Reflections by comrade Fidel: It's time to do something
I will tell you a bit of history. "Discovered"
When the Spaniards five centuries before us, was the estimated population of the island with about 200,000 inhabitants living in balance with nature. Their main food sources were in the protein-rich rivers, lakes and seas. In addition, they operated a rudimentary agriculture, which provided them with calories, vitamins, minerals and fiber.
In some areas of Cuba it has still to produce the habit Tapiokafladen, which is like a bread made from cassava. Certain fruits and small wild animals supplemented their diet you also have a few drinks made of fermented products and have passed on the culture of the world not at all healthy habit of smoking.
The current population of Cuba is perhaps 60 times larger than the former. Although the Spaniards intermarried with the indigenous population, but these have virtually destroyed by the almost slave labor in the countryside and in the search for gold in river sand.
The native population was captured by the import of violence and replaced enslaved Africans, a cruel, applied over centuries method.
Very important for our lives were created diet. We have been in consumers of pork, beef and sheep meat, milk, cheese and other derivatives, transformed wheat, oats, barley, rice, chick peas, beans, peas and other legumes that are from other types of climatic zones. We originally possessed
to corn, and it was introduced to the calorie-rich sugar cane plants belonging.
The conquistadors have the coffee and cocoa from Africa may have brought from Mexico into the country. After the slave revolt Haiti in the early 19th Century were both next to the sugar, tobacco and other tropical products to enormous sources of revenue for the city.
The production system based on slavery has been virtually up to the handover of sovereignty to the Cuban United States by the English colonial rulers in hand, whose rule had been defeated by the Cubans in a bloody war and extraordinary.
The victory of the revolution in 1959 was our island a true Yankee colony. The Unite States had deceived our liberation army, betrayed, and disarmed. One could not speak of a developed agriculture. There was just immense plantations were processed on the basis of manual labor and draft animals. They used normally no fertilizer or machinery. The major sugar factories were U.S. property, various of which more than 100,000 acres of land owned, others tens of thousands. Overall, it was about 150 sugar factories - including those in the hands of Cubans - who worked less than four months per year.
During the two great world wars, the United States have received deliveries of sugar from Cuba and they had our country approved a sales quota for their markets. It was associated with trade obligations and limitation of our agricultural production, although the sugar part was produced by them. Other key sectors such as ports and oil refineries were U.S. property. Their companies had large banks, industrial plants, mines, docks, shipping and railways, as well as such vital public services such as electricity supply and telecommunications services.
For those who want to understand, nothing more is needed.
Nevertheless, there was a significant need for the production of rice, corn, fat, grains and other food, put the United States, certain limits for all that their country could compete with its own production, including the subsidized beet sugar.
course it is a fact that Cuba is within the geographical boundaries of a small, tropical, rainy and hit by hurricanes, the country that had neither machinery nor dams and irrigation systems and adequate equipment, have regard to food production or the means to could have been able to compete with the mechanized cultivated soybean, sunflower, pulses and rice production in the United States. Some, such as could, for example, wheat and barley, not grown in our country.
Frankly the revolution could not enjoy peaceful minute. After watching the agrarian reform had been declared before the end of the fifth month of the revolution victory, the sabotage programs the fires, the disabled and the application of chemical pollutants have been started against the country. It even plagues against vital products and human health have been applied.
have committed a mistake, as they have underestimated our people and their decisiveness to fight for their rights and their independence.
course at that time none of us had those many years of experience reached, our starting point were just ideas and a revolutionary concept. Perhaps there was the main error committed our idealism to believe in it, that it would give the world a certain amount of justice and respect for the rights of nations, where it absolutely did not exist in reality. The decision to fight does not go on it.
The first, our efforts in availing task was to prepare us for the coming battle.
The heroic in the struggle against the Batista tyranny acquired experience is that the enemy, no matter what were his powers, not the Cuban people will be able to defeat.
the country's preparations for battle was the most important effort of the people, and led us to such key episodes as the battle against the promoted by the United States Mercenary invasion of April 1961, which was landed in the Bay of Pigs and escorted by the Marines and the Yankee Air Force.
Unable to come to terms with the independence of Cuba and the exercise of its sovereign rights, the Government of that country's decision to attack our country. The USSR had nothing to do with the victory of the Cuban Revolution. This has not adopted the socialist character of the support of the USSR, but it was the opposite: the support of the USSR was based on the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution. And that is true completely, was you: when the USSR was dissolved, was Cuba still remains socialist.
The USSR learned in some way that Kennedy intended to apply to Cuba the same method as in Hungary. This led to the mistakes committed Khrushchev regarding the missile crisis of October, I saw myself forced to criticize. But not only Khrushchev was wrong, but also Kennedy. Neither Cuba had something to do with the history of Hungary, nor the Soviet Union with the revolution in Cuba. That was the sole result of the struggle of our people. Khrushchev was found only in solidarity with Cuba by the country sent weapons when it was threatened by the mercenary invasion organized by the United States, trained, armed and transported has been. Without the weapons of Cuba sent our people would have defeated the mercenaries, as it defeated the army of Batista and all their military equipment - 100,000 weapons - was confiscated. If the direct invasion of Cuba by the United States had taken place, then our people would still to this day fighting against the soldiers who had also to millions of Latin Americans have to fight. The United States had committed the biggest mistake of their history, and perhaps it would still give the USSR.
few hours before the invasion, according to the devious attack on our air bases marked by Cuban flags Aircraft of the United States, was the socialist character of the revolution was proclaimed. The Cuban people in that battle that went down as the first victory against imperialism in America in history, fought for socialism.
Ten U.S. presidents have succeeded one another and the time of the eleventh passes slowly, and the Socialist Revolution maintains itself. Also, all those governments, the complicity of the United States in their crimes against Cuba, are gone, and our revolution has gone further. The Soviet Union disappeared and the revolution has gone further. It was not done with the permission of the United States but a cruel and merciless blockade subject, taken specifically by the use of terrorism, the thousands of people have life and have hurt people and enjoy their authors now complete impunity, while five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters have been sentenced to life imprisonment and Cuban Adjustment Act, a law called entry into the United States and residence and employment there hedges. Cuba is the only country in the world, is applied to the citizens of that privilege which is denied in Haiti, after the earthquake that has killed over 300,000 people, and just as other citizens of the hemisphere, pursuing the Empire and deports. However, the Cuban Revolution maintains itself.
Cuba is the only country on the planet that can not be visited by U.S. citizens, but Cuba exists and holds himself upright, just 90 miles from the United States, and fight on from his heroic struggle.
We, the Cuban revolutionaries who have made mistakes and will continue to make mistakes, but we will never make the mistake of being traitors.
We never illegality, lies, demagoguery, the betrayal of the people, pretense, hypocrisy, opportunism, corruption, the complete lack of ethics, the abuse of power chosen or even the crime and the disgusting torture, with obvious, have won without doubt laudable exceptions, the behavior of the U.S. president.
At this time humanity faced serious problems like no other. The worst thing is that the solutions will depend to a large part of the richest, most developed countries that will reach the point of having to confront a situation, they do not look in the eye, without coincident that her world view that they to form the benefit of their selfish interests have tried, and that inevitably leads to disaster.
I am not speaking only of wars, the dangers of and submitted as episodes and brilliant people, including many Americans.
I mean the food crisis, caused by economic facts and climate change, which are a result of human beings seemingly irreversible, but with respect to which the human mind still has a duty to offer them as quickly as the forehead. It has been talked about for years, what was lost time. But the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, ie the United States has systematically refused to consider the opinion of the world public. Apart from the usual protocol and other trifles of the statesmen of consumer societies, usually in their access to power, confused and stunned by the influence of mass media, the truth is that they have given the matter any attention. A drunken man whose problems were known, and I need not name, has enforced his line in the international community.
The problems have suddenly taken shape, by phenomena that repeat themselves on every continent: heat, forest fires, crop losses in Russia, with many victims, climate change in China, excessive rain or drought, increasing loss of water in the Himalayan mountains, includes India, China, Pakistan and other countries threaten, excessive Rainfall in Australia that have inundated nearly a million square kilometers, unusual and seasonally shifted cold wave in Europe that had affected considerably agriculture, drought in Canada, unusual cold spells in this country and in the United States; rains like never before in Colombia, the million hectares of farmland have injured; unprecedented rainfall in Venezuela; disasters because of excessive rain in the major cities of Brazil and droughts south. Practically there is no area in the world where these events have taken place.
The production of wheat, soy, corn, Rice and numerous other grain and sleeve crops, which are the basis for feeding the world - whose population is now estimated that nearly 6.9 billion population is and the record number is approaching 7 billion, and where more than one billion people from hunger and malnutrition suffer - are already seriously damaged by climate change, what the world has caused a big problem. Now that the reserves and the supply is still not fully recovered or only partially and in some products have created, already a serious threat problems and instability in many countries.
than 80 countries, all from the Third World, which already have to be real difficulties are threatened by actual hunger.
I will limit myself to these statements and reports published in recent days to quote briefly:
"The UN warns of danger of a new food crisis.
11th January 2011 (AFP) "
" 'We are facing a difficult situation' ... "agreed the FAO.
About 80 countries confront a food deficit ... "
" The global price index of agricultural commodities (cereals, meat, sugar, oil-bearing crops and milk products) is nowadays the highest level since the FAO has started to develop this index 20 years ago.
"UNITED NATIONS (IPS)"
"The United Nations Food and Agriculture (FAO), with headquarters in Rome, has warned in the last week that the global prices of rice, wheat, sugar, barley and meat [...] in 2011 will have a significant increase ... "
" PARIS, 10 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy's campaign to address the high global food prices, bringing to Washington this week ... "
Basel (Switzerland), 10 January (EFE) - The president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Jean-Claude Trichet, Chairman of Governors of the Group-of-ten (G10) today warned of the severe food price increases and inflationary threat in the emerging countries "
.
"World Bank fear a crisis in food prices, 15 January (BBC) "
" Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, told the BBC that this crisis will be far-reaching than the 2008 version of "
" MEXICO FD, 7 (Reuters)
"The annual inflation growth rhythm in food has tripled in November in Mexico compared to the last two months ... "
" Washington, January 18 (EFE) "
" According to one study of climate change will exacerbate the food shortage "
" Liliana Hisas, Executive Director of the U.S. branch of this organization, told EFE that: '. For over 20 years, the researchers warn against the effects of climate change but nothing changes, apart from the increase in emissions that cause global warming.' "
" Osvaldo Canziani, Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and scientific advisor to the report, stated that 'occur anywhere in the world meteorological events and extreme climatic conditions and the increase in average surface temperatures will exacerbate the intensity of the same'. "
" (Reuters) 18 January. Algeria buys wheat to avoid shortages and riots
A source from the Ministry of Agriculture told Reuters. The state grain agency Algeria has in the past two weeks bought about a million tons of grain to avoid shortages, if you encounter troubles "
"(Reuters) 18 January - Strong increase in prices for wheat in Chicago to purchases of Algeria "
" newspaper El Economista, 18 January 2011
alarm worldwide due to food prices, "
" One of the main reasons include the climate change caused floods and droughts, the use of food for biofuel production and speculation in the prices of commodities (consumer goods). "
The problems are dramatically seriously. Yet all is not lost.
The estimated current wheat production reached almost 650 million tonnes.
When corn exceeded this amount and will generate approximately 770 million tons. could
In soybean reach almost 260 million, with the United States expect to produce 92 million and Brazil 77th They are the two largest producers.
The information more than the available grains and pulses for 2011 are known.
The first thing to solve the international community has, would be to make the choice between food and biofuel. Brazil, a developing country should, of course, a balance maintained.
If the millions of tonnes of soya and maize, which will be invested in biofuels in the future, the production of food would be paid, the unusual Price increase could be stopped and the scientists of the world to propose formulas to stop the situation in some way and can even reverse it.
Too much time was wasted. It is time to do something.
Fidel Castro Ruz
19th January 2011 21:55
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