Re: [Marxism] INTERVIEW: Cuban Ambassador to Zimbabwe

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Ambassador Espinosa, you have been in Zimbabwe for almost two years 
> now, how has been your stay, and the state of Zim-Cuba relations?

What else would an Ambassador say?

In any case, our politics is not governed by the need to develop 
allies internationally no matter how unsavory. We are not an isolated 
socialist island but an aspiring worldwide revolutionary movement 
that has to stand on the basis of Marxist principle rather than expediency.

In 1968, when Mexican students rebelled against an oppressive 
government, they were shot down in cold blood. If you go to the 
Castro speech database at 
http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/cb/cuba/castro.html, you will not find a 
single reference to that repression. Could this be related to the 
fact that Mexico was a bit more recalcitrant in lending itself openly 
to the gusano cause, for fear of ruining the admittedly moribund 
reputation of the PRI, a party born in struggle just as Zimbabwe's ZANU?

Who knows. All that I would say at this point is that we are under no 
obligation to prettify a government that is capable of this:

On Friday, the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights 
issued its own statement on the attacks, saying it had documented 48 
hospitalizations and more than 175 lesser medical treatments for 
assaults in the last month alone. The association is nonpartisan and 
does not try to identify the political affiliations of the victims.

The group's chairman, Dr. Douglas Gwatidzo, said in an interview on 
Friday that the attacks seemed to have peaked in late March.

"It's a continuous level of attacks, without an increase or 
decrease," he said. "We see maybe three or four a day coming into 
hospital. But that's not a reflection of what's happening on the ground."

Among the injuries, the doctors' group reported, were six gunshot 
wounds, one of them fatal; four head injuries; and 11 fractures.

Assaults on opposition figures have been a staple of Zimbabwe 
election campaigns during this decade, but critics of Mr. Mugabe's 
government say that the latest barrage of attacks is the most intense 
of all. Many of the victims have been beaten by police officers after 
being arrested and jailed; many more have been abducted from their 
homes. Those who are abducted are generally driven to rural areas 
where they are severely beaten.

The government has yet to comment on the assaults. In part because 
most of the victims are opposition party members, many critics say 
the beatings mark the start of a strategy to ensure Mr. Mugabe's 
victory in the next presidential election, scheduled for March 2008.

Mr. Mugabe, 83, has ruled unchallenged for 27 years, but by any 
measure his hold on Zimbabwe's presidency is at its weakest. With 
prices now rising at least 50 percent each month and four in five 
adults jobless, many ordinary Zimbabweans openly detest him, and the 
party he commands, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic 
Front, has made little secret of its hope that he will make way for a 
successor.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/14/world/africa/14zimbabwe.html 


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