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The Cuban people reaffirm socialist revolution

4/28/2015

On April 19, 2015, the Cuban people reaffirmed their support for the Cuban revolutionary project. In the “partial elections” held on that date, 8,403,836 people, or 89.88% of the eligible voters, went to the polls to elect delegates to 149 municipal assemblies of popular power across the nation, in a secret vote in which voters choose one from two or more candidates. In Cuba, citizens sixteen years of age or older have the right to vote. The total Cuban population, including those less than 16 years of age, is slightly more than eleven million.

     On April 19, 11,424 delegates to the 149 municipal assemblies were elected. In 1,165 voting districts, no candidate received a majority, and a second round was held on April 26.

    There are three ways for Cubans to express in Cuban elections their dissatisfaction with the Cuban political-economic system: (1) not voting; (2) depositing a blank ballot; and (3) completing the ballot incorrectly, including writing on the ballot. In the latter case, the ballot is “annulled” by the National Electoral Commission responsible for the administration of the elections.

    In the election of April 12, 90.52% of the ballots were valid, having correctly marked an “X” for one of the two or more candidates; 4.54% were blank; and 4.92% were annulled. Taking into account the voter turnout of 89.88%, we can interpret the results to mean that 81.36% of the Cuban people affirmed their support of the political-economic system by going to the polls and depositing a valid ballot with an “X” marked for one of the candidates to the municipal assembly.

     In the Cuban political system, institutionally established by the Constitution of 1976, citizens eighteen years of age or older are eligible to be elected to the municipal assemblies, whether or not they are members of the Cuban Communist Party. The candidates are nominated through a series of nomination assemblies held in each voting district. Any citizen can put forward the name of a person, and the merits of those named are discussed by the assembly. In the nomination assemblies that I have attended, one to three persons were put forward for consideration, persons who were active in a mass organization or in community service. Several persons took the floor to express the positive qualities of one of the persons whose name had been put forward. In the nomination assemblies, I never heard anyone speak negatively of one of the persons named. It seems to me that, to some extent, the nomination assemblies function to provide the people with an opportunity to express their appreciation of highly committed and community-serving persons, who frequently are present at the nomination assemblies. At the end of the nomination assembly, preferences are expressed by a show of hands.

     In informal conversations among the people, it is being said that in the process leading to the elections of April 19, there emerged among the candidates on the ballot a couple of persons identified with the Cuban counterrevolution centered in Miami and supported by the United States. However, these candidates found that they had almost no support among the voters in their districts, and they thus withdrew their names from the ballot.

     The election of April 19 were “partial elections.” Every five years, “general elections” are held. The partial elections establish municipal assemblies, which elect the presidents and vice-presidents of the municipal assemblies. In the general election, the elected delegates of the municipal assemblies, in addition to electing their presidents and vice-presidents, also nominate delegates to the provincial assemblies and deputies to the national assembly, which are presented to the electorate for ratification in a secret vote. Once formed, the national assembly elects the executive branch of the government, known as the Council of State. Through this process, Fidel Castro was for many years elected and reelected President of the Council of States, a position now held by Raúl Castro.

     Although extremely high by international standards, the nearly 90% is relatively low by Cuban standards. Until 2010, Cuba consistently had a voter turnout of 95% or higher. I attribute this to a slight erosion of popular enthusiasm for the Cuban revolutionary project, which is a consequence of two principal factors: (1) the shortages and the hardships that the people have had to endure since the collapse of the socialist bloc and the corresponding tightening of the US blockade; and (2) the influence of the consumer societies of the North, stimulated by international tourists in Cuba, the visits of family members living abroad, and the Internet.

     The slight erosion of revolutionary commitment and values is most evident in the city of Havana, as is indicated by the fact that the voter turnout in Havana was 84.32%, whereas the other provinces had from 89.63 to 93.58% voter turnout.

     The significance of this erosion should not be exaggerated. It is understandable it light of the international situation in which the Cuban revolution must make its way, and popular support for and participation in the Cuban revolution remains strong. It is no sense implies the emergence of a counterrevolution within Cuba, for the counterrevolution has been discredited by its association with the imperialist foreign policy objectives of the United States as well as by the evident and significant gains and benefits of the revolutionary project.

    Rather than a counterrevolution from within, what has been emerging is a sense of dissatisfaction, particularly with the level and quality of production and distribution of goods and services. The dissatisfaction is expressed in other ways, in addition to the slight decrease in voter turnout. When it attains political expression through the structures of popular power and mass organizations, it is in the form of a popular demand to improve efficiency in production and distribution, within the context of the established socialist political-economic system. The new economic and social model, proposed by the party in 2012, modified through popular consultation, and approved by the national assembly in 2014, is an effort to respond to this popular desire.

     In spite of a level of popular dissatisfaction, the Cuban people are too politically mature to believe that the global powers and the international finance agencies have the answers to their problems. They understand that the dominant global actors have neither the interest nor the capacity to resolve the problems that the majority of the people in the world confront. They understand that the solutions to the multi-faceted and interrelated problems that humanity confronts must emerge from below; and they are proud that socialist Cuba, in spite of its imperfections, is an important actor in the emerging just and democratic world-system being developed by the peoples of the world from below.

     As Fidel has said, the future of Cuba is tied to the future of the world. If, led by the misguided neoliberal and militarist policies of the global elite, the world-system falls more and more into chaos, then there will be a decline of hope in Cuba and elsewhere. But if the just and reasonable process emerging from below, represented most clearly by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and by the Non-Aligned Movement, can overcome obstacles and attain full expression, then Cuba will fulfill its destiny and take its place in history as a leading force in the creation of democratic world-system, in which the true sovereignty of nations is upheld, the social and economic rights of all are respected, a political system of popular democracy is the norm, and nature is held in awe and reverence.

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Raúl Castro speaks to the two Americas

4/17/2015

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Generally, when Cuban President Raúl Castro addresses international summits, he reads from a prepared text, presenting a succinct and clear summary of the positions of the Cuban government on a variety of themes, combined with insightful commentaries on world affairs. But when he took the floor to address the Seventh Summit of the Americas, following twenty-one years of the exclusion of Cuba from the first six Summits of the Americas, he frequently departed from the prepared text to passionately defend the Cuban Revolution. His prepared and spontaneous comments together articulated an indignant review of unjust treatment by the United States that Cuba has endured for more than 100 years, as a consequence of US imperialist expansionism that began in the earliest years of the North American nation, more than 200 years ago. He was especially indignant over the fact that the United States government has placed Cuba on its list of countries that sponsor terrorism, when in fact Cuba has been victimized by terrorism originating in the United States, and some of those who have engaged in terrorist acts against Cuba live with impunity in the United States. Terrorist activities in Cuba, he said, have resulted in 3,478 deaths and 2,099 incapacitated for life.

     Whereas US President Barack Obama expressed in his comments that it would be best not to dwell on the past and to look to the future, Raúl considers it his duty to remind the people of historic events, for in the past were created the structures that today shape our reality. This perspective of history forming the present is expressed by Fidel, quoted by Raúl: “The fundamental causes (of global conflicts) are poverty and underdevelopment, and the unequal distribution of wealth and knowledge that prevails in the world. It cannot be forgotten that present underdevelopment and poverty are a consequence of the conquest, colonization, enslavement, and plundering of a great part of the Earth by the colonial powers, the emergence of imperialism, and the bloody wars that seek a new distribution of the world. Humanity ought to gain consciousness of what we have been and what we are not able to continue being. Today our species has acquired sufficient knowledge, ethical values and scientific resources to march toward an historic stage of true justice and humanism. Nothing of what exists today in the political-economic order serves the interests of humanity. It cannot be sustained. One must change it” (italics added).

     Accordingly, Raúl reviewed basic historic facts that are well-known in Cuba, but not in the United States: the expressed desire of US political leaders to add Cuba to its empire in 1800; the Monroe Doctrine; Manifest Destiny; the territorial expansion of the United States; the organization of a war of Cuban independence by José Martí, and his founding of the Cuban Revolutionary Party in order to lead the nation toward the establishment of a Republic “with all and for the good of all;” Martí's concern that the United States would seek to dominate the Caribbean and Latin America; the US military intervention of 1898; the Platt Amendment to the Cuban Constitution, granting the United States authorization to intervene in Cuba; the establishment of the Guantanamo Naval Base; the penetration of US capital in Cuba; and US military interventions and support for cruel dictatorships in Cuba and Latin America.

      Raúl maintains that, in reaction to six decades of US domination of the Republic, the Cuban Revolution triumphed in 1959, and it initiated a stage of full sovereignty for Cuba, with the support of the Cuban people, who have paid a very high price. In 1961, recognizing wide support of the Cuban Revolution by the Cuban people, the United States organized an invasion of mercenaries at the Bay of Pigs, with the intention of establishing a beachhead on which would be placed an alternative counterrevolutionary government, which would have asked for and received US military assistance, and which would have been recognized by OAS. However, the invading mercenary force was completely overcome by Cuban popular militias in seventy-two hours.

     Continuing his review of Cuban history, Raúl observes that in 1962 the United States initiated an economic, commercial and financial blockade of Cuba, with the intention of provoking the hunger and desperation of the Cuban people, thus stimulating a popular overthrow of the revolutionary government. The blockade has had terrible consequences for the people; it has provoked shortages of necessities, and it has placed significant obstacles on the development of the Cuban economy. But it also accelerated the revolutionary process, and it has increased the resistance of the people, so that patriotic convictions have prevailed. The blockade constitutes a violation of International Law, and it has been rejected nearly unanimously by the nations of the world.

     Raúl also noted that, beginning at the end of 1959 and continuing until 1965, the United States sponsored and organized armed groups that operated in the mountainous regions of Cuba.

     Subsequently, Raúl observes, there emerged the external debt and the imposition of a savage neoliberalism, representing a new stage of imperialism. In this context emerged the US proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, which “would have destroyed the economy, the sovereignty and the common destiny of our nations, if it had not been shipwrecked in 2005 in Mar del Plata by the leadership of Presidents Chávez, Kirchner, and Lula.” A year earlier, Chávez and Fidel had established an alternative to the FTAA, the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

     Raúl criticizes the reigning financial speculation, the privileges of the Bretton Woods institutions, and the unilateral removal of the dollar from standard convertibility into gold. He calls for a more transparent and equitable international financial system.

     Raúl maintains that the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean are constructing a better international order, based on International Law and the rights of all nations to self-determination and equal sovereignty; the development of mutually beneficial ties; and the right of each nation to develop its own political-economic-social-cultural system. The nations of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) reject interference in the internal affairs of nations in the pursuit of particular interests; they are developing an alternative way of cooperation, seeking to serve the interests of all of the nations of the region.

     Raúl also affirmed support for Venezuela, maintaining it cannot possibly be a threat to a superpower like the United States, and he called for the rescinding of Obama’s Executive Order. He declared support for Argentina in its claim for the recovery of the Malvinas Islands; and for Ecuador in its confrontation with transnational corporations that have caused ecological damage. In addition, he called for the independence of Puerto Rico, in accordance with the reports of the Committee on Decolonization of the United Nations.

    Raúl asks why the two Americas, North and South, are not able to work together in the building of schools and hospitals and in the eradication of poverty. “Would we not be able,” he asks, “to diminish inequality in the distribution of wealth, to reduce infant mortality, to eliminate hunger, to eradicate preventable diseases, and to end illiteracy?”

      Raul asserts, “Cuba will continue defending the ideas for which our peoples have struggled and have accepted the greatest sacrifices and risks, and it will continue defending the poor, the sick without medical attention, the unemployed, the children abandoned to their fate or forced to work or to prostitute themselves, the hungry, the discriminated, the oppressed, and the exploited that constitute the immense majority of the world population."

     Following Raúl's passionate address, Cristina Fernández, President of Argentina, proclaimed that Cuba is today included in the Summit of the Americas, after years of exclusion, as a result of the struggle of the Cuban people, and because the Cuban leadership has never betrayed the people’s struggle. The following day, Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, observed that Cuba will never betray the people of Latin America.

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Cuba and the Civil Society Debate

4/13/2015

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The Cuban philosopher Dr. Thalía Fung is the founder of the Political Science from the South, a school of thought affiliated with the Cuban Philosophical Society and the Division of Philosophy and History of the University of Havana. Far more comprehensive than Western Political Science, the Political Science from the South integrates philosophy, history, and the social sciences. But Dr. Fung uses the term “political science” in order to emphasize that the emerging integrative philosophy-history-social science is tied to and culminates in political action and public policy. Accordingly, knowledge of the “art of politics” is essential, a knowledge that often has been demonstrated by exceptional social movement leaders, who in their political leadership, speeches, and writings contribute to the Political Science of the South. In addition, the emerging knowledge is “from the South,” that is, it seeks to understand the world from the vantage point of the colonized and the oppressed, and it seeks to create an alternative world project that responds to their needs.

     Dr. Fung maintains that civil society is a reflection of the state, and its characteristics are shaped by the political system of the country. In the case of Cuba, civil society is formed by the various mass organizations that were developed, following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, in order to facilitate active citizenship participation. The mass organizations include the Confederation of Cuban Workers, the National Association of Small Agricultural Producers, the Cuban Federation of Women, and the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, a neighborhood organization with presence in every city block and in the countryside. The leaders of these popular organizations are elected by delegates who are elected at the base by its membership. In addition, Cuban civil society includes professional and scientific organizations as well as persons with special interests or concerns, such as the environment (Fung 2014:107, 318-19, 322).

     Many people in the world assume that these organizations of civil society in Cuba are not independent, because they are not in conflict with the government (Fung 2014:319). But this assumption fails to ask: What interests does the government defend? When a government defends the interests of banks and corporations, or a petty bourgeois bureaucratic class, popular organizations will emerge that critique the government and engage in political action in opposition to the government and/or its policies. But when the government defends the interests of the people, the functions of state and civil society are complementary, and their relations are not antagonistic or conflictive. In the case of Cuba, the popular organizations, which are modestly financed by the low dues of its many members, see themselves as non-governmental but not anti-government. The absence of conflict between the civil society and the government in Cuba is in fact evidence that the Cuban Revolution has accomplished a socialist transformation of Cuban political institutions, in which the system responds, as best as it can in light of limited national resources, to the interests and needs of the popular classes and sectors, and it does so through active citizenship participation.

     Dr. Fung also notes that the highly-industrialized capitalist countries have created and funded international non-governmental organizations, creating an international civil society. These international NGOs function in other countries as an extension of the political system of the funding country. In countries where the national project seeks autonomy from the demands of the global powers, NGOs are involved in seeking to stimulate and nourish opposition to the government. Thus, through NGOs, the wealthy countries are able to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, seeking to promote their economic and political interests, with limited public awareness of their involvement. Many progressive and socialist governments and organizations have denounced this form of intervention by the global powers, and they demand that the autonomy of their political-economic-cultural systems be respected (Fung 2014:319-20). In her address at the Summit of the Americas on April 11, Argentinian President Cristina Fernández condemned this practice, which she described as a “soft coup” and as a more sophisticated form of intervention than the coups and military interventions of previous decades.

     In the case of Cuba, opposition within the nation to the socialist projected is weak to the extreme, as a result of the intertwining of the socialist project with the historic nationalist aspirations for the full independence of the nation; and as a result of the flight in the early 1960s of the bourgeoisie, the conservative wing of the petty bourgeoisie, and those tied to the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship. The US government has been reduced to paying salaries to a small number of people, encouraging them to engage in some kind of political disturbance, which has not excluded terrorist acts. Drawing upon interviews with Cuban agents who infiltrated the mini-groups formed by these paid representatives of US interests, “Los Disidentes” reveals the pathetic nature of these small counterrevolutionary groups. US agents admit and lament the limited number and the poor quality of “dissidents” that they are able to recruit. The great majority of Cubans contemptuously dismiss these persons as unpatriotic mercenaries who have been bought by a foreign power that seeks to restore its domination of the Cuban nation.

     The contrasting interpretations of civil society provoked conflict at the Seventh Summit of the Americas, held April 10-12, 2015 in Panama, an event that brought together heads of state of the nations of the two Americas. As a result of the emergence of a new political reality in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1995, the Summits of the Americas have evolved to have a character completely different from the First Summit of the Americas, held in Miami in 1994, in which the principal agenda was the imposition by the United States of a Free Trade Area of the Americas. FTAA was buried at the Fourth Summit of the Americas in 2005 at Mar del Plata, Argentina, as a result of the opposition of Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

     The Seventh Summit of the heads of state was accompanied by five parallel events: the Summit of the Peoples, the Business Summit of the Americas, the Summit of University Rectors, the Youth Forum, and the Forum of Civil Society. The most colorful of these was the Summit of the Peoples, consisting of delegates of social movements, labor unions, and student and indigenous organizations. Four thousand delegates arrived to participate in the Summit of the Peoples and to issue a Declaration that affirms the need for a new society with social justice and that supports Cuba, Venezuela, and Argentina in their conflicts with the United States.

     In the Forum of Civil Society, the Cuban delegation found that a group of persons, including persons of Cuban origin no longer resident in Cuba, had been accepted as delegates representing Cuban civil society, while the Cuban delegation experienced delays in their own accreditation. Moreover, the “delegates” included two persons with involvement in terrorist acts and others that were associates of known terrorists. The Cuban delegation demanded the expulsion of the “group of mercenaries with terrorist ties,” and they withdrew from the inaugural session in protest. The following day, the Cuban delegation participated in the six sessions on various themes, and four of the sessions were conducted without problems. Two of the sessions, however, experienced conflicts provoked by the “delegates,” and these sessions on Citizen Participation and Governability were unable to produce a declaration of principles and positions. On the third day, the Cuban delegation decided not to participate in the closing session and social events.

     Given the policy of the US government to influence civil society in various countries, no one should be surprised that members of the US embassy in Panama met with persons of Cuban origin, and gave them guidelines concerning their comportment as “delegates” to the Summit of Civil Society. The US-supported group maintains that it forms an alternative Cuban civil society and that the Cuban delegation is the “official” Cuban civil society, intertwined with the government and not independent.

     Who authentically represents Cuban civil society? Respect for the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of nations requires that no nation should seek to organize and/or direct the representatives of the civil society of another nation at an international forum. Keeping in mind Dr. Fung’s observation that civil society to some extent functions as an extension of the state, any delegates organized by the US, if they have appropriate characteristics to be delegates by virtue of their participation in social movements and legitimate social organizations, should be accredited as delegates of US, and not Cuban, civil society. No international forum should permit the United States or organizations of US civil society to name the delegates of Cuban, Venezuelan, Ecuadorian, Bolivian, or Nicaraguan civil society.

     The US attempt to discredit Cuban civil society at the Forum of Civil Society is an indication of the sophisticated form of interference in the internal affairs of nations that the United States today uses to promote its economic interests, under the fictitious umbrella of the promotion of democracy and the defense of human rights, and supported by the manipulations and distortions of the international media of communication.

      Like conceptions of democracy and human rights, conceptions of civil society are tied to the characteristics of the political system (see “United States, Cuba, and human rights”). In my view, the conflicts between the United States and Latin America are an indication that we are in transition from an epoch of capitalist representative democracy, which serves the interests of international corporations and international finance, to an epoch of socialist popular democracy, which defends the interests of the people, the sovereignty of nations, and the needs of the Earth.

References
Elizalde, Rosa Miriam and Luis Baez. 2003. “Los Disidentes”: Agentes de seguridad cubana revelan la historia real. La Habana: Editora Política.

Fung Riverón, Thalía M. 2014. La Ciencia Política Enfoque Sur: Desde la Revolución Cubana.   La Habana: Editora Política.

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Cuba, United States, and human rights

4/9/2015

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On March 31, 2015, Cuba and the United States held a dialogue on the theme of human rights. It is a question of an interchange between two nations that have “profound differences of conceptions and positions,” as has been expressed by Anayansi Rodríguez, permanent representative of Cuba in the institutions of the United Nations in Geneva.

     In the United States, the political culture has defined human rights as political and civil rights, such as: the rights to vote and to own property; freedoms of assembly, association, speech, and religion; and equal treatment under the law, regardless of class, ethnicity, or gender. In contrast, since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, there has emerged a Cuban political culture that defines human rights in a far more comprehensive manner, to include not only the political and civil rights, but also social and economic rights, such as the right to a minimal standard of living, a level of education and cultural formation, and health care. In addition, the Cuban perception includes not only the rights of individuals but also the rights of nations and ethnic groups, and thus it affirms the rights of nations to sovereignty and self-determination, and the rights of peoples to the preservation of their cultures.

     The US conception of human rights is integrally tied to its political system of representative democracy, in which voters decide among two or more political parties, who compete in costly campaigns held in states and relatively large congressional districts. It is a system that favors the rich and the large corporations, inasmuch as they possess the resources to finance the political campaigns. With their financial control of politicians, and with their financing and control of foundations, higher education, and churches, large corporations have shaped the political culture of the United States in accordance with their interests, and thus they have succeeded in limiting the conception of human rights to political and civil rights.

      The Cuban conception of human rights is tied to its political system of popular democracy, in which voters decide among competing candidates, who are selected by voters in neighborhood nomination assemblies, and who are presented to the voters in small voting districts, without the participation of electoral parties and without political campaigning or campaign financing. These delegates elected at the local level in turn elect delegates and deputies to provincial and national legislative assemblies, culminating in the election by the assemblies of the executive branches of provincial and national governments. This political structure of popular power is tied integrally to mass organizations of workers, farmers, cooperatives, women, students, and neighborhoods, the leaders of which are likewise elected at the base, and which continually inform the provincial and national assemblies of the needs of the people.

     The Cuban conception of comprehensive human rights and popular democracy emerged during the republic of 1902-1959, which in reality was a neocolony of the United States. During the neocolonial republic, the Cuban Revolution developed the understanding that the US concept of democracy provided very limited protection of the sovereignty of the nation or the social and economic rights of the people. With the triumph of the revolution, the political culture forged an alternative to the US conception, culminating in the Constitution of 1976 and the establishment of political structures of popular power, and in the formulation of a comprehensive understanding of human rights to include the social and economic rights of the people and the true independence of the nation.

     The representative democracies have established some restrictions of the rights of private property, enacted for the good of society as a whole. These restrictions, although limited, establish the right of states to limit private property as a principle in international law.

     In accordance with the internationally accepted principle of the right of states to regulate and restrict private property, Cuba has imposed certain restrictions on private property, following its alternative conception of human rights and democracy. The United States, with its more limited concept of democracy, views some of these measures as violations of human rights. First, there is state ownership of major industries, a step, taken in the 1960s, necessary for the breaking of the neocolonial relation and the protection of the social and economic rights of the people. Secondly, there is public control of the press and the media of communication, based on the concept that editorial judgments, which affect what the people will know and believe, should not be in the hands of private and wealthy sectors, but in the hands of the elected delegates of the people.

     In the United States, the Cuban imposition of greater limitations on private property tends to be seen as violations of human rights. But when the Cuban system is observed with thoroughness and attentiveness, it can be seen that the Cuban conception is a more comprehensive and more profound, and therefore more advanced, understanding of human rights.

     The United States, particularly in the period 1990-2007, has utilized the international machinery of human rights to stigmatize and castigate the countries that do not follow its concept of democracy, establishing itself as the arbiter of human rights, in spite of the limited and less advanced character of its conception. The former UN Commission on Human Rights was notorious in this respect. However, as a result of the sustained objections of the governments of the Third World, especially those of Latin America, who could see the economic interests behind this political and ideological game, the Commission was replaced in 2007 by the UN Council on Human Rights, in which Cuba has been elected as a member by the UN General Assembly, whereas the United States has not been so elected.

    Given the history of the United States in seeking to impose its concept of democracy on the world, which in the case of Cuba has included the establishment of conditions for the ending of the blockade, Cuba enters the new phase of dialogue with the United States with the continual insistence that these negotiations be characterized by mutual respect for the sovereignty of each nation.

     Genuine dialogue requires listening to the other, and in a cultural sense, this is not new for Cuba. Cuban political culture is well-informed with respect to US political conceptions. Indeed, the Cuban Revolution historically appropriated certain concepts and values of the bourgeois revolutions of the West; and it has continually expressed its appreciation for the democratic concepts of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, and Jimmy Carter.

     In contrast, US political culture has not listened to and reflected upon the alternative concepts of the various Marxist-Leninist revolutions of the world, of the Bolivarian Revolutions of Latin America, or of the Cuban Revolution. It is hard to imagine that the United States will begin to do so now, given that this dialogue involves representatives of an Obama administration that has demonstrated its continuity with US imperialism, with the neoliberalism of Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush, and with the militarism of Bush II.

     In this historic moment of structural global crisis, US political culture needs a reformulation rooted in a revolutionary popular movement, which, among other things, would take seriously the conceptions of the political culture of the Cuban Revolution. This could lead to some particular proposals with respect to the United States: the expansion of public television and radio; significant restructuring of campaign financing; free access to public television for political candidates; reforms that would enhance the emergence of alternative visions and alternative political parties and structures; the expansion of organizations of workers, students, women, and neighborhoods; and through these means, the development among the people of consciousness of human rights as including the social and economic rights of all persons as well as the rights of all nations to true independence.

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World rejects Obama order re Venezuela

4/3/2015

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The nations and peoples of the world have rejected completely the Executive Order signed by US President Barack Obama, which declares, as Latin America hears it, that Venezuela is a threat to the national security of the United States.

   The Obama declaration is interpreted widely as a preparation for more aggressive economic and/or military action against the South American nation. Latin American and Caribbean governments and popular organizations are mobilizing to protest this action at the upcoming Summit of the Americas.

   An indication of the global rejection of the Obama Executive Order is the series of declarations being issued by associations of nations. ALBA, consisting of the five most progressive governments of Latin America (Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua) plus several Caribbean nations, has declared: We “solicit the government of the United States, and especially President Barack Obama, to rescind the Executive Order of March 9, 2015, inasmuch as it constitutes a threat to the sovereignty and an intervention in the internal affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” The ALBA declaration maintains that “Venezuela is a threat to no nation, for it is a supportive nation that has demonstrated its will to cooperate with the peoples and governments of the region, and it has become a guarantor of social peace and stability in our continent.” The ALBA declaration states that the member nations have decided “to demand that the government of the United States immediately cease harassment and aggression against the Venezuelan government and people.” For the full text of the ALBA declaration, go to The Voices of Third World Leaders, ALBA, Declaration 3/17/2015.

CELAC, consisting of all the nations of Latin American and the Caribbean, has issued a communiqué: “The Community of Latina American and Caribbean States (CELAC) declares its rejection of the Executive Order of the government of the United States of America of March 9, 2015, and it considers that this Executive Order ought to be reverted.” For the full text of the CELAC declaration, go to The Voices of Third World Leaders, CELAC, Declaration 3/26/2015.

The Group of 77 plus China, consisting of 133 nations of the Third World and China, “expresses its rejection of the recent decision of the government of the United States of America to expand its unilateral sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.” The G-77 voices its strong rejection of extra-territorial, economic and coercive measures, and accordingly, it “urges the international community to adopt urgent and effective measures to eliminate the use of coercive economic measures against any state, and particularly against countries in development.” In complete contrast to Obama´s characterization of Venezuela, the G-77 Declaration stresses the positive role of Venezuela in the world: “The Group of 77 plus China underscores the positive contribution of Venezuela in the strengthening of South-South cooperation, of solidarity, and of friendship among the peoples and nations, with the intention of promoting peace and development.” For the full text of the G-77 Declaration, go to The Voices of Third World Leaders, G-77, Declaration 3/26/2015.

Venezuela is in no sense a military threat to the United States. Venezuela has never invaded another country, and the current Chavist government of Nicolás Maduro pursues a foreign policy of support and cooperation with other nations.

But these is a sense in which Venezuela is indeed a threat to the United States. Since the election of the democratic socialist Hugo Chávez in 1998, Venezuela has sought to attain full sovereignty and independence, a national project that includes control of its natural resources, including the important resource of petroleum. Such a project contradicts the interests of the large transnational corporations, whose profits require access to the raw materials and labor of the planet.

True sovereignty and independence for the nations of the world is a threat to the existing world-system structures, which promote the ransacking of the planet, necessary for the maintenance of the consumer societies of the North and the profits of the rich. Full democracy is indeed a threat to the neocolonial world-system and its imperialist power.

     All empires and world-systems must legitimate the policies that maintain their structures. In light of the wide acceptance of democratic values in the world, no government of the United States, insofar as it continues to represent the privileges of the few, can politically afford to honestly affirm that the problem with Venezuela is that it seeks democracy in a world that structurally negates democracy. Thus, US governments, when they continue to defend the interests of the wealthy and the powerful, are compelled to utilize ideological distortions in order to generate popular support, or at least popular acceptance, of their essentially undemocratic policies. In this way, the confusion of the people is an important consequence of the structures of the neocolonial world-system.

The present structural crisis of the world-system, which has been made evident since the 1970s, makes necessary and calls into being a popular revolutionary movement in the United States, a movement that forms an alternative political party that seeks to attain political power and that intends to lead the nation toward policies of solidarity and cooperation with governments that seek true independence and with all the peoples of the world, casting aside imperialist policies in a quest for a more just, democratic and sustainable world-system.

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The Cuban people reaffirm socialist revolution

Raúl Castro speaks to the two Americas

Cuba and the Civil Society Debate

Cuba, United States, and human rights

World rejects Obama order re Venezuela

Author: Charles McKelvey

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