicate ideas. As for me, I supposed that he
would be leaving the next day and not early that same
evening, according to the flight plan that had been
scheduled before we met. It was approximately five o’clock
in the afternoon. What happened was a kind of contest as to
how we would be using the time. Lula, smart and
quick-witted, took his revenge at a meeting with the press,
when, smiling and cunning as you can see in the photos, he
told the reporters that he had only talked for half an hour
and Fidel had talked for two. Of course, with the privilege
of seniority, I used up more time than he did. You have to
discount the time taking photographs of each other, since I
borrowed a camera and became a reporter: He followed suit.
I have
here 103 pages of dispatches reporting what Lula said to the
press, the photos taken of him and the confidence he
communicated about Fidel’s health. Truly, he left no space
for the reflection published on January 16th that
I had just finished writing the day before his visit. He
took up the entire space and this is equivalent to his
enormous territory, compared to the miniscule land surface
of Cuba.
I told
him how happy I was that he had decided to visit Cuba, even
without the assurance that he would be able to see me. As
soon as I knew that, I decided to sacrifice anything, like
my exercises, rehab and recovery, just so I could be with
him and talk extensively.
At that
moment, even though I knew that he would be leaving that
same day, I was unaware of the urgency in his departure.
Evidently, the health condition of the Vice President of
Brazil, according to his own statement, urged him to take
off so that he could arrive in Brasilia at around dawn the
next day, in the middle of spring. Yet, another long and
hectic day for our friend.
A
strong and persistent downpour fell on his residence while
Lula waited for the photos and two other bits of material,
together with my notes. He left that night for the airport
under the rain. If he had seen the front page of Granma:
"2007, the third rainiest year in more than 100 years", he
would have been able to understand what I had told him about
the climate change.
Well
then, the sugar harvest in Cuba has begun, along with the
so-called dry season. The sugar crop yield is only at nine
percent. How much would it cost to grow sugar for export at
ten cents a pound, when the purchasing power of one cent is
almost fifty times less than at the time of the triumph of
the Revolution in January of 1959? Reducing the costs of
these and other products to fulfil our commitments, to
satisfy our consumption, to create reserves and develop
other production, is highly commendable; but not even in our
wildest dreams can we find easy solutions to our problems,
the solutions are not just around the corner.
Among
many other topics, we discussed the inauguration of the new
President of Guatemala, Álvaro Colom. I told him that I had
seen the ceremony in its entirety and the social commitments
made by the newly elected President. Lula mentioned that
what we can see today in Latin America was born in 1990 when
we decided to create the Sao Paulo Forum: “We made a
decision here, in a conversation we had. I had lost the
election and you came to lunch at my home in San Bernardo."
My
conversation with Lula was just beginning, and I still have
many things to tell and ideas to offer, that might perhaps
be useful.
Fidel Castro Ruz
January
23, 2008
Part 3
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