‘Imperialism is the greatest wolf that ever existed’

How Far We Slaves Have Come! by Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for May. It contains the speeches of Mandela, who had been released the year before from a South African prison after 28 years, and Cuban President Castro to a rally of tens of thousands on July 26, 1991, marking the 38th anniversary of the opening of the Cuban revolution. Mandela paid tribute to the unparalleled contribution of over 400,000 Cuban internationalist volunteers, whose aid to Angola defeated repeated invasions by the South African apartheid regime. This helped pave the way for Mandela’s freedom and the dismantling of the racist apartheid system. The excerpt is from Castro’s speech “We will never return to the slave barracks.” Copyright © 1991 Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FIDEL CASTRO
All the Latin American capitals are surrounded by slums full of destitute people, and often the number of people who live in shantytowns and favelas in the capital cities is greater than the number who live in normal conditions. All the Latin American capitals are surrounded by slums, without a single exception.

Who is responsible for this? Is capitalism removed from this problem? Are colonialism and neocolonialism removed from it? Is U.S. imperialism removed from this problem? How can they come along now with the formula that what is needed is more capitalism to develop these countries? …

The United States used to be the center of capitalism, the richest, the most competitive of all countries. Following World War II it enjoyed complete hegemony. And now it has lost these positions. In many important industries such as automobiles, chemicals, electronics, steel, and others it has lost the position it once had, which has been taken up by competitors.

In the years following the war, the rate of return on invested capital was as high as 24 percent. For capitalism, the rate of return on investment is very important, because this is the money available to continue investing and developing. In the 1950s the rate of return was 24 percent, and now it is about a third of that, about 8 percent. …

So if Latin America is going to integrate into the U.S. economy, it is going to integrate into the economy of a financially ruined country and it is going to get the worst end of the deal, because what Latin America exports to the United States is principally fuel and raw materials. Sixty percent of what it exports is fuel and raw materials, and less than 30 percent is manufactured products. This is ideal for imperialism: to buy fuel and raw materials cheaply and sell manufactured products at very high prices; and Latin America needs to enter into world trade with manufactured products. These are the kinds of problems and challenges that face the Latin American countries; they are very serious.

You must forgive me if I have gone on about this, because I wanted to give you some idea of the realities in this world.

The famous Uruguay Round — which you must have heard mentioned many times — is not advancing. It consists of a series of negotiations and formulas that have been elaborated to try to promote world trade. And every day there is more protectionism in Europe, more protectionism in Japan and the United States. These protectionist measures are exercised only partially through tariffs. There are many other forms of protectionism: sometimes by establishing impossible requirements for obtaining approval for a product that a Third World country wants to export, sometimes through setting quotas that cannot be exceeded. And apart from all these calamities, the economy of Latin America is threatened by the three great economic blocs and their tendencies to create closed preserves in the economic field. So the peoples of our hemisphere have a very harsh future ahead of them, and that is why it seemed to us an important and historic first step that we gathered together on our own initiative.

We should not create illusions; we should not raise false hopes. This is a very long and difficult process. But the world does not face a very flourishing situation economically. The United States is suffering from the problems I mentioned and more of them; imperialism should not sing victory songs. Militarily the United States is more powerful than ever, and politically it has enormous influence; but economically it is weaker than ever and has very serious problems. …

We are internationalists, we are not narrow nationalists or chauvinists. We have shed our blood in other parts of the world, such as in Latin America and Africa. As Mandela recalled, for each person who went on internationalist missions, there were ten who volunteered to go. Is there a more noble people, a people more willing to express their solidarity, a more revolutionary people? The blood of the Angolans was our blood, the blood of the Namibians is our blood, and the blood of the South Africans is our blood! Humanity’s blood is our blood! [Applause]

Our ideas go beyond chauvinism or narrow nationalism. Our ideas extend beyond all borders. We live in the world that was given to us and we are fighting for a better world. Our minds, our intelligence, and our hearts are prepared for a much better world, for a superior world, for a world such as that desired by Marx and Engels, where men act as brothers to each other rather than preying on each other like wolves.

Capitalism is the greatest creator of wolves in human history, and imperialism has not only been the greatest creator of wolves but also the greatest wolf that has ever existed.

We who come from way back, who were conquered, who were exploited, and who were enslaved throughout history, what marvelous ideas we can defend today; what just ideas we can uphold! And we can think in Latin American and even world terms.

How far we slaves have come! [Applause]

But now internationalism means defending and preserving the Cuban revolution; that is our greatest internationalist duty. [Applause] Because when there is a flag like ours, which represents ideas as just as ours, then to defend this trench, this bastion of socialism, is the greatest service we can offer to humanity.

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