The living and the dead

(Fidel Castro's latest newspaper column)

(The following s a Miami Herald translation of Fidel Castro's latest newspaper column. Words in brackets [] are the translator's clarifications).

You may think that your small ship is moving up the river, but, if the current is stronger, it is going backward.

Do not make shameful concessions to the Empire's ideology, I said, and I repeat that today.

Nobody will ever read from my humble pen an opportunistic praise that might debase his behavior.

For this reason, I resolutely support the decision by the Party and the Council of State to replace the Minister of Education.

As is known, ever since I gained a revolutionary conscience, I have consecrated my whole life primarily to the topic of education, from the Literacy Campaign to the universalization of higher learning. Even under conditions of economic blockade and aggression, we managed to reach a privileged and unique place in the world.

The titular in that post, Luis Ignacio Gómez Gutiérrez, was truly worn out. He had lost energy and revolutionary conscience. He should not have delivered those latest speeches and spoken about future meetings between educators from the hemisphere and the world, exalting a labor that was the genuine fruit of numerous revolutionary cadres, not personal, as he attempted to make the guests believe.

I truly regret if any of our devoted teachers interpreted that as an unfair statement.

I must point out that in the course of 10 years, he has traveled abroad more than 70 times. In the past three, he did it at the rate of one trip per month, always using the pretext of [promoting] Cuba's international cooperation. For this and other elements of judgment, we no longer have confidence in him; clearer yet, no confidence at all.

Who should replace him? That was another aspect of the problem. It needed to be done, and quickly. The search involved many. From the best [candidates], a list of 15 was made. Two had performed with notable success in that field. Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, a doctor in Educational Science, current dean of the Frank País Pedagogic Higher Institute in Santiago de Cuba. She graduated in 1980, accumulated teaching experience in the most varied fields of education, where she excelled. She is 52; when the Revolution triumphed, she was only 2, having been born in the capital of the ancient eastern province.

Cira Piñeiro Alonso, [with] a degree in Psychology, graduated with Golden Diploma, Provincial Director of Education in [the province of] Granma, 16 years' experience in diverse educational tasks. Her success as the person responsible for education in Granma is recognized by the entire country. She is 39.

Because of their merit and achievements, both comrades were proposed by the commission of candidacy and elected deputies to the National Assembly.

The two shall be brought into the Ministry of Education: Ena Elsa as the Minister and Cira Piñeiro as an aide to the Minister, and a future cadre in whatever post she is assigned. They will be replaced in their current tasks by professionals extracted from the inexhaustible lode of our docent and revolutionary personnel.

In this special and important case, my personal opinion notwithstanding, I was fully consulted and informed.

When I had the privilege to be similarly consulted on the eve of the election of the Council of State, I did not hesitate to propose that prestigious military chiefs who filled our heroic people with glory and moral authority, like Leopoldo Cintras Frías and Alvaro López Miera, mature, modest, full of experience and energy, younger than the man who (with military rank) is one of the strongest and most threatening candidates to the leadership of the Empire, be submitted to the National Assembly as candidates to membership in the Council of State. I know other cadres a lot younger than them, with great capability and excellent preparation, yet little known, on whom we can count.

I am not at all pleased to hurt anybody, but I must not hesitate to explain the facts with full clarity to protect the work of the generations that have contributed sweat, sacrifice and, not a few times, even health and life to the Revolution.

I hope that my compatriots understand that the forced labor that nature imposed upon me in this stage of my life obliges me, when dealing with friends and adversaries, to express what I think without subterfuge and with irrefutable moral proof at my fingertips. I therefore assume full responsibility for this decision, whatever the reactions and consequences may be.

Slanderous enemy publications will accuse me of applying psychological terror from my moral authority. That's absolutely untrue for those who are aware that the real psychological and physical terror -- with infinite human and moral suffering for our people -- would be the return of imperial domination over Cuba. In that sad event, the cause would be not the lack of literacy or culture but the lack of conscience.

I shall never resign myself to the idea that the desire for power be fueled by selfishness, self-sufficiency, vanity and the alleged indispensability of any human being.

I shall express my modest opinion while I can and need to do so.

We the living and the dead shall fight!

signed Fidel Castro Ruz

April 22, 2008

6:18 p.m.