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I hold nothing against Brazil, even thought to more than a
few Brazilians continuously bombarded with the
most diverse arguments, which can be confusing
even for people who have traditionally been
friendly to Cuba, we might sound callous and
careless about hurting that country’s net income
of hard currency. However, for me to keep
silent would be to opt between the idea of a
world tragedy and a presumed benefit for the
people of that great nation.
I do not blame Lula and the Brazilians for the objective laws
which have governed the history of our species.
Only seven thousand years have passed since the
human being has left his tangible mark on what
has come to be a civilization immensely rich in
culture and technical knowledge. Advances have
not been achieved at the same time or in the
same geographical latitudes. It can be said that
due to the apparent enormity of our planet,
quite often the existence of one or another
civilization was unknown. Never in thousands of
years had the human being lived in cities with
twenty million inhabitants such as Sao Paulo or
Mexico City, or in urban communities such as
Paris, Madrid, Berlin and others who see trains
speeding by on rails and air cushions, at speeds
of more than 250 miles an hour.
At the time of Christopher Columbus, barely 500 years ago,
some of these cities did not exist or they had
populations that did not exceed several tens of
thousands. Nobody used one single kilowatt to
light their home. Possibly, the population of
the world then was not more than 500 million.
We know that in 1830, world population reached
the first billion mark, one hundred and thirty
years later it multiplied by three, and
forty-six years later the total number of
inhabitants on the planet had grown to 6.5
billion; the immense majority of these were
poor, having to share their food with domestic
animals and from now on with biofuels.
Humanity did not then have all the advances in computers and
means of communication that we have today, even
though the first atomic bombs had already been
detonated over two large human communities, in a
brutal act of terrorism against a defenseless
civilian population, for reasons that were
strictly political.
Today, the world has tens of thousands of nuclear bombs that
are fifty times as powerful, with carriers that
are several times faster than the speed of sound
and having absolute precision; our sophisticated
species could destroy itself with them. At the
end of World War II, fought by the peoples
against fascism, a new power emerged that took
over the world and imposed the absolutist and
cruel order under which we live today.
Before Bush’s trip to Brazil, the leader of the empire
decided that corn and other foodstuffs would be
suitable raw material for the production of
biofuels. For his part, Lula stated that Brazil
could supply as much biofuel as necessary from
sugar cane; he saw in this formula a possibility
for the future of the Third World, and the only
problem left to solve would be to improve the
living conditions of the sugarcane workers. He
was well aware –and he said it-- that the United
States should in turn lift the custom tariffs
and the subsidies affecting ethanol exports to
that country.
Bush replied that custom tariffs and subsidies to the growers
were untouchable in a country such as the United
States, which is the first world producer of
ethanol from corn.
The large American transnationals, which produce this biofuel
investing tens of billion dollars at an
accelerated pace, had demanded from the imperial
leader the distribution in the American market
of no less than thirty-five billions
(35,000,000,000) of gallons of this fuel every
year. The combination of protective tariffs and
real subsidies would raise that figure to almost
one hundred billion dollars each year.
Insatiable in its demand, the empire had flung into the world
the slogan of producing biofuels in order to
liberate the United States, the world’s supreme
energy consumer, from all external dependency on
hydrocarbons.
History shows that sugar as a single crop was closely
associated with the enslaving of Africans,
forcibly uprooted from their natural
communities, and brought to Cuba, Haiti and
other Caribbean islands. In Brazil, the exact
same thing happened in the growing of sugar
cane.
Today, in that country, almost 80% of sugar cane is cut by
hand. Sources and studies made by Brazilian
researchers affirm that a sugarcane cutter, a
piece-work laborer, must produce no less than
twelve tons in order to meet basic needs. This
worker needs to perform 36,630 flexing movements
with his legs, make small trips 800 times
carrying 15 kilos of cane in his arms and walk
8,800 meters in his chores. He loses an average
of 8 liters of water every day. Only by burning
cane can this productivity per man be achieved.
Cane cut by hand or by machines is usually
burned to protect people from nasty bites and
especially to increase productivity. Even though
the established norm for a working day is from 8
in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, this
type of piece-work cane cutting tends to go on
for a 12 hour working day. The temperature will
at times rise to 45 degrees centigrade by noon.
I have cut cane myself more than once as a moral duty, as
have many other comrade leaders of the country.
I remember August of 1969. I chose a place
close to the capital. I moved there very early
every day. It was not burned cane but green
cane, an early variety and high in agricultural
and industrial yield. I would cut for four hours
non-stop. Somebody else would be sharpening the
machete. I consistently produced a minimum of
3.4 tons per day. Then I would shower, calmly
have some lunch and take a break in a place
nearby. I earned several coupons in the famous
harvest of 1970. I had just turned 44 then. The
rest of the time, until bedtime, I worked at my
revolutionary duties. I stopped my personal
efforts after I wounded my left foot. The
sharpened machete had sliced through my
protective boot. The national goal was 10
million tons of sugar and approximately 4
million tons of molasses as by-product. We never
reached that goal, although we came close.
The USSR had not disappeared; that seemed impossible. The
Special Period, which took us to a struggle for
survival and to economic inequalities with their
inherent elements of corruption, had not yet
begun. Imperialism believed that the time had
come to finish off the Revolution. It is also
fair to recognize that during years of bonanza
we wasted resources and our idealism ran high
along with the dreams accompanying our heroic
process.
The great agricultural yields of the United States were
achieved by rotating the gramineae (corn, wheat,
oats, millet and other similar grains) with the
legumes (soy, alfalfa, beans, etc.). These
contribute nitrogen and organic material to the
soil. The corn crop yield in the United States
in 2005, according to FAO (Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations) data was 9.3
tons per hectare.
In Brazil they only obtain 3 tons of this same grain in the
same area. The total production registered by
this sister nation that year was thirty-four
million six hundred thousand tons, consumed
internally as food. It cannot contribute corn
to the world market.
The prices for this grain, the staple diet in numerous
countries of the region, have almost doubled.
What will happen when hundreds of millions of
tons of corn are redirected towards the
production of biofuel? And I rather not mention
the amounts of wheat, millet, oats, barley,
sorghum and other cereals that industrialized
countries will use as a source of fuel for its
engines.
Add to this that it is very difficult for Brazil to rotate
corn and legumes. Of the Brazilian states
traditionally producing corn, eight are
responsible for ninety percent of production:
Paraná, Minas Gerais, Sao Paulo, Goiás, Mato
Grosso, Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina y Mato
Grosso do Sul. On the other hand, 60% of sugar
cane production, a grain that cannot be rotated
with other crops, takes place in four states:
Sao Paulo, Paraná, Pernambuco and Alagoas.
The engines of tractors, harvesters and the heavy machinery
required to mechanize the harvest would use
growing amounts of hydrocarbons. The increase of
mechanization would not help in the prevention
of global warming, something which has been
proven by experts who have measured annual
temperatures for the last 150 years.
Brazil does produce an excellent food that is
especially rich in protein: soy, fifty million
one hundred and fifteen thousand (50,115,000)
tons. It consumes almost 23 million tons and
exports twenty-seven million three hundred
thousand (27,300,000). Is it perhaps that a
large part of this soy will be converted to
biofuel?
As it is, the producers of beef cattle are beginning to
complain that grazing land is being transformed
into sugarcane fields.
The former Agriculture Minister of Brazil, Roberto Rodrigues,
an important advocate for the current government
position, --and today a co-president of the
Inter American Ethanol Commission created in
2006 following an agreement with the state of
Florida and the Inter American Development Bank
(IDB) to promote the use of biofuel on the
American continent-- declared that the program
to mechanize the sugarcane harvest does not
create more jobs, but on the contrary it would
produce a surplus of non-qualified manpower.
We know that the poorest workers from various states are the
ones who gravitate towards cane cutting out of
necessity. Sometimes, they must spend many
months away from their families. That is what
happened in Cuba until the triumph of the
Revolution, when the cutting and hauling of
sugarcane was done by hand, and mechanized
cultivation or transportation hardly existed.
With the demise of the brutal system forced on
our society the cane-cutters, massively taught
to read and write, abandoned their wanderings in
a few years and it became necessary to replace
them with hundreds of thousands of voluntary
workers.
Add to this the latest report by the United Nations about
climate change, affirming what would happen in
South America with the water from the glaciers
and the Amazon water basin as the temperature of
the atmosphere continue to rise.
Nothing could prevent American and European capital from
funding the production of biofuels. They could
even send the funds as gifts to Brazil and Latin
America. The United States, Europe and the other
industrialized countries would save more than
one hundred and forty billion dollars each year,
without having to worry about the consequences
for the climate and the hunger which would
affect the countries of the Third World in the
first place. They would always be left with
enough money for biofuels and to acquire the
little food available on the world market at any
price.
It is imperative to immediately have an energy revolution
that consists not only in replacing all the
incandescent light bulbs, but also in massively
recycling all domestic, commercial, industrial,
transport and socially used electric appliances
that require two and three times more energy
with their previous technologies.
It hurts to think that 10 billion tons of fossil fuel is
consumed every year. This means that each year
we waste what it took nature a million years to
create. National industries are faced with
enormous challenges, including the reduction of
unemployment. Thus we could gain a bit of time.
Another risk of a different nature facing the world is an
economic recession in the United States. In the
past few days, the dollar has broken records at
losing value. On the other hand, every country
has most of its reserves in convertible
currencies precisely in this paper currency and
in American bonds.
Tomorrow, May Day is a good day to bring these reflections to
the workers and to all the poor of the world. At
the same time we should protest against
something incredible and humiliating that has
just occurred: the liberation of a terrorist
monster, exactly when we are celebrating the 46th
Anniversary of the Revolutionary Victory at the
Bay of Pigs.
Prison for the assassin!
Freedom for the Five Cuban Heroes!
Fidel Castro Ruz
April 30, 2007
6:34 p.m
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