Interview Granted to Journalist Iazonas Pipinis Velasco on January 16, 2015

Interview granted to journalist Iazonas Pipinis Velasco on January 16, 2015.

Journalist: Is this the first time you visit Acropolis?

Alejandro: Well, it is the first time I visit Greece and it was an old longing that has been made possible thanks to the solidarity with my people, because I am here invited out of solidarity, without spending a dime to the Cuban State, logically, I would not do it, and only because of that detail I want to make it evident here, I came invited by them and it has been an excellent visit, we have been able to exchange with the Greek people in a close way, in neighborhoods, towns and what we have discovered is a great appreciation for the Cuba people, and great respect and admiration for Fidel and Raúl.

In every encounter we have had the opportunity to thank the Greek people for the solidarity to my country for over 50 years of facing the American empire and in circumstances like this when for the first time in 50 years the president of United States Barack Obama accepted the mistake the 10 presidents that preceded him had made in the last 50 years. He said it had been a mistake, a failed policy and it had to be changed; it has been a moment, let us say meaningful, to travel to this country in these circumstances.

Journalist: In Cuba many things are changing, in terms of diplomatic relations with the United States, which initiates a new stage. What would the new day be like, let us say, for Cuba, I mean, the future of Cuba, how do you see it?

Alejandro: The future of Cuba is the one earned by a country, which has resisted for over 50 years against the most powerful empire on Earth. The resilience of its people marked this triumph, this success we are seeing from the point of view of international policy. I am referring to the Cuban people along with international solidarity, because they defeated an imperial position in the middle of the XXI century, and has demonstrated the potential of a nation, that albeit over 50 years of iron-hand blockade, with those measures, with permanent aggressions of all kinds, including terrorism of State against Cuba from that country, in the new circumstances we have the absolute conviction that we will move forward even more that we have.

Because as you know, my country has progressed a lot regarding all the parameters and rates of social development and those rates can be compared with those of the first world in several aspects and so we think that without that heavy burden that is the blockade, we can move forward a lot more and we will be able to build the prosperous and sustainable socialism to which we aspire, which is the will of the Cuban people, expressed in the last Congress of the Party, but that had a previous process of popular consultation and more than eight million Cubans, spoke and supported these Guidelines of economic and social policy of the Party and the Revolution, that were later approved by the National Assembly as the highest organ of the power of the Cuban State and today are the strategic guidelines of the nation to reach that prosperous and sustainable socialism to which we aspire.

Journalist: Many people say that in Latin-America now after the death of Hugo Chavez a lot of thing might change. That is to say, the socialisms established in Venezuela and in other countries like Bolivia or Ecuador, could disappear and that could affect Cuba.

Alejandro: Actually our analysis is completely the opposite of that one, and simply because the logic of history teaches us. The countries of which you were talking about, all lived times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where practically, the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves affected severely in their way of living, the precarious state of employment, in its subsistence conditions, where the unemployment started to take hold everyday more of the political space as the element of more impact, that has influenced the evolution of the social situation of those countries and the position several sectors have assumed, that even though it is not politics from the strict point of view, I mean, they have not been political movements, they have been social movements.

Let us say, if we are going to talk about the most recent, of the “Indignados” movements in several countries of the world, including Europe, those are social movements but that step by step will become political movements, inasmuch as the traditional bourgeois parties have lost credibility, those who have had, let us say, the main political influence in most countries of Latin-America and Europe in the last 50 or 60 years. But the most important thing is that those countries you mentioned, the countries that currently compose the core of Alba: Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, breaking with the unfair order imposed by the neoliberal adjustment policies promoted by Washington and the western powers, by breaking with that alone they already have a more favorable economic development, and even a better social development.

They have made a tremendous leap only by rejecting the neoliberal adjustment policies, making a statement from the social perspective, the capital has not been protected in any way, which is what neoliberalism stands for and the non-interference from the State. The other way around, they have looked for social policies, first from the political movements and then when they have acquired the power of those political movements have assumed as State policy a social policy, several of them with socialist organization, as is the example of Bolivia or Ecuador, where the results are important. Venezuela, what was Venezuela before Chávez and after Chávez?

Journalist: Do you think capitalism will never be applied in Cuba?

Alejandro: No, in Cuba was applied a ferocious capitalism, 60 years, Velasco, 60 years of capitalism that took the nation to the most precarious social situation, but also to a process of domination in every sphere.

Journalist: Do you think in the future it would be impossible to apply once again capitalism in Cuba?

Alejandro: Totally, because it is a people that lived that, it is a people that suffered it in the most cruel way, but besides, not only in the social order, in the economic order, in the political order, but also in the matter of repression. The repression simply, to what means did the United States turned to when it started losing prominence in Latin America: military dictatorships.

Then we have a case, for example, as the Nobel Peace Prize, Kissinger, known American scholar who later was National Security advisor to President Nixon, who later was State Secretary, and received the Nobel Peace Prize for playing an important role in reestablishing the relations between the United States and China, and however, was one of those who encouraged all the actions of the covert war against Cuba and political assassinations. So those are the contradictions one cannot understand.

That is why Cuba cannot go back to capitalism, because we know what all of those tragic experiences have generated for Latin America and the world, and we also know successful and positive experiences of socialism, not only in our geographic environment, as I was explaining in Latin America, we are seeing China. Today China is the first world economy, I mean, the first economy in terms of development. Let us see, the American economy in terms of GDP is still the first, but it is a broken economy.

United States is the most indebted country of the world. It has almost 17 billion dollars of debt with the rest of the world. Then it lives from the world’s savings. -Let me finish the idea because it is important - they live from the savings of the world, from the savings of the Greek people, from the savings of the Spanish people, from the savings of the French people, they live from the savings of the rest of the world.

All of those countries that save their currency reserves in the banks in dollars are simply financing the American economy, and that is why the average American citizen consumes twice and a half of its income. How is it possible to understand that? How can a society prosper like that? Only because it has the money printing machine, so when the economic situation is difficult as it has happened in the last depressive events you have seen, the most recent, the summer of 2008: the financial crisis that later became economic crisis, so how is it resolved: printing money.

That is the business, the privilege given to them by the famous conference of Bretton Woods in 1944, when United States emerges as the superpower after Europe and the rest of the world, mainly Europe, have collapsed after the war. Then basically with the financing of the war economy, emerged as the great power and logically after it remained as a superpower.

You know the history of the Cold War and I am not going to give you details, today we comprehend it is a declining superpower from that point of view and we see another, like I was saying is the case of China, which is a rising economic superpower that is certainly moving forward.

Journalist: Many politicians in United States say that the blockade against Cuba must continue because Cuba does not hold elections.

Alejandro: Repeat the question please.

Journalist: Many politicians in United States say that the blockade against Cuba must continue.

Alejandro: Why Cuba does not hold elections?

Journalist: Because they say, the American politicians, that Cuba since 1959 does not hold elections.

Alejandro: It is very interesting that you ask that question here in the cradle of the western democracy, seeing the Parthenon as background to this encounter, it is very interesting and I am going to stop and reflect on the subject, because I think it is the appropriate place to ask a question like that.

When we speak of the origin of the western democracy and the origin of the democracy precisely here in this territory that today occupies Greece, and as you know, that modern definition of democracy first emerged in the city states of the current territory of Greece. Coming from a society in which 30 thousand citizens had rights and 300 thousand were slaves and citizen without rights that lived in this territory.

So, that was the western democracy; some citizens had the prerogative of exerting their civil and political rights, but the others had none, they were either slaves, who basically did not even receive payment, they simply lived for a plate of food and also were subjected to brutal repression from a democracy that simply imposed itself by the force of the economic power of the power elites that ultimately decided that democracy.

That is why it is very important, because after that came the evolution of democracy in the world and the democratic experiences that used as reference this Greek experience.

I was saying, that is the evolution of the definition of democracy that later when it emerges, when the bourgeoisie experiences it in Europe, mainly after the thinkers like John Locke or Francisco de Secundat, better known with the name of the Baron of Montesquieu, whom is the one who states or outlines the new revolutionary political visions, because the bourgeoisie at that time was revolutionary, considering there was a prevailing feudal regime in Europe with very precarious conditions. People in this case had little, according the European experience within the European feudalism, servants had a little more prerogative than slaves, but that is regarding the raising bourgeoisie, because simply they saw that social regime was not good especially for the development of capital, so that was the end of that raising bourgeoisie. We are precisely talking about Europe after the Age of Enlightenment, the age of the development of the sciences, the arts, that begins to take force mainly in the XV, XVI, XVII century, and it begins, it even coincides with the discovery of America by the Europeans and the conquest of America.

America did not need to be discovered because simply America had the American-Indians; it had the people that lived there, the people originally from the region that came from very developed societies: the Incas, the Aztecs, and the Mayans. They really had developed societies, but well, then came the European vision, the conquest turn into a supposedly source of advance and growth to the medieval Europe and in those circumstances these new bourgeois revolutionary trend stated a new perspective of democracy, let us say they tried to improve the Greek democracy, to mention a referent. Then came the distribution of powers of Montesquieu, the guide of powers, the separation of powers between executive, legislative and judiciary in order to find a balance and the necessary counterparts to make the governing exercise effective, the exercise of democracy and also to represent all of those under the government.

So, was that what actually happened? Was the popular exercise what really prevailed in the bourgeois democracy? It can be said that in the XXI century that democracy they tried to establish as referent, the American democracy as the final and most completed of democracies, after the European experiences and its version in America through the democracy created in United State. I will tell you what my point of view is regarding the democracy we see today in those countries.

Can we say that the constitutional monarchies in Spain, Belgium or England are democratic? Those with superior chambers like the House of Lords in England, that still represent the English feudal nobility in terms of attributes above the region representatives, who are in the end the representatives supposedly elected by the population.

Many mechanisms exist, but those are mechanisms to preserve the power of the wealthy classes, of the classes precisely bourgeois above the powers and rights of the rest of the society. It is a reality. That is expressed in many ways.