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Weekend Edition Feb 27-Mar 01, 201<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/the-future-of-cuba/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/27/the-future-of-cuba/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big><big>Communism is an
Aspiration</big></big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">The Future of Cuba</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by ALEJANDRO CASTRO ESPIN and LASONAS
PIPINIS VELASCO</div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>In this interview Alejandro Castro Espín, Doctor of Political
Science and social researcher and son of Cuban president Raul
Castro and the late Vilma Espin, openly shares his thoughts
regarding the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and
the United States. He also explains how Cuban participatory
democracy works and his perception of the future of Cuba.</p>
<p>Castro Espin was in Athens during the first two weeks of
January where he presented the second edition of his book
“Empire of Terror” that was originally published in Cuba in
2009. Since that time the book has been translated into
numerous languages including, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese.
The book examines the ideology of imperial policy and what
constitutes the essence of a national security doctrine that
is the main axis of the aggressive foreign policy of the U.S.
The book presentation in Greece took place thanks to the
Solidarity Movement with Cuba in that nation.</p>
<p>The interview was conducted in Acropolis on January 16, 2015
by Peruvian-Greek journalist Lasonas Pipinis Velasco.</p>
<p><em><strong>Lasonas Pipinis Velasco:</strong> Is this the
first time you have visited Acropolis? </em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín:</strong> Well, it is the
first time I have visited Greece. It is something I had hoped
to do for a long time and it finally happened thanks to
solidarity here with my people. I was invited without having
to spend a dime of Cuban resources and it has been an
excellent visit. We have been able to interact closely with
the Greek people, in neighborhoods and towns and in that
process we have discovered great respect and admiration for
Fidel and Raul. Our visit has made it possible to thank the
Greek people for the solidarity they have shown Cuba for over
50 years as we faced the American empire. What made this trip
even more special is the recent circumstances when Barack
Obama accepted that the policy of the previous 10 presidents
had been a mistake and had to be changed.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> In Cuba many things are changing,
in terms of diplomatic relations with the United States.
What happened initiates a new stage, what does this new day
mean for the future of Cuba?</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín: </strong>The future of Cuba
is one earned by a country that has resisted for over 50 years
against the most powerful empire on Earth. The resilience of
its people made this triumph materialize. The Cuban people
along with international solidarity defeated this imperial
position in the middle of the 21st century and have
demonstrated the potential of a nation that has lived under an
iron handed blockade and permanent aggression including state
sponsored terrorism and yet has survived. In the new
circumstances we have the absolute conviction that we will
move forward even more than we already have. As you know Cuba
has progressed a lot regarding all the indicators of social
development and those rates can be compared favorably with the
first world in several aspects. We think that without the
heavy burden of the blockade that we can move forward a lot
more in building prosperous and sustainable socialism to which
we aspire.</p>
<p>This is the will of the Cuban people as expressed in the last
Congress of the Party that was arrived at through a process of
popular consultation with more than eight million Cubans who
spoke and supported these guidelines of economic and social
policy of the Party and the Revolution that were later
approved by the National Assembly; the highest organ of the
power of the Cuban State.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> Many people say that in
Latin-America after the death of Hugo Chavez a lot of things
could change, that is to say, the socialism being
established in Venezuela and in other countries like Bolivia
or Ecuador could disappear and that could affect Cuba.</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín: </strong>Actually our
analysis is completely the opposite of that one simply because
the logic of history teaches us that. The countries you
mentioned all lived through times of cruel and ruthless
capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population,
saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and
subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold
and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those
countries and even though that produced movements that were
not exactly political movements but social movements. If we
are going to talk about the most recent of the “Indignados”
movements in several countries of the world, including Europe,
those are social movements but eventually they will evolve
into political movements. This will happen because the
traditional bourgeois parties have lost credibility after
being the main political influence in most countries of
Latin-America and Europe in the last 50 or 60 years. But in
those countries you mentioned, the ones that currently compose
the core of Alba; Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua,
they have shown that by breaking with the unfair order imposed
by the neoliberal adjustment policies, promoted by Washington
and the western powers, that they already have a more
favorable economic development, and even a better social
development. They have made a tremendous leap just by
rejecting the neoliberal adjustment policies, they are making
a statement from the social perspective. Capital in these
cases has not been protected in any way which along with non –
interference of the state is what neo liberalism stands for.
It has gone the other way around; they have looked for social
policies from the political movements and then when they have
acquired the power of those political movements they have
become in charge of the State. Several of these countries like
Bolivia and Ecuador have implemented social policy with a
socialist organization.<br>
LPV: Do you think capitalism will ever be re established in
Cuba?</p>
<p>Alejandro: No, in Cuba we had the most ferocious form of
capitalism for 60 years. It dominated every sphere of life.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> So you think it would be impossible
to apply capitalism in Cuba once again?</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín:</strong> Totally, because we
are a people that lived that. Cubans are a people who suffered
from capitalism in the cruelest way, in the social order, the
economic order and the political order. The United States
turned to repression when its prominence started to slip in
Latin America through establishing military dictatorships.
Then there is the case of Henry Kissinger who was a known
scholar who later became the National Security Advisor to
President Nixon and later on Secretary of State. He received
the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in establishing relations
between the U.S. and China. At the same time that he was doing
that he was also encouraging all sorts of covert actions
against Cuba including political assassinations. This
contradiction is one that is hard to understand. This is why
Cuba cannot go back to capitalism; we know all the tragic
experience that it has generated for Latin America and the
world. We also know the positive experiences of socialism not
only in our geographic environment but also like what we are
witnessing in China.</p>
<p>Today China is a first world economy, in terms of
development. The U.S. may still be in first in GDP but it is a
broken economy in reality. The United States is the most
indebted country in the world. It has almost 17 billion
dollars of debt with the rest of the world while living off
the world’s savings. Let me finish the point, they are living
off the savings of the people of Greece, the savings of the
people of Spain, France etc. All of those countries that save
their reserves in the banks in dollars are simply financing
the American economy, and that is why the average American
citizen consumes two and a half times more than their income.
How is that possible to understand that? How can a society
prosper like that? What the U.S. does is it continues to print
money when the economic situation gets difficult. This is what
happened in the last depression during the summer of 2008 when
they tried to resolve the economic crisis by printing
valueless money. This is the business privilege given to them
at the famous conference of Bretton Woods in 1944 when the
United States emerged as the superpower after Europe and the
rest of the world, mainly Europe, that had collapsed because
of the war. Then basically with the financing of the war
economy they emerged as the great power that developed
logically into a superpower. I am not going to explain to you
the history of the Cold War because you certainly know it but
what we see now is China as the rising economic superpower,
one that is certainly moving forward.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> Many politicians in United States
say that the blockade against Cuba must continue because
Cuba does not hold elections.</em></p>
<p><strong><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín</strong>:</strong>
Repeat the question please.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> Many politicians in United States
say that the blockade against Cuba must continue.</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín: </strong>Because Cuba doesn’t
hold elections?</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> Because they say, the American
politicians, that Cuba since 1959 does not hold elections.</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín: </strong>It is very
interesting that you ask that question here in the cradle of
western democracy, with the Parthenon as the background to our
discussion. I am going to stop and reflect on the subject
because I think it is the appropriate place to ask such a
question. When we speak of the origin of western democracy
it’s precisely here, in this territory that the modern
definition of democracy first emerged in city/states known now
as Greece. This was coming from a society in which 30 thousand
citizens had rights and 300 thousand were slaves and citizens
without rights that lived in this territory. So that was the
concept of western democracy; some citizens had the
prerogative of exerting their civil and political rights while
the others had none. Those were the slaves, who basically did
not even receive pay, they just simply lived for a plate of
food and were also subjected to brutal repression from a
democracy that imposed itself by the force of the economic
power of the elites that ultimately decided that definition of
democracy.</p>
<p>This is very important because after that came the evolution
of democracy in the world and the democratic experiences that
came used the Greek experience as their reference point. The
evolution of the definition of democracy later emerges when
the bourgeoisie experiences in Europe, mainly after the
thinkers like John Locke or Francisco de Secundat, outline
their new revolutionary political visions and they were
revolutionary considering the prevailing feudal regimes in
Europe with its very precarious conditions. People during this
period had little, for example servants had little more
prerogative than slaves. The rising bourgeoisie saw feudalism
an impediment to progress especially for the development of
capital. We are talking precisely here about Europe after the
Age of Enlightenment, the age of the development of the
sciences, the arts, that begins to take force mainly in the
fifteenth, sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. This
development coincides with the discovery of America by the
Europeans and the conquest of our continent.</p>
<p>America did not need to be discovered because quite simply
America had the American-Indians. There were whole groups of
people that already lived there including very developed
societies such as the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Mayans. But
then came the European vision that saw the conquest as a
source of advanced growth away from medieval Europe. The new
revolutionary bourgeois trend formed a new perspective on what
was democracy that they saw as an improvement to the democracy
of ancient Greece.</p>
<p>Then came the distribution of power of Montesquieu, the guide
of powers, with the separation of power between executive,
legislative and judiciary in order to find a balance and the
necessary counterparts to make the governing bodies exercise
effective democracy and to represent all of those under one
government. So what actually happened? Was the popular will
what really prevailed in the bourgeois democracy? It can be
said that in the 21st century they tried to establish American
democracy as a reference point and defined it as the final and
most completed form of democracy, coming after the European
experiences and being created in the territory of the United
States. I will tell you what my point of view is regarding the
democracy we see today in those countries.</p>
<p>Can we say that the constitutional monarchies in Spain,
Belgium or England are democratic? Those with superior
chambers like the House of Lords in England, that still
represent the English feudal nobility in terms of positions
above regional representatives, who are in the end the
representatives supposedly elected by the population. Many
mechanisms exist, but they are mechanisms to preserve the
power of the wealthy classes, of the bourgeois classes that
hold the power and rights above the rest of the society. It is
a reality that is expressed in many ways. How is it possible
that a process can be democratic when it comes by way of
money? If there is money then it can be elected a senator, it
can be elected a representative. Do you know how much it cost
to be elected president of the United States? The amount has
reached, billions of dollars, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion
dollars, that’s how much a presidential campaign costs. How
much does a senatorial campaign cost? It costs 80 to 90
million dollars; or the campaign of a representative, 40 to 50
million. Is that really a democracy?</p>
<p>Then there is us living the Cuban experience that we believe
is ours. We do not believe that it is perfect, but it has been
above all counting truly on the people, which is where the
origins of true democracy lie. It is a democracy that
represents the humble, the dispossessed, those who make up the
vast majority of the population. It is for those who carry the
main weight of society’s load in matters of the production of
goods and services. These are not the ones that live from
financial speculation. How is the world economy structured
today? What importance does the financial speculation have in
the economic development of the world? What influence does it
have in the financial crisis that has been unfolding, which
each time is more severe than the last and affecting most
countries of the world? What weight does that carry? The great
financial capital is not in one country, it is transnational,
that is why it answers to power elites and that is why when I
talk about the imperial power of United States I am in no way
referring to the American people, who are a noble people that
have always been moved by humane concerns. They have on many
occasions been willing to shed their own blood for a noble
cause, like when hundreds of thousands of Americans
participated in the fight against fascism in Europe, and other
causes. There are many good people there, and the Cuban people
know the American people, we have many examples of solidarity
from the American people in every stage of the Cuban people’s
fight for independence.</p>
<p>As I was saying we can say that the great transnational
capital in which the American capital has a lot of influence
because of the sheer volume of capital that it handles. And in
the end it pays the politicians that assume power in the U.S.
and the other countries of the West. What worker or peasant
can pay 80 – 90 million dollars to elect a senator or 4
billion to elect a president? Only great capital can do that.
That is why we say that bourgeois democracy has been evolving
in the last years into dollar democracy, this is not the
democracy of sovereignty, and only the people can determine
that. So when we talk about Cuban democracy we are referring
to participatory democracy which is big difference with
representative bourgeois democracy. Our is a democracy in
which everything is consulted with the people; it is a
democracy in which every aspect and important decision that
has an impact in the life and society of the people, is done
in consultation.</p>
<p>In Cuba, despite having lived through the most difficult
times, there has never been a neo liberal adjustment. You know
what I am talking about because you have lived through that.
You are a Peruvian Greek that lives in Greece for how long?
You were born in Greece but you have family there and you keep
your Peruvian origins and that is why you told me, “I am Greek
Peruvian”. How long have you lived in this country, how old
are you?</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> 35</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín:</strong> 35 years. You have
witnessed the events. I have not spoken with one person during
my visit here that does not have very serious opinions on what
they are seeing in the modern day capitalism of Europe. They
talk about the general crisis that capitalism has caused and
the precarious social situation and the poverty it has
generated. Just imagine, more than half of the young people in
the European Union do not have jobs. How can one explain that?
How can one explain that to a working family, that produces
goods and services, those who produce the olive oil that is a
a main source of food in any European country? They humbly
work the land with great effort and then the little resources
they had saved in banks have now become dust simply because
they did not have the means to withstand inflation produced by
the adjustment policies. Everything they have, their simple
possessions, have become depreciated, they have lost their
property, and they have lost their homes.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> One question…</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín:</strong> Let me finish the
idea, I am going to answer all of your questions but I want
you to listen so that I can finish my main idea about why I
tell you that we have a lot of faith and confidence in Cuban
democracy. I want to repeat our experiment is not the best
democracy and should not be a reference to anybody elses, it
is ours. It has worked for us and the clearest evidence that
our democracy has worked is that there is a revolution that
has continued after a half century of facing down the most
powerful empire. This has not happened many times in history.
It has to be said like that, we have a complete respect for
history, we respect the experiences of other countries and we
have our own, but the truth is that if the Cuban revolution
had not been a democracy it would not have survived, not even
a day under those circumstances I mentioned. It is only
through popular consultation and exchange with the people
about social and economic policies that we were going to
define the strategic direction of the country in the next
years. To reach prosperous and sustainable socialism, which is
our aspiration, we discussed that with the entire population.
The most recent example of this process was the discussion
that took place in the congress of the Communist Party of
Cuba. There are 11 million Cubans and around 8.7 million
Cubans who participated in the conversations regarding those
projections, gave opinions that were analyzed and taken into
account.</p>
<p><em><strong> LPV: </strong>The question is about the
elections? That is, if elections are held will the blockade
against Cuba end? Could there be elections held in Cuba?
Because it is said that there are no elections in Cuba and
that is why the blockade against Cuba continues. The
question is if you think Communism has been applied in Cuba
or not?</em></p>
<p><strong><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín</strong>:</strong> Do
you realize that does not make any sense? That is an argument
used to attack a country, to impose a different political
system on it that besides being ineffective has had no
results. That does not make sense. So, the argument is that
they impose a blockade because we do not have direct
elections. I am telling you that our elections could not be
more direct, and I am going to explain it to you so you can
learn about it and also because it is important to eliminate
the stigma created by American imperialism and its allies
regarding the Cuban political system. That stigma must be
eliminated. You don’t have the direct knowledge about this and
you may think that there are no direct elections in Cuba. I am
going to tell that they are direct and you can compare our
process with any other country including the United States.</p>
<p>In Cuba the elections for the powers of the State comes from
the people, first it comes from meetings of the citizens at
the base. In Cuba we call them blocks, the divisions of a city
that is the term we use. Several blocks of neighborhoods that
live in the same area gather in assemblies that are stipulated
by law. In those assemblies the people choose freely among
themselves who will represent them. The criteria takes into
account the candidates characteristics, including if they are
hardworking, If they are good people, if they have a clean
past, and money has no bearing on who is nominated.</p>
<p>This is how a candidate comes about and I want to emphasize
and important thin first and that is they are not nominated by
a party, the people nominates them. This is not the same
process that happens today in bourgeois society, where
political parties prepare a nomination list. No, in Cuba it is
the people at the base level in neighborhood assemblies,
without any influence of money. The one chosen is based on the
one who represents that neighborhood the best. There always
has to be at least two candidates but there can be many more.
After the popular election, we chose one and we call him a
local delegate and then all of them meet to form a Municipal
Assembly; let us call it a superior political administrative
level. The Municipal Assembly of the People’s Power, and those
elected by the people, form that Assembly and that Assembly
chooses in the same way the power at the municipal level.
Among those elected by the people select who can represent
them at the municipal level and the same happens at the
provincial and national level, when they reach the national
level the National Assembly is formed, in a popular election
where they nominate all those people they think have the right
attributes, prestige and authority to govern them.</p>
<p>The National Assembly chooses the superior powers of the
State that is the Council of State, the Council of State then
chooses those who direct the society; the President of the
Council of State and the Council of Ministers, the
Vice-presidents of the Council of State and Ministers, that is
the highest power of the State and then the highest power of
the State defines a Government and after that Government is
defined. The Government is formed with those elected by the
people who have been elected at various levels, because all
off those positions elected at the national level come from
the base.</p>
<p>The President of the country must be nominated at the base,
in the municipality. It is not like here in Greece where the
parties are listed at the top level and they can list anyone.
We are not like bourgeois democracy the ones you say that
imposes the blockade to make Cuba change. We have direct
elections. Here they put people on a list and then tell the
people supposedly what they have done so they can be elected.
That is the difference and why we say our democracy is truly
participatory and popular.</p>
<p>It is important you understand this because we need to
eliminate that stigma I was mentioning, because its intention
is to maintain the aggression against my country. These
attacks have been going on for over 50 years against a people
who only decided to choose its own destiny, to be sovereign
and independent. Cuba has not accepted the domain and
imposition of an empire that has wanted to dominate us for
over half a century.</p>
<p>When we arrived in this country we found your citizens
admiring us for our stand. We have spoken with people from the
right, from the left, from the center. We have talked with
people at the street level, but also in localities, several
mayors, and governors from regions like Lamia. And it has been
very interactive, we talked with them about how we are
perfecting our democracy and exercising the process of
peoples’ power, because we understand that everything can be
improved. What we do not accept is the comparison of our
participatory democracy with bourgeois democracy which has not
solved anything for humanity. The only thing it has done is to
take humanity towards a precarious point. They have created
the environmental crisis, the food crisis, the water crisis
and the pandemics all over the world. The reason for that is
because they have taken the majority of the resources and
given it to militarism paid for by the western powers because
it is a great business for them; this is the real truth. We
have to talk about all of this and make it available for
people everywhere so they can draw their own conclusions.</p>
<p><em><strong>LPV:</strong> You said that communism had never
been applied in Cuba or I did not understand?</em></p>
<p><strong>Alejandro Castro Espín:</strong> No, I was saying,
Velasco, that to apply communism is an aspiration, in fact it
has never been applied anywhere, it is really still a utopia.
Communism is something that comes from the classics of Marxism
that talked of a modern society we should aspire to. One that
is truly fair where relations of monetary exchange are not the
priority but rather one where peoples’ needs could be
satisfied. The classics of Marxism talked of communism as a
society to which a modern society should aspire, a society
truly fair, where the relations of monetary exchange were not
the priority but one wher the people’s needs could be
satisfied, and where people would not be worth more according
to how much monetary wealth they acquired. Instead their value
would be based on their contribution to society as a whole. It
would be a society without class that would accept people
based on their capabilities and their potential to contribute
to that society. No one would be living in marginal conditions
as they do under capitalism today and where the greatest part
of humanity lives. In the southern countries and in the
regions and continents like Africa, which is where the origin
of life on earth began, there is tremendous debt on humanity,
it is one of the most underdeveloped areas and where the worst
pandemics exist. In many incidents the European powers that
colonized them are now not even capable of helping them. How
else do we explain for example the Ebola epidemic in Liberia,
Sierra Leone, and Guinea Conakry? Those very powers that
swindled and occupied them, in the face of the serious
situation of social emergency, have not even had the capacity
to send doctors there. In some cases they have sent in
militaries instead because that is what they are compelled to
do. They have had to send military to do it because they do
not even have any doctors with the willingness to risk their
lives in order to help those people that are precisely paying
for the consequences of years of colonization.</p>
<p>Why is it that those that come to help that situation are
countries like Cuba who has lived under the difficult
situation of the blockade for 50 years? When we talked about
going to help these countries how many doctors in Cuba raised
their hands to go? 15 thousand. In their homes they said, “We
are willing to go risk our lives to help other countries”.
That is true medicine; it is the true observance of the
Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear to. It is to defend human
life in any circumstances and not for political reasons or for
reasons of any other kind, it is really to help, that is true
solidarity. It was the same thing that happened when Cuba sent
soldiers to Angola, to help those African countries which
neocolonialism would not take their claws off of. This is
still the case in many countries now in the 21st century.</p>
<p>These are the same countries that had fought and suffered
from the ignominy of fascism in the Second World War, like
France, Spain and England, but still maintained their colonies
in Africa, not that far from educated Europe. How can one
understand this? In what kind of society, in what kind of
democracy are they living or defending?</p>
<p>So, those nations, and I mean the governments not the people,
the people are solidarity. The governments, almost all
right-wing, did not have a supportive attitude towards those
countries at the time when they were emerging from being
colonies. It was in those circumstances when the
internationalist help towards Africa appears. There were 2,077
Cubans who died helping to eliminate the remnants of
neocolonialism left in those nations and they contributed in
bringing an end to apartheid. This was the racist
segregationist regime that held Mandela in prison for over 30
years. And this is the same thing that is happening today with
the governments of Israel. The United States was the one
nullifying any attempt in the Security Council of the United
Nations to sanction those fascist governments, really
segregationist and racist. The same thing it is doing for
Israel is what it used to do for South Africa who ended up
having seven nuclear weapons. Why didn’t they act against them
like they did against Iraq for the so called weapons of mass
destruction during Bush that never existed in the first place?</p>
<p>When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South
African government, where a few million white people
subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they
could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending
Angola. These things have not been written down but they need
to be told as part of the reality of history which should not
be distorted the way the historians connected to the power
elite tend to do. The role that Cuba played and the lives of
those 2,077 Cubans, whose mothers and families mourn for
having lost their children in Africa, helped achieve the true
security and independence of Angola. It was a contribution
because in the end the Angolan people were the ones who
decided that. We also contributed in a definitive way securing
the independence of Namibia after years that a United Nations
resolution was being ignored by South Africa and the western
powers. With the Cuban presence in Namibia it was also
possible to achieve the security and real freedom of that
country and the end of Apartheid in South Africa, with the
modest contribution of the international military presence in
Africa.</p>
<p>But back to the initial question; you were asking me about
Communism. Communism is an aspiration, an aspiration is an
ideal, a dream, a longing of something that would be perfect,
but hard to build because it has to clash with human nature
and against the egotism of humans and the egotism of the
elites which usually try to guarantee their own interests
above those of their nations and of their own people. But they
are the ones that prevail because they have the economic
power, the political power and the military power.</p>
<p>That is why communism is still an aspiration, in Cuba we are
building a socialist society and we could say we are on the
verge of a communist society which is hard to achieve, very
hard to achieve, but is a longing worth fighting for.
Socialism is overcoming certain difficulties, it is working in
order to try to achieve social advances, to really achieve a
society where everybody improves, not where just the elite
improve and the others get worse.</p>
<p>You know how excluding modern societies are; the income
differences in the First World, for example in the United
States where 2 or 3% percent of the population holds 60% of
the GDP of that country. You should find out about the wealth
distribution in the rest of the countries, in England, in
France, in Spain, in Germany… find out about the differences,
about how the wealth is distributed.</p>
<p>Let’s not use the term democracy as a play on words which is
what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext.
Those people that really violate human rights, those are the
ones I was referring to right now; they violate human rights
from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human
rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say,
“They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human
rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech”. There is
no one more talkative than Cubans, Cubans express their
feelings, there’s nobody more rebellious and revolutionary
than a Cuban and I say that without chauvinism. I mean, I say
so because I am Cuban and it pains me to listen to what is
said about my people. And I feel the responsibility of talking
to you clearly and with openness. We are two Latin-Americans
in Greece who are now in front of this monument, which
illustrates what humanity aimed to do at a certain moment
history. In building up a democratic model I think that Cuba’s
contribution, little by little, has contributed to getting
closer to the ideals of those philosophers, of those Greeks
who thought about how a society could be fairer, how a society
could really represent the interests of the people. We have
tried to get closer to that from a Latin-American perspective
and from the Cuban perspective.</p>
<p><em><strong>Lasonas Pipinis Velasco</strong> is
a Peruvian-Greek journalist.</em></p>
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