CUBA: 'We will conquer injustice'

BY JONATHAN STRAUSS

PORTO ALEGRE — Cuban National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon
reaffirmed the internationalist and socialist perspective of the Cuban
Revolution in a speech from the chair of a thematic panel at the World
Social Forum on January 28. On the anniversary of Jose Marti's birth, Alarcon
quoted the Cuban national hero:“We will conquer injustice”.

Alarcon said capitalism begins the third millennium with a series of
lies. The “global village” promised by new technologies is dominated by
a few corporations and inequalities that are greater than ever. The US
proceeds with an arms race without reason, inventing new enemies: people
abroad are threatened by nuclear and conventional warfare and invasion,
while US workers are tricked by “armamentism”.

Perhaps the biggest lie, Alarcon said, is that with neo-liberalism politics
would retreat and the market would provide for the community's welfare.
Political intervention — in the interests of corporate profits — has strengthened.

The “new international order” is imposed by government, specifically
the United States government. This government exercises a historic concentration
of power over both allies and adversaries.

US workers are also affected: they suffer a high rate of exploitation,
a lack of health care and education, and poverty. Their alienation is evident
even in relation to the internet, where the desire to access it far exceeds
ability to do so, especially among Latinos and African-Americans.

The US also uses its position to benefit from the United Nations. While
benefiting from the presence of the UN headquarters in New York, the US
both pays less to the UN than it should and uses the UN to pursue its foreign
policy. The UN is not able to implement its decisions, such as those on
aid levels and the environment, if this contradicts US positions.

The US, Alarcon said, is trying to impose its model on the whole world.
Its model of representative democracy, however, is emptied of substantive
content. The domination of money has made a farce of democracy.

The US government serves the richest of the rich. The international
financial institutions are its tools, dismantling any other authority by
demanding privatisation and government spending cuts.

The rest of the population are not citizens but consumers, Alarcon said.
Abstention among them is increasing rapidly and corruption is inevitable.
But this is not a rejection by the politically aware.

Alarcon accused the US electoral system of scandalous fraud, lacking
the independent electoral commission the US government demands of other
nations. Holding elections on a working day meant only a part of the population
was expected to take part.

Alarcon noted the court battles over the US presidential election had
only been about recounting the vote, not those who were denied it. A new
vote would have recognised the popular prerogative, but in the US the people
have no more rights than to vote once every four years. Plutocratic rule
is the norm.

Then there are those who are not even citizens. The US had erected a
“Berlin Wall” on the Mexican border. More than 750 people have died trying
to reach California from Mexico. The chief role of the Mexican consulate
in San Diego is the collection of cadavers.

Migration — between jobs, if not countries — is becoming a way of life,
Alarcon noted. Job security and full-time work are disappearing.

Citizens retain the illusion of representation. But all the propaganda
about the “end of history” tries to convince them not to have aspirations.
The dream of those who rule in the US is “ideological cloning” and to make
US society one in which human beings don't count.

Alarcon said there is a need to move from the domination of profit to
a socialist society. Even some capitalist ideologists had predicted this,
but capitalism will not fall on its own.

A fight is needed for a truly human order, Alarcon said. He pointed
to the experience of the campaign against corporate tyranny, which has
united workers, environmentalists and supporters of democracy in a broad
front: a “new international”, opposed to sectoralism, is possible.

“The future will be socialist, or there will be no future”, Alarcon
said. This socialism will be different, the “heroic result” of each people's
struggle: it will realise people's ideals and be the apex of democracy.

From GLW issue 435