BY MANUEL GONZÁLEZ AND CAROL VILLANUEVA
HAVANA - Nearly 600 students and youth from 66 countries
around the world gathered here August 15-18 to participate in
the International Seminar of Youth and Students on
Neoliberalism. The last day of the gathering conference
participants and invited guests filled the National Theater
for a closing session addressed by Fidel Castro.
The Cuban president was given an enthusiastic greeting by those who waited to hear him speak. The crowded theater was full of flags that represented the international character of the conference, including those of oppressed nations such as the Basque Country and Puerto Rico. Revolutionary chants echoed throughout the theater.
Castro thanked the organizers of the gathering, especially the Cuban youth who were the hosts. The conference was called by a number of student and youth organizations in Cuba, including the Union of Young Communists, the Federation of University Students, the Federation of High School Students, and the Center for Studies on Youth. Two international youth organizations also sponsored the conference - the Continental Latin American and Caribbean Student Organization (OCLAE) and the regional coordinating committee for Latin America and the Caribbean of the World Federation of Democratic Youth.
Commenting on the important themes discussed in various workshops of the conference and their relevance for fighters today, Castro explained the necessity for young fighters to study and work to develop political ideology - ideas that can be strengthened in combat.
The political ideas that guide the Cuban revolution, Castro said, are very strong. The Cuban people have demonstrated the truth of that by surviving the last 10 years of U.S. imperialism's economic war against them. For years, the imperialists have been expecting and hoping the revolution would fall, Castro noted, but the Cuban people know the revolution will not go away, that it works for the interests of the Cuban people, and tries to work on behalf of all humanity.
This fact was exemplified by the presence of a couple hundred youth from the Latin American School of Medicine who were invited to the closing session of the conference. The school was opened last September and currently enrolls 1,658 students from 15 countries throughout Latin America. The students pay no fees and receive materials like books for free. This is true for all Cuban youth as well. The right to an education is one of the fundamental conquests of the Cuban revolution.
The school is a true example of the internationalist tradition of Cuba's Socialist Revolution. "In these students we have great hopes," Castro said. "In Cuba there is always a congress of youth." The medical school "shows the world what can be done without many resources but with a lot of will," he added. The director of the school, Dr. Juan Carrizo, explained that after a hurricane hit Honduras last year the first volunteers to land were students from the Latin American School of Medicine.
Castro mentioned that in two years 6,000 students from other countries will have passed through schools in Cuba and will have had the chance to be a part of Cuban society. He referred to the thousands of African students from countries like Angola, Namibia, and South Africa who have studied in Cuba over the last decades.
Some of the themes Castro touched on throughout his talk were the status of Puerto Rico and its fight for independence, and struggles unfolding in the Dominican Republic and Panama. There is a "great effervescence of youth fighting for the sovereignty of their country and demanding the release of the Panama canal," Castro noted.
He spent some time describing capitalism's deep crisis and tremendous instability, which is felt around the world. Castro explained that the capitalist system has its own laws that the capitalists themselves can't control - even less so in a "globalized world" where whatever happens in one place effects another part of the world. Castro pointed to the example of the economic crisis that swept southeast Asia, which had immediate effects in all of the world.
"A group of politicians who wanted to adopt some changes in order to avoid a catastrophic crisis would not be able to do it," Castro noted. "The crisis is congenital and no remedy has been invented. There is no medicine or vaccination against it."
Castro reiterated the challenges that fighting workers and youth face as capitalism sinks deeper into crisis, but also painted a picture of the fighting power and potential of revolutionary struggle. To much laughter and applause, he used the analogy of an army of ants. "This world must be reinterpreted starting from the best of human thought, including ideas from the bourgeois revolution and those that arose 2,000 years ago with the rise of Christian teachings, as well as modern ideas from the society we currently have," Castro said. This century got to know the working class and its struggles. It got to know the most extraordinary attempts - not always successful - of transforming human society and truly establishing the principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity, which the great majority of the planet's inhabitants demand like oxygen.
This powerful force, said Castro, is meant for war, not for killing ants. And the world is a swarm of ants. Millions of ants can carry away an elephant, and that elephant is going to fall. Like all systems throughout history, capitalism has the genes that will lead to its death, and it also has the ones who will carry it away and eliminate it.
Ants possess more of a social instinct than does man, who possesses intelligence. Man, Castro commented, must create his own organization and unity through this intelligence. This gigantic swarm of ants must unite through consciousness. "I have no doubt that in the next century, this unsustainable world will change."
The Militant will feature further coverage of the International Seminar of Youth and Students on Neoliberalism in an upcoming issue.