by
Atilio Borón
The
passing of Fidel causes the heart and the brain fight to control the
chaos of feelings and ideas this catalyzes. Memories emerge in a
whirlwind and overlap in a mix of images, words, gestures (Fidel’s
gestuality was amazing), intonations, irony, and, above all,
ideas—many ideas.
He
was a true follower of José Martí’s ideas. He firmly believed in
the precept of the Cuban revolutionary: “trenches of ideas are
worth more than trenches of stones”. Undoubtedly, Fidel was a great
military strategist—something that he proved not only in the Sierra
Maestra battles but also in his careful planification of the great
battle of Cuito Cuanavale, which was fought in Angola between
December 1987 and March 1988, which precipitated the fall of the
racist South African regime and ruined the plans of the US in the
southern part of the continent.
But
he was also an accomplished politician, with a phenomenal ability to
interpret national and international scenarios, a talent which
allowed him to lead Cuba to play a key role in some of the biggest
international conflicts that shook the twentieth century. No other
country in the region achieved something remotely similar to what
Fidel did.Cuba gave decisive support to the consolidation of the
Algerian revolution and defeated French colonialism in its last
bastion. Cuba was with Vietnam since the very beginning, and the help
it provided was enormously valuable to its people, that was being
slaughtered. Cuba was with the Palestinians and never doubted about
which side was right in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Cuba was decisive,
Nelson Mandela said, to redefine the socio-political map of the south
of Africa and to end Apartheid.
Countries
like Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, which have bigger economies,
territories and population, have never had a comparable impact on
world affairs. But Cuba had Fidel…
He
was not only follower of the ideals of José Martí but also of Simón
Bolívar. To Fidel, the unity of Latin America and of all the peoples
and nations of the then-called “Third World” was essential.
That’s why he held the 1966 TriContinental Conference in Cuba, to
support and coordinate the struggles for national liberation in
Africa, Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean. He knew that unity
was indispensable to contain and defeat US imperialism. That the lack
of unity was the greatest vulnerability of the tyranny of the United
States, and that it was urgent and indispensable to enact the
proposals made by Simón Bolívar in the 1826 Amphictyonic Congress,
which he had already outlined in his famous 1815 Jamaica Letter.
Honoring
his ideas, Fidel was the main strategist of the process of
supranational integration that began to grow in Latin America in the
late twentieth century, when Hugo Chávez Frías appeared—the field
marshall he needed to bring his ideas to life. The alliance of these
two giants of Latin America opened the doors to an unprecedented
process of changes that brought to its knees the most important and
geopolitical plan of the empire for this subcontinent: the FTAA.
And
in addition to his military and political accomplishments, we mustn’t
forget that Fidel was also an intellectual. It’s uncommon to see a
Head of State so willing to listen and debate, and never being
overcome by the arrogance that clouds the mind of some leaders.
I
was fortunate enough to assist to an intense but respectful debate
between Fidel and Noam Chomsky on topics such as the 1962 missile
crisis and Operation Mongoose, and not for a moment did the host stop
carefully listening to what the North American visitor had to say.
There’s
also the unforgettable image of Fidel participating in the numerous
events that Cuba hosted: the summits on Globalization held by the
National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba (ANEC),
the ones by the Office of Studies on José Martí or of the Latin
American Social Sciences Council (CLACSO). There, sitting in the
front row, armed with a little notepad and a pencil, he listened to
speakers for hours and dutifully took notes. From time to time, he
asked for the floor and amazed the audience by masterfully summing up
what had been said in the previous four hours or so, or drawing
surprising conclusions that nobody had imagined. That’s why he used
to tell the Cuban people: “don’t believe, read”—a clear
example of the respect he felt for intellectual work.
Like
Chávez, Fidel was a very cultured man and a voracious reader. His
passion for precise and detailed information was inexhaustible. I
remember that, in one of the preparatory meetings for the 2003 CLACSO
Assembly, he said: “remember that God doesn’t exist, but He is in
the details”, and that nothing, no matter how insignificant,
shouldn’t be left to chance. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de
Janeiro, he warned, before the skeptic looks and ironic smiles of his
mediocre colleagues (Bush Sr., Fujimori, Felipe González, Carlos
Menem), that humanity was “an endangered species” and that the
phenomenon we now know as “climatic change” was a death threat.
Like an eagle that flies high and sees far away, he saw, twenty years
sooner than everybody else, the seriousness of this problem that is
now omniscient in the global agenda.
Fidel
has passed, but his legacy (like the legacies of the Che and Chávez)
will live on forever. His call for unity, solidarity,
anti-imperialist internationalism—his revindication of socialism,
of Martí’s principles—his creative appropriation of Marxism and
Leninism—his warning that those peoples who dare to create a new
world must be prepared to be crudely punished by the right and that
they must therefore be quick to carry out the fundamental tasks of
the revolution—his teachings, in sum, are an essential treasure for
the future of the world’s struggles for liberation.
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