It has been repeatedly said that the American people are the only ones
who could perform the Herculean task of bringing down the most
powerful and bloodthirsty empire ever known to humankind. Humanity
anxiously hopes to see the US people act, and will provide the
solidarity they would have earned.

The frequent US asymmetric wars against countries incomparably poorer
and militarily weaker than the only superpower have awakened the
humanitarian consciousness of many Americans who have strongly
demonstrated solidarity with these abused peoples.

The continuous embarrassing exposure of prisoners’ human rights
violations – including torture and serious indignities– in US public
or secret prisons scattered around the world, have awakened the
awareness of millions of Americans who condemn such injustice.

However, as a result of the manipulation and deceit they are subjected
to in their religious faith, or the naiveté that for years has been
instilled by the media dominated by corporate and banking elites,
Americans have been impregnated –for more than a century– with the
influence of a neo-conservative policy with fundamentalist traits that
today some consider their national feature.

After the collapse of the USSR and the European socialist bloc –which
meant the end of the Cold War– the US government intensified its
economic war against Cuba, a country that had remained as a thorn in
the throat of imperialism.

With new laws, there was a better definition of the set of tools aimed
at the economic and financial drowning of the island. There were also
other measures whose goal was to “cause shortages, suffering, and the
overthrow of the Cuban government” –as originally defined, more than
half a century ago, by the objectives of the US blockade,
euphemistically called an “embargo”.

Fidel Castro, called on the Cuban people to “tighten their belts” and
prepare for shortages and greater sacrifices. Cubans responded by
closing ranks around the leader of the Revolution. The results of
their heroic resistance can be seen today. Reason, justice, and
patriotism were victorious. The internationalist solidarity of
countless people around the world who stimulated the success of the
Cubans with their sincere help has also been victorious.

A uni-polar world followed the end of the Cold War. A single
superpower tries to impose its selfish interests on the rest of the
planet. The neoliberal globalization imposed on the world’s peoples,
with its consequences of hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental
degradation, discrimination, and many other ills of humanity. This
proves that it is not geographical fatalism, or an alleged racial
inferiority, but the very essence of the bourgeois order that
determines these evils in human societies.

Neo-liberalism, the order which the North spreads, imposes on the
South, and recommends itself as a panacea for all the misfortunes of
humankind which is precisely the basic cause of the great evil and
cruel abandonment suffered by the peoples living in the poor
countries, and the poor who live in the rich countries.

Neoliberal capitalism, with its praise and proclamation of the market
–not the human being– as the absolute axis for the functioning of
society, has increased poverty and expanded inequalities on a
universal scale. Constantly generating crises, the capitalist order
tries to ignore the asymmetries it causes, and always manages to
unload its effects on the humble people of the planet.

The capitalist system of relations, instead of calling for cooperation
and solidarity, calls for competition, selfishness and the law of the
richest.

With Bernie Sanders’ campaign for nomination as Democratic Party
candidate in the United States presidential election, Americans have
begun to hear about many things that were not mentioned in the recent
past.

Sanders offers to end nearly four decades of neo-liberal policies. He
condemns Wall Street greed, the corruption of the electoral and
political systems, and the stealing of the futures of young people and
American workers. He recalls the glorious struggles for equality,
civil and labor rights, and the rights of immigrants.

These are things not heard in the United States for a long time. Let’s
hope they are a prelude to a change that only the US people can
promote.

April 26, 2016. 

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.