The People of the USA will Have the Final Word

Havana.

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 naivete 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 that 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.

This article was translated from the Spanish by Walter Lippmann for the invaluable CubaNews.

Manuel E. Yepe is a lawyer, economist and journalist. He is a professor at the Higher Institute of International Relations in Havana.