Venceremos

I am happy for everything he accomplished in life. What I will most miss about him are his colorful speeches. He was a brilliant speaker who could deliver a two hour speech without even glancing at notes. As an American I was fascinated to see a Latin American leader speak about the empire and the history of Latin America. He spoke in an illuminating manner about issues which American media outlets rarely discussed.

Contrary to how he may be depicted in the vast majority of the American media outlets, Hugo Chavez was not anti-American. One of the most quotable things he ever said was, "The U.S. is a great country, and it will always be a great country, but there will come a day when it will no longer be an empire, and the driving force of a hegemonic project. "

To refer to Latin American leaders such as Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa who assert their countries' soveriegnty as anti-American is like referring to black people who assert their civil rights as anti-white.

Among his accomplishments was to assert Venezuelan control over Venezuelan oil resources, an important achievement for any country, to control its own resources. He also diversified the client base for Venezuelan oil. Apart from this, unlike his American detractors who are obsessed with perpetuating their radical oil dependence, he was aware that an oil rich country cannot transform itself without diversifying its economy. He invested in education and provided free healthcare to all of Venezuela's citizens. He also made a commitment to achieving nutritional self-sufficiency within his country.

Yet, perhaps his greatest accomplishment is not any of the foregoing, but the fact that like other men who came before him such as Jesus, Buddha, Ghandi, King, X, Cesar Chavez, etc., he changed the consciousness of the world he lived in. He demonstrated that it is possible to create revolution and challenge the Anglo-Saxon hegemonists of the North American continent.

Congratulations Venezuela

The constitutional amendment which will permit Hugo Chavez to be re-elected to the presidency was approved yesterday with 54.85% of the votes in favor.

Hugo Chavez:, "You guys were capable of confronting lies, the attempts at manipulation by the oligarchy and its media. You guys have managed to defeat lies. The truth has imposed itself."

"You guys should study history. The complete history, and diffuse it. Like Bolivar said, history is an immense womb which contains more hopes than past events, and future events will be greater than the past ones. History is a teacher and a mother to the peoples."

50 Years of Revolution: Fidel Castro Speaks to the Americas in English



In May 2003, ex-Cuban president Fidel Castro was in Argentina to attend the inauguration of the new Argentinean president, Nestor Kirchner. Just two months earlier, the United States had plunged itself into a world of intellectual darkness by pre-emptively and illegally invading Iraq. Against this backdrop, Fidel Castro delivered a 2 1/2 hour speech on the steps of the law school to thousands of Argentineans, yet the footage has the feeling as if he was speaking to the entire continental mass that comprises the Americas.

In these videos, 44 minutes have been excerpted and provided with translation so that people from the English speaking world have the opportunity to form a better criteria by which to judge one of the most historically important Americans(in this sense, someone from either of the Americas) of the 20th and 21st century.

After 50 years of revolution, 47 years of an embargo, hundreds of assassination plots, one failed invasion, and unquantifiable lies and slander by the United States government and American media outlets, the world faces the prospect of a crumbling American empire and a Cuban revolution that will survive it in the context of an increasingly independent and socialist Latin America. The multi-polar world is a reality.

By 2003, the beginnings of change had begun to manifest themselves, as Fidel Castro explains towards the end of his speech. In these 44 minutes, he discusses the Bush doctrine, education, health, immigration, the Cuban electoral system, mass media and communication, and neoliberal globalization. He even touches upon "an international economic crisis."