Socialist Action /September 2001
Fidel Castro Addresses UN Racism Conference
Below we reprint the Sept. 1 address
by Cuban President Fidel Castro to the World Conference against Racism,
Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance in Durban, South
Africa.
Racism, racial discrimination, and xenophobia are
not naturally instinctive reactions of the human beings but rather a social,
cultural, and political phenomenon born directly of wars, military conquests,
slavery, and the individual or collective exploitation of the weakest by
the most powerful all along the history of human societies.
No one has the right to boycott this conference,
which tries to bring some sort of relief to the overwhelming majority of
mankind afflicted by unbearable suffering and enormous injustice.
Neither has anyone the right to set preconditions
to this conference or urge it to avoid the discussion of historical responsibility,
fair compensation or the way we decide to rate the dreadful genocide perpetrated,
at this very moment, against our Palestinian brothers by extreme-right leaders
who, in alliance with the hegemonic superpower, pretend to be acting on
behalf of another people which throughout almost 2000 years was the victim
of the most fierce persecution, discrimination, and injustice that history
has known.
Cuba speaks of reparations, and supports this idea
as an unavoidable moral duty to the victims of racism, based on a major
precedent-that is, the indemnification being paid to the descendants of
the Hebrew people, which in the very heart of Europe suffered the brutal
and loathsome racist holocaust.
However, it is not with the intent to undertake
an impossible search for the direct descendants or the specific countries
of the victims of actions occurred throughout centuries. The irrefutable
truth is that tens of millions of Africans were captured, sold like a commodity,
and sent beyond the Atlantic to work in slavery-while 70 million indigenous
people in that hemisphere perished as a result of the European conquest
and colonization.
The inhuman exploitation imposed on the peoples
of three continents, including Asia, marked forever the destiny and lives
of over 4.5 billion people living in the Third World today, whose poverty,
unemployment, illiteracy, and health rates as well as their infant mortality,
life expectancy, and other calamities-too many, in fact, to enumerate here-are
certainly awesome and harrowing.
They are the current victims of that atrocity which
lasted centuries and the ones who clearly deserve compensation for the horrendous
crimes perpetrated against their ancestors and peoples.
Actually, such a brutal exploitation did not end
when many countries became independent, not even after the formal abolition
of slavery. Right after independence, the main ideologists of the American
Union that emerged when the 13 colonies got rid of the British domination
at the end of the 18th century advanced ideas and strategies unquestionably
expansionist in nature.
It was based on such ideas that the ancient white
settlers of European descent, in their march to the West, forcibly occupied
the lands in which Native Americans had lived for thousands of years, thus
exterminating millions of them in the process. But they did not stop at
the boundaries of the former Spanish possessions; consequently Mexico, a
Latin American country that had attained its independence in 1821, was stripped
of millions of square kilometers of territory and invaluable natural resources.
Meanwhile, in the increasingly powerful and expansionist
nation born in North America, the obnoxious and inhumane slavery system
stayed in place for almost a century after the famous Declaration of Independence
of 1776 was issued, the same that proclaimed that all men were born free
and equal.
After the purely formal slave emancipation, African
Americans were subjected during 100 more years to the harshest racial discrimination,
and many of its features and consequences still persist after almost four
more decades of heroic struggles and the achievements of the 1960s, for
which Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and other outstanding fighters
gave their lives.
Based on a purely racist rationale, the longest
and most severe legal sentences are passed against African Americans, who
in the wealthy American society are bound to live in dire poverty and with
the lowest living standards.
Likewise, what is left of the Native American
peoples, which were the first to inhabit a large portion of the current
territory of the United States of America, remain under even worse conditions
of discrimination and neglect.
[It is] needless to mention the data on the social
and economic situation of Africa-where entire countries and even whole regions
of Sub-Saharan Africa are in risk of extinction, the result of an extremely
complex combination of economic backwardness, excruciating poverty, and
grave diseases, both old and new, that have become a true scourge. And the
situation is no less dramatic in numerous Asian countries.
On top of all this, there are the huge and unpayable
debts, the disparate terms of trade, the ruinous prices of basic commodities,
the demographic explosion, the neoliberal globalization, and the climate
changes that produce long draughts alternating with increasingly intensive
rains and floods. It can be mathematically proven that such a predicament
is unsustainable.
The developed countries and their consumer societies,
presently responsible for the accelerated and almost unstoppable destruction
of the environment, have been the main beneficiaries of the conquest and
colonization, of slavery, of the ruthless exploitation and the extermination
of hundreds of millions of people born in the countries that today constitute
the Third World.
They have also reaped the benefits of the economic
order imposed on humanity after two atrocious and devastating wars for a
new division of the world and its markets, of the privileges granted to
the United States and its allies in Bretton Woods, and of the IMF and the
international financial institutions exclusively created by them and for
them.
That rich and squandering world is in possession
of the technical and financial resources necessary to pay what is due to
mankind. The hegemonic superpower should also pay back its special debt
to African Americans, to Native Americans living in reservations, and to
the tens of millions of Latin American and Caribbean immigrants as well
as others from poor nations, be they mulatto, yellow, or black, but victims
all of vicious discrimination and scorn.
It is high time to put an end to the dramatic situation
of the indigenous communities in our hemisphere. Their own awakening and
struggles, and the universal admission of the monstrosity of the crime committed
against them make it imperative.
There are enough funds to save the world from the
tragedy. May the arms race and the weapon commerce that only bring devastation
and death truly end. Let it be used for development a good part of the one
trillion U.S. dollars annually spent on the commercial advertising that
creates false illusions and inaccessible consumer habits while releasing
the venom that destroys the national cultures and identities.
May the modest 0.7 percentage point of the Gross
National Product promised as official development assistance be finally
delivered.
May the tax suggested by Nobel Prize Laureate James
Tobin be imposed in a reasonable and effective way on the current speculative
operations accounting for trillions of U.S. dollars every 24 hours; then
the United Nations, which cannot go on depending on meager, inadequate,
and belated donations and charities, will have one trillion U.S. dollars
annually to save and develop the world.
Given the seriousness and urgency of the existing
problems, which have become a real hazard for the very survival of our species
on the planet, that is what would actually be needed before it is too late.
Put and end to the ongoing genocide against the
Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in amazement.
May the basic right to life of that people, children and youth, be protected.
May their right to peace and independence be respected; then, there will
be nothing to fear from UN documents.
I am aware that the need for some relief from the
awful situation their countries are facing has led many friends from Africa
and other regions to suggest the need for such prudence as would allow something
to come out of this conference. I sympathize with them but I cannot renounce
my convictions, as I feel that the more candid we are in telling the truth
the more possibilities there will be to be heeded and respected. There have
been enough centuries of deception.
I have only three other short questions based on
realities that cannot be ignored.
The capitalist, developed, and wealthy countries
today participate of the imperialist system born of capitalism itself and
the economic order imposed on the world based on the philosophy of selfishness
and the brutal competition between men, nations, and groups of nations which
is completely indifferent to any feelings of solidarity and honest international
cooperation. They live under the misleading, irresponsible, and hallucinating
atmosphere of consumer societies.
Thus, regardless the sincerity of their blind faith
in such a system and the convictions of their most serious statesmen, I
wonder: Will they be able to understand the grave problems of today's world,
which in its incoherent and uneven development is ruled by blind laws, by
the huge power and the interests of the ever growing and increasingly uncontrollable
and independent transnational corporations?
Will they come to understand the impending universal
chaos and rebellion? And, even if they wanted to, could they put an end
to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and other related issues,
which are precisely the rest of them all?
From my viewpoint we are on the verge of a huge
economic, social, and political global crisis. Let's try to build an awareness
about these realities and the alternatives will come up. History has shown
that it is only from deep crisis that great solutions have emerged. The
peoples' right to life and justice will definitely impose itself under a
thousand different shapes.
I believe in the mobilization and the struggle
of the peoples! I believe in the idea of justice! I believe in truth! I
believe in man! Thank you.
Socialist Action /September 2001 |