AMLO 6
Los Angeles and the prelude to a Summit
Los Angeles and the prelude to a Summit (+ Video)
Some Miami-based anti-Cuba hate-mongers, especially in the South Florida media, have begun to appear, announcing their attendance to the Summit.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
In Los Angeles, three out of four homeless people have no bed in any shelter or temporary solution. PHOTO: AP
Prelude to the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, United States, at the end of the first weekend of June, the meeting continues to suffer from a “strange” silence on the part of its hosts and, except for a last-minute invitation to the President of the Spanish government to attend as Joe Biden’s guest -is it that Spain is in America?-, little is known about the subject.
The invitation from across the seas is focused on the issue of migrants. I am not very convinced that Biden’s power of persuasion can involve a country in this issue that continues to lead the European Union in unemployment, with a rate of 13.3%.
The U.S. administration hopes that Spain will agree to double or triple the number of temporary workers from Central America, according to Axios.
Regarding the participation of the President of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador [AMLO], it was reported that the U.S. President wishes his Mexican counterpart to accompany him in person at the meeting.
López Obrador has stated that, if Washington does not invite all the countries of the Americas to the Summit, he would not cancel his nation’s participation in the event, but would send his representative, the Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Also in the last few days, especially in the South Florida press, some Miami-based anti-Cuba hate-mongers have begun to appear, announcing their attendance at the Summit. The publications do not explain whether they are part of the so-called civil society, knowing that they are counter-revolutionaries of Cuban origin.
The rest of this poorly made movie has been put in the hands of the media related to its organizers so that they can “make a fuss” about the ups and downs and manipulations of the hosts, which are not at all transparent.
For the Spanish newspaper El País, the city is “the misery capital of the United States”, and argues that the number of “homeless” people there has increased by 23% in one year, and details that three out of four homeless people do not have a bed in any shelter or temporary solution.
Across the United States, there are 553,000 people sleeping on the streets.
According to the RT website, the “hidden face” of Los Angeles is its poverty rate. It is estimated that there are about 66,433 homeless people in the city, and the African-American population continues to be the hardest hit by this scourge, if one compares the proportion of 33.7% with the total population, since this community only represents 7.9% [of the whole].
ATTACK AGAINST THE PEOPLE`S FORUM REJECTED
The attacks against the headquarters of The People’s Forum, in New York City, have been rejected by institutions and social movements that warn of the action of right-wing groups in the United States, with the support of the police.
“From Casa de las Americas we send all our support and solidarity to the members of The People’s Forum (TPF), whose headquarters in New York City has been the object of an illegal attack by reactionary forces of the extreme right”, a communiqué from this institution states.
According to Prensa Latina reports, more than a dozen New York Police Department agents entered TPF without being invited and acted as security for the extreme right-wing, which carried out the illegal attack.
The Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) expressed its strong rejection of the aggression against the organization.
It is noteworthy that this attack takes place when many TPF staff and leadership members are in Los Angeles organizing the People’s Summit for Democracy, ICAP stressed.
AMLO May 8, 2022 speech in Cuba
Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “I have never bet, nor will I bet on the failure of the Cuban Revolution”
By Andrés Manuel López Obrador
May 8, 2022
Translated by Pedro Gellert F.
Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez, president of Cuba, awards the José Martí Order to his counterpart of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla/ Cubadebate.
SPEECH BY MEXICAN PRESIDENT ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR DURING HIS VISIT TO CUBA
Friends, before reading the text I wrote for this important occasion, I would like to convey my condolences to the families of the victims of the calamity that occurred in a hotel under repair here in Havana. I extend to you a heartfelt embrace.
I would also like to send greetings and our affection to all the mothers of Cuba, those who are here on the island and those who are abroad.
President and friend Miguel Diaz Canel
All my friends,
Without wanting to exalt the chauvinism that almost all Latin Americans carry within us, it is safe to say that Cuba was, for almost four centuries, the capital of the Americas.
No one coming from Europe to our hemisphere could fail to pass through the largest island of the Antilles, and for many decades Cuba was the jewel of the Spanish Crown.
For a very long time, Cuba and Mexico, due to their geographic proximity, migratory flows, language, music, sports, culture, idiosyncrasy, and sugarcane cultivation, have maintained relations based on true brotherhood.
It is even possible that in pre-Hispanic times, there were Mayan inhabitants from the Yucatan peninsula on the island, who in addition to possessing a splendid culture, were like the Phoenicians, great navigators who maintained trade relations not only with the peoples of the Gulf of Mexico, but with those of the Caribbean as far as Darien.
But leaving this very interesting subject to anthropologists and archaeologists, what is certain is that the first expeditions departed from Cuba toward what is today Mexico and it was from Cuba that Hernán Cortés’ soldiers sailed their ships to undertake the conquest of Mexico. It is also known that even with the differences that this intrepid and ambitious soldier had with Governor Diego de Velázquez, all the assistance to take on the indigenous resistance in Mexico departed from Cuba by orders of the Spanish monarchy.
During the colonial period, in Cuba, as in Mexico, there were epidemics and the super-exploitation of the native population, which was practically exterminated. This explains the outrageous and painful boom of the African slave trade in Cuba and the Caribbean in general as of the 16th century. Once I had the opportunity to visit the old city of Trinidad and went to the Museum of Slavery and saw whips, shackles, and stockades of whose existence I was aware due to the comments written concerning the punishments meted out by the peonage laws that were in force in Mexico several decades after our political independence from Spain.
You should know that in our country, slavery was not actually abolished until 1914. Moreover, it should be noted that just three years earlier, in 1911, the great peasant leader Emiliano Zapata took up arms because the sugar estates were invading the lands of the villages of the state of Morelos with impunity.
However, sugar cane, royal palm, and migration from Cuba to Mexico is most noticeable in the Papaloapan Basin in the state of Veracruz. Havana is like the port of Veracruz, and it is the inhabitants of Veracruz who are the most similar to Cubans. By the way, my father’s side of my family was from there.
Our peoples are united, as in few cases, by political history. At the beginning of Mexico’s Independence, when there were still constant military uprisings and battles between federalists and centralists and liberals against conservatives, there were two governors of Cuban origin in my state, in Tabasco, Infantry Colonel Francisco de Sentmanat and General Pedro de Ampudia.
Coincidentally, the confrontation of these military leaders would serve, in these times, for writing an exciting, tremendous, and realistic historical novel, whose brief story is that one of these leaders defeats his fellow countryman and governor militarily and he goes abroad and recruits a group of Spanish, French, and English mercenaries in New York and organizes an expedition to invade Tabasco. However, when the foreigners disembarked, they were defeated and put to the sword, while ex-governor Sentmanat’s head was cut off, and on the recommendation of a doctor or physician, it was placed in a pot of boiling water to delay its decomposition due to the heat and for it to be able to be exhibited as punishment for a few days in the public square. This inhuman procedure was not unknown in Mexico nor uncommon in other parts of the world. The Father of our Homeland, Miguel Hidalgo, who proclaimed the abolition of slavery, when he was apprehended by orders of local and Spanish oligarchs, was not only shot, but also decapitated, and his head was put on display for ten years in the main square of Guanajuato. Militarism is barbaric and belligerent conservatism breeds hatred and savagery.
But history is not lineal nor Manichean; it does not consist of good and bad individuals, but of circumstances. General De Ampudia ordered Sentmanat’s execution, because according to his words, a “terrible and exemplary punishment” was needed, then he played an exemplary role in 1846, as defender of the city of Monterrey, during the U.S. invasion of Mexico; and later, in 1860, he served as Minister of War and Navy in the liberal government of Benito Juarez.
The list of Cubans who fought on behalf of Mexico during the U.S. and French invasions is extensive and broad. Likewise, there were Mexicans who fought here for the liberation of Cuba. In the times of Juarez, Mexico was the first nation in the Americas to support the independence of Cuba and to recognize Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the president in arms and father of the Cuban homeland.
And what can we say about the great services rendered to our country by the Cuban Pedro Santacilia, son-in-law of President Juarez and his main confidant. Juarez, during his exile, was here and in New Orleans, where he met the person who would later marry his daughter Manuela.
Juarez’s confidence in his son-in-law was so great that during the most difficult moments of the French Invasion, it was Santacilia who took care of the family of the defender of our Republic in the United States. Juarez called him “my Saint”. No one received as many letters from Juarez as Santacilia. No one shared the moments of greatest sadness and happiness of the “Distinguished Patriot of the Americas” as he did.
In the midst of so many gestures of brotherly ties, it is unthinkable that José Martí would not have been so closely linked to our country. The Cuban writer and political leader lived in Mexico City from 1875 to 1877. There he wrote essays, poetry and, among many other works, the famous theater script “Love is repaid with love”. He was a columnist for the newspaper El Federalista, linked to the liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and when the latter was overthrown by a military movement led by Porfirio Díaz, Martí left Mexico and with the vision that only the great possess, he wrote to his friend Manuel Mercado that he was leaving, and I quote, because “a man declared himself by his own volition lord of men…. and with a little light in your mind one cannot live where tyrants rule”.
Even though Porfirio Díaz’s seizure of power sparked Martí’s anger, it should also be taken into account that by then he had already set his sights on participating in the struggle for Cuban independence.
In addition to always maintaining an epistolary relationship with his friends in Mexico and returning to our country for the last time in 1894, there is a parallel story to Martí, the Cuban independence fighter, in the figure of the Mexican revolutionary Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodríguez. Despite being little known in history, in the same timeframe Garza had the audacity to lead a guerrilla movement from Texas and call on the people of Mexico to take up arms to overthrow Porfirio Díaz, 18 years before Francisco I. Madero did in 1910.
Catarino Garza was from Matamoros, Tamaulipas and lived in Laredo and other towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. On September 12, 1891, he crossed the Rio Grande River heading up a squadron of 40 combatants and on the 15th of that month he issued the Cry of Independence in Camargo, Tamaulipas. In one of his proclamations to stir the people against Porfirio Diaz, Garza denounced, before others did, the grave injustice of the dispossession of the lands of the indigenous communities, declared by the regime as wasteland to benefit large national and foreign landowners. Catarino was a journalist and his manifestos were constant, profound, and well written. However, in the military field he achieved little with his movement; he barely gathered together about 100 combatants and of his four incursions into Mexican territory he only won one victory at Rancho de las Tortillas, near the village of Guerrero, Tamaulipas. But even without winning many battles, the challenge of this fighter sparked deep uneasiness in the Mexican military elite who, in collaboration with the U.S. Army and the famous Texas Rangers, mobilized thousands of soldiers to practically seal off the border and carry out a tenacious search village by village, ranch by ranch, in pursuit of the rebel chief, his small band of troops, and his sympathizers.
In these circumstances, Catarino disappeared and amid conjecture, the legend and the inseparable corrido ballad arose, which in one verse proclaimed:
Where did Catarino go
with his pronounced plans
with his insurgent struggle
for the Mexican American.
The mystery was cleared up when, sometime later, it was discovered that Garza had appeared in Matina, a town on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica. Before that, he had been hiding here in Havana, protected by his pro-independence Masonic brothers.
In those times, Costa Rica was the meeting point and the ideal terrain to prepare guerrilla forces and landings of the most important revolutionaries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The president of Costa Rica, Rafael Iglesias Castro, was a tolerant liberal and respectful of the right of asylum. Hence, in the Costa Rican capital, leaders and military leaders prepared the struggle for the independence of Cuba, the integration of the Central American countries, and the reconstitution of greater Colombia, projects sealed by word of honor, in which there was also the commitment to support Catarino in overthrowing Mexico’s dictator.
In this atmosphere of brotherhood, Catarino established close relations with Cubans, Colombians, and Central Americans. In Costa Rica there were around 500 Cuban refugees, the most prominent of whom was Antonio Maceo, the general who, together with Máximo Gómez, fought for the Independence of Cuba and was considered a threat by the Spanish colonial government.
The presence of Maceo did not go unnoticed in Costa Rica. Rubén Darío, the great Nicaraguan poet, recalls that one day he saw “coming out of a hotel, accompanied by a very white woman with a fine Spanish body, a large and elegant [man]. It was Antonio Maceo. His manner was cultured, his intelligence lively and vivacious. He was a man of ebony”.
Maceo was indispensable for the victory of the Cuban liberation movement. The duo he formed with Máximo Gómez was the main concern of the Spanish monarchy. That Spain would lose its last important bastion in the hemisphere depended on them. Hence the impetuous phrase, and I quote: “(Winning) the Cuban War is only a matter of two happy bullets […] to be used against Maceo and Gomez”.
But, just as his enemies sought to eliminate Maceo, the Bronze Titan, there were others who considered him indispensable. This was the opinion of José Martí, the most intelligent and self-sacrificing figure in the struggle for Cuban Independence. Despite the differences, Martí demonstrated a patriotic humility in his relationship with Generals Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo.
This explains why Martí went to Costa Rica twice to see Maceo. Later, in November 1894, after the attempt in Costa Rica on the life of Maceo, with his unique prose, Martí wrote an article from New York in which he said:
“Let the Spanish government use as many assassins as it pleases. General Maceo and his comrades will in due time, in any case, be given the position of honor and sacrifice that the homeland bestows on them. Assassins can do nothing against the defenders of freedom. The infamous stab that wounds the revolution, that wounds the hero comes from those who criminally seek to extinguish the aspiration of a people”. Strictly speaking, to wound Maceo was to wound the heart of Cuba.
Although Catarino knew Maceo, he finally chose to link up with the radical Colombian general Avelino Rosas and his confidant, journalist and writer Francisco Pereira Castro. At that time, among other Colombians, the famous General Rafael Uribe Uribe, also a friend of Maceo’s, was conspiring in Costa Rica. He inspired Gabriel García Márquez to create the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía in his famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Facing all kinds of adversities, betrayals, and hardships, as usually occurs in these struggles, Rosas was able to define and undertake a revolutionary plan to rescue Colombia from the conservatives. Thus, he ordered Catarino to take action to seize the barracks and the port of Bocas del Toro, now in Panama.
Catarino’s anticipated expedition began in early February 1895 almost at the same time as Maceo’s voyage to Cuba.
We owe the best information about Catarino’s incursion and its tragic end to Donaldo Velasco, the commander of the ports of Bocas del Toro and Colon, who, the year after the events in question, that is, in 1896, published a booklet in which in good prose he narrated everything that occurred. Thanks to this cultured conservative, we know the details of the final odyssey of the revolutionary Catarino Erasmo Garza.
The mission was not an easy one, but the idealism of the revolutionaries is an extraordinary source of inspiration and represents a very powerful force.
Once the landing was made in Boca del Toro, after four o’clock in the morning of March 8, 1895, the guerrilla chiefs positioned the 30 combatants to simultaneously attack the police and military barracks. Velasco recognized that “they had managed to surprise us when we least expected it, in spite of so many warnings…”.
The fighting was intense and there was hand-to-hand combat:
In the first new minutes, several soldiers fell. Catarino led the action with passion and courage. However, “two almost simultaneous shots… mortally wounded him: … his agony was brief”.
Shortly afterward, at 5:00 a.m., the bugle of the soldiers sounded powerfully, playing a reveille as a sign of victory.
In the report on the battle sent to General Gaytán, who was in David, Panama, it was reported that five guerrilla fighters and nine soldiers had died, with eight wounded; “in the latter category, some, on both sides, died later”.
At 4 o’clock in the afternoon, Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodriguez, Francisco Pereira, and two other comrades were buried in a deep grave in the pantheon of Bocas del Toro, located on the seashore. “Where a man falls, he remains”, Che Guevara would say seven decades later. We are currently conducting an investigation to recover the remains of Catarino Garza and take them to Mexico.
The information of what occurred in Bocas del Toro made its way to all the islands and ports of the Atlantic Coast.
Porfirio Diaz found out about all this on March 11, through a cable sent by his ambassador in Washington, Matias Romero.
On whether Catarino was a revolutionary or, as it was said at that time, a bandit, besides the opinion each person might have, there is a verdict in of considerable value since it was sustained by a loyal and proud conservative, the Colombian Donaldo Velasco. In his text, this important protagonist and witness of the final events could not hide his deep admiration for Catarino, and I quote: “…He was not, in my opinion, the vulgar bandit portrayed by the Americans […]. Even after his death, he inspired respect…”.
This story could not end without clarifying that, even after seizing the Bocas del Toro barracks, Catarino went on to defeat an even more powerful enemy. At dawn, at the entrance of the bay, the Atlanta, an imposing U.S, warship, awaited him with its cannons; a steel hull of 96 meters in length and 284 U.S. Navy sailors. All this firepower, to pursue and annihilate, pardon the paradox, Catarino “the pirate”. Those were the times when the North Americans had decided to become the owners of the hemisphere and defined what they considered their vital physical space in order to then undertake the conquest of the world. Annexations, independence, the creation of new countries, free associated states, protectorates, military bases, landings, and invasions to put in and remove rulers at will were at their peak.
We do not know if it was due to the commander’s false statements or by decision of the supreme command in Washington -as the crew of the Atlanta had no need to intervene-, the U.S. Navy certified that it had made, and I quote: “a landing in Bocas del Toro, Colombia, on March 8, 1895, to protect American lives and property threatened by a Liberal Party revolt and pirate activity”. The Marines were even decorated.
In a brief account and in homage to men of revolutionary ideals, the same year that Catarino and Pereira fell, Martí died; Maceo was assassinated in 1896; Rosas, in 1901. Such has also been the fate of many forgotten but sacred anonymous heroes and of others who will continue to emerge, because the struggle for the peoples’ dignity and freedom is a never-ending story.
Even though my text is already very long -that’s right, isn’t it, Beatriz?- I apologize. But in discussing our close relationship, Mr. President, I cannot fail to mention the outstanding and dignified role of Manuel Márquez Sterling, Cuban ambassador in Mexico during the coup d’état, imprisonment, and assassination of President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez.
In those times of vultures, when the U.S. ambassador organized the coup against our Apostle of Democracy, Francisco I. Madero, the Cuban ambassador, in stark contrast, tried to save his life, offered asylum to prisoners and spent a night with them in the quartermaster of the National Palace, where they were held for five days before the terrible crime of killing them in a rampage occurred.
Márquez Sterling relates in his book that my fellow countryman, Vice-President José María Pino Suárez, during that solidarity visit, prophetically confessed to him the following: “our imposed resignation provokes the revolution; murdering us is equivalent to decreeing anarchy. I do not believe, like Señor Madero, that the people will overthrow the traitors to rescue their legitimate leader. What the people will not consent to is that they shoot us. They lack the civic education necessary for the former. They have plenty of courage and strength for the latter…”.
And so it was, on February 22, 1913, at midnight, the president and vice-president legally and legitimately elected by the people of Mexico were cowardly assassinated. From that moment on, José María Pino Suárez’s prediction began to be fulfilled; as soon as they were killed, the Revolution furiously erupted. On March 26, 1913, Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, signed along with other revolutionaries the Plan of Guadalupe to restore legality and depose the coup general Victoriano Huerta, who had appointed himself president.
Huerta remained in power for a year and a half. Carrancistas, Zapatistas, and Villistas independently of each other fought him, and achieved the fall of the usurper, who, at that time, was unable to obtain the support of the U.S. government.
During the whole period of the Revolution, exiles lived in Cuba, both Porfiristas and Huertistas as well as Maderista revolutionaries. It is said that in the streets of Havana, here, they insulted each other. For example, the revolutionary from Veracruz, Heriberto Jara, one of the inspirers of the oil expropriation carried out in 1938 by General Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, lived here.
Nor can I fail to mention the supportive role of the Mexican people and governments in relation to the Cuban revolutionaries who fought against the Batista dictatorship.
As we know, and as you recalled, my friend President Miguel Diaz-Canel, when you visited us last year on the occasion of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s Independence, the passage of Fidel and his comrades through Mexico left a deep impression on the future expeditionaries of the ‘Granma’ and a host of legends everywhere, which are still spoken of with admiration and respect.
We will never forget [you said] that thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the Granma yacht set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. Seven days later, on December 2, the newborn Rebel Army, which came to free Cuba, disembarked from that historic vessel.
You went on to say:
Nor do we forget that only a few months after the historic victory of the Revolution in 1959, General Lazaro Cardenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people following the mercenary invasion of Playa Girón in 1961, marked the character of our relations.
President Diaz Canel also explained that:
Faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only country in Latin America that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by imperial mandate.
As for my convictions about Commander Fidel Castro and Cuban independence, I reiterate what I wrote recently in a book:
Over a long period, as oppositionists in Mexico, Fidel was the only one of the leftist leaders who knew what we stood for and distinguished us with his support in reflections, in writings, and in political deeds of solidarity. We never met, but I always considered him a great man because of his pro-independence ideals. We can be for or against him as a person and his leadership, but knowing the long history of invasions and colonial rule that Cuba experienced in the framework of the U.S. policy of Manifest Destiny and under the slogan “America for the Americans”, we can appreciate the feat represented by the persistence, less than a hundred kilometers from the superpower, of the existence of an independent island inhabited by a simple and humble, but cheerful, creative and, above all, worthy, very worthy people.
That is why, when I was visiting Colima and learned of the death of Commander Castro, I declared something I felt and still hold: I said that a giant had died.
My position on the U.S. government’s blockade of Cuba is also well known. I have said quite frankly that it looks bad for the U.S. government to use the blockade to hinder the well-being of the Cuban people so that they, the people of Cuba, will be forced by necessity, to confront their own government. If this perverse strategy were to succeed -something that does not seem likely due to the dignity of the Cuban people to which I have referred-, it would in any case turn this great offense into a pyrrhic, vile and despicable victory, into one of those stains that cannot be erased even with all the water in the oceans.
But I also maintain that it is time for brotherhood and not confrontation. As José Martí pointed out, the clash can be avoided, and I quote: “with the exquisite political tact that comes from the majesty of disinterest and the sovereignty of love”. It is time for a new coexistence among all the countries of the Americas, because the model imposed more than two centuries ago is exhausted, has no future or end strategy and no longer benefits anyone. We must put aside the dilemma of integrating with the United States or opposing it defensively.
It is time to express and explore another option: that of dialogue with U.S. leaders and convince and persuade them that a new relationship between the countries of the Americas, of all the Americas, is possible.
Our proposal may seem utopian and even naïve, but instead of closing ourselves off, we must open ourselves to committed and frank dialogue, and seek unity throughout the Western hemisphere.
Furthermore, I see no other alternative given the exponential growth of the economy in other regions of the world and the productive decadence of the entire Americas. Here I will repeat what I have expressed to President Biden on more than one occasion. If the economic and trade trend of the last three decades continues -and there is nothing that legally or legitimately can prevent it-, in another thirty years, by 2051, China would have a 64.8 percent share of the world market and the United States only between 4 and up to 10 percent. This, I insist, would be an economic and commercial imbalance that would be unacceptable for Washington and that would keep alive the temptation to wager on resolving this disparity with the use of force, which would be a danger for the whole world.
I am aware that this is a complex issue that requires a new political and economic vision. The proposal is, nothing more and nothing less than to launch something similar to the European Union, but in accordance with our history, our reality, and our identities. In this spirit, the replacement of the OAS by a truly autonomous organization, not a lackey of anyone but a mediator at the request and acceptance of the parties in conflict in matters of human rights and democracy, should not be ruled out. Although what is proposed here may seem like a dream, it should be considered that without the horizon of ideals you get nowhere and that, consequently, it’s worth trying. It is a great task for good diplomats and political leaders such as those that, fortunately, exist in all the countries of our hemisphere.
For our part, we believe that integration, with respect for sovereignty and forms of government and the proper application of a treaty for economic and commercial development, is in the interest of us all and that no one loses in this. On the contrary, it would be the most effective and responsible solution given the strong competition that exists, which will increase over time and which, if we do nothing to unite, strengthen ourselves, and emerge victorious in good terms, will inevitably lead to the decline of all the Americas.
Cuban friends,
Dear President Díaz Canel,
I conclude, now, with two brief reflections:
With all due respect for the sovereignty and independence of Cuba, I would like to state that I will continue to insist that the United States lift the blockade of this sister nation as a first step to initiating the reestablishment of relations of cooperation and friendship between the peoples of the two countries.
Therefore, I will insist in discussions with President Biden that no country of the Americas be excluded from next month’s Summit to be held in Los Angeles, California, and that the authorities of each nation freely decide whether or not to attend this gathering, but that no one be excluded.
Finally, thank you very much for the distinction of awarding me the Order of José Martí, whom I respect and admire, as I admire and respect Simón Bolívar and our great President Benito Juárez.
Thanks to the generous, supportive, and exemplary people of Cuba.
On a personal note, I maintain that I have never wagered, nor do I wager nor will I wager, on the failure of the Cuban Revolution, its legacy of justice and its lessons of independence and dignity. I will never participate with coup plotters who conspire against the ideals of equality and universal brother and sisterhood. Stepping backward is decadence and desolation, it is a question of power and not of humanity, I prefer to continue maintaining the hope that the revolution will experience a rebirth within the revolution, that the revolution will be cable of renewal, to follow the example of the martyrs who fought for freedom, equality, justice, sovereignty. And I have the conviction, the faith, that in Cuba they are doing things with that purpose in mind. That the new revolution is being made within the revolution. This is the second great message, the second great lesson of Cuba for the world, that this people will once again demonstrate that reason is more powerful than force.
Thank you very much.
Plaza de la Revolución, Havana, Cuba, May 8, 2022
Source: https://presidente.gob.mx/discurso-del-presidente-andres-manuel-lopez-obrador-en-su-visita-a-cuba/
AMLO speech in Cuba – transcript
Andrés Manuel López Obrador: “I have never bet, nor will I bet on the failure of the Cuban Revolution”.
By Andrés Manuel López Obrador
May 8, 2022
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Miguel Díaz Canel Bermúdez, president of Cuba, awards the José Martí Order to his counterpart of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: Abel Padrón Padilla/ Cubadebate.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: My friends:
Before reading the text I wrote for this important occasion, I would like to convey my condolences to the families of the victims of the accident that occurred in a hotel under repair here in Havana. A heartfelt embrace.
Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the Republic of Cuba: Thank you, President.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador: I would also like to send my congratulations to all the mothers of Cuba; those who are here on the island and those who are abroad. Our affection.
President, my friend Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Friends, friends all:
Without wanting to exalt the chauvinism that almost all Latin Americans carry inside, it is safe to say that Cuba was, for almost four centuries, the capital of America. No one coming from Europe to our continent could fail to pass by the largest island of the Antilles and, for many decades, Cuba was the jewel of the Spanish Crown.
Since ancient times, Cuba and Mexico, due to their geographic proximity, migration, language, music, sports, culture, idiosyncrasy and sugarcane cultivation, have maintained relations of true brotherhood.
It is even possible that in pre-Hispanic times there were Mayan inhabitants on the island from the Yucatan peninsula who, in addition to possessing a splendid culture, were like the Phoenicians, great navigators who maintained commercial relations, not only with the peoples of the Gulf of Mexico, but also with those of the Caribbean as far as the Darien.
But, leaving this very interesting subject to anthropologists and archaeologists, what is certain is that the first expeditions departed from Cuba towards the current Mexican territory and that from there, from here, the soldiers of Hernán Cortés sailed their ships to undertake the conquest of Mexico.
It is also known that, even with the differences that this intrepid and ambitious soldier had with the governor Diego de Velázquez, all the support to face the indigenous resistance in Mexico departed from Cuba by orders of the Spanish monarchy.
During the colonial period, in Cuba, as in Mexico, there were epidemics and overexploitation of the native population, which was practically exterminated. This explains the outrageous and painful boom -since the 16th century- in the African slave trade in Cuba and the Caribbean in general.
On one occasion, I visited the ancient city of Trinidad and went to the Museum of Slavery, and observed whips, shackles and stocks, of whose existence I was aware from mentions of the punishments provided for by the espionage laws that ruled in Mexico several decades after our political Independence from Spain, because it should be known that, in our country, slavery was not actually abolished until 1914. Furthermore, it should be noted that just three years earlier, in 1911, the great peasant leader Emiliano Zapata took up arms because the sugar haciendas were invading the lands of the towns of the state of Morelos with impunity.
However, sugar cane, royal palm and migration from Cuba to Mexico is most noticeable in the Papaloapan basin, in the state of Veracruz. Havana is like the port of Veracruz, and the most similar to the Cuban is the jarocho, the inhabitant of that region of the Gulf of Mexico. By the way, my paternal family is from there.
Our peoples are united, as in few cases, by political history. At the beginning of Mexico’s Independence, when there were still constant military uprisings and federalists against centralists and liberals against conservatives, there were two governors of Cuban origin in my state, in Tabasco, the infantry colonel Francisco de Sentmanat and the general Pedro de Ampudia.
Coincidentally, the confrontation of these military men would serve in these times to write an exciting, tremendous and realistic historical novel, whose short story is that one of these characters defeats his countryman governor militarily, and he goes abroad and recruits in New York a group of Spanish, French and English mercenaries, and they organize an expedition to invade Tabasco. But when the foreigners disembarked, they were defeated and put to the sword, while ex-governor Sentmanat’s head was cut off and on the recommendation of a doctor – at that time they were called facultative – they put it in a pot of boiling water, supposedly to delay its decomposition due to the heat and to be able to exhibit it for a few days as an example in the public square.
This inhumane procedure was not unknown in Mexico, nor was it strange in other parts of the world. The father of our country, Miguel Hidalgo, who proclaimed the abolition of slavery, when he was apprehended by orders of Creole and Spanish oligarchs, was not only shot, but also beheaded, and his head was exposed for 10 years in the main square of Guanajuato. Militarism is barbaric and belligerent conservatism breeds hatred and savagery.
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But history is not flat or Manichean, it is not of good and bad, but of circumstance. The General de Ampudia who ordered the execution of Sentmanat, because, according to his words, ‘a terrible and exemplary punishment’ was needed, then stood out in 1846 as defender of the city of Monterrey in times of the American invasion of Mexico; and later, in 1860, he served as Minister of War and Navy in the liberal government of Benito Juarez.
The list of Cubans who fought in the Mexican cause during the American and French invasions is extensive and fruitful. Likewise, there were Mexicans who fought here for the liberation of Cuba. In the times of Juarez, Mexico was the first nation in America to support Cuba’s independence and to recognize Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, the president in arms and father of the Cuban homeland. And what can we say about the great services rendered to our country by the Cuban Pedro Santacilia, son-in-law of President Juarez and his main confidant.
Juarez, during his exile was here and in New Orleans, where he met the woman who would later marry his daughter Manuela. Juarez’s confidence in his son-in-law was so great that, during the most difficult moments of the French invasion, it was Santacilia who took care of the family of the defender of our Republic in the United States; Juarez called her ‘my Saint’. No one received as many letters from Juarez as Santacilia, no one like him shared in the moments of greatest sadness and happiness of the “Benemérito de las Américas”.
In the midst of so many gestures of political brotherhood, it is unthinkable that José Martí would not have been so closely linked to our country. The Cuban writer and politician lived in Mexico City from 1875 to 1877. There he wrote essays, poetry and, among many other works, the famous theater script Amor con amor se paga.
He was a columnist for the newspaper El Federalista, linked to the liberal president Sebastián Lerdo de Tejada, and when the latter was overthrown by a military movement led by Porfirio Díaz, Martí left Mexico and, with the vision that only the great possess, wrote to his friend Manuel Mercado that he was leaving, I quote, ‘because a man declared himself by his exclusive will to be lord of men and, with a little light on his forehead, one cannot live where tyrants rule’.
Even though Porfirio Díaz’s assault on power caused Martí’s anger, it should also be taken into account that by that time he had already set his sights on participating in the struggle for Cuban independence, in addition to maintaining a constant epistolary relationship with his friends in Mexico and returning to our country for the last time in 1894.
There is a parallel story to Martí, the Cuban independence fighter, in the figure of a Mexican revolutionary, Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodríguez, who, despite being little known at that time, had the audacity to lead a guerrilla movement from Texas and call on the people of Mexico to take up arms to overthrow Porfirio Díaz, 18 years before Francisco I. Madero did it in 1910.
Catarino Garza was from Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and lived in Laredo and other towns along the U.S.-Mexico border. On September 12, 1891 he crossed the Rio Bravo in command of 40 guerrillas and on September 15, 1891 he gave the Cry of Independence in Camargo, Tamaulipas.
In one of his proclamations to raise the people against Porfirio Diaz, Catarino denounced, before others, the grave injustice of the dispossession of the lands of the indigenous communities, declared by the regime as wastelands to benefit large national and foreign landowners.
Catarino was a journalist and his manifestos were constant, profound and well written. However, in the military field he achieved little with his movement: he only gathered about 100 combatants and of his four incursions into Mexican territory he only won one victory at Rancho de las Tortillas, near the town of Guerrero, Tamaulipas.
But, even without winning many battles, the challenge of this guerrilla caused a deep uneasiness in the Mexican military elite that, in collaboration with the U.S. Army and the famous Texas Rangers, mobilized thousands of soldiers to practically seal the border and carry out a tenacious pursuit, village by village, ranch by ranch, in search of the rebel chief, his small troop and his sympathizers.
In these circumstances, Catarino disappeared and in the midst of conjecture the legend and the inseparable corrido arose, which in one verse said: ‘Where did Catarino go with his plans pronounced with his insurgent struggle for the Mexican-American?’
The mystery was cleared up when, some time later, it was known that Catarino appeared in Matina, a town on the Atlantic coast of Costa Rica; before that he had been hiding here, in Havana, protected by his independence Masonic brothers.
In those times, Costa Rica was the country of encounters and the ideal territory to prepare guerrillas and landings of the most important revolutionaries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
The president of Costa Rica, Rafael Iglesias Castro, was a tolerant liberal and respectful of the right of asylum; hence, leaders and military leaders prepared in the Costa Rican capital the independence of Cuba, the integration of the Central American countries and the reconstitution of the great Colombia, projects celebrated under word of honor in which there was also the commitment to support Catarino in the overthrow of the dictator of Mexico.
In this atmosphere of fraternity, Catarino established close relations with Cubans, Colombians and Central Americans. In Costa Rica there were around 500 Cuban refugees, the most prominent of whom was Antonio Maceo, the general who, together with Máximo Gómez, fought for the independence of Cuba and was considered a threat by the Spanish colonial government.
The figure of Maceo did not go unnoticed in Costa Rica. Rubén Darío himself, the great Nicaraguan poet, relates that one day, I quote, he saw ‘coming out of a hotel accompanied by a very white woman with a fine Spanish body, a large and elegant man; it was Antonio Maceo. His manner was cultured, his intelligence lively and quick. He was a man of ebony’.
Maceo was indispensable for the triumph of the Cuban liberation movement. The duo he formed with Máximo Gómez was the main concern of the peninsular monarchy; it depended on them that Spain would lose its last important bastion in the continent. Hence the reckless phrase, I quote: ‘The war in Cuba is only a matter of two happy bullets against Maceo and Gomez’.
But, just as his enemies sought to eliminate Maceo, ‘the Bronze Titan’, there were others who considered him indispensable. This was the opinion of José Martí, the most intelligent and self-sacrificing character in the struggle for Cuban independence.
Despite the differences, Martí showed a patriotic humility in his relationship with Generals Máximo Gómez and Antonio Maceo. This explains why Martí went twice to Costa Rica to see Maceo.
Later, in November 1894, after the attempt on Maceo’s life in Costa Rica, Martí wrote from New York, with his incomparable prose, an article in which he said: ‘Let the Spanish government use as many assassins as it pleases, General Maceo and his comrades will be, in due time, in any case, in the position of honor and sacrifice that the homeland designates for them. Assassins can do nothing against the defenders of freedom. The infamous stab that wounds the revolution wounds the hero of those who pretend to suffocate with iniquitous crime the aspiration of a people’. Strictly speaking, to wound Maceo was to wound the heart of Cuba.
Although Catarino knew Maceo, he finally chose to link up with the radical Colombian general Avelino Rosas and his confidant, the journalist and writer Francisco Pereida Castro.
At that time, among other Colombians, the famous General Rafael Uribe Uribe, also a friend of Maceo’s and who inspired Gabriel García Márquez to create the character of Colonel Aureliano Buendía in his famous novel One Hundred Years of Solitude, was conspiring in Costa Rica.
Facing all kinds of adversities, betrayals and hardships, as it usually happens in those struggles, Rosas was able to define and undertake a revolutionary plan to rescue Colombia from the conservatives; that is how he ordered Catarino to take action to take the barracks and the port of Bocas del Toro, now Panama.
Catarino’s announced expedition began in early February 1895, almost at the same time as Maceo’s expedition to Cuba. The best information about Catarino’s incursion and its tragic end, we owe to Donaldo Velasco, the commander of the ports of Boca del Toro and Colon, who, the year after the events, that is, in 1896, published a booklet in which he narrated, with good prose, everything that happened. Thanks to this cultured conservative agent, we know the details of the last odyssey of the revolutionary Catarino Erasmo Garza.
The mission was not an easy one, but the idealism of the revolutionaries is an extraordinary source of inspiration and constitutes a very powerful force. Once the landing was made in Boca del Toro, after 4:00 a.m. on March 8, 1895, the guerrilla chiefs positioned the 30 combatants to simultaneously attack the police headquarters and the military barracks. Velasco recognized that ‘they had managed to surprise us when we least expected it, in spite of so many warnings’.
The combat was intense and there was hand-to-hand fighting. In the first minutes, the casualties were of the soldiers. Catarino led the action with passion and courage; however, two almost simultaneous shots wounded him to death. The agony was short; shortly after, at 5:00 a.m., the soldiers’ bugle sounded a powerful bugle playing a Diana as a sign of triumph.
In the war report, sent to General Gaytán, who was in David, Panama, it was reported that five guerrillas had died and nine soldiers with eight wounded. Of the latter, from both sides, some died later. At 4:00 in the afternoon, Catarino Erasmo Garza Rodriguez, Francisco Pereira and two other companions were buried in a deep grave in the Boca del Toro cemetery, located on the seashore.
Where the man who was, I would say seven decades later ‘Che’ Guevara’ falls, we are now doing an investigation to recover the remains of Catarino Garza and take them to Mexico.
The information of what happened in Boca del Toro spread and reached all the islands and ports of the Atlantic coast. Porfirio Diaz found out on March 11, through a cable sent by his ambassador in Washington, Matias Romero.
As to whether Catarino was a revolutionary -or, as it was said at that time, a bandit, apart from one’s own opinion-, there is a very valuable verdict to support it: a loyal and proud conservative, by the Colombian Donaldo Velasco. In his text, this important protagonist and witness of the last events, cannot hide his deep admiration for Catarino; I quote: ‘In my opinion, he was not the vulgar bandit portrayed by the Americans; even after his death, he inspired respect’.
This story could not end without clarifying that, even after taking the Boca del Toro barracks, Catarino was summoned to defeat an even more powerful enemy. At dawn, at the entrance of the bay, waiting for him with its cannons was the ‘Atlanta’, an imposing U.S. warship, a steel hull of 96 meters (inaudible) and 284 sailors of the U.S. Navy. All this power to pursue and annihilate, paradoxically, the quote-unquote Catarino, ‘the Filibuster’.
Those were the times when the Americans had decided to become masters of the continent and were defining what they considered their vital physical space, in order to then undertake the conquest of the world. Annexations, independence, the creation of new countries, free associated states, protectorates, military bases, landings and invasions to put and remove rulers at will were at their peak.
We do not know if it was due to the commander’s falsehood or by decision of the supreme command in Washington – since the crew of the Atlanta had no need to intervene -, the U.S. Navy certified that it had made, I quote, ‘a landing at Boca del Toro, Colombia, on March 8, 1895 to protect American lives and property threatened by a Liberal Party revolt and filibustering activity’. The sailors were even decorated.
In a brief account and in homage to the men of revolutionary ideals, the same year that Catarino and Pereira fell, Martí died. Maceo was assassinated in 1896; Rosas, in 1901. Such has also been the fate of many anonymous heroes, forgotten but blessed, and others who will continue to emerge, because the struggle for the dignity and freedom of the peoples is a never-ending story.
Even though my text is already very long -true, Beatriz?- I apologize, I could not fail to mention in our close relationship, President, the outstanding and worthy role of Manuel Márquez Sterling, Cuban ambassador in Mexico during the coup d’état, imprisonment and assassination of President Francisco I. Madero and Vice President José María Pino Suárez.
In those times of the coup d’etat, when the U.S. ambassador organized the coup against our Apostle of Democracy, Francisco I. Madero, the Cuban ambassador, in stark contrast, tried to save his life, offered asylum to prisoners and spent a night with them in the National Palace, where they were held for five days before the terrible felony of killing them in a rampage.
Márquez Sterling tells in his book that my fellow countryman, Vice President José María Pino Suárez, during that solidarity visit, prophetically confessed to him the following:
‘Our imposed resignation provokes the revolution. To assassinate us is equivalent to decreeing anarchy. I do not believe, like Mr. Madero, that the people will overthrow the traitors to rescue their legitimate leader; what the people will not consent is that they shoot us. They lack the civic education necessary for the former, they have plenty of courage and strength for the latter.’
And so it was. On February 22, 1913, at midnight, the president and vice-president legally and legitimately elected by the people of Mexico were cowardly assassinated. From that moment on, José María Pino Suárez’s prediction began to come true: as soon as he was killed, the Revolution was unleashed with fury. On March 26, 1913, Venustiano Carranza, governor of Coahuila, signed with other revolutionaries the Plan of Guadalupe to restore legality and depose the coup general Victoriano Huerta, who had appointed himself president.
Huerta remained in power for a year and a half. Carrancistas, Zapatistas and Villistas fought him with relative independence among them, and achieved the fall of the usurper, who was unable to obtain, at that time, the support of the United States government.
During the entire period of the revolution, both Porfiristas and Huertistas and Maderista revolutionaries lived in exile in Cuba; it is said that in the streets of Havana, here, they insulted each other. Here was, for example, the revolutionary from Veracruz Heriberto Jara, one of the inspirers of the oil expropriation carried out in 1938 by General Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio.
Nor can I omit to mention the solidarity role of the Mexican people and governments with the Cuban revolutionaries who fought against the Batista dictatorship.
It is well known, as you recalled, my friend President Miguel Diaz-Canel, when you visited us last year on the occasion of the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Mexico’s Independence: the passage of Fidel and his companions through Mexico left a deep impression on the future expeditionaries of the ‘Granma’ and an accumulation of legends everywhere, which are still spoken of with admiration and respect.
We will never forget,” you said, “that thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the yacht ‘Granma’ set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. Seven days later, on December 2, the newborn rebel army that was coming to liberate Cuba disembarked from that historic vessel.
You went on to say:
‘Nor do we forget that, just a few months after the historic triumph of the Revolution, in 1959, General Lazaro Cardenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people, following the mercenary invasion of Playa Giron in 1961, significantly marks the character of our relations.’
President Díaz-Canel, also expressed that ‘faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only country in Latin America that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by imperial mandate’.
As for my convictions about Commander Fidel Castro, and about Cuba’s independence, I reiterate what I wrote recently in a book: Throughout our time as opponents in Mexico, Fidel was the only leftist leader who knew what we represented and distinguished us with his support in his reflections, writings and political acts of solidarity. We never met, but I always considered him a great man for his pro-independence ideals.
We can be for or against his person and his leadership, but, knowing the long history of invasions and colonial rule that Cuba suffered within the framework of U.S. policy, of manifest destiny and under the slogan of America for the Americans, in quotation marks, we can appreciate the feat that represents the persistence, less than 100 kilometers from the superpower, the existence of an independent island inhabited by a simple and humble people, but cheerful, creative and, above all, worthy, very worthy.
That is why, when I was touring Colima and learned of the death of Commander Castro, I declared something I felt and still hold: I said that a giant had died.
My position on the U.S. government’s blockade of Cuba is also well known. I have said quite frankly that it looks bad for the U.S. government to use the blockade to impede the welfare of the people of Cuba so that they, the people of Cuba, forced by necessity, will have to confront their own government.
If this perverse strategy were to succeed, something that does not seem likely due to the dignity of the Cuban people to which I have referred, it would, in any case, turn this great wrong into a pyrrhic, vile and despicable triumph, into one of those stains that cannot be erased even with all the water in the oceans.
But I also maintain that it is time for brotherhood and not confrontation; as José Martí pointed out, the clash can be avoided, I quote, ‘with the exquisite political tact that comes from majesty, disinterest and the sovereignty of love’.
It is time for a new coexistence among all the countries of America, because the model imposed more than two centuries ago is exhausted, has no future or way out, and no longer benefits anyone. We must put aside the dilemma of integrating with the United States or opposing it defensively.
It is time to express and explore another option, that of dialogue with the rulers of the United States, and to convince and persuade them that a new relationship between the countries of the Americas, of all America, is possible. Our proposal may seem utopian and even naïve, but, instead of closing ourselves off, we must open ourselves to committed, frank dialogue and seek unity throughout the American continent. Besides, I see no other alternative in the face of the exponential growth of the economy in other regions of the world and the productive decadence of all America.
Here I repeat what I have expressed to President Biden on more than one occasion: if the economic and commercial trend of the last three decades continues and there is nothing that legally and legitimately can prevent it, in another 30 years, by 2051, China would have the dominance of 64. 8 percent in the world market and the United States only four and even 10 percent, which, I insist, would be an economic and commercial disproportion that would be unacceptable for Washington, and that would keep alive the temptation to bet on resolving that disparity with the use of force, which would be a danger for the whole world.
I am aware that this is a complex issue that requires a new political and economic vision. The proposal is, no more and no less, to build something similar to the European Union, but attached to our history, our reality and our identities.
In this spirit, we should not rule out replacing the OAS with a truly autonomous organization, not a lackey of anyone, but a mediator at the request and acceptance of the parties in conflict, in matters of human rights and democracy. Although what is proposed here may seem like a dream, it should be considered that, without a horizon of ideals, one gets nowhere and that, consequently, it is worth trying. It is a great task for good diplomats and politicians such as those that fortunately exist in all the countries of our continent.
For our part, we believe that integration with respect for sovereignty and forms of government and the proper application of a treaty for economic and trade development is in the interest of all of us, and that no one loses in this; on the contrary, it would be the most effective and responsible way out in the face of the strong competition that exists, which will increase over time and which, if we do nothing to unite, strengthen ourselves and emerge victorious in a good fight, will inevitably lead to the decline of all the Americas.
Cuban friends.
Dear President Díaz-Canel.
I will end now with two brief reflections:
With all due respect for the sovereignty and independence of Cuba, I would like to state that I will continue to insist that the United States lift the blockade of this sister nation as a first step, in order to begin the reestablishment of relations of cooperation and friendship between the peoples of the two nations.
Therefore, I will insist with President Biden that no country of the Americas be excluded from next month’s summit to be held in Los Angeles, California. And that the authorities of each country should be free to decide whether or not to attend the meeting, but that no one should be excluded.
Finally, thank you very much for the distinction of awarding me the ‘José Martí’ Order, whom, as has been made clear, I respect and admire, as I admire and respect Simón Bolívar and our great President Benito Juárez.
Thanks to the generous, supportive and exemplary people of Cuba.
On a personal note, I maintain that I have never bet, do not and will never bet on the failure of the Cuban Revolution, its legacy of justice and its lessons of independence and dignity. I will never participate with coup plotters who conspire against the ideals of equality and universal fraternity.
Regression is decadence and desolation, it is a matter of power and not of humanity. I prefer to continue to maintain the hope that the Revolution will be reborn in the Revolution. That the Revolution will be able to renew itself to follow the example of the martyrs who fought for freedom, equality, justice, sovereignty. And I have the conviction and the faith that in Cuba things are being done with that purpose, that the new Revolution is being made in the Revolution, that is the second great lesson, the second great lesson of Cuba for the world.
This people will once again demonstrate that reason is more powerful than force.
Hugs and thank you very much.
Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the Republic: Well, it is my turn to close this meeting, which will be memorable for all of us.
First of all, good afternoon.
And I would like to express our deepest appreciation to the Cuban mothers, even when we are living a moment of pain and mourning in our country.
I would like to thank President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for this visit to Cuba in these turbulent times we are living through.
Our people, my friend President, receive you with great affection, respect and the admiration you have earned for your generous expressions and gestures towards Cuba. And we also thank you for your condolences to our people for the events we have experienced in recent days.
The relations between Mexico and Cuba are, as you have expressed it, historic and endearing. And you had given a lesson on how the very history between Mexico and Cuba provides the reasons to justify, to nurture, to continue to enhance those relations, and it is precisely for those purposes that this visit has been taking place, which confirms the nature of these ties and opens a path for their progress and deepening.
During this visit we have signed a declaration that consolidates a new stage in the bilateral relationship between Mexico and Cuba. Our Health Ministers published a cooperation agreement that facilitates taking advantage of all the health and scientific potentialities, joint efforts and wills that our two countries can develop in the field of health for the benefit of our peoples in this noble area.
We have also dealt with important issues of the bilateral agenda, of our bilateral relations, but we have also addressed regional and international issues.
I have thanked President López Obrador for his firm position, as he has expressed in his words, of rejecting the genocidal blockade imposed by the government of the United States on our country in the commercial, economic and financial spheres, and also the intensification of this blockade at the present time.
The declaration we adopted recognizes the commitment of both nations to the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a zone of peace, which was created at a Celac summit here in Havana, and the respect that both nations profess for international law.
I also expressed to our friend President López Obrador our appreciation and recognition for his role in favor of the integration of our America, as demonstrated by Mexico’s commendable work at the helm of the pro tempore presidency of Celac last year and its defense of full respect for the sovereignty and integrity of the States, as Benito Juárez always proclaimed.
In this sense, we agree on the inappropriateness of the unjustified incursions of countries of our region in hemispheric events, as it seems that it will happen in what could already be called the so-called Summit of the Americas, in quotation marks.
As President López Obrador has expressed, hemispheric relations must change profoundly. The Cuban Revolution assures him that it will continue its triumphant march of hope and future, and that Mexico can always count on Cuba.
President:
We believe that we have expressed on both sides will, efforts and integration and have made decisions for the benefit of Mexico and Cuba, and of course our peoples.
Viva Mexico!
Viva Cuba!
Díaz-Canel at Mexican Independence Day
Díaz-Canel: “Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba” (+Video)
Address by President of the Republic Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez at the civic-military parade on the occasion of the celebrations for the anniversary of the Grito de Dolores. Mexico, September 16, 2021
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Díaz-Canel recalled that “Mexico was the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag”. Photo: Estudios Revolución
(Shorthand Versions – Office of the President of the Republic)
Dear Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President of the United Mexican States;
Distinguished guests;
Dear Mexico:
Thank you for the opportunity you give us to bring Cuba’s grateful embrace to your beautiful patriotic celebrations for that Grito de Dolores that aroused so much libertarian eagerness in our region more than 200 years ago.
Among all the brothers that Our America has given us, Mexico counts, for many reasons, as one of the most dear to Cuba.
That affection that unites our lands begins with the dazzle caused by its deep and diverse traces in the literature and history of America:
“How beautiful is the land inhabited by the brave Aztecs!” said the Cuban José María Heredia in the Teocalli of Cholula, opening a fascinating door to that Mundo Nuestro, much earlier than that of the terrible conquest that began centuries later, with unrestrained slaughter and destruction, the Spanish troops coming from Santiago de Cuba, under the command of Hernán Cortés.
But no one would tell us more about Mexico than José Martí. I quote excerpts from his memorable speech delivered at the evening in honor of this country at the Hispanic American Literary Society in 1891: “(…) today we gather to pay honor to the nation girded with palm trees and orange blossoms that raises, like a flourish of glory, to the blue sky, the free summits where the whistle of the railroad awakens, crowned with roses as yesterday, with the health of work on the cheek, the indomitable soul that sparkled in the embers in the ashes of Cuauhtémoc, never extinguished. We salute a people that melts, in the crucible of its own metal, the civilizations that were cast upon it to destroy it!”.
Later, referring to the significant date we commemorate today, Martí said: “Three hundred years later, a priest (…) summoned his village to war against the parents who denied the life of soul to their own children; it was the hour of the Sun, when the adobe huts of the poor Indians were shining through the mulberry trees; and never, although veiled a hundred times by blood, has the sun of Hidalgo stopped shining since then! They hung the heads of the heroes in iron cages; the heroes bit the dust, with a bullet in the heart; but on September 16 of every year, at dawn, the President of the Republic of Mexico cheers, before the people, the free homeland, waving the flag of Dolores”.
Due to its characteristics, the Mexican independence process, which began with the Grito de Dolores, led by Father Miguel Hidalgo on a day like today in 1810 and was consummated 11 years later with the entrance of the Trigarante Army in Mexico City. It had a notorious component of social and indigenous demands that differentiated it from other processes that typified the independence era. Its impact was, without a doubt, extraordinary in the libertarian and anti-colonialist struggle in our region and particularly in Cuba.
It gathered ancestral aspirations of entire peoples that inhabited the territory, not only in Mexico, but also in Central and South America and the Antilles. It vindicated all poor Creole sectors -white, black and mulatto- submerged in misery, hunger and exploitation, and opposed the slavery of the blacks.
The broad popular presence had a decisive influence in its radicalization and in the realization of important social and political demands, which constituted an immense inspiration and encouragement for our independence movement.
There are many notable Cubans who left their blood and their names in the history of Mexico. The Cuban solidarity in Mexico’s confrontation with the Texan invasions in 1835-1836 and the North American invasion of 1846-48 stands out, especially the generals Pedro Ampudia, Juan Valentín Amador, Jerónimo Cardona, Manuel Fernández Castrillón, Antonio Gaona, Pedro Lemus and Anastasio Parrodi.
In March 1854, Cubans Florencio Villareal and José María Pérez Hernández launched the historic Plan de Ayutla, which was decisive in the rupture of the Mexican army and society with the dictatorial government of General Santa Anna.
As confirmed by the prestigious researcher René González Barrios, several of those men held key positions in Mexican political-military life and were governors or military commanders in important places in the country.
Two of them, Major Generals Anastasio Parrodi and Pedro Ampudia Grimarest were Ministers of War and Navy in the government of Benito Juarez during the Reform War.
In the Congress, the Government, in exile or in the war at Juarez’s side there were always Cubans. Prominent compatriots such as General Domingo Goicuría y Cabrera, and poets Juan Clemente Zenea and Pedro Santacilia, who was his son-in-law, secretary and agent of the Republic of Cuba in Arms before the Mexican Government, praised his magnificent work.
In the war against the French, the brothers Manuel and Rafael de Quesada y Loynaz, general and colonel respectively, served the Mexican army; colonels Luis Eduardo del Cristo, Rafael Bobadilla and Francisco León Tamayo Viedman; doctor commander Rafael Argilagos Gimferrer and captain Félix Aguirre. All of them would return to Cuba at the beginning of the Ten Years’ War.
It was Mexico, then, the first country to recognize our armed struggle and to open its ports to ships flying the Lone Star flag. The Congress approved it, Juarez pronounced it and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, President of the Republic in Arms, thanked him in a memorable letter to his Mexican counterpart: “…[it is] highly satisfactory that Mexico has been the first Nation in America to have thus manifested its generous sympathies to the cause of independence and freedom of Cuba”.
One of the main tasks that Pedro Santacilia would then fulfill, with Juarez’s consent, was to send to Cuba a select group of Mexican soldiers to contribute to the formation and training of the nascent Liberation Army. Mexicans shone in the fields of Cuba and their prowess inspired the troops and all those who heard about them.
Once again, the Father of the Cuban Homeland left a record of that dedication in a letter to the “Benemérito de las Américas”. Céspedes wrote: “Some Mexican gentlemen have come here and have shed their generous blood on our soil and for our cause, and the whole country has shown its gratitude for their heroic action”.
Two of those brave Mexican soldiers, veterans of the Reform War and the battle against the French Empire, reached the rank of Brigadier General of the Cuban Liberation Army and were part of its main chiefs: José Inclán Risco and Gabriel González Galbán.
Dear friends:
Because of that endearing memory that we share, we are moved and inspired by these acts that revere history and we return again and again to each line written for Mexico by José Martí, who forever links our two nations in all his work, but especially in his letters to his great Mexican friend Manuel Mercado.
It is also to that soul friend to whom he leaves in an unfinished letter, his resounding political testament: the will consecrated to the objective of “preventing in time, with the independence of Cuba, the United States from spreading through the Antilles and falling, with that force more, on our lands of America”.
Years before, on his way to Veracruz, Martí wrote: “O beloved Mexico, O adored Mexico, I see the dangers that surround you, I hear the clamor of a son of yours who was not born of you! From the North, an avid neighbor is curdling (…) You will be ordered; you will understand; you will be guided; I will have died, O Mexico for defending and loving you!”.
Here died for the Revolution, the young communist Julio Antonio Mella, assassinated in a street of this same city where Ernesto Che Guevara and Fidel Castro Ruz would meet, years later, through his brother Raul.
It was here that the young people of the Centennial Generation trained and organized their expedition. Here they forged friendships and affections that still endure and were immortalized in a song that is like a hymn of those epic times: La Lupe, by Juan Almeida Bosque.
From that Mexican period, among many others, the names of María Antonia González, Antonio del Conde, El Cuate, key in the acquisition of the Granma yacht; Arsacio Venegas and Kid Medrano, professional wrestlers who gave physical training to the troops; Irma and Joaquina Vanegas, who offered their house as a camp, will remain forever in Cuban history.
The passage of Fidel and his companions through Mexico left a deep impression on the future Granma expeditionaries and an accumulation of legends everywhere that are still spoken of with admiration and respect.
We will never forget that, thanks to the support of many Mexican friends, the Granma yacht set sail from Tuxpan, Veracruz, on November 25, 1956. From that historic vessel, seven days later, on December 2, the newborn Rebel Army landed to liberate Cuba.
Nor do we forget that, just a few months after the historic triumph of the Revolution in 1959, General Lázaro Cárdenas visited us. His willingness to stand by our people after the mercenary invasion of Bay of Pigs in 1961 marked the character of our relations.
Faithful to its best traditions, Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break off relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate.
Throughout the years, we have never broken what history has indissolubly united. Our two countries have honored their sovereign policies, regardless of the closeness or distance between governments. A very Mexican principle prevails: respect for the rights of others is peace.
There is unquestionable merit in those who have dedicated life and energy, heart and soul, to nurture that brotherhood with the tenderness of peoples. I pay tribute here to the sustained, invariable, passionate and firm solidarity that we always find in this land, which all Cubans must love as our own.
It was said by the Cuban Apostle, who also drew with his colorful prose a faithful portrait of this generous people when he declared: “As from the root of the land comes to the Mexican that character of his, shrewd and stately, attached to the country he adores, where through the double work of magnificent Nature and the brilliant touch of the legend and the epic, the order of the real and the romantic feeling come together in their rare measure”.
From those words until today, the common heritage built by an infinite list of prestigious intellectuals and artists of both nations has not ceased to grow. We are united by literature, cinema, visual arts, bolero and mambo.
It could be said that the significant cultural exchange between Mexico and Cuba reaches all manifestations of culture in its broadest meaning, inasmuch as it is no less influential the relationship in sports, especially, baseball and boxing, where the connection is so natural and deep that at times the exact origin of works and facts is lost and we must conclude that it comes from both.
Friends:
For these and other reasons, which do not fit in a necessarily brief speech, it is a great honor to participate in the military parade commemorating the beginning of the struggle for Mexico’s independence and to express our feelings before your Government and your people.
I do so conscious that it is a recognition of the historical ties and brotherhood existing between Mexico and Cuba, a genuine token of appreciation, affection and respect for which I am deeply grateful on behalf of my people.
The decision to invite us has an immeasurably greater value at a time when we are suffering the onslaught of a multi-dimensional war, with a criminal blockade, opportunistically intensified with more than 240 measures in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic, which has such dramatic costs for everyone, but particularly for the less developed countries.
We are facing, in parallel, an aggressive campaign of hate, disinformation, manipulation and lies, mounted on the most diverse and influential digital platforms, which ignores all ethical limits.
Under the fire of that total war, Mexico’s solidarity with Cuba has awakened in our people a greater admiration and the deepest gratitude.
Allow me to tell you, dear President, that Cuba will always remember your expressions of support, your permanent demand for the lifting of the blockade and for the annual United Nations vote to be converted into concrete deeds, something that your country has fulfilled in an exemplary manner towards our people.
We are deeply grateful for the aid received in the form of medical supplies and food to alleviate the combined effects of the economic harassment and the pandemic.
Mexican sisters and brothers:
In the face of the complex epidemiological situation facing the world, solidarity and cooperation among our peoples takes on greater transcendence.
For this reason, our health professionals and technicians did not hesitate to accompany the Mexican people whenever necessary. And we will do it again whenever they need it.
We recognize the excellent work carried out by Mexico at the head of the pro tempore presidency of the Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States, a mechanism of genuine Latin American and Caribbean vocation aimed at defending the unity in the diversity of Our America against the neoliberal recolonization project that is trying to impose on us.
As Fidel expressed in an act of Cuban-Mexican friendship held on August 2, 1980: “We will not tolerate anything against Mexico! We will feel it as our own. We will know how to be faithful to the friendship forged by centuries of history and beautiful common principles!
Long live Mexico!
Long live the friendship between Cuba and Mexico! (Applause.)
Mexico was the only Latin American country that did not break relations with revolutionary Cuba when we were expelled from the OAS by an imperial mandate, said Díaz-Canel. Photo: Estudios Revolución
Parade for the 211th anniversary of the Grito de Independencia of Mexico. Photo: Estudios Revolución
AMLO Zocalo Speech, December 1, 2019
Pueblo of Mexico ‘Guardian Angel’: AMLO, full speech in the Zócalo
December 2, 2019
Translated and edited by Pedro Gellert for CubaNews.
SPEECH DELIVERED BY ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR, PRESIDENT OF MEXICO ON THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF HIS INAUGURATION
Friends:
The change we are undertaking is on the horizon. In the neoliberal period, laws were made without considering the public interest. Now, the purpose behind the reforms to the Constitution is to guarantee the country’s development and the population’s well-being. For example, the main reforms and laws approved by the legislators have been those aimed at fighting corruption; the austerity law; asset recovery legislation to reclaim and return to the people what was stolen; the reforms to Article 28 of the Constitution to prohibit tax rebates; the classification of fuel theft, tax evasion, and electoral fraud as serious crimes; the elimination of presidential immunity so that the president can be judged for any crime while still in office; presidential recall referendums; popular consultations; the new labor legislation that guarantees free, secret, and direct voting in the unions; the health law to guarantee all Mexicans free medicines and medical care.
There is also the cancellation of the misnamed educational reform, as well as the constitutional reform that allows members of the Army and Navy to participate in public security tasks and creates the National Guard. In addition, I have sent Congress a reform bill to enshrine in the Constitution the right of senior citizens and people with disabilities to obtain a pension and for poor students at all levels of schooling to receive scholarships. In reality, these modifications represent a new Constitution that reflects the demands and will of the people who decided to undertake the Fourth Transformation of the country’s public life in a legal, democratic, and peaceful manner.
As I have said many times, the main task of the government is to do away with political corruption. We are putting the house in order from the highest levels of power. That is why we are cleansing the government from top to bottom, just as we clean the stairs.
The theft of fuel has been reduced by 94 percent, and tax waivers and write-offs for large business and financial corporations has been prohibited. All government purchases are being made in consolidated fashion and under the coordination of the Chief of Staff of the Finance Ministry. This year, the savings obtained in preventing corruption in the acquisition of goods and services will reach 200 billion pesos.
The budget of the President’s office decreased from 3.6 billion to 800 million pesos, a 75 percent decline. This is, in practice, republican austerity.
The formula of ending corruption and reducing the cost of government allows us to finance the budget without increasing taxes, without boosting fuel prices, and without indebting the country. The resources earmarked to finance social programs come from what is saved with the fight against corruption and with the elimination of luxuries and opulent expenses.
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We are implementing a new productive policy to support the popular economy, strengthen the domestic market, promote projects for regional development, encourage the participation of private enterprise, and intensify efforts to attract foreign investment.
In order to strengthen the popular economy, we have prioritized agricultural recovery. Direct economic support for planting crops has been provided to 2 million ejidatarios and comuneros (small-scale, semi-communal peasant farmers-TN) and small landowners; this includes members of indigenous communities and sugar cane and coffee growers. The program of uncollateralized, paperwork and interest-free loans for cattle raising was launched, benefitting 7,734 producers. This year, the Planting Life program is being applied in 575,000 hectares and has generated 230,000 permanent jobs. Next year it will be extended to more than one million hectares and create 430,000 jobs. The planter who cultivates his own plot of land will receive a 5,000 peso-per- month subsidy.
Thus, will are rooting young peasant farmers to the land, we are reducing migration, we are producing lumber, fruits, and food, we are rehabilitating the rain forest and woodlands, and are rescuing and protecting the native flora and fauna. In short, life is being planted. We are also preventing the overexploitation of aquifers and promoting population growth in the Southeast, where 70 percent of the country’s water is located. The use of transgenic corn seeds and the exploitation of hydrocarbons through the practice of fracking has been banned. We have supported fishermen by simplifying procedures to obtain permits with sustainability rules and we are granting them direct financial assistance.
This year, the decentralized public agency for food security Seguridad Alimentaria Mexicana (SEGALMEX) was created to administer the policy that we established of guaranteed prices and supplying the population with foodstuffs.
With the Interest-Free Loans for Well-Being program, 356,500 credits have been granted, without interest or complicated paperwork, to small merchants, businessmen, artisans, and those who earn their living as best they can.
The construction of 109 concrete roads is progressing in the municipalities of Oaxaca. We supply the resources to the authorities of local indigenous communities selected through ancestral customs, they manage them honestly and, as a result, employment is provided to women and men in the same villages. With these small but important work projects, migration is reduced and family and community life is strengthened.
It must be recognized that a major factor in strengthening the economy promoted from below, with the people and for the people, has been the contribution of our living heroes, the Mexican migrants, who in the first nine months of this year sent remittances to their families to the tune of 26.98 billion dollars, the highest amount in history.
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At the same time, we seek to strengthen the domestic market through a policy of wage recovery and a strategy of massive creation of productive jobs.
Thus far this year, according to data from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), 648,000 new jobs have been created. This is without taking into account those created by the Planting Life, Young People Building the Future, and the road construction with labor power programs and others that, together, surpass one million additional jobs.
The minimum wage increased by 16 percent, something that had not occurred in 36 years of neoliberalism. According to the IMSS, during our administration, the average salary obtained by its 20,727,424 affiliates increased to 11,352 pesos per month.
We have healthy public finances. From January to October, tax collection increased by 139.70 billion pesos compared to last year, that is, 1.6 percent in real terms. In October, annual inflation was 3 percent, the lowest since September 2016.
During our time in office, the peso has strengthened 4 percent against the dollar and the stock market has appreciated 2 percent. The economic growth that we hope for has still not taken place, but there is a better distribution of wealth; the public budget does not remain in the hands of a few, but reaches the majority of the population. We have completed a year in government and unlike other beginnings of the six-year presidential administrations, we have not rebated or condoned taxes to those who financed the election campaigns; we have not privatized public goods or properties nor have we declared war on anyone, just on corruption and impunity.
We have rigorously fulfilled all financial commitments. Salaries, benefits and pensions have been paid to workers and budgetary outlays have been paid to states and municipalities on time. There has been no further delay in paying suppliers. In addition, we have complied with recognizing and dealing with the enormous debt we inherited of 10.8 trillion pesos. So far we have paid 454 billion pesos in interest alone.
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We have begun basic engineering studies for the Mayan Train, and they will be completed on December 13 in order to carry out the bidding process on this important work project that will benefit five states in southeast Mexico. I would like to clarify that the project will depend on the outcome of the consultation we are conducting in the municipalities where the new railroad will pass through.
To further the integral development of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, work is already proceeding on the expansion of the port of Salina Cruz and the same will be done in Coatzacoalcos. Work has also begun on the modernization of the container freight train line that will connect the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
A free zone will be established in this stretch of land; that is, taxes and energy prices will be reduced in order to promote the installation of industrial parks that will generate jobs with good salaries.
We are successfully facing the obstinate attitude of the corrupt conservatives who resorted to legal sabotage in the construction of the new Felipe Ángeles airport, for which they filed 103 injunctions with the aim of preventing us from beginning work in Santa Lucía. But reason and the law prevailed and work on the project has begun. The military engineers have assured me that we will inaugurate the new international airport on March 21, 2022.
Since January of this year, the free zone program began along the 3,180 kilometer border with the United States. There, the Income Tax was reduced to 20 percent; the VAT was cut from 16 to 8 percent; fuel was made cheaper and the minimum wage was doubled.
The company Telecomunicaciones e Internet para Todos, a subsidiary of the Federal Electricity Commission, was created and the concession was obtained to offer nonprofit Internet service for all throughout the country.
We are proud to report that for the first time in 14 years, we halted the progressive decline in oil production. In 2018 oil production had decreased by 200,000 barrels per day and thus far during this current administration, not only have we not seen a fall in output, but by the end of the month we will be extracting an additional 50,000 barrels per day.
The country’s six refineries are being refurbished. Their production rose from 32 to 40 percent of their capacity. Construction has already begun on the new refinery in Dos Bocas, Paraíso, Tabasco.
The investment for the construction and maintenance of highways and rural roads is 42.5 billion pesos, of which 20 billion pesos are earmarked for the conservation of the country’s road network, something that had never occurred before.
The construction of the Emisor Oriente Tunnel has been completed. With this project, floods will be prevented in a good part of the Valley of Mexico. The Guadalajara Light Train will also be completed this year and the Toluca-Mexico City train is still under construction.
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The participation of private enterprise in the development of Mexico is a positive and necessary reality. A few days ago we agreed on a joint plan for the construction of infrastructure with 134 projects and an investment of 709 billion pesos. I would also mention that an agreement was reached with national and foreign companies that installed gas pipelines. It was agreed to recognize the contracts signed by the previous administration but rates were reduced and a savings of 4.5 billion dollars obtained for the CFE. This arrangement also guarantees the supply of gas, a key raw material for the generation of electricity and for the development of Mexico, for the next 20 years.
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In the first 9 months of this year, 26 billion dollars entered the country in foreign investment, the highest figure in history. From January to October 2019 our exports totaled more than 384 billion dollars, a 3 percent increase over the same period last year.
This year, tourism has grown compared to 2018. From January to September, 32.8 million international tourists arrived, 7.6 percent more than in the same period last year, injecting more than 18.56 billion dollars in the economy, 11.3 percent more than last year. I would like to emphasize the effective and timely intervention of the Ministry of the Navy to keep our beaches in the Caribbean free of sargassum seaweed. I would like to add that we are already the main trade partner of the United States and I feel that the new trade treaty will be approved, sooner rather than later, in the congresses of that country and Canada.
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We are committed, above all, to achieving a higher goal, namely, the general well-being of the population, material well-being and well-being of the soul, spiritual well-being.
At least half of Mexican households receive benefits from at least one social welfare program. Among the indigenous peoples, 95 percent of households already have access to at least one of the support programs and the figure will soon reach 100 percent.
I am pleased to report that eight million senior citizens have received their pensions of 2,550 pesos bimonthly, double what they obtained previously. This support will increase in accordance with inflation and includes both those who receive a contributory pension and those who had no income; in other words, it became a universal right.
Assistance is also provided to 790,000 people with disabilities, especially poor children, with a subsidy of 2,550 pesos every two months. Soon we will reach one million beneficiaries.
Scholarships of 1,600 pesos bimonthly are also being granted to poor preschool, primary, and secondary school students. In the case of high school students, the support is universal; that is, it is granted to all adolescents between the ages of 15 and 18 on average; and at the higher education or university level, 300,000 young people are being assisted with scholarships of 2,400 pesos per month. In total, more than 10 million students are receiving a scholarship, which means an annual investment of 60 billion pesos.
The Young People Building the Future program has provided work as apprentices to 930,000 youth who were previously discriminated against and characterized as ninis (those without work and who are not studying-TN). The federal government grants them a monthly scholarship of 3,600 pesos to train for a year in companies, workshops, public institutions, and social organizations, which facilitates their successful insertion into the labor market and prevents them from falling prey to crime.
The National Reconstruction Program serves the population affected by the earthquakes of September 2017 and February 2018, and has provided financial support for housing to 13,805 families. Schools and clinics and hospitals are under reconstruction and progress is being made in the restoration of temples and other structures or spaces catalogued as historical heritage sites.
We have begun the Urban Improvement and Housing Program, both in cities on the northern border and in tourist development poles, to reduce the contrast between luxury hotels and marginalized neighborhoods.
This program is bearing fruit in Tijuana, Mexicali, San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Acuña, Piedras Negras, Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa and Matamoros, as well as in marginalized neighborhoods in four tourist centers: Los Cabos, Bahía de Banderas, Acapulco, and Playa del Carmen. To date, 18,455 housing units have been built or refurbished, and the introduction of water, sewage, and pavement has begun, as well as providing the property deeds for homes in low-income neighborhoods in 14 cities. The INFONAVIT government housing agency has restructured 147,523 housing loans for the benefit of workers who paid debts that grew instead of decreased. Those who have covered 90 percent of their credit will have the remainder forgiven and will be able to receive their property deed. This modality has benefited 31,000 families. In addition, no one has been evicted from their apartment or housing, as was the case when the so-called overdue loan portfolios were sold to “coyotes”, collection offices or influence traffickers.
The vast majority of the poor cannot use the banking system. To remedy this situation, the federal government has created the Banco del Bienestar social welfare bank, whose main purpose is to allocate resources via cards to beneficiaries of the social programs. Next year, the Banco de Bienestar will increase the number of its branches from 433 to 13,000 throughout the country.
These offices will operate in integration centers located in areas with large populations in order to then serve more than 180,000 communities in the country with less than 2,500 inhabitants.
In the last six-year presidential administration, the so-called “educational reform” was imposed, which generated a bitter social conflict and led to unjustifiable repressive measures. Our government is committed to improving the quality of teaching and the material conditions of the country’s schools, to guaranteeing access to education for all young people, and to reversing legislative adulteration. Following an intense process of dialogue and reflection, the schools, the Federal Executive branch, Congress, and the national teachers’ movement reached a broad agreement that led to the approval of a new legal framework for public education.
With the new 2019-2020 school year, the School is Ours program began, which provides resources for the construction, repair, and maintenance of public schools to the Participatory Management School Committees, made up of students, teachers, and parents from each school. With this program, each school will receive its annual budget.
Resources are beginning to arrive directly from the federal treasury to the school, without intermediaries or cumbersome paperwork procedures. In the first stage, 103,000 of the 173,000 existing schools will be served. The amount of resources per school was defined as follows: for schools with from five to 50 students, 150,000 pesos per school year; from 51 to 150 pupils, 200,000 pesos; more than 150 students, 500,000 pesos. The initial budget is 21 billion pesos and we are reaching agreements with the state governments for the latter to contribute half the amount. Most have responded well and the first to accept was the governor of Puebla, Miguel Barbosa. The delivery of financial resources to 14,000 school committees has already begun.
The strategy for rescuing historical memory and promoting reading is functioning. The Fondo de Cultura Económica publishing house has issued 29 books by great writers in the Vientos del Pueblo collection with press runs of 40,000 copies, reaching a total of 1,160,000 copies. These books are sold at affordable prices ranging from 9 to 20 pesos. In addition, 8.5 million copies of the Castilla Moral (Moral Primer) of Alfonso Reyes were reprinted.
We made progress in supporting universities and public research centers with financial resources. This year, the National Council for Science and Technology, the CONACYT, has allocated more than 2.25 billion pesos to basic or frontier science. In addition, 24,453 new scholarships were granted to graduate students.
The Benito Juarez Garcia Universities for Social Wellbeing began their activities in March 2019 with one hundred campuses. Altogether, they serve 39,600 students from marginalized areas who receive scholarships of 2,400 pesos per month. These universities are staffed by 815 academics and administrative employees.
This coming January, the University of Health will start operating. It is designed for the training and education of doctors and nurses and is promoted by the Mexico City government.
The opening of what had been the former official residence of Los Pinos to the population has allowed 2.8 million people to visit the old presidential mansion and a project is already being developed, in coordination with the City Government, to convert the Chapultepec Forest and the land where the Army Weapons Factory was located into an artistic and ecological space of 800 hectares. Soon, very soon, it will be one of the most important cultural sites in the world.
We have created the National Institute of Health for Well-Being, which has begun to resolve four basic demands: supply of all medicines in hospitals and clinics located in the most remote communities of the country; the assignment of doctors, nurses, and paramedics in all population centers; the refurbishing and expansion of the health infrastructure, including the improvement of medical equipment, and the basification of more than 80,000 employees who have been working for a long time as casual workers and paid by fees rather than fixed salaries. The health budget will be increased by 40 billion pesos to guarantee quality level and free medicines, clinical analysis, and medical and hospital care, to all the inhabitants of Mexico as soon as possible. A national information campaign on addictions has already been launched, basically focused on young people, to provide orientation on the tremendous harm caused by drugs.
All types of sports are being promoted. The athletic delegation that represented Mexico at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, in July and August, won the largest number of medals in competitions outside the country. The 546 athletes and their coaches were given financial support for one year.
We did the same with the Paralympic athletes, who won 55 gold medals (a historic record), 58 silver medals, and 45 bronze medals.
The financial resources provided to athletes and the poorest villages in Mexico come from the sale of movable and immovable property seized from common and white-collar crime, and are delivered by the newly created Institute to Return Stolen Goods to the People.
The federal executive branch has undertaken a change in the public security policy model. Between 2006 and 2018, the government sought to resolve public insecurity and criminal violence through the deployment of the military and police forces, without addressing the root causes of the problem. The result was catastrophic and that strategy left in its wake a frightening toll of dead, disappeared, and injured; a human rights crisis; an unprecedented institutional decomposition; and very serious damage to the social fabric. The country still suffers the consequences of that erroneous policy.
It should not be forgotten that on January 2, 2007 in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Felipe Calderón, in an attempt to legitimize himself after the electoral fraud, ordered the participation of the Armed Forces in what he called the “War against Drug Trafficking”. This irresponsible decision led soldiers and sailors into a head-on battle against organized crime, under the slogan “cleaning up” no matter what, with executions, massacres, or extermination. In the military high command, the officers were told: you finish them off and we’ll take care of human rights. The best proof of this authoritarian approach is that this six-year period has the highest fatal casualty rate in combat since the Mexican Revolution. This indicator is obtained from the average number of alleged criminals killed or taken down in confrontations, compared to the number of those wounded and detained presented by the military forces to the authorities. In just two years of Calderón’s government (2011-2012), there were 1,898 confrontations in which 2,459 people died, 231 were wounded, and 1,519 were arrested; that is, the number of deaths was 709 higher than the number of wounded and arrested.
By the same token, in the last three years of the Felipe Calderón administration (2010-2012), the number of military and navy personnel killed in confrontations reached 154, an average of 51 per year, while in 12 months of our government, we can only regret that 15 members of the Armed Forces have lost their lives. Although the data speak for themselves, it is obvious that this absurd and deranged strategy will not be repeated and that the life and prestige of the members of the Armed Forces will never again be irresponsibly put at risk, much less used to commit excesses and execute illegal and inhumane orders.
The validity of the new security policy was clearly demonstrated in the response to the terror crisis experienced on Thursday evening, October 17, in Culiacán, Sinaloa, on the occasion of the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, son of Joaquín Guzmán Loera. In that true test of fire in which criminals took to the streets with high-caliber weapons and a high risk was posed, we preferred to halt the operation and release the suspect to avoid a massacre in which hundreds of individuals, mostly civilians, innocent people, would have lost their lives, according to the calculation of the Armed Forces. Our adversaries may say that we displayed weakness, but nothing is worth more than people’s lives.
The rationale for this new strategy is contained in the Development Plan, but I would like to reiterate that among the main actions to achieve peace is the creation of better living and working conditions, in order to address the root causes of violence: unemployment, poverty, marginalization, and the lack of jobs and educational opportunities for young people.
The new public security strategy also includes zero tolerance of torture and any other human rights violations. We are devoting time and resources to the search for those who were disappeared as a result of political violence. We will not rest until we know the whereabouts of the young people of Ayotzinapa. Protection is being provided to 365 journalists and 721 human rights defenders. Forty-seven political prisoners have been released and we will continue to free those still unjustly imprisoned, in accordance with applicable legal dispositions. Rescue operations have already begun for the remains of the 63 miners whose bodies have not been recovered since 2006 in the Pasta de Conchos Mine, Coahuila.
The Army and the Navy have not been used and will not be used to repress the people. The state is no longer the main human rights violator. I would like to thank the soldiers and sailors who have accepted the challenge of guaranteeing public security with full respect for human rights and with the regulated use of force for their support. The loyalty of the Armed Forces of Mexico is not in doubt; as a uniformed people they are participating fully, one hundred percent, in the transformation of the homeland.
I wish to reiterate that the decrease in crime in the country is our main challenge, but we are sure that we will bring calm to Mexico with the support of the people and with the coordinated work of the entire government, with perseverance, professionalism, honesty, and, above all, with actions guided by the principle that peace is the fruit of justice.
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The government of Mexico offers cooperation, friendship, and respect to all the nations of the world and particularly to the brother countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In keeping with our exemplary tradition of offering safe haven to those politically persecuted from around the world, we decided to grant humanitarian and political asylum to the President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, and his Vice President, Álvaro García Linera. Evo is not only our brother who with dignity represents the majority indigenous people of Bolivia. Evo was the victim of a coup d’état. And from Mexico to the world, we declare: democracy yes, militarism no.
Mexico’s membership in the North American region, together with the United States and Canada, is an unavoidable historical, cultural, political, and economic reality. The relationship with the first of these countries, with which we share more than three thousand kilometers of border, is marked by a history of invasions, territorial dispossession, and interventions, but also by an intense economic, cultural, and demographic exchange.
The Executive Branch strives for the bilateral relationship with the northern neighbor to be developed with adherence to mutual respect, cooperation for development, and negotiated solutions to common problems, among which the most significant are undoubtedly, the migratory phenomena from south to north and the expressions of transnational crime, namely, trafficking in persons and the transfer of arms, illicit drugs, and foreign currency.
Our government now defends Mexicans in the United States with full respect for the sovereignty of that country and with all the legal instruments at its disposal. The main such instrument is the network of consulates, which will operate as ombudsmen for migrants, within the framework of international conventions and U.S. laws, to prevent or remedy violations of the rights of Mexicans.
Here we once again express our condolences to the families of the victims of the collective murder in El Paso, Texas, and reiterate our condemnation of this hate crime motivated by racism and xenophobia, as well as the demand that the person responsible for this abominable aggression be punished in accordance with the law.
We also thank President Donald Trump for his solidarity expressed in the crisis of violence in Culiacán and after the sad and painful events in which three women and six children from the Mexican-American families LeBarón and Langford lost their lives. We recognize that in both cases he offered us help and respected our sovereign right to decide independently and freely. The government of Mexico will fulfill its responsibility to ensure justice.
In terms of immigration policy, we have formulated a radical change with respect to what was done in the recent past. Our purpose now is to ensure that no Mexican citizen is forced to leave his or her place of residence due to poverty, marginalization or public insecurity.
The Executive Branch has sought to involve the United States and the sister countries of Central America in this solution in order to participate together in the elaboration of mechanisms for economic reactivation, well-being, and development with the final purpose of ensuring that all people can work, study, have access to health care and well-being where they were born; that migration be optional, and not forced by hunger or violence.
Friends:
When it comes to good leaders, as José Martí said, “years go by maturing, not aging”. This applies to our special guest, Pepe Mújica, former president of Uruguay.
Friends:
A year ago, in this same place, I presented one hundred commitments to the people of Mexico. Today we have fulfilled 89 and only 11 are pending.
There is no doubt that in these first 12 months we have come a long way, but we are still in a process of transition. The old has not yet died and the new has not yet been born. However, we are not simulating, a new way of doing politics is underway, it is no longer more of the same, now we are guided by honesty, democracy, and humanism.
How much time will we need to consolidate the transformation? I think one more year, that is, in December 2020, the foundations for the construction of a new homeland will already be established. By then, it will be practically impossible, under any circumstances, to return to the era of infamy that the neoliberal or neoporfirista period (referring to the period of President Porfirio Diaz’s rule, broadly considered to be repressive and violent-TN).
I am sure that when we complete two years in government, the conservatives will no longer be able to reverse the changes or, to not be so categorical, they would have to make a tremendous effort and be very shamefaced to return to the dark days of corruption, of boilerplate contracts, of tax condonations, of electoral frauds, of abandonment of young people, of racism, of contempt for the poor, and of cold-blooded killings. But what I most desire with all my heart is that by then we live in a better society: freer, fairer, prosperous, democratic, peaceful, and fraternal.
During my long public life and, above all, in the most difficult moments, I have always had a guardian angel called the people. You have always supported me and sustained me. To the people I owe everything that I am, so I will continue to listen and serve them, and I will never, ever betray them.
Thank you for the protection and support I receive from you and many people. I am a mere leader; the people are the great lord, the master, the sovereign, the ruler, the one who truly rules and transforms.
I do not forget and I always remember what President Benito Juárez said with such depth and simplicity: “with the people everything, without the people nothing”.
Long live the Fourth Transformation!
Long live Mexico!
Long live Mexico!
Long live Mexico!
Zócalo – Mexico City, December 1, 2019
AMLO’s Victory: Parting of the Waters
AMLO’s Victory, a Parting of the Waters in Latin America
By Manuel E. Yepe
http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/
Exclusive for the daily POR ESTO! of Merida, Mexico.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.
There is no doubt that we are facing a wave of extreme right-wing movements. In order to understand what is happening, it is important to turn to a historical perspective. For that, we turn to the explnation given by John Bellamy Foster, Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon and editor of the US left-wing magazine Monthly Review.
The political map on both sides of the Atlantic seemed to reveal a rise of the extreme right in the world. In most European economies, from the largest and strongest to the smallest and weakest, there was an increase in electoral support for right-wing forces. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, these forces of reaction achieved one success after another with impunity by resorting to various forms of disguised violence.
But the clean and resounding electoral triumph of Andres Manuel López (AMLO) in the race for Mexico’s presidency seems to have been a watershed towards a different reality.
It is known that, against this great victory by the Mexicans, there was put into practice a great clandestine Berlin operation. It’s named after the name of the street in the Mexican capital where the clandestine headquarters of the imperialist operation operated.
They used cyber techniques similar to those used shortly before, under the direction of the CIA. They targeted the electoral processes in Brazil, Ecuador and other points in Latin America and Africa that left distorting fruits of popular will, Operation Berlin was carried out in Mexico. Only this time, in Mexico, they failed. Marxist theorists, along with most historians, have explained that fascism has as its backbone a political alliance between monopoly capital and a certain stratum of the middle class (or petty bourgeoisie).
Historically, the extreme right, too, has gained followers from the countryside, from established religions and from sectors of the armed forces. Fascism is always marginally present in all capitalist societies. It never emerges with all its strength on its own. It is consolidated as a movement only in those cases in which the capitalist class offers its encouragement and support, mobilizing the most reactionary elements of the “middle class”, which acts as the rear of the system.
If, in a period of economic and political crisis, the liberal state becomes an impediment to capitalist government, the existing powers will seek to preserve, consolidate and expand their rule through a regressive change in the capitalist state using the political forms provided by the extreme right.
Neoliberalism de-legitimizes the state. It encourages the development of radical right-wing or neo-fascist movements that oppose neoliberal political elites in the exercise of power and influence impoverished sectors through bribery.
Emerging neo-fascism in the United States is rooted in the “white supremacism” that goes back to slavery and the predominant thinking of the first British settlers, mixed with all sorts of new ideological elements.
Trump’s militant political base is estimated to be between 25 and 30 percent of the electorate and is located in the lower-middle stratum, with family incomes of about $75,000 a year.
It is a very white sector of the population that finds itself in a position of extreme economic insecurity. Its ideology is national-imperialist, with militant racism. A large part of this demographic group is associated with right-wing evangelism. It is something similar to the mass in Brazil that supported Jair Bolsonaro.
Trump’s main value for the ruling class lies in the fact that the radical right has been able to deliver added value to the rich: it has removed obstacles to market dominance over the whole of society.
The notion that coheres its social base is the construction of a wall along the Mexican border and new detention centers. These symbolize a war against poor immigrants. But the economic policies of the Trump administration have little to do with the demands of its social base. Trump has increased the power of financial monopoly capital, given huge tax and subsidy exemptions to big business and the rich. He has promoted economic and environmental deregulation, undermined unions, privatized education, expanded the penal state, destroyed the little progress which had been made in health care, and waged a relentless war for U.S. hegemony. Hence, Mexicans can feel like they are on the cusp of a well-deserved future.
October 31, 2019.
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