Mariela Castro, in addition to being the head of CENESEX (Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education), is an active militant in all forms of international solidarity.
Completely committed to the defense of the Palestinian Resistance and against Zionism, she now adds to her priorities, first, joining her people in developing the maximum political and military defense of Cuba against the imperialist attack, and then, for the same reasons, offering her full support to Bolivarian Venezuela.
We spoke with Mariela about this hostile reality that our peoples are experiencing, and this is the result we offer to our readers.
We are in a truly turbulent moment in the world; a moment that has nuances of perversity and cruelty, inherent to capitalism, but which are now expressed in a completely stark and unsubtle way. Within this context, there are two or three fundamental paradigms, about which we would like to hear your opinion. One of them is, obviously, what just happened in Bolivarian Venezuela: a planned attack, an act of war that ended with the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his partner, Congresswoman Cilia Flores. In that scenario, there was combat, in which 32 Cuban combatants were vilely murdered, along with a significant number of Venezuelans, both civilians and military personnel. The first two questions are: to what extent does capitalism advance in its voracity, exercising this level of violence with complete impunity? Are you surprised by what has happened, this brutal attack against the sovereignty of a people who are not at war with anyone?
Honestly, yes, I am surprised. Because theoretically, everyone talks about how capitalism is in decline, and that in this process of decadence it will drag the entire world down with who knows what, with how many more catastrophes. And that is what we are witnessing. This is not new, but these are new ways of acting. Because the two world wars were about the division of the world. The colonization of the American continent allowed for this accumulation of new wealth and strengthened the capitalist system. But there have been many other times when it became clear that new magnates needed to accumulate even more than they already possessed; and to do so, they needed to appropriate certain resources, leading them to develop all sorts of policies, discourses, economic forums, and mechanisms for economic control over other countries. Because what they have in their own nations is no longer enough for them; they are magnates and represent less than 1% of the world’s population. This has been underway for a long time: the distribution of the world’s wealth. Now, the United States, after World War II, occupied a position of leadership, of hegemony, which is becoming increasingly absolute. They truly want to control absolutely everything, deciding which riches to appropriate, which countries to invade to plunder their wealth, and then administer it. And above all, they do it from a global dictatorial stance, not only from the US, but also from the figure of Donald Trump and the whole group of cronies who follow him and who benefit from all these policies. I’m sure it never crossed his mind to do any of what he’s doing. These are the orders, the mandates, given to him by the truly powerful, those who actually control most of that wealth. So, of course, it surprises me to see a man without limits, unpredictable, without ethics, a man sick with power since childhood, one of those who can buy anything with money and for whom anything goes. A man with these characteristics who has become president. Everyone who has sat in the emperor’s chair of that empire has had to do terrible things in accordance with that colonizing strategy, and now with these more clearly neo-Nazi, fascist nuances, and with a very strong economic power that conditions him, which is Zionist capital, Zionist business.
Zionist capital has collateral holdings in various countries around the world, and of course, in Latin America as well.
That’s right. Many of those political hacks, like Milei and others, play into their hands and facilitate the continued appropriation of wealth by this global mega-corporation. Look at the current situation in Argentina, which is in danger and on the verge of becoming an extension of Israeli territory. But this has been happening quietly in Central America as well. They have already been positioning themselves, buying up, and occupying the territories of the indigenous populations, who are the ones who truly protect the land and natural resources. In other words, these signs have been visible for a long time. All the wars that the empire has waged, led by the US, have taken place primarily in the 20th and 21st centuries. It is truly a continuation of this process of dividing up territories and their resources. And of course, it involves developing a narrative within the realm of cognitive warfare to distort reality and manipulate international public opinion to gain the support they need. Or at least, they no longer have the decisive opponents for their projects, those who could have prevented them. Therefore, they have neutralized the United Nations and the mechanisms that humanity has built to protect the entire system of rights. International law, the documents generated by the United Nations, have truly been nullified and dismantled.
As the Canadian president surprisingly stated, there is no longer an international order, despite humanity’s efforts to create a new, equitable, and just global order. This new order no longer exists, but what is coming is worse. A world without order, without rules, tailored to Donald Trump and his imperial whims. Because, moreover, these magnates, who represent less than 1% of the world’s population, must be happy to have a representative like the President of the United States, who has no limits or scruples, who is not guided by any norms, not even the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking of this lack of limits abroad, it’s worth noting that the same is true of Trump operating in his own backyard. Do you see it that way?
The American people are suffering terribly; they are suffering as they have in other periods of their history, because what is happening is not new. And with ICE’s brutal persecution of migrants, which affects men, women, and even children, where people are murdered with incredible ease and impunity, it’s clear that Trump’s fascism is lethal.
These people have suffered this many times before; and they have been experiencing it recently with the protests in support of the Palestinian people and against the Zionist-imperialist genocide. Let’s remember that this nation was created in the same way as the State of Israel, by usurping the territories of what we have called the First Nations. There were cultures. There were different Indigenous nations, many people who also died, as the Palestinian people are now, through genocide and ethnic cleansing. What is happening today in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine is the same thing they did to occupy and colonize territories in North America, but also in a large part of the world. Countries that have been plundered and impoverished, or that suffer theft through genocide. So, the same historical mechanisms that have characterized imperialism continue to be repeated, not only in their suffering but also in their expansionist phase.
Many people, when they talk about Trump or Milei, describe them as somewhat “crazy.” Do you believe in that theory, or is there something more behind Trump’s actions?
No, he’s not crazy. He’s a psychopath who has also grown without limits. Anything goes, and “what I want, I take,” by any means necessary. And that’s what they did with this military aggression against Venezuela, where they bombed five Venezuelan cities—mainly the capital—to create a distraction while they went in to kidnap the legitimate constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, and his wife.
Let’s remember that Cilia Flores is a congresswoman with a long career, the First Lady, and also the First Combatant. Her kidnapping is also illegal, has consequences, and is a violation of internationally established norms. Truly, if international law existed, they wouldn’t be able to kidnap anyone; but ultimately, they do it to anyone who opposes them. They are brazenly unpunished.
Notice that the Mossad’s modus operandi is no different from that of US imperial power, because they are one and the same. They were born almost simultaneously, and have developed and strengthened each other. They do the same thing everywhere they need to seize wealth and territory, eliminate entire populations, and assassinate popular leaders who bother them. Just look at how many leaders and scientists they have murdered in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon. This pattern of behavior is constant, and the world prefers to look the other way, especially the politicians who make the decisions in each country and who always put themselves at the service of the empire, out of cowardice, opportunism, and also out of sheer fear.
In many cases, they say that the US pressures and blackmails them.
Of course, they are pressured, they are coerced. This coercion leads not only to public humiliation and attacks, but also to creating a global psychological and media environment to discredit certain leaders. In this sense, the example of the Spanish president is relevant. He wavers in his decisions because he suffers popular pressure within his own parliament; but he also faces very dangerous pressures. Not just pressures, but threats! This has also happened to the judges of the International Criminal Court, who have been accused and threatened with death, along with their families. And yet they remain steadfast despite all these mechanisms employed by vandals, by international criminals. They use mechanisms of terror because they are inflicting terror to dominate. And that is how the capitalist system has developed, through terror and barbarity. So, it is a shame that there is so much distraction when the world is moving in such a dangerous way, in which all of humanity is at risk. There is so much distraction; there are people who don’t even know what is happening and think that nothing will happen to them. Some, because they are far from a certain geographical area or because they say, “No, it won’t happen here, we are friends of the U.S.” All of this will lead to a catastrophe that is truly difficult to imagine.
In this same context, and returning to Venezuela, at the opposite end of the spectrum from what you have so aptly described, lies the resistance of both the Venezuelan people and their revolutionary leadership. Within the catastrophe of the kidnapping of a president and the killing of civilians and military personnel, the effort was made to maintain the constitutional order and move forward with a government whose fundamental objective is to rescue the hostages. This is no small feat, given the blackmail of this imperialism that tells you: “Well, if you fight, I’ll bomb you; if you fight, I’ll torture you.” In other words, this is the blackmail that people in general experience. And on the other hand, I also want to highlight—I want us to talk about both things—the role of Cuba’s internationalist solidarity, having sent fighters to protect the President, fighters who battled to the bitter end. It had been a long time since Cuba had lost so many combatants. Because Cuba isn’t invading countries. Cuba sends doctors, literacy teachers, athletes. But what has happened is extremely serious. I wanted to ask you how this painful situation impacted Cuban society.
The biggest impact was the first news that arrived that morning. First, a journalist friend called me: “They’re bombing Venezuela.” I told her, “It can’t be.” And she replied, “Go to teleSUR so you’re aware of the news.” And I started to see the events unfold, the kidnapping of the president and his wife. Then I said to myself, “No, this has gone too far.” Now we have to see how the world reacts to this situation, because it can’t be allowed. So, the pain was immense, even physical, very painful. And I said to myself: “Our comrades were fulfilling an internationalist mission protecting President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, because there were already threats, and it was known that they were studying the president’s movements for some kind of attack. That was known. And the threat was an open kidnapping, since the threats were blatant. But it sounded more like boasting. The thing is, in Cuba we take boasting seriously; because we’ve already had painful experiences, including the loss of valuable lives. So, the first thing I thought was: how many comrades must have fallen in that U.S. military operation, which wasn’t surgical, it was clumsy; the thing is, they have a lot of technology, and they also suffered many casualties, but they don’t want to admit it. They suffered many dead and many wounded, because our comrades fought. Because of the thirty-two dead, some were sleeping during the changing of the guard, or they were drivers. But twenty-one fought directly. Just twenty-one soldiers faced two hundred robots. Because you know how the U.S. military operates, surrounded by protection.” But they’re incapable of hand-to-hand combat. They lack that skill because it requires conviction. They’re defending the world’s richest people, not even their own.
We know what our fighters are like; we know how Fidel, how our country’s leadership, trained our fighters in the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of the Interior’s armed forces. I knew we were going to suffer casualties. And they fought to the death, but they left the enemy with casualties. And they don’t want to talk about that, because that’s what brings them into disrepute. It wasn’t a successful surgical operation; it was a disaster, and the worst part is all the violations of national and international laws and regulations to kidnap the president of a sovereign state without even having any grounds. There isn’t a single valid argument to condemn him. Besides, who are they? They think they’re the world’s police! In fact, they already have a lot of control, with new technologies, over people and countries. And they make arbitrary decisions, always in a biased way. Unjust, against their own people and against other peoples. Now with this Greenland story… please! They themselves are jeopardizing relations with their allies. But they have proven to be so cowardly that we don’t know what will happen. We imagine they will take Greenland. Because they want it, because they have longed for it for more than 150 years. There are many speeches justifying that Greenland should belong to them.
Do you think the Venezuelan revolutionary leadership is handling these difficult circumstances well?
I see that they are responding very intelligently, very united. That is, this aggression has united the Venezuelan people. They recognize their leaders. They know that Nicolás Maduro is still in charge, he is still the president. And there are close relationships, and decisions are being made amidst the very complex circumstances they are experiencing, which those who don’t understand will question. And they will say—as they are doing with so much “fake news” and so many lies they spread—that there are betrayals. which are already being handed over to the United States. But between Cuba and Venezuela there is a very strong, unbreakable bond. And we do not allow, and are also combating, all these fake news stories that are trying to divide us, to create distrust toward the current Venezuelan leadership. They are trying to discredit the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, and other important figures in Venezuelan politics. They are trying to create informational chaos so that people will become complacent and repeat what they did with Gaza, where they tried to demonize its leaders, where they have brutally demonized the insurgent organization that has led everything that has happened in these last two years since the Al-Aqsa Massacre, and whose leaders were elected by their people at the ballot box.
So, they’ve dedicated themselves to demonizing everything that has a positive impact and mobilizes consciences. Like when the Zionist Netanyahu said that they created this leading organization of the Palestinian insurgent movements, which is a lie. They did try to sell weapons to one side during the conflict and civil war in Gaza, but they never created it. Similarly, now Trump says he likes Delcy, that she’s wonderful; all to confuse people and make them believe she’s at his service and not at the service of her people. And fortunately, Venezuela has demonstrated, through all its internal work, its strengthening, and the popular support for President Nicolás Maduro and the policies initiated by Hugo Chávez. Venezuela is preparing for whatever comes.
And Cuba is doing the same, calling for the defense of the country.
Since the triumph of the revolution, Cuba has suffered attacks and aggressions of various kinds from successive US administrations. Therefore, Cuba has had to develop a defense strategy that integrates its own experiences and those of other countries, such as Vietnam, as exemplified by the doctrine of the people’s war.
This is a permanent strategy that is constantly being strengthened, and at this time, certain tasks are being reactivated with the entire population so that everyone knows how to respond to different types of aggression, and above all, so that we are kept up-to-date on the latest military tactics used by the US military, particularly the use of new technologies, as we have seen in Gaza, or as we see now in the aggression against Venezuela. In other words, this is one of the lines of world governance developed in Davos in recent years, which leads almost to the annihilation of national governments and the establishment of a global government, a world government. Of course, to establish it, it has to be through a fascist and neo-Nazi dictatorship like the one they are developing. In short, our people are preparing for different situations in order to defend themselves. Cuba is not an aggressor nation; Cuba will defend itself, and in turn, support other nations in their defense. This will be done through prior, consensual agreement, and at the request of the people, as happened in Angola, and as happened now in the protection of President Nicolás Maduro. In other words, what Cuba has strongly developed is the principle not only of sovereignty and independence but also of solidarity among nations. Fidel always taught us that these are non-negotiable principles. Principles are not negotiable. There is no possibility of negotiation with imperialism and all its facets. As Jean-Paul Sartre said: one does not negotiate with fascism, one fights fascism. And many other intellectual figures around the world have expressed themselves around this same idea. That is to say, there is no possibility of negotiation, only dialogue. Because the principles of the sovereignty of nations cannot be negotiated. Let’s see what happens with this president’s other aspirations. What he shamelessly and openly wants is to seize wealth, especially Venezuelan oil, the riches of Greenland, and those of other nations. And in the case of Cuba, what interests him most is dismantling the example of how we have resisted the empire for sixty-seven years. They have tried everything, as Trump himself said, and they haven’t been able to destroy this Revolution. And the more aggression there is, the more united the people become; the more our people’s defensive capacity and capacity to respond are strengthened. Look, despite the surprise attack on Caracas, our comrades fought to the death. And they suffered significant losses that they will never acknowledge, because they are afraid of weakening their image as powerful, white, blond men who intend to dominate the world. So, we are in a new era of imperialism in decline. But a new and very dangerous era has begun, in which humanity no longer has any mechanisms to protect itself because they have all been disabled.
Finally, knowing how much what is happening in Palestine hurts you and us, we see that the empire is now setting up a “peace council.” An initiative that is truly a farce. How do you see the resolution of the Palestinian issue within this framework of a genocide that continues unabated, and in which this new Hitler aspires to build a real estate project in Gaza on the corpses of so many Palestinians?
They had this project planned for a long time. And nobody wanted to talk about it. It even came specifically from a retired US military officer, but then nobody else pursued the issue. Or those who did were silenced.
This “Greater Israel” plan, since there are more countries, they are going to invade, despite there having been so subservient and cowardly, as is the case with Egypt.
Really, what is happening now is the demonstration of that project, which they have been enriching, modifying, and adjusting to the current circumstances. They had it planned. The Al-Aqsa Flood was the pretext they used to commit this great genocide, in which they never respected the ceasefire in either Palestine or Lebanon. Then, suddenly, this new proposal for a “peace council” for Palestine—which, moreover, isn’t just for Palestine; it will surely be global, for them to impose and command in a dictatorial manner. Surprisingly, and painfully, we have seen how many countries we didn’t expect are supporting, or considering supporting, the Zionist Yankee proposal. This is what truly leaves me speechless, asking: how is this possible? They weren’t going to accept this under any circumstances, but they have. There are others who are US puppets, licking the emperor’s boots, as is the case with Milei, who is handing over national territory to the Israelis. And to say Israelis is to say the United States.
Trump’s speeches are utterly absurd, unimaginable. But they are happening, they are being disseminated; And although they mock his words, he continues to rule with exorbitant, unprecedented power. The BRICS have been unable to move forward, and we’ve had Trojan horses that have hindered certain processes. Unexpected Trojan horses, but heavily pressured by their national oligarchies and by imperialism. Sadly, this has happened, as was the case with the impediment to Venezuela joining the BRICS.
It is, as you say, a process that seems unstoppable, although it is absolutely necessary to creatively imagine a way to put a stop to this fascist advance. Where do you think we can find the light at the end of the tunnel?
The question is something like, what are we doing? Resistance is strengthening around the world, even within the US. The Black Panther Party has resurfaced; social self-defense movements have been organized; and yet they have the decency and culture of adherence to the law that is killing them. They don’t respond with firearms to the brutal enemy that is attacking and murdering them. They don’t. Instead, people like those in ICE are doing horrible things that are raising awareness even within the US, but there’s no decisive leap to stop this barbarity.
We’re left there, with that last sentence. How much work still needs to be done to move from protest to confrontation with imperialism. Because time is running out. And, truly, with every passing minute, the imperial offensive grows. Thank you, Mariela, for your answers that help us shed light amidst so much darkness.
Carlos Aznarez >> Argentine journalist in print and digital media, radio, and TV. Author of several books on international politics. Director of the newspaper Resumen Latinoamericano. Coordinator of Cátedras Bolivarianas, a forum for reflection and debate on Latin America and the Third World.
[ SOURCE: https://www.cubaperiodistas.cu/ ||| RESUMEN LATINOMAERICANO ]
