[WW] Fidel Castro to Racism Conference

["Macdonald Stainsby" <mstainsby@xxxxxx>]

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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Sept. 13, 2001
issue of Workers World newspaper
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FIDEL CASTRO TO RACISM CONFERENCE: "WE ARE ON THE
VERGE OF A HUGE GLOBAL CRISIS"

Excerpts from the key address by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, president
of the Republic of Cuba, at the World Conference against Racism,
Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, Durban,
South Africa, Sept. 1

Excellencies:

Delegates and guests:

Racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia are not
naturally instinctive reactions of 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 through 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
humankind 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 2,000 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 who 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 one hundred 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, who
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.

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
droughts alternating with increasingly intensive rains and
floods. It can be mathematically proven that such a
predicament is unsustainable. ...

There are enough funds to save the world from tragedy.

May the arms race and the weapons commerce that only bring
devastation and death truly end.

Let be used for development a good part of the one trillion
U.S. dollars annually spent on commercial advertising that
creates false illusions and inaccessible consumer habits
while releasing the venom that destroys 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 an 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 in 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 people, 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 of 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 humanity!

Thank you.

- END -

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