Articles of Reflections by Fidel

Secondary Education students met: their XI Congress was the occasion. Listening to them, I felt wholesome pride and justifiable envy. What a privilege at that fertile age! If today university education has become massive, so too a more important activity is massive: the battle of ideas before starting university.

Raúl had invited him. He replied he didn’t want to come see me so I wouldn’t catch the flu he had. That was nothing but a pretext to avoid the torture of my habitual questions. “What am I taking vitamin C for?” I told him in a message. Should we expect all the heads of State who attended the Rio Group’s warm and successful last meeting to get sick?

The knock-out took place in the capital of the Dominican Republic. We followed every second of the match on Telesur. Nearly all of the Latin American presidents from the Rio Group were there. Ecuadorian President Correa had announced it the day before. I underscored the importance of this meeting in one of my reflections. It did not take place within the OAS. Most importantly, US diplomats were not in attendance. In one way or another, despite the profound ideological and tactical differences, everyone shone and showed the virtues that earned them important positions in office.

For the past months and ending yesterday on March 5th, La Hojilla, a Venezolana de Televisión programme, took on the task of selecting facts and sentences that exactly reveal the imperialist scheme of doing to Chavez what was done to Milosevi? after the genocidal Kosovo Conflict: to have him tried by the International Criminal Tribunal.

I remember when he visited us, months before the electoral campaign when he was thinking of running as a candidate for the Presidency of Ecuador. He had been the Minister of the Economy in the government of Alfredo Palacio, a surgeon with professional prestige who had also visited us as Vice President, before becoming the President in an unexpected situation that took place in Ecuador. He had been receptive to a program of ophthalmologic operations that we offered him as a form of cooperation. There were good relations between our two governments.

Our doctors and all the other Cuban health professionals and technicians are an exceptional powerhouse. No other country has anything like it; just like our island’s internationalist soldiers, they were trained in combat. Their missions overseas abide by strict ethical standards. Their services are offered free of charge, or they are commercialized according to the host country’s circumstances. They are not exportable.

Sergio has left us. A little while ago I heard the news about his cremation on television. He was much younger than I. If we had more knowledge about health, perhaps he wouldn’t have gone so soon. I learned from him when visiting the lovely mountains in the centre of the island. I was an admirer of his principles. I am certain that he wouldn’t have wanted his ashes to lie in the capital’s cemetery. I hope that his relatives, or whoever else has the right to do so, decide to place them in some Escambray forest where a tree can grow together with his memory. I shall accept any decision with sincere honesty.

These words will be published tomorrow, on February 29th. A great many tasks lie immediately ahead of us. The 10th International Meeting of Economists on Globalization and Development Problems, a conference I had always attended and in which I had always expressed different points of view, will begin on Monday the 3rd. Judging from the international developments we’ve witnessed, this conference will doubtless be of great importance, owing to the presence of prestigious economists, some Nobel Prize Laureates and two eminent heads of State.

Today, by mere chance, I remembered that the OAS still exists, when I read a cable posted on the Internet which contained an article by Georgina Saldierna, published in La Jornada, titled “Insulza rules out the possibility of re-admitting Cuba into the OAS”. No one even remembered the OAS. Note how retrograde this line of reasoning is.

That Tuesday there was no fresh international news. The modest message I wrote to the Cuban people on Monday, February 18, was widely and easily disseminated. As from 11 o’clock in the morning I started to receive concrete news. The previous night I had slept like never before. I had a clear conscience and I had promised myself a vacation. The days of tension, awaiting the proximity of February 24, had left me exhausted.