80 YEARS IN THE LIFE OF MARQUEZ

Narrating to live it

• Briton Gerald Martin publishes first "authorized" biography of Gabo: a monumental literary and editorial event

• ONE would have had to have been in New York in person on Wednesday, May 27 to understand what happened at the Americas Society. British academic Gerald Martin launched what he called "a tolerated biography" of Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature.
This book of more than 600 pages (of the 2,500 of manuscript) is already considered a monumental literary and editorial event which will obviously have a place apart in the history of world literature. The English-language edition of Gabriel García Márquez: A Life was launched for the first time in the United Kingdom, published by Bloomsbury, which described it as an "authorized" biography. Since May 5, it has been distributed in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf publishers, which issued the U.S. edition.

NOTE: THIS COMING OCTOBER 6

Spanish-language editions will be published in the United States by Knopf, in the rest of the world by RH Mondadori publishers. Milena Alberti, director of the Knopf Spanish-langue publications department, said translation is underway and the goal is to have the book out by October 6.
"It is a real process, given that now the translation team has to research the writings of García Márquez translated into the English book with the writer’s originals," Alberti said. "The translation is being done in Spain, and an adaptation to Latin American Spanish is also needed."
During the New York event, Martin described García Márquez as "the finest novelist in the world, if one does not consider the world to be just the United States and the United Kingdom." Martin also said that as far as he knew, García Márquez was not working on a book at present.
Gerald Martin, 64, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh (U.S.A.) and researcher with the London Metropolitan University in London, a translator for Miguel Angel Asturias (Mr. President), spent almost 20 years researching the life and work of García Márquez. He spoke with him on numerous occasions, for hundreds of hours, and talked to and interviewed more than 300 people close to the Colombian, including relatives, friends, heads of state, starting with those in Colombia, Fidel Castro, politicians like Felipe González and writers such as Alvaro Mutis, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.
"At first, García Márquez told me that he wouldn’t collaborate with my project. ‘What do you want to do with this, are you sick? I haven’t died yet!’" That was how García Márquez reacted about 18 years ago when Martin presented the idea to him, he said. "After an hour and a half and several whiskies, he finally agreed to participate in the biography, but he said to me, ‘OK, but don’t make me work,’" the biographer said humorously during the New York event. That’s why his book is more of a "tolerated" biography than an authorized one, Martin says, and in fact, García Márquez would have preferred for it not to be published. In the book’s epilogue, he says that, given that Gabo had tolerated the project, had told him that he wouldn’t oppose it or prevent Martin from talking to his people. He adds, "But he could have told me that he would appoint me his authorized biographer, and give me all of his notebooks, letters and access to all his personal effects. But he never did anything of the sort." Martin says he did not raise the issue so as not to seem ungrateful; on the contrary, he feels enormously grateful to García Márquez for his collaboration, although gratitude is not the best motivation for a biography. He said they got along very well, considering that it was difficult. Nobody likes having a biographer, he said…

PREVIOUS CHAPTERS

On March 26, 2006, Granma International published an article, "Gabo stuck," which said, "The publication of the second volume of his autobiographical trilogy may be postponed." García Márquez published the first volume, Living to Tell the Tale, in 2002. His most recently published work was Memories of My Melancholy Whores, a short novel (2004).
Actually, everything began with an interview of García Márquez published by La Vanguardia, in Barcelona, Spain, in its Sunday supplement of January 29, 2006. Outside of its deep interest, at that time it did not have the importance, the worldwide impact then that it now has three years later. It can now be read differently, because between the interview (with journalist Xavi Ayén) and Martin’s biographical work, there is an obvious, strong and fundamental tie that allows the reader to better understand how and why the authorized biography came about, and the relevance of Gabriel García Márquez: a Life. Moreover, since then, Gabo has not accepted any other interview with a "historical" span and that sums everything up.
Some information must be noted. García Márquez himself wondered, could his inspiration be on the way to expiring? It was not a matter of numbers but of faculties in front of his cutting-edge computer keyboard. GGM (for ease and also one of the signatures of the journalist García Márquez in the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, as of 1954) told Ayén, "This year, 2005, I have taken a sabbatical. I have not sat down in front of the computer. I have not written one line. And moreover, I do not have a project or any prospect of having one. I had never left off writing; this has been the first year in my life that I have done so…"
"The sabbatical year has ended for me, but I’m finding excuses to prolong it throughout all of 2006. Now that I’ve discovered that I can read without writing, let’s see how far it goes. I think I’ve earned it. With everything that I’ve written, right? …Actually, with the practice that I have, I could write something without too many problems: I sit down in front of the computer and get it out… but people realize if you haven’t really put yourself into it… People should know that if I publish anything else, it will be because it’s worth it."
Xavi Ayén: And have you found something better to do?
I’ve found a fantastic thing: Staying in bed reading! I’m reading all the books I never had time to read…
And the second volume of your memoirs?
I think I’m not going to write it. I have some notes, but I don’t want it to be a purely professional mechanical thing. I realize that if I publish it as second volume, I am going to have to say things in it that I don’t want to say, because of certain personal relationship that are not very good… I found a number of people that had to appear, and that, damn it, I don’t want to be in my memoirs. It would not be honorable to leave them out, because they were important in my life, but I don’t really like them."
Reticent of speaking about his private life, Gabo told Ayén (January 2006), "For that, you have my official biographer, Gerald Martin of the United States, who, incidentally, should have published the book by now; I think he’s waiting for something to happen to me…" In February or March of 2006, very few people had noticed that García Márquez had chosen a biographer, and even fewer an "official" biographer (from the U.S. or not, actually working in the United States).
Years later, Gerald Martin confessed in the book’s epilogue, "I found out that I was his official biographer by reading that famous interview…" He calls it a "surprise interview," and holds the theory that "it was not something that was improvised"; instead, "it seems like a family meeting took place where it was decided, under the circumstances, to make one last statement followed by retirement. Afterward, silence."
Returning to January 2006, many Latin American newspapers were evidently taken by surprise; this revelation hit them hard, literally and figuratively. According to Clarín, an outstanding Argentine newspaper, the most important thing to highlight in the interview was "his surprise confession," which moreover, he is without anesthesia. "Without anesthesia, he is letting the world know that 2005 has been a virtually non-productive year for him." Those same newspapers also emphasized that García Márquez accepted two things he never used to do: in the photo, by photographer Kim Manresa, he is posing with his wife, Mercedes Barcha, inside his home in Mexico. One of his children participated for a moment in the interview. On the other hand, the writer evokes several aspects, anecdotes and episodes of his personal and family life with his usual sense of humor, the so-called "mamagallismo" (irony, parody, and over-exaggeration,) of the Colombian Caribbean.

"BAKING CAKES"

Three years have passed. Three very important years (more) in the life of Gabriel García Márquez. The writer did not publish anything. The Patriarch appears to have entered a slow retirement.
For the last five years, expectations of reading something new by García Márquez have been major and constant. If news about García Márquez continues to be valid and potent today, it is due not directly to the writer, but to his "official biographer." For the first time, a discreet biographer, of Anglo-Saxon roots, talks about 80 years (1927-2007) of the life of this writer, the son of a telegraph operator, and who will always be the son of a telegraph operator for the rest of his life. That is how the life and work of writer and journalist Gabriel García Márquez of Aracataca should be understood.
What does Martin think about rumors that García Márquez has just finished a new novel? Martin: "It would really surprise me…"
For his part, a leading "Gabologist," Argentine Tomás Eloy Martínez, said, "Only he knows what his desires and limits are in terms of continuing to write. Anything else is guessing." And what does Gabo say? One of the most prolific writers on the face of the Earth gave one of the most laconic and appropriate responses known on this same Earth. With 90 words he "finished off the job" (Quima Mono, La Vanguardia). Read the entire text of his telegraphic interview (30 seconds) with a journalist from Bogotá’s El Tiempo newspaper:
El Tiempo: Maestro, could you answer some questions for El Tiempo? Gabriel García Márquez: Call me later, I’m writing. El Tiempo: We called him later at his studio in Mexico City, and he only agreed to answer two questions:
El Tiempo: It is true you won’t return to writing?
García Márquez: Not only is it not true, but the only thing that is true is that the only thing I do is write.
El Tiempo: But people have said that you won’t publish any more books?
García Márquez: My profession is writing, not publishing. I’ll know when the cakes I’m baking are ready to taste.
Gabriel García Márquez is baking cakes then… For his part, Gerald said (to DPA) that he now has a long version of the biography. "It will be a minimum of 2,500 pages, and I expect it to be published within five years." Also, a book about the experiences of the biographer himself during the almost two decades he dedicated to the life and work of Gabo. "It will be the chronicle of a chronicle," he said.

Nobel laureate for 27 years,

'Gabo' for 55

• JUST like cause comes before effect, existence precedes essence, and motorcycle outriders lead official retinues, one always has a common name or nickname before becoming a Nobel laureate.

Is there life after winning a Nobel Prize? Are there happy "Nobelites?" It is a vast subject. Let us take just one random example of winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature (the best-known and the most popular in the media, much more so than the Nobel Peace Prize winners). And the thing is, it is worth far more to be called "Gabo" than to be a Nobel laureate… The time of indifference is worth much more than that of celebrity, and all that it brings with it. That has been confirmed by an authorized source. G. García Márquez never thought differently. Especially after (the age of) 82.

TWO OR THREE THINGS WE KNOW ABOUT HIM

As everybody knows, "being a candidate" for an upcoming Nobel is considered a lack of taste and contrary to the statutes of the venerable Swiss Academy (18 members, founded on March 20, 1786) and one day you were declared nobelizable, along with other candidates. Let us open the French dictionary Le Petit Robert 2008 to the letter N: nobelizable. adj. Etim. 1973; from Nobel (Prize). Susceptible to winning a Nobel Prize. The nobelizable "immense novelist" Gabriel García Márquez (Philippe Sollers)". And then you are "nobelizable" (Important to read: "The fortune of not standing in line," journalistic article, originally published on May 4, 1981).

"You have said ‘Gabo’. How does one become ‘Gabo’?
"First of all a small linguistic explanation is needed. Could it be, perhaps, a diminutive, a shortening, an apheresis, an apocope or an acronym? The first, according to the dictionary, is "a proper name… that indicates familiarity or affection in the person who uses it. Joey for Joseph, or Johnny for John, are diminutives. The adjective "diminutive" provides or adds the idea of smallness (often with a nuance of affection). Hence, "Gabo" is not a diminutive. And as we shall soon find out, it is not a pseudonym, either, nor a nom de guerre, stage name or nom de plume. Neither is it an apheresis: Ling. Loss of a phoneme or group of phonemes at the beginning of a word (opposite of apocope). We say "bus" for "omnibus." So? Conclusion?
Jean-François Fogel, a top-rate "Gabologist" is not of much help to us; on the contrary when he writes in his blog, "Gabo is not just Gabo," we might ask ourselves, "Isn’t it better to go to the trunk than to the branches? With that said, it is also true that God’s word is not always the gospel.
— Hey man! Mr. Gabo!— he practically shouted, using the name he had invented for me in Barranquilla as an apocope of Gabito and which only he used" (from the autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale).
Apocope: the loss of one or more sounds or letters at the end of a word (opposite of apheresis). Shortening: people say "TV" instead of television, etc. The abbreviation of a word by dropping one or more syllables. Bike is a shortening of bicycle. But Gabo is not an apocope of Gabriel but of Gabriel García Márquez. Let there be no doubt about it.
Moreover, in addition to being an epithet, of constituting an indelible mark, a typographical simplicity, a logo and above all four (generally) affectionate letters, of friendship and especially respect, Gabo is an apocope and we didn’t know it. Now that the linguistic tangle has been untangled, let us review some historical/biographical twists and turns to culminate our unusual, special story:
As if to provide evidence of the decency, pertinence and legitimacy of those four letters, García Márquez has made them his own for 55 years. You are a friend, you call him by phone, he likes to chat on the phone, especially after he decided not to write letters anymore. His tone is affable, cordial, "always very Caribbean," says his great friend. Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza): "What’s up, this is Gabo."
"I should have been called Gabriel José de la Concordia, but they forgot about it at the baptism."
Flashback: Bogotá, 1954. At the time, Gabriel José García Márquez, 27 years old, recently arrived from Barranquilla — on the northern Caribbean coast, more than 1,000 km from the capital — that young man "wearing loud-colored clothing, with an excessive mustache and eyes, and extremely pale and thin" (1) was bored in Bogotá, despite having been invited for a few days by his friend Alvaro Mutis, then the public relations man for the Esso company. "I would spend my days in Mutis’ office, and after a few days, I didn’t really know what to do (2), taking refuge from the cold and loneliness." (1)
Upon returning to the Andean city of Bogotá in late January, after six years of absence (1943-1948 – he had left shortly after the Bogotazo), he had arrived in the former Techo airport with his globetrotter’s suitcase and two packages (1), which were the original copies of the stories La casa and La hojarasca. So began the long, eventful novelistic journey of the kid from Aracataca, one of the 11 children of the telegraph operator Gabriel Eligio García Martínez and Luisa Santiaga Márquez Iguarán.
As the Colombian essayist Dasso Saldívar says, "In January 1943, he saw himself heading into the most radical and perhaps most useful act of his life: leaving home" and financing his secondary and university studies. Bogotá was going to be "the city of his nightmares" (1) (See "Bogotá 1947," published originally on October 21, 1981, in Notas de prensa, Obra periodística, Mondadori, 1999) and, at the same time, the luckiest thing in his life. Five years later, before leaving the capital to return to the Atlantic Coast (20 months in Cartagena contributing to the El Universal newspaper and, from January 1950, to the Heraldo de Barranquilla, until December 1952), he had published three short stories in the literary supplement of El Espectador in Bogotá. He was in his second year of law school at the Universidad Nacional. He was just 20 years old. In January 1954, "thinking that I wasn’t doing anything and I was wasting Mutis’ time, I decided to go back to the coast" (2), believing he would never get a steady job, he finally got an offer as staff writer with a tempting salary, "considering that in previous years, an article in El Heraldo (signed "The Giraffe") earned him 3 pesos." (2)
Mutis’ office at Esso was on an upper floor of a building on the centrally-located Jiménez de Quesada Avenue. By pure coincidence, the El Espectador newsroom was located on the first and second floors of that same building. García Márquez knew the place. Once in a while, he would write brief articles that the paper’s editors would ask for when they "were short of a writer." The Barranquilla native would do so, "to get them out of a jam."
"That guy is first-rate." But another problem had emerged, Zaldívar recounts: when Gabriel Cano, the newspaper’s owner, saw him for the first time, he was "transfixed": he could not believe that it was the "great writer" that Alvaro Mutis and the deputy editor and writer Eduardo "Ulises" Zalamea Borda had mentioned in approving of his short stories and news articles. Cano told Mutis: "Man, Mr. Alvaro, that kid may have a lot of talent, but the way he looks, for God’s sake!" Mutis answered, "He’s the best worker that you’re going to have at this newspaper. You have never had a worker like him."
The offer, a contract for 900 pesos monthly, came of course from El Espectador (the second-largest daily after El Tiempo). He accepted the opportunity ("I was breathless. When I recovered, I asked him again how much and he repeated it, spelling it out: n-i-n-e h-u-n-d-r-e-d…" --- from Living to Tell the Tale) and stayed at the paper. After a few days of work, the newspaper owner called his friend Mutis: "Listen Mr. Alvaro, you were completely right: that guy is first-rate. Thanks a million."
"I should have been called Olegario," the saint whose feast day falls on March 6 (1927), but the saints’ calendar was nowhere to be found. Who was the person who practically shouted "Hey man! Mr. Gabo"? An apocope that only "he" used. Who was that man that brought "Gabo" to the world? Eduardo "Ulises" Zalamea Borda. Remember that name and surname, "my true literary dad" (GGM), his "Christopher Columbus." García Márquez himself provides the details in his autobiography: "I had arrived (in Bogotá) the day before. The editor of El Espectador, Guillermo Cano, telephoned me and insisted that I come by and say hello. So I did…. He took me by the arm and separated me from his colleagues in the newsroom. ‘Listen to me for a sec, Gabriel,’ he said to me with an innocence that was beyond suspicion. ‘Why don’t you do me a big favor and write up a little editorial note for me that I need to send the paper to press?’ He indicated the size of half a glass of water with his thumb and forefinger, saying ‘About that long.’
"More amused than he was, I asked him where I could sit down, and he pointed to an empty desk with a typewriter on it from times gone by. I sat down without any more questions, thinking about a good theme for them, and I stayed there in that same chair, with the same desk and the same typewriter, for the next 18 months.
"Minutes after my arrival, Eduardo Zalamea Borda, the deputy editor, came out of the adjoining office, absorbed with a file full of papers. He started when he recognized me: "Hey man! Mr. Gabo!" he practically shouted, using the name he had invented for me in Barranquilla as an apocope of Gabito, and which only he used. But this time it became generalized in the newsroom, and they kept using it, even in print: Gabo.
"I don’t remember the subject of the note that Guillermo Cano asked me to write… I finished it in half an hour, made a few corrections by hand and gave it to Guillermo Cano, who read it standing up, peering shortsightedly over his glasses…. Just like his predecessors must have done, he made a few changes jumbled up with minor questions, and ended with the first practical and simplifying use of my new name:
"Very good, Gabo."
Gabo was born that day, the same one who was awarded the Nobel Prize 28 years later, without losing its apocope. But by the way, what happened to Gabito, his irregular diminutive? "From the minute I was born, that’s what they called me, and I’ve always felt like that is my given name and that the diminutive was Gabriel…." (from his autobiography). •

The quotes in this article are taken from El Viaje a la Semilla/La biografía (Journey to the Seed/The Biography) by Colombian essayist Dasso Saldívar (Editorial ABC, Spain, first edition, 1997). The quotes (2) are from the French scholar Jacques Gilard, author of the prologues of three of the volumes of G. García Márquez, La Obra periodística (G. García Márquez, Journalistic Work, 1982).

By Michel Porcheron

Reflections of Prabhat

Socialism and Welfarism

Socialism consists not just in building a humane society; it consists not just in the maintenance of full employment (or near full employment together with sufficient unemployment benefits); it consists not just in the creation of a Welfare State, even one that takes care of its citizens ''from the cradle to the grave''; it consists not just in the enshrining of the egalitarian ideal. It is of course all this; but it is also something more. Its concern, as Engels had pointed out in Anti-Duhring, is with human freedom, with the change in the role of the people from being objects of history to being its subjects, for which all the above conditions of society, namely full employment, Welfare State measures, a reduction in social and economic inequalities, and the creation of a humane order, are necessary conditions; but they are, not even in their aggregation, synonymous with the notion of freedom. And hence they do not exhaust the content of socialism.

The conceptual distinction between a humane society and socialism comes through clearly if we look at the writings of the most outstanding bourgeois economist of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes. Keynes abhorred the suffering that unemployment brought to the working class. The objective of his theoretical endeavour was to end this suffering by clearing the theoretical ground for the intervention of the (bourgeois) State in demand management in capitalist economies. He was passionately committed to a humane society, and believed that the role of economists was to be committed in this manner. Indeed he saw economists as the ''conscience-keepers of society''.

But at the same time Keynes was anti-socialist, not just in the sense that bourgeois intellectuals usually are, i.e. of seeing in socialism an apotheosis of the State and hence a denial of individual freedom, but in a more fundamental sense. He too would have seen in socialism a denial of individual freedom, but his objection to socialism was more basic, and expressed in the following words: ''How can I adopt a creed which, preferring the mud to the fish, exalts the boorish proletariat above the bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia, who with all their faults, are the quality of life and surely carry the seeds of all human achievement? … It is hard for an educated, decent, intelligent son of Western Europe to find his ideals here, unless he has first suffered some strange and horrid process of conversion which has changed all his values.'' (Essays in Persuasion, 1931). Keynes' objection in other words was precisely to the idea of the people becoming the subjects of history. He was full of humaneness; but he baulked at this idea of freedom that would transform the people, led by the proletariat, from being objects to being subjects.

Even though welfarism and socialism are conceptually distinct, there is a dialectical connection between the two, which had, quite naturally, escaped Keynes, and which constitutes the real Achilles heel of his theory. It is this dialectics which explains why the bourgeoisie is so implacably opposed to the Welfare State and why Socialists must always vigorously fight for a Welfare State within a bourgeois society. And it is because of this dialectics that the Welfare State cannot become some sort of a ''half-way house'' where the bourgeois system can get stabilized and stay forever: the bourgeoisie will always try to ''roll'' it back, and the socialist effort must always be to defend it and to carry it forward.

The reasons for the bourgeoisie's opposition to the Welfare State, by which is meant here the entire panoply of measures including State intervention in demand management to maintain full employment (or near full employment), social security, free or near-free healthcare and education, and the use of taxation to restrict inequalities in income and wealth, are several. First, it militates against the basic ethics of the bourgeois system. Michael Kalecki had expressed this bourgeois ethics ironically as: ''You shall earn your bread with the sweat of your brow, unless you happen to have private means!'' But his irony was directed against the basic position, expressed in much bourgeois economic literature, that the distribution of rewards by the spontaneous working of the capitalist system is ''fair'', in the sense that each is rewarded according to his/her contribution, from which it followed that any interference with this distribution of rewards was ''unfair''. Hence, society's accepting the responsibility for providing a basic minimum to everyone was contrary to the ethics of the bourgeois system and ''unfair''.

Secondly, precisely for this reason, the acceptance of welfarism amounted to ''no confidence'' in the bourgeois system. If it got generally accepted that the working of the bourgeois system yielded results that were inhumane, i.e. caused hardships that had nothing to do with any delinquency on the part of the victims, then the social legitimacy of the bourgeois system got ipso facto undermined.

It is the third reason however that is germane here. Welfare State measures improve the bargaining strength of the proletariat and other segments of the working people. The maintenance of near-full employment conditions improves the bargaining strength of the trade unions; the provision of unemployment assistance likewise stiffens the resistance of the workers. The ''sack'' which is the weapon dangled by the ''bosses'' over the heads of the workers loses its effectiveness in an economy which is both close to full employment and has a system of reasonable unemployment allowances and other forms of social security.

In short, resistance by the workers and other sections of the working people gets stiffened by the existence of Welfare State measures. The famous Bengali writer Manik Bandyopadhyay in a short story Chhiniye Khayni Kyano (''Why Didn't They Snatch and Eat?'') asks the question: why did so many people die on the streets without food in the Bengal famine of 1943, when within a few yards of their places of death there were restaurants full of food and houses with plenty of food? Why did they not raid these well-stocked places and snatch food from them to save their lives? His answer, that the absence of nourishment itself lowers the will to resist, has a general validity. The will to resist gets stiffened the better placed the workers are materially; and Welfare State measures contribute towards this stiffening.

This stiffening of the will to resist is itself a part of the transition from being objects to subjects. Hence welfarism and socialism, though conceptually distinct, are dialectically linked. Socialists must support Welfare State measures, not just because such measures are humane, not just because such measures benefit the working people, but above all because such measures stiffen the will of the people to resist, help the process of changing them from objects to subjects, and hence contribute to the process of sharpening of class struggle. And since the bourgeoisie wants precisely to avoid this, since it wants the people enchained in their object role, since it wants them weakened, cowed down, divided, atomized, and transfixed into an empirical routine beyond which they cannot look, it carries out a continuous struggle for a ''rolling back'' of all Welfare State measures. Even when under the pressure of circumstances it has had to accept in a certain context the institutionalization of such measures, its effort is always to undo them.

The fact that Keynes did not see it, and hence could not visualize the collapse of ''Keynesian'' demand management under pressure from the bourgeoisie, especially the financial interests, constitutes a weakness of his social theory; conversely, the fact that this collapse occurred only underscores the strength of the socialist theory that he so derided. True, the collapse of Keynesian demand management did not occur in the same political economy regime within which it had been introduced. It had been introduced within a context where the nation-State was supreme, and the area under its jurisdiction cordoned off from free flows of goods and finance; but it collapsed within a regime where there was globalization of finance and hence far freer flows of goods and finance. But this changed context only provided the capacity to capital to ''roll back'' Keynesianism; the fact that it wished to do so had to do with the insurmountable contradictions that the dialectics of welfarism generated within the bourgeois order.

The foregoing has a relevance to the current Indian context. Under pressure from the Left during the period of the Left-supported UPA regime, a number of measures like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme had been adopted, against strong opposition from the leading exponents of neo-liberalism within the government. The fact that the same exponents subsequently claimed credit for these measures is ironical; but let it pass. Not only do they claim credit for these measures, even while quietly whittling down many of them (restricting the people's access to food under the guise of a Right to Food Act is the latest, and most ironical, example of this), but they actually use these as the fig-leaf to cover the pursuit of blatantly pro-rich policies. The government stokes the stock market to produce overnight billionaires; it hands over further largesse to these billionaires in the name of ''development''; but if anyone objects, the response is: ''Don't you know? We have an NREGS in place!'' The welfare measures, even as they are being whittled down, provide an alibi for doling out largesse to the rich.

And these measures themselves are seen essentially as acts of generosity on the part of the government. Several of these measures, like the NREGS, are nominally rights-based, but in practice no different from the earlier programmes whose effectiveness depended basically upon the discretion of the implementing government. Hence, even as they provide some succour to the poor and working people, they confirm the people in their role as objects. And the entire self-congratulatory discourse that has developed among intellectuals loyal to the ruling class, especially after the elections where the Congress Party is supposed to have done well because of programmes like the NREGS, is one that is laden with this objectification of the people.

The stiffening of the will to resist among the people, which Welfare State measures can bring about, has to be made practically effective through the intervention of the Left, since the Left's agenda precisely is to overcome the objectification of the people. The left therefore must both act energetically for the implementation of these Welfare State measures like the NREGS, preventing all backsliding on them by the bourgeoisie, and at the same time use the context of the material succour provided by such schemes to help in strengthening the resistance of the people, in intensifying class struggle, and also in overcoming the objectification intrinsically attached to such schemes themselves. The Left fights not just for welfarism but for socialism, with which welfarism is dialectically linked, but whose content is qualitatively different.

Prabhat Patnaik

Reflections of Fidel

Hopefully I am mistaken!

Fidel Castro Ruz

I read with astonishment weekend news agency reports on the internal politics of the United States, where a systematic debilitation of President Barack Obama’s influence is evident. His surprising electoral victory would not have been possible without the profound political and economic crisis of that country. American soldiers killed or wounded in Iraq, the scandal of torture and secret prisons, the loss of homes and jobs, had shaken U.S. society. The economic crisis was extending throughout the world, increasing poverty and hunger in Third World nations.

Those circumstances made possible Obama’s nomination and subsequent election within a traditionally racist society. No less than 90% of the African-American population, discriminated against and poor, the majority of voters of Latin American origin and a broad middle and working class white minority, particularly young people, voted for him.

It was logical that many hopes would be aroused among U.S. citizens who supported him. After eight years of adventurism, demagogy and lies during which thousands of U.S. soldiers and close to one million Iraqis died in a war of conquest for the oil of that Muslim country, which had nothing to do with the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers, the people of the United States were weary and ashamed.

Many people in Africa and other parts of the world were enthused with the idea that there would be changes in U.S. foreign policy.

However, an elemental knowledge of reality should have sufficed for not falling into illusions in relation to a possible political change in the United States on the basis of the election of a new president.

Obama had certainly opposed the Bush war in Iraq before many others in the U.S. Congress. He knew from his own adolescence the humiliations of racial discrimination and, like many Americans, admired the great civil rights fighter, Martin Luther King.

Obama was born, educated, went into politics and was successful within the imperial capitalist system of the United States. He did not wish to nor could he change the system. The strange thing is, in spite of that, that the extreme right hates him for being an African American and is fighting against what the president is doing to improve the deteriorated image of that country.

He has been capable of understanding that the United States, with barely 4% of the world population, consumes approximately 25% of fossil energy and emits the greatest volume of the world’s contaminating gases.

Bush, in his ravings, did not even subscribe to the Kyoto Protocol.

In his turn, Obama proposes to apply tighter regulations in the context of tax evasion. He has announced, for example, that out of the 52,000 accounts held by U.S. citizens in Swiss banks, these banks are to provide information on approximately 4,500 suspected of tax evasion.

In Europe, a few weeks ago, Obama committed himself before the G-8 countries, especially France and Germany, to bring to an end his country’s use of tax havens in order to inject vast quantities of U.S. dollars into the world economy.

He has offered health services to almost 50 million citizens who lacked medical insurance.

He has promised the people of the United States to lubricate the productive apparatus, halt growing unemployment and restore growth.

He has informed12 million Hispanic illegal immigrants that he will put a stop to the cruel raids and the inhuman treatment to which they are subject.

There were other promises that I am not enumerating, not one of which questions the system of imperialist capitalist dominion.

The powerful ultra-right is not resigned to any measure whatsoever that diminishes its prerogatives to the most minimum degree.

I shall confine myself just to referring textually to information coming from the United States that has been arriving in the last few days, taken from news agencies and the U.S. press.

August 21:

"Americans’ confidence in the leadership of President Barack Obama has fallen sharply, according to a survey published today in The Washington Post."

"In the midst of growing opposition to health system reforms, the telephone survey undertaken jointly with the ABC TV network from Aug 13 to 17 of 1, 001 adults, reveals that… forty-nine percent now say they think he will be able to spearhead significant improvements in the system, down nearly 20 percentage points from before he took office."

"Fifty-five percent see things as pretty seriously on the wrong track, up from 48 percent in April."

"The heated debate on healthcare reform in the United States is showing signs of an extremism that is worrying experts, alarmed at the presence of armed men at public meetings, paintings of swastikas and images of Hitler."

"Experts in hate crimes recommend closely watching these extremists, and while many Democrats have been overwhelmed by the protests, others have opted for directly facing their co-citizens."

"A young woman carrying a manipulated photo of Obama with a Hitler-style mustache is feeding the theory that the leader is to create ‘death panels’ that would back euthanasia for elderly people with terminal illnesses…"

"Some people are turning a deaf ear and opting for hate messages and extremism, which former FBI agent Brad Garrett is observing with alarm."

"It's certainly a scary time," Garrett told ABC last week, adding that the secret services ‘really do fear that something could happen to Obama.’"

"Without going any further, on Monday, around 12 people airily displayed their weapons outside the Phoenix Convention Center (Arizona), where Obama was making a speech to war veterans, defending, among other things, his medical reforms."

"Another man was carrying a pistol and a sign saying ‘It is Time to Water the Tree of Liberty," a reference to Thomas Jefferson's quote that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

"Some messages have been even more explicit, wishing for ‘Death to Obama, Michelle and his… daughters.’"

"Those incidents demonstrate that hatred has erupted into U.S. politics with more strength than ever."

"’We are talking about people who are shouting, who are carrying photos of Obama characterizing him as a Nazi… and who are using the term socialist contemptuously," EFE was informed by Larry Berman (University of California, author of 12 books on the U.S. Presidency), who attributes part of what is taking place to the latent legacy of racism."

"After The New York Times reported yesterday that, in 2004, the CIA hired Blackwater for planning, training and surveillance tasks, in today’s edition the daily provides more details on the activities assigned to that controversial private security company whose current name is Xe."

"The daily noted that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recruited Blackwater agents to plant explosive devices in drone aircraft with the objective of killing Al Qaeda leaders."

"According to information given by government officials to The New York Times, the operations were carried out in bases located in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the private company assembled and loaded Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs."

"The agency’s current director, Leon Panetta, canceled the program and notified Congress of its existence in an emergency meeting in June."

"Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program."

"Blackwater was the central private security company responsible for protecting U.S. personnel in Iraq during the George W. Bush administration."

"Its aggressive tactics were criticized on a number of occasions. The gravest case occurred in September 2007, when company agents killed 17 Iraqi civilians."

"Faced by record suicide figures and the wave of depression among soldiers, the U.S. army is gradually training specialized formations aimed at making its troops ‘more resistant’ to emotional stress related to war situations."

August 22:

"U.S. President Barack Obama today launched harsh criticisms of those opposed to his plan to reform the country’s health system and accused them of circulating lies and distortions."

"As he has noted in his speeches, the objective of the reform of the medical care system is to halt its spiraling cost and to guarantee medical coverage to close to 50 million Americans who lack insurance."

"…’should be honest debate, not dominated by falsehoods and intentional distortions circulated by those who would most benefit from things being maintained as they are.’"

"The U.S. State Department is still financing Blackwater, the private company of mercenaries involved in the murder of Al Qaeda leaders and which is now called Xe Services, according to today’s New York Times."

"David Patterson, governor of New York state, stated on Friday that the media has utilized racial stereotypes in its coverage of African-American officials, like himself, President Barack Obama and the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick."

"The White House calculates that the budget deficit over the next 10 years will be $2 trillion more than recent forecasts, a devastating blow for President Barack Obama and his plans for creating a public health system funded to a large extent by the state."

"Ten-year forecasts are seen as highly volatile and could vary with time. However, the new red figures in public finances are going to pose difficult problems for Obama in Congress, and enormous anxiety among foreigners who are financing the U.S. public debt, especially China. Almost all economists consider them unsustainable, even with a massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar."

August 23:

"The U.S. army joint chief of staff stated on Sunday that he was concerned at the loss of popular support in his country for the war in Afghanistan, while he stated that that country still remains vulnerable to extremist attacks."

""I think it is serious and it is deteriorating, and I've said that over the past couple of years – that the Taliban insurgency has gotten better, more sophisticated, in their tactics," said Admiral Mike Mullen."

"In an interview broadcast on NBC, Mullen declined to specify whether it was necessary to send in more troops."

"A little over 50% of people consulted in a recently published Washington Post-ABC survey, stated that the war in Afghanistan is not worth it."

"At the end of 2009, the United States will have three times more soldiers in Afghanistan than the 20,000 deployed there three years ago."

Confusion reigns in the heart of U.S. society.

Next September 11 is the eighth anniversary of the fateful 9/11. That day we warned in an event in the Ciudad Deportiva [Havana] that war would not be the way to put an end to terrorism.

The strategy of withdrawing troops from Iraq and sending them to the Afghanistan war to fight against the Taliban, is an error. The Soviet Union sunk there. The European allies of the United States will steadily put up more resistance to shedding the blood of their soldiers there.

Mullen’s concern over the popularity of that war is not unfounded. Those who plotted the September 11, 2001 attack on the Twin Towers were trained by the United States.

The Taliban is an Afghani nationalist movement that had nothing to do with that event. The Al Qaeda organization, financed by the CIA from 1979 and utilized against the USSR in the Cold War years, was the group that plotted that attack 22 years later.

There are shady events that have not as yet been sufficiently clarified before world public opinion.

Obama has inherited those problems from Bush.

I do not harbor the slightest doubt that the racist right will do everything possible to wear him down, blocking his program to get him out of the game in one way or another, at the least possible political cost.

Hopefully I am mistaken!
August 24, 2009, Translated by Granma International

They did not elect me president

to restore capitalism in Cuba or to surrender the revolution.

I was elected

to defend, maintain and continue perfecting socialism, not to destroy it

• Speech given by General of the Army Raúl Castro Ruz, president of the Councils of State and Ministers, during the 3rd ordinary session of the 7th Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the International Conference Center, on August 1, 2009, "Year of the 50th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution."

Compañeras and compañeros:
We have had days of intense work. On July 26, in Holguín, I explained that my remarks would be very brief, considering that questions of greater complexity were be debated thoroughly in different meetings throughout the week.

We dedicated the entire day on the 29th to holding the 7th Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party, with its Political Bureau and Secretariat, with the participation, as guests, of the members of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers; in other words, the main leaders of the Party, state, and government and the central cadres of the mass organizations, representing the rest of society. Further on, I will refer to some of the questions addressed in the plenum, although a brief report was published in our press yesterday.

Likewise, the next day there was an ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers, which approved the second adjustment to expenditure for this year and a set of agreements to deal with the tense financial situation our economy is experiencing.

Also during the week, there have been meetings of the National Assembly commissions, in which deputies received detailed information and discussed developments in every area of activity in the country. Today, in this plenary session, we have analyzed and decided on other important issues.

The laws for the National Museum System and the Comptroller General of the Republic were passed, preceded by an extensive process of information, analysis and the reconciliation of different opinions on every level.

The first, the National Museum System Law, is an indispensable instrument for preserving our historical and cultural heritage for the present and future generations.

For its part, the Comptroller General of the Republic Law created a state agency that replaces the current Ministry of Auditing and Control, with the goal of aiding the National Assembly and the Council of State in implementing the constitutional mandate of exercising oversight of all state and government bodies.

This institution will play an essential role in increasing order, economic discipline, internal control and a resolute response to any manifestation of corruption, as well as causes and conditions that could propitiate negligent or criminal conduct on the part of any leader or official.
It will contribute to purging of administrative and criminal responsibility both the direct perpetrators of crimes and the secondary ones, which latter are, as the law itself defines, cadres, leaders or administrative officials who, because of a lack of exigency, negligent conduct or failure to observe established controls, help bring about violations of discipline or do not immediately confront and report them.

The Assembly has just elected as Comptroller General Deputy Gladys Bejerano Portela, who will receive my fullest support in carrying out her duties, and above all, I will require her to do so to the letter.

Likewise, we will be paying attention — both the Party and the government — so that leaders in other offices act with the same conscientiousness.

These are questions that are always essential, and even more so at this time.

A YEAR OF DIFFICULT CHALLENGES

During the last Assembly session in December, I warned that the year 2009 would pose a difficult challenge to the Cuban people following the $10 billion in losses and damages caused by three devastating hurricanes. The first, Gustav, began to affect us on August 30, and the third, Paloma, caused destruction until November 9. That is, in just 72 days, approximately 20% of our gross domestic product — the famous GDP — was lost. In addition to that, there was the uncertainty implied by the economic and financial crisis on a global scale, and its inevitable impact on our economy.

We thought at the time that we would have a 6% (economic) growth; by April, when we saw ourselves obliged to make the first adjustment to the plan, we lowered our expectations to 2.5%, and we have confirmed that in the first semester, GDP growth has been 0.8%. Despite that, we estimate that we will finish the year at about 1.7%.

Our exports have significantly diminished due to falling prices. Nickel, for example, has dropped from being sold at an average price of $21,100 per ton last year to $11,700 in the first semester. In the first months of the year, it was even lower, and we reached the point of proposing a temporary shutdown of certain nickel plants.

Tourism is facing a paradox in that, despite having received 2.9% more visitors to date this year, income was reduced due to a deterioration in the exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and the other principal currencies. In short, more tourists, but less income.

The value of our imports has also dropped, to a greater extent, which has propitiated an almost restored trade balance, but the accumulated effect of prior commitments and additional difficulties in accessing sources of financing have made the country’s financial situation even more complicated.

Despite our firm desire to honor every obligation, we have been forced to renegotiate debts, payments and other commitments with foreign entities, something quite common these days all over the world. As a rule, we have found understanding and confidence in our partners, to whom we now reaffirm our recognition and the security that we will meet the agreements reached.
At the same time, new procedures have been recently put in place to facilitate transactions with other countries, which likewise means increasing discipline and control over these matters.

NOBODY CAN SPEND MORE THAN HE EARNS

We have been consistent on the need to adjust spending to income. I am not an economist, nor has it been my task during these years of the Revolution to dedicate myself to the details of economic development, but I am basing myself on the logic that — as I said in the last session of Parliament — nobody, no individual nor country, can indefinitely spend more than s/he earns. Two plus two always adds up to four, never five. Today I would add, as I said three days ago in the Central Committee Plenum, that within the conditions of our imperfect socialism, due to our own shortcomings, two plus two often adds up to three.

We are now immersed in drafting next year’s budget, the guidelines of which have been approved by the Council of Ministers. I will mention two of them: planning the balance of payments without a deficit and even with a reserve in order to be able to deal with unforeseen circumstances; and the other, to ensure integrally and give absolute priority to growth in production and services that contribute hard currency income.

This is the line that we agreed in the 7th Plenum and which it is up to all of the institutions to implement, under the authority of the Ministry of Economy and Planning, an important body of central state administration, and which we are all obliged to help, support and above all comply with.

Over the present year, we will continue taking diverse measures to strengthen our institutionalism and the functioning of the government and the state. Four new vice presidents of the Council of Ministers have been appointed, which together with the two existing ones, have assumed attending to ministries, national institutions and important development programs. That was followed by the restructuring of the state apparatus, with the merger of several central state administration agencies and other entities, and the consequent reduction in expenditure, transport and staff, not to mention unnecessary paperwork. This process will continue gradually, with the goal of increasing government efficiency. There is growing cohesion and harmonious, integrated work by the collective agencies of the Party, state and government leadership.

DESPITE THE EXISTING TENSIONS, MODEST AVANCES CAN BE SEEN

Despite existing tensions in our economy, modest advances can be seen. The internal currency balance is showing one of the most favorable situations in the last 20 years. Prices, while high, remain stable. In addition, more people have joined the workforce. With some exceptions, there is increased production in agriculture and industry and transport as a whole, and social services are guaranteed for our population, particularly health, education and cultural and artistic activities.

In terms of health — not without shortcomings of which we are aware — we have given an irrefutable demonstration of our ability to face epidemics of every type.
We are one of the few countries in the world that can say it has the A H1N1 virus under control. For example, as of last night, as this disease spreads uncontrollably in more than 171 nations and as these same nations report to the World Health Organization, more than 177,000 people have been infected and more than 1,100 have died.

In Cuba, 242 cases have been confirmed, of which 135, more than half, are imported — in other words, sick people who traveled to the island; 50 are introduced – individuals infected by sick people from outside the country – and 57 are categorized as autochthonous, having been infected here by introduced cases. Of that total, 232 have been released from hospital and the remaining 10 are evolving favorably. Thus far, we have not had to regret complications or any deaths. It is an achievement of the health system developed by the Revolution, and moreover an example of how, when the necessary arguments are put forward, the required organizational methods are adopted with the participation of the entire people, and there is exigency, there are results.

WE CALL ON OUR PEOPLE TO CONSERVE AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE

Others can be mentioned, such as the fact that to date, the population has been spared irritating power outages stemming from generating shortfalls, aside from those caused by maintenance work on the electricity distribution networks or other causes.

That would have been impossible to achieve without the strategy charted by compañero Fidel and subsequent measures for electric power generation and conservation.
As it is known, in the first months of the year, demand rose much higher than planned consumption, in circumstances in which it was impossible to import more fuel. The decisions implemented turned the situation around in June, although in July the results were not so positive. It would seem that the initial impetus is now fading, as tends to happen, and that it is a defect that is quite typical of many of our cadres and functionaries. Rigor on this crucial question must be increased for the rest of the year and for the future. It is very simple; there is no alternative but to adjust strictly to the plan.

Exceptional measures have been taken, such as cutting off service to certain entities for having exceeded planned consumption, with the consequent effects, and also, a number of filchers have been fined for committing fraud with the meters in their homes. I warn the latter that very severe actions will be taken, including the cutoff of electricity to repeat violators for long periods and even definitively, if it should come to that.

While we have managed to halt increasing electricity usage in the state sector, it has continued to rise in the residential sector. Without ignoring the high temperatures of these months, the fact that we are in the middle of the summer vacation period, and other objective reasons, but aware that reserves exist, we are calling on our people to conserve as much as possible. It is up to the mass organizations in the neighborhoods to play a greater role in this context under the leadership of the Party, with rational and adequately coordinated actions, convincing the people.

SOCIAL EXPENDITURE SHOULD BE IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REAL POSSIBILITIES

There are many needs and we have to know how to prioritize the principal ones. Their solution will depend on us working more and better. What we do need to definitively root out is the irresponsible attitude of consuming without anybody, or very few people, worrying about how much it costs the country to guarantee that, and above all, if it can really do so.

We know how terrible it is, for example, to lack housing, but as I have said on more than one occasion, solving that problem is not a question of desire; it requires time, resources and above all work. It becomes more difficult if there are not enough construction workers, as is generally the case.

In fact, in some provinces there are not even enough people willing to be teachers or police officers, or to do other work that requires particular dedication or physical effort. I referred to this issue in the previous session of the Assembly, and I have been and will be following how each province is progressing on incorporating its population into these tasks.

It is a matter for which solutions adjusted to reality are required, in addition to appealing to the people’s honor, which is also important.

In the education sector, more than 7,800 retirees have gone back to the classrooms, and another 7,000 have postponed their retirement. Taking together teachers who desisted from resigning and others who came back to teaching, we will have close 19,000 more teachers in the coming school year. I am sure that the example set by these compañeras and compañeros will contribute to that same behavior being followed by many who have not yet done so, and moreover to those who are reaching retirement age to stay on — if that is possible — in their posts for longer, a little bit longer, receiving their corresponding pensions in addition to their salary. It is already a considerable figure.

As it is known, a modest salary increase was recently approved for that sector. We would have liked it to be higher, and — as we intended — to pay our teachers and professors more fairly for their efforts; however, after thoroughly studying the matter, this was what was possible to approve in the current situation, and that is how it has been appreciated by these selfless workers.

Social expenditure should be in accordance with real possibilities, and that means cutting those it is possible to do without. They may be beneficial and even praiseworthy activities, but they are simply not affordable.

In that context, methods are being studied to reduce the number of full-time boarders and students who eat lunch at school at all levels of education. For example, there are pre-university schools and secondary schools in the countryside in places where their participation in agricultural work is no longer needed, and most of whose student bodies come from urban areas. These institutions will be gradually transferred to the city as the material and organizational conditions are ensured.

It is a decision in the interest of greater savings in considerable education spending, without affecting quality, that moreover will save some 5,000 teachers long hours of daily transportation to and from their homes, and will increase the role of families in the education of their children. Nevertheless, some schools with boarders will always be needed in rural areas.
Another area in which solid steps have been taken is reconciling the positions available in schools with current requirements and prospects for socioeconomic development in each province.
With a similar sense of rationality, other decisions will be implemented in education, public health care and the rest of the budgeted sector, aimed at eliminating spending that is simply unsustainable, that has grown from year to year and which moreover, is not very effective, or even worse, is making some people feel that they have no need to work.

It was under that concept that multiple jobs were authorized, as an alternative for making better use of workers’ potential and as a means of increasing their income. This includes students of working age, a practice common throughout the world, which in addition to satisfying personal needs, contributes to better preparing them professionally and above all for life.
Limitations need to be known, not to be afraid of them or to hold them up as a pretext for doing nothing, but to determine which are the best alternatives and dedicate ourselves to putting them into practice.

INCORPORATING THE LARGEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE INTO FOOD PRODUCTION

Last July 26, I talked about the results of milk distribution and the distribution of idle land, and I mentioned the urgency of using land surrounding almost all towns and cities as intensively as possible.

The first experience began in the city of Camagüey. All entities and agencies are participating, under the leadership of the provincial government, based on their own resources and with extensive utilization of animal traction. This coming January, the plan is to extend that experience to the municipal capital of every province.

We have designated this program suburban agriculture. It will be developed on land surrounding cities and towns, to a distance allowing inhabitants to work there with the least volume of fuel spent on transportation.

It was decided to entrust the Ministry of Agriculture with this task, specifically, Deputy Adolfo Rodríguez Nodal and his small working group, who have obtained outstanding results in urban agriculture, the fruit of exigency and being systematic, expressed in the four tests to which every province and municipality in the country are annually subjected.

In this program, we forget about tractors and fuel; even if we had them in sufficient numbers, the concept is to carry it out essentially with oxen, because these are small farms, just like a growing number of producers are doing with excellent results. I have visited some, and was able to see for myself that they have transformed the land they are working into veritable gardens, where every square foot of the land is being used.

Work is also under way to improve the collection and distribution system for agricultural products via an integral concept. As the press has reported, it is being applied in the two Havana provinces, even with the many and longstanding and thus entrenched problems, just like the bureaucracy that has managed this activity for so long, and, depending on the results, the necessary adjustments will be made and will be generalized throughout the rest of the country. At this point in time, engines have been replaced in 145 old trucks that came out of the garage rejuvenated and will be dedicated to supplying the capital. The same is to happen immediately with another 55 trucks, for a total of 200.

That is the spirit with which it is necessary to work, not only in agriculture, but in every productive activity or service that brings in income for the nation or replaces imports.
Strategic tasks like food production, which we have indicated is a national security issue, require us to continue adding the greatest possible number of people, via every existing form of property and with the required order.

We can count on many university graduates, in some specialties far over and above our necessities, but if we are not able to change mentalities and create the objective and subjective conditions that ensure opportune availability of a skilled workforce, who will attend to the land? Who will work in the factories and workshops? Who, in the end, will create the material wealth that our people need? Sometimes one has the sensation that we are eating socialism before building it, and aspiring to spend as though we were in communism.

THIS SMALL ISLAND’S PRESTIGE IS GROWING

Moving on to another subject, the seven months that have gone by this year have been witness to Cuba’s outstanding international role. Even our staunchest enemies cannot deny that this small island’s prestige is growing.

We have just handed over the presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement to Egypt, a movement that, in the opinion of its member states, under Cuba’s leadership, has been revitalized and has greater unity and influence in the most diverse world forums in the last three years,.
The peoples and governments of Latin America and the Caribbean, giving yet further evidence of the profound changes that have occurred over the last 50 years since the triumph of the Revolution, in which attempts to isolate us in this hemisphere have failed, unanimously demanded, with renewed strength, the lifting of the U.S. blockade at the Summit of the Americas in Port of Spain.

It was a resounding victory won by the ALBA and the entire region in San Pedro Sula, Republic of Honduras, when, overcoming the opposition of the United States, it was decided to eliminate, without any conditions whatsoever, the anachronistic exclusion of Cuba from the Organization of American States, which, I reiterate once again, we do not have the slightest intention of joining, for obvious reasons known by all of you.

Cuba participates actively in the different integration mechanisms that exist in the region. Its entry into the Rio Group as a full member last December was a highly significant event.
Our political and economic relations with Venezuela and with the rest of the nations of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, as well as with other countries in the region and the rest of the world, are progressing in a sustained, firm manner. The ALBA, a forum of integration and solidarity, is being consolidated, and in turn, is beginning to coming under attack from imperialism.

This Assembly has just adopted a declaration on Honduras. Cuba has firmly condemned the coup d’état in that country; has resolutely supported the immediate and unconditional restitution of the legitimate president, and has expressed its solidarity with that sister nation. What is happening in Honduras is decisive to the future of Our America. The Honduran people will have the last word.

I WAS ELECTED TO DEFEND, MAINTAIN AND CONTINUE PERFECTING SOCIALISM, NOT TO DESTROY IT

Despite the economic and financial difficulties, we have honored our moral commitment in terms of international cooperation and solidarity.

The two Central American nations which did not yet have diplomatic relations with us established them in the last few months.

It would be fitting to ask what country is isolated in this region; it does not seem to be Cuba.
We have attentively observed the attitude of the new U.S. government toward our nation. If we adhere strictly to the facts, the essential thing is that the economic, commercial and financial blockade remains intact and fully implemented, as seen by the persecution of our transactions with third countries and the growing fines levied on U.S. companies and their foreign subsidiaries. Likewise, Cuba continues to be unjustly included on the list of state sponsors of international terrorism annually issued by the State Department.

The positive but minimal measures announced last April 13 on the eve of the Summit of the Americas, in response to the anti-blockade clamor of the entire continent, which ended the restrictions on travel by Cubans resident in that country and remittances to their families, and which would likewise permit certain operations in terms of telecommunications, have not been implemented as of yet. It is important for this to be known, because there is quite a bit of confusion and manipulation in the international media on the matter.

It is true that the aggressiveness and anti-Cuban rhetoric of the U.S. administration has diminished, and after six years of suspension due to Bush’s decision, talks between the two governments on the migration issue were renewed this past July 14, and took place in a serious and constructive way. Cuba reiterated that it would continue to scrupulously comply — as it has until now — with the migration accords, and denounced the encouragement of illegal departures and human smuggling implied by the Cuban Adjustment Act and the wet-foot/dry-foot policy applied by the U.S. government.

Several weeks ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated that “…We are opening a dialogue with Cuba, but we are very clear about wanting to see fundamental changes in the Cuban regime,” she concluded.

I feel myself obliged, with all due respect, to respond to Mrs. Clinton and, by the way, to those in the European Union who are demanding unilateral gestures from us in the direction of dismantling our political and social regime.

They didn’t elect me president to restore capitalism in Cuba or to surrender the Revolution. I was elected to defend, maintain and continue perfecting socialism, not to destroy it (prolonged applause).

This is something that should be made very clear, because it represents the determined will of the Cuban people, after they approved, in a referendum in 1976, by the direct and secret ballot of 97.7% of voters, the Constitution of the Republic, which in its first article says, “Cuba is a Socialist State of workers, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all, as a unified and democratic republic, for the enjoyment of political freedom, social justice, individual and collective well-being and human solidarity.”

And more recently, in the year 2002, concretely between June 15 and 18, 8,198,237 citizens, almost the entire voting-age population, signed the request to this Assembly to promote the constitutional reform ratifying the Constitution of the Republic in all of its parts, and declared irrevocable the socialist nature and the political and social system contained within our fundamental law, which was approved unanimously by the deputies of the National Assembly in an extraordinary session held on the 24th, 25th, and 26th of June of that same year.

I am using this opportunity to reiterate Cuba’s disposition to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States, between equals, without any shadow over our independence, sovereignty or self-determination. We are ready to talk about everything, I repeat, everything, but about here, about Cuba, and about there, about the United States, not to negotiate our political and social system. We are not asking the United States to do so. We must mutually respect our differences.
We do not recognize the government of that country, of any other, or of any group of states, as having jurisdiction over our sovereign affairs.

In Cuba, since the triumph of the Revolution, there has not being a single extrajudicial execution, or disappearances, or torture. I correct myself; there has been torture, but on the Guantánamo naval base, imposed on our country for more than 100 years by the despicable Platt Amendment approved in the United States Congress as a condition for the cessation of yanki military occupation.

There has been torture there, and that is part of Cuba’s territory, although we did not engage in it. That is why we say, with all due respect, to Mrs. Hillary Clinton, secretary of state of that country, that if there is a desire to talk about everything, let’s talk about everything, about here, but about there, too.

The closure of the U.S. prison in Guantánamo has been announced; it is a just demand of world public opinion, but the matter should not end there. We do not renounce nor will we ever renounce the unconditional return of that piece of our national territory.

Just as we have repeated our willingness to resolve our conflict with the United States, I clarify that we are facing this matter with absolute serenity and without any haste whatsoever. We have been walking on a knife’s edge for 50 years; we are well trained in that, and we are capable of resisting another 50 years of aggression and blockades. (Applause)

THE GENERATIONS TO FOLLOW WILL NEVER BE DISARMED IDEOLOGICALLY

There are those in U.S. ruling circles who say that they will wait for the disappearance of the Revolution’s historic generation, a sinister bet on the so-called “biological factor,” or the death of Fidel and all of us, which is the same thing.

Those who think like that are doomed to failure because the generations of revolutionary patriots who will follow us, in the first place our magnificent youth, will never be disarmed ideologically, and together with them and the Party, the Mambises of the 21st century will always be on the front lines: our glorious Revolutionary Armed Forces, which were capable this time of victoriously entering Santiago de Cuba on the 1st of January of 1959, with their Commander in Chief in the lead. (Applause)

I did not mention the Ministry of the Interior because it had not yet been created when we entered Santiago de Cuba; moreover, we consider it to be within the same family and with the same objectives.

Our five heroes are an eloquent example of that attitude, imprisoned for the last 11 years in the United States for combating terrorist plans against Cuba. The worldwide movement for their freedom continues to grow, and this Assembly agreed today on an appeal to the parliaments and peoples of the world, denouncing this injustice. From here, we send a strong embrace to Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René, and express to them our admiration for their unbreakable determination, which is now a symbol of the Cuban Revolution. (Applause).

IT MUST BE THE PEOPLE, WITH THEIR PARTY IN THE VANGUARD, WHO DECIDE

I have one other substantial matter to address, and which was published yesterday in our press. The 7th Plenum of the Central Committee agreed to postpone the 7th Congress of the Party, which was planned for the end of this year.

The task that we Cuban communists and all our people have ahead of us is large; it is a question of defining, with the broadest popular participation, the socialist society to which we aspire and can build in Cuba’s present and future conditions, the economic model that will guide the life of the nation to the benefit of our compatriots and ensure the irreversibility of the country’s sociopolitical regime, its only guarantee for real independence.

You can understand the magnitude of the studies under way, which cover the principal aspects of national life in the midst of the pressing questions and tensions associated with the economic situation.

That includes, among other matters, the complex process of monetary unification to get rid of the dual currency system — which was necessary to establish at a given time — the elimination of gratuities, with the exception of those established in the Constitution, and of unjustified subsidies; the system of wage payment based on the socialist principle, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his labor.”

A formal congress that does not discuss in depth these strategic issues and dictate guidelines for the future would have no sense or content. In other words, compañeros, it is a Herculean task, identifying the principal problems as such, and this will necessarily take us a while longer.
As approved in the 7th Plenum of the Central Committee and explained in the note published yesterday, first it is necessary to conclude the preparation of the entire Party, and then to discuss with the population as a whole and only then to hold the Congress, when that great process has been completed. That is the real congress, in which all of the problems are discussed with the communists and with all of the people.

If we want to hold a real Congress, in a situation like the present, finding solutions for problems and looking toward the future, it must be like that. It must be the people, with its Party in the vanguard, that decides.

In 50 years of Revolution, in terms of consulting with the people, we have sufficient experience. The most recent, on a national level, was the process of analyzing the speech of the 26th of July of 2007 in Camagüey. The months of September and October were dedicated to discussing it at the grassroots level, without being limited to the issues contained in that speech, and the population was encouraged to express itself on any subject of interest, information that has been very useful for the subsequent work of the country’s leadership. In November of that year, work was done to collect the information and to draw up a summary, and in December of that same year, we discussed the final report in the Party. The study meetings were attended by more than 5.1 million people, who made 3,255,000 comments, with 1,301,203 concrete proposals, of which 48.8% were critical. The outcome of that activity was not thrown into a bottomless pit.
The most recurrent referred to food production, the irrevocable decision to build socialism, the replacement of imports, increasing production, the economic and social situation, the concept of not spending more than what is taken in, the manifestations of corruption and criminal activities, defense preparation and the role of political and administrative cadres. As you can see, they are subjects very much linked to the content of the Congress and to the country’s future. I should clarify now that the process was conceived of as a rehearsal, thinking about this maximum Party event.

Its postponement does not at all mean paralyzing its preparation; on the contrary, this decision implies the need to take urgent steps, such as the renewal of the Party’s highest leadership bodies.

The current Central Committee is made up of magnificent comrades, but many of them are not carrying out the responsibilities they held when they were elected 12 years ago, for a period that is supposed to be five (years), and which as been prolonged due to the accumulated delay in holding the Congress.

Article 46 of the Party’s statues establishes, “In the period between one congress and the next, the Central Committee may convene a National Conference to address important issues of Party policy. The National Conference is authorized to incorporate new members into the body and to separate or liberate from its ranks those it considers convenient to do so. The number of participants, the way they are elected and the norms for preparing and carrying out the National Conference are established by the Political Bureau.”

In line with this article, the 7th Plenum decided to convene a National Conference, fundamentally to elect new leadership bodies; in other words, the Central Committee, the Political Bureau and the Secretariat, which are responsible for continuing and completing preparations for the Congress. It is an event that we have not implemented previously, and that we can organize in a relatively brief period of time, and that is what we will do.
Ever since that January 1st, in 1959, it has been the unwavering line to analyze with the people every important problem, no matter how difficult it is. If we have survived all of the difficulties and aggression for half a century, it has been because the Revolution is the work of the immense majority of the Cuban people.

Firmly united, we will be consistent with the legacy of our people’s long history of struggle, Fidel’s teachings and our eternal commitment to the fallen.

Thank you very much.

Comrade EMS - A Homage

Tributes to E.M.S. Namboodripad

Ashok Mitra

Scholar extraordinary, Comrade EMS would hold his own in intense discussions on ideological, methodological and epistemological issues with close comrades as much as with foremost economists, historians and other social scientists. He would write tracts on both Marxist theory and on emerging aspects of what he described as the National Question. He would, simultaneously, compose documents, in English as well as Malayalam, on contemporary political issues, whether involving the region, the country or the world.
And yet, the same person, when he would address a rural assemblage, would have no problem unburdening himself in the plainest of language on the most intricate themes. He would make himself understood to each and every one, including the slowest of the slow learners. His invectives would be ferocious and his wit devastating, evoking both chuckle and catharisis of passion. He would hold the crowd in thralldom; those who came to scoff would stay back to extol.
This man commanded immediate respect when he visited New Delhi or foreign capitals because, while he remained on the surface the near-rustic activist from Kerala, he could also understand the mind of his ‘sophisticated’ class adversaries. He would listen to them with patience; when he would respond, while borrowing their lingo, he would still be devastating both in the formulation of his syllogisms and the thrust of his repartees.
¨
All this, in a sense, is perhaps beside the point. Comrade E.M.S. was, above all, a great human being, full of vision, but full of the milk of pristine kindness too. He knew how to shower affection to those who drew close to him; he also knew how to express scorn for renegades to the cause. He was, till till his last breath, a believer in the policy of the principle. If he were still around—and at the helm—those currently mouthing the proposition that the primary task of a Communist is to nurture and defend capitalist growth, would have found themselves thrown out of the party in no time.
Leaders like E.M.S. Namboodiripad and A.K. Gopalan built the Communist Party through decades of sacrifice, dedication, hard work and maintenance of ideological rigour. The edifice they constructed is now in danger, not so much on account of international developments, but because, on the domestic front, ideological purity has taken a back seat.