APPEAL/OPEN LETTER TO FIDEL CASTRO
URGENT NEED FOR UNITED LEFT: LATIN AMERICA AND CHINA
By: Andre Vltchek
Fidel,
I am writing this letter from the frozen shore not far from the northernmost Japanese city of Wakkanai. It is pristine and cold here, bitterly cold. When the wind blows, the snow powder takes to the air – on such occasions it looks like a real snowstorm although instead of descending from the sky, the snow is actually elevated from earth. It is as white as it gets anywhere in the world, and then blue late in the evening.
On the shore, huge antennas and satellites are facing north; they are pointed towards Sakhalin – an enormous island that at the end of the WWII was taken by the Soviet Union and now belongs to Russia. More than two decades ago Cold War officially ended, but the dishes, listening posts and who knows what else are still here, scaring the nature and silencing goodwill.
I love pristine snow and humble villages of Northern Hokkaido. I often come here to hike and to think. However, this time I undertook this journey of more than 2.000 kilometers from central Honshu in order to get away from my duties of a writer and filmmaker and to assume my duties of revolutionary. I have come here to address you – to write this chaotic and untidy appeal or a letter or whatever one should call it.
In November 2010 you quoted my article “The West Perfecting Its Techniques To Hurt China” where I am arguing that Peace Nobel Price given to Liu Xiaobo was nothing more than yet another cruel attack against China, aimed at disorienting Chinese people and discrediting tremendous achievements of their country.
I was deeply moved by your interest in my work and would like to use this opportunity to launch our dialogue and to share with you and with the Cuban people much that I have learned throughout my nomadic life, things that could help to put some recent events into perspective and eventually help our cause.
Above all, I would like this letter to be seen as my personal appeal to you, in which I am pleading that you do even more than what you are already doing to promote unity among Socialist and Communist governments and movements of Latin America and Asia.
* * * *
This seems to be the crucial moment in history: the West is solidifying its iron hand of total control and indoctrination that reaches far and wide – to all corners of the planet. What colonialism failed to achieve during few long centuries, neo-colonialism accomplished in just a few decades. The circle is closing, and at times there seems to be no escape from its powerful grip. Market fundamentalists, neo-colonialists and Western supremacists from both sides of the Atlantic are managing to choke all forms of resistance and only few islands of sanity are remaining: Latin America and Asia Pacific.
Against all odds Cuba has survived without having to compromise its revolutionary principles and despite the vitriolic propaganda from the US and European Union, it is still offering inspiration and hope to millions of desperate men and women in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world. One after another, Latin American countries are choosing the socialist path: some do it ‘with songs’ and fiery speeches like Venezuela and Bolivia, other cautiously but determinedly like Brazil. Even Chile, often described at the most market-oriented society on the continent is definitely socialist in its heart – something that was apparent during and after the 2010 natural disaster and outburst of solidarity that followed. Hopefully, four years of the rule of business mogul there will not change much in terms of general direction in which the country is developing.
It would be too early and too simplistic to say that we – the Left – won in entire Latin America. After all this vast part of the world includes huge and stagnant Mexico, worn out and divided Colombia as well as Honduras – country recently destroyed by the old-fashioned coup supported by the North. Despite the setbacks it is obvious that tremendous progress has been made. Camaraderie and cooperation between Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia, for instance, opened new chapter in internationalism. And progress should not only be judged by achievements. Tens of millions of people in Latin America demanded and were given back their dignity and hope.
More than ten thousand kilometers away from Latin America, China has also stood tall, building its own brand of socialism, lifting up hundreds of millions of people from clutches of poverty. Its revolution first drew inspiration from Western Marxist ideals but later combined them with Confucianism and other elements of its own enormous culture of more than 6,000 years.
The West has flatly refused to accept and tolerate this great and gentle power, which for centuries refused to colonize and brutalize the world the same way as Western empires had done. Tricked, defeated and divided by sly and power-hungry European states and later by Japan, China has had to clench its fists and fight for its independence and freedom, struggling and undergoing tremendous effort while build true socialist nation and defending its territorial integrity. Like Cuba, China has been facing subversion and infiltration from abroad, malicious propaganda and direct mingling in its internal affairs. As a matter of principle, the West is siding with all enemies of Beijing – it glorifies and canonizes anti-government terrorists as well as former feudal lords and religious buffoons. Especially cherished are those who are trying to destroy China’s territorial integrity.
The greatest fear, the darkest nightmare, true horror scenario for the Empire and its propaganda machine has been the possibility that one day the people all over the world would wake up and realize that China (PRC) is actually enormously successful because it is a Communist country! The Empire does and will do everything in its power to convince the world that ‘China is more capitalist than capitalist nations themselves’ (one of the favorite phrases of the propaganda machine). In the mainstream Western press China is described as Communist only when it is being bashed for selected issues like ‘democracy’ (the West is naturally claiming that its dysfunctional multi-party system that serves business interests instead of its citizens is the only genuine form of the ‘rule of the people’) or for ‘human rights’, mostly for jailing those who want to overthrow the system – something that would earn their counterparts in the West Guantanamo Bay-style accommodation. To simplify the situation: China is described as capitalist whenever its success is admitted and as Communist whenever it is criticized.
Who are the Western allies in Asia? Basically all those self-proclaimed anti-Communists who are ready to harm, ostracize or isolate China: from Indonesian fascist generals and politicians to Thai ruler (the closest ally of the US in Southeast Asia and the richest monarch on earth), from new servile and often extreme right-wing Mongolian leaders to a handful of those Chinese people who feel spite for their own nation and culture.
One of the darlings of the West is still Dalai Lama, that feudal lord and during the last few decades one of the chief propagandists of anti-Chinese hysteria, who in the past offered India thousands of its serves for the war with ‘Red China’. ‘Chinese opposition intellectuals’ are pampered and awarded every imaginable and unimaginable price, grant and funding. Visitor to any major London, New York or Hong Kong bookstore would be facing enormous offerings of anti-Chinese, anti-Communist fiction and non-fiction books painstakingly translated into English language, but would hardly be able to stumble over anything positive regarding Chinese Revolution, Chairman Mao and recent developments. As if more than one billion of people living in China had no right to have their voices heard! No empire on earth and no political block ever managed to develop such successful and effective censorship, as did the West! Instead of human censors with ink-stained fingers, censorship of Western regimes is anonymous – it is playing on people’s fear of losing job, fear of not being hired, fear of becoming undesirable or simply fear of something abstract and yet omnipresent.
It is interesting, one would say fascinating, that while we constantly hear from our publishers and film distributors that ‘writing political books is out of vogue, almost like committing commercial suicide’, political books are all over us, awarded prices and supported by mighty funding and scholarships. However, these are political books supporting regime’s dogmas: books criticizing China and Cuba, recalling hardships of Soviet era in former Eastern Block. All those Jung Changs, Andrei Makines and Sofi Oksanens! Would anyone buy it that they are not political? Of course they are, but being political and out of fashion is reserved to those works that are exposing horrors, genocides and mass murder committed by the Empire and by col
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