US exports ‘violence’ to Latin America, says Fidel

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:38:00 GMT

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Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro says the US has never ceased its “exceptional cynicism” towards the revolutionary nations in Latin America over the past 50 years.

In an article titled “Is there any margin for hypocrisy and deceit?” Castro investigates Washington’s approach toward the Latin American nations especially those that opt to challenge its hegemony in the region.

Fidel writes that “the empire,” as he calls it, has altered its strategies over the years, but has never changed its objectives while facing revolutionary nations in the region.

He goes on to describe “violence” as the most exported products by the United States’ capitalist society during the last half a century.

In case of Venezuela, the ailing former leader maintains, “the empire” used all the tools available to it in an attempt to suppress the revolutionary nation and its leader Hugo Chavez.

Praising Chavez’s endeavors to eliminate class differences in a country exploited by former capitalist leaders, Fidel says that the US has always tried to undermine such efforts by the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution through accusing him of provoking war, unleashing a regional arms race and masterminding and promoting drug trafficking.

Fidel then points to the US-provoked coup d’état attempt in Venezuela on April 11, 2002 that was aimed at dismantling Chavez and his socialist revolution saying, ” the US government has ceaselessly plotted against the Venezuelan revolutionary process, just as it did and has continued to do against the Revolution in our Homeland (Cuba) for fifty years now.”

“After violently crushing the Revolution in Central America and thwarting, by bloody and repressive coups, the democratic and progressive advances in South America, the empire could not resign itself to the construction of socialism in Venezuela.”

While the US puts Venezuela under “savage” embargos, the long-serving Cuban leader says, it never hesitates to supply neighboring Colombia with “billions of dollars worth of arms, means of combat, aircraft and training to the Armed Forces.”

“The Yankees not only supplied weapons; they also instilled feelings of hatred against Venezuela among the troops they trained, as they did in Honduras, through the Task Force based in Palmerola.”

Referring to the military bases granted by the Colombian government to the US, Fidel says that “Wherever the US has military bases it supplies the combat units with the same type of uniform and equipment used by the interventionist troops of that country anywhere else in the world [sic].”

“The United States does not need soldiers of its own, as in Iraq, Afghanistan or the northern region of Pakistan, to plot acts of genocide against our peoples.”

Fidel said the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the regional states to react to US military bases and the threats they pose.

“The empire should know that whatever the circumstances, Latin Americans will fight tirelessly for their most sacred rights,” he concluded.

RB/MMN