Radio Havana Cuba

Notes on the Revolution / Column 12

September 30, 2019

Cuba Speaks to the World

By Charles McKelvey

The annual General Debate of the General Assembly of the United Nations provides opportunity for world leaders to address the international community. The annual debate is one of the gains of the anti-colonial movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Drawing upon and expanding fundamental democratic moral concepts formulated by the colonial powers themselves, the anti-colonial movements formulated demands that were backed by the organized people, who in some cases lifted up arms, and in other cases formed non-violent mass mobilizations. The colonizing powers were compelled by these global developments to concede political independence to nearly all of the peoples, whose independence enables them to have representation in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

Although said gains are significant and must be preserved, we should understand their limitations. The structure of the United Nations divides the General Assembly and the Security Council, and the authority of the organization is concentrated in the Security Council, which has far less democratic structures of global representation. Moreover, the major media of communication provide limited reporting of the annual General Debate. The news coverage selects only a few leaders, and the coverage of their remarks is often superficial, and in some instances, inaccurate. In addition, the political process of many nations is distorted by the maneuvers, interventions, and interferences of the colonizing powers, such that many world “leaders” do not represent the true voice of the people. These limitations reflect the fact that the colonizing powers never have accepted the universally proclaimed principle that the world order should be composed of equal and sovereign nations.

In spite of said limitations, there have been moments in which the General Debate of the UN General Assembly provided a forum for an exceptional leader to arrive to speak to the world in defense of the rights of the colonized, and the powers-that-be were compelled to listen. The peoples of humanity will never forget the address to the General Assembly by the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution on September 26, 1960. Fidel spoke of the Cuban struggle against Spanish colonial domination, resulting in a new colonization and the establishment of a neocolonial republic under U.S. direction. He spoke of the efforts of the triumphant revolution, now in the political power, to transform conditions of underdevelopment, poverty, and social exclusion. He spoke of the agrarian reform program, and its nationalization of the properties of North America monopolies, and the efforts of the Cuban Revolutionary Government to negotiate a settlement with the government of the United States. Moving beyond the Cuban situation, and reflecting upon the problems confronted by the soon-to-be independent nations of Africa, he proposed that underdeveloped countries have the right to nationalize their resources and their foreign investments without compensation, inasmuch as there cannot be political independence without economic independence. In addition, he advocated the inclusion of the Chinese People’s Republic in the United Nations. The four-hour address was interrupted on several occasions by prolonged applause, and when it concluded, an ovation followed.

When Bruno Rodríguez, Minister of Foreign Relations of the Republic of Cuba, appeared on September 28, 2019 at the same podium where Fidel spoke fifty-nine years ago, he stood in a tradition of powerful Cuban orators who arrived to that podium to speak truth to the world. He did not hesitate to denounce the government of the United States for its criminal measures impeding the supply of fuel to Cuba, compelling the Cuban government to adopt temporary emergency measures, which it is able to do because the people are organized and united, and willing to defend itself from foreign aggression. He further observed that the economic aggression, no matter how hard, will not attain a single concession from Cuba. Nonetheless, he reiterated that “Cuba does not renounce its will to develop a civilized relation with the United States, based on mutual respect and on recognition of our profound differences.”

In response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s historically inaccurate portrayal of socialism, the Cuban minister said that “President Trump ignores or intends to hide that neoliberal capitalism is responsible for the growing social and economic inequality that today suffer even the most developed societies, and that neoliberal capitalism by its nature generates corruption, social marginality, the growth of crime, racial intolerance, and xenophobia; and he forgets or does not know that from capitalism emerged fascism, apartheid, and imperialism.”

Rodríguez further observed that capitalism threatens the ecological balance of the planet. “Capitalism is unsustainable,” he declared. “Its irrational and unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and the growing unjust concentration of wealth are the principal threat to the ecological equilibrium of the planet. There will not be sustainable development without social justice.”

In addition, the Cuban minister commented that the structures of representative democracy are failing the peoples. He stated that “corruption proliferates in the political systems and the electoral models, characterized by increasing distance from the will of the peoples. Powerful and exclusive minorities, especially corporate groups, decide the nature and composition of governments, parliaments, and institutions that impart justice and apply the law.”

Maintaining that the United States violates human rights in a systemic form, the chief Cuban diplomat rejected “the politization, selectivity, punitive focus, and double standards in the treatment of the question of human rights.” He maintained that Cuba will remain committed to the practice “of all the human rights, especially the rights to peace, life, development, and free determination.”

We who form the peoples of the North must overcome habits inculcated by the major news media; we must learn to listen to the voices of the neocolonized peoples. They are an inseparable part of humanity, and their condition of oppression provides them with the experiential base for understanding the necessary road for all of humanity.

This is Charles McKelvey, reflecting on the unfolding global popular socialist revolution forged by our peoples in defense of that oppressed humanity.