Fidel Castro: A Nobel Prize for Evo Morales
By Fidel Castro
October 18, 2009 "Information Clearing House" -- If Obama was awarded
the Nobel for winning the elections in a racist society despite his being
African American, Evo deserves it for winning them in his country despite
his being a native and his having delivered on his promises.
For the first time, in both countries a member of their respective
ethnic groups has won the presidency.
I had said several times that Obama is a smart and cultivated man in a
social and political system he believes in. He wishes to bring healthcare to
nearly 50 million Americans, to rescue the economy from its profound crisis
and to improve the US image which has deteriorated as a result of genocidal
wars and torture. He neither conceives nor wishes to change his country's
political and economic system; nor could he do it.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three American presidents,
one former president and one candidate to the presidency.
The first one was Theodore Roosevelt elected in 1901. He was one of
the Rough Riders who landed in Cuba with his riders but with no horses in
the wake of the US intervention in 1898 aimed at preventing the independence
of our homeland.
The second was Thomas Woodrow Wilson who dragged the United States to
the first war for the distribution of the world. The extremely severe
conditions he imposed on a vanquished Germany, through the Versailles
Treaty, set the foundations for the emergence of fascism and the breakout of
World War II.
The third has been Barack Obama.
Carter was the ex-president who received the Nobel Prize a few years
after leaving office. He was certainly one of the few presidents of that
country who would not order the murder of an adversary, as others did. He
returned the Panama Canal, opened the US Interests Section in Havana and
prevented large budget deficits as well as the squandering of money to the
benefit of the military-industrial complex, as Reagan did.
The candidate was Al Gore -when he already was vicepresident. He was
the best informed American politician on the dreadful consequences of
climate change. As a candidate to the presidency, he was the victim of an
electoral fraud and stripped of his victory by W. Bush.
The views have been deeply divided with regards to the choice for this
award. Many people question ethical concepts or perceive obvious
contradictions in the unexpected decision.
They would have rather seen the Prize given for an accomplished task.
The Nobel Peace Prize has not always been presented to people deserving that
distinction. On occasions it has been received by resentful and arrogant
persons, or even worse. Upon hearing the news, Lech Walesa scornfully said:
"Who, Obama? It's too soon. He has not had time to do anything."
In our press and in CubaDebate, honest revolutionary comrades have
expressed their criticism. One of them wrote: "The same week in which Obama
was granted the Nobel Peace Prize, the US Senate passed the largest military
budget in its history: 626 billion dollars." Another journalist commented
during the TV News: "What has Obama done to deserve that award?" And still
another asked: "And what about the Afghan war and the increased number of
bombings?" These views are based on reality.
In Rome, film maker Michael Moore made a scathing comment:
"Congratulations, President Obama, for the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please,
earn it."
I am sure that Obama agrees with Moore's phrase. He is clever enough
to understand the circumstances around this case. He knows he has not earned
that award yet. That day in the morning he said that he was under the
impression that he did not deserve to be in the company of so many inspiring
personalities who have been honored with that prize.
It is said that the celebrated committee that assigns the Nobel Peace
Prize is made up of five persons who are all members of the Swedish
Parliament. A spokesman said it was a unanimous vote. One wonders whether or
not the prizewinner was consulted and if such a decision can be made without
giving him previous notice.
The moral judgment would be different depending on whether or not he
had previous knowledge of the Prize's allocation. The same could be said of
those who decided to present it to him.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile creating the Nobel Transparency Prize.
Bolivia is a country with large oil and gas depots as well as the
largest known reserves of lithium, a mineral currently in great demand for
the storage and use of energy.
Before his sixth birthday, Evo Morales, a very poor native peasant,
walked through The Andes with his father tending the llama of his native
community. He walked with them for 15 days to the market where they were
sold in order to purchase food for the community. In response to a question
I asked him about that peculiar experience Evo told me that "he took shelter
under the one-thousand stars hotel," a beautiful way of describing the clear
skies on the mountains where telescopes are sometimes placed.
In those difficult days of his childhood, the only alternative of the
peasants in his community was to cut sugarcane in the Argentinean province
of Jujuy, where part of the Aymara community went to work during the
harvesting season.
Not far from La Higuera, where after being wounded and disarmed Che
[Guevara] was murdered on October 9, 1967, Evo -who had been born on the
26th of that same month in the year 1959-was not yet 8 years old. He learned
how to read and write in Spanish in a small public school he had to walk to,
which was located 3.2 miles away from the one-room shack he shared with his
parents and siblings.
During his hazardous childhood, Evo would go wherever there was a
teacher. It was from his race that he learned three ethical principles:
don't
lie, don't steal and don't be weak.
At the age of 13, his father allowed him to move to San Pedro de Oruro
to study his senior high school. One of his biographers has related that he
did better in Geography, History and Philosophy than in Physics and
Mathematics. The most important thing is that, in order to pay for school,
Evo woke up a two in the morning to work as a baker, a construction worker
or any other physical job. He attended school in the afternoon. His
classmates admired him and helped him. From his early childhood he learned
how to play wind instruments and even was a trumpet player in a prestigious
band in Oruro.
As a teenager he organized and was the captain of his community's
soccer team.
But, access to the University was beyond reach for a poor Aymara
native.
After completing his senior high school, he did military service and
then returned to his community on the mountain tops. Later, poverty and
natural disasters forced the family to migrate to the subtropical area known
as El Chapare, where they managed to have a plot of ground. His father
passed away in 1983, when he was 23 years old. He worked hard on the ground
but he was a born fighter; he organized the workers and created trade unions
thus filling up a space unattended by the government.
The conditions for a social revolution in Bolivia had been maturing in
the past 50 years. The revolution broke out in that country with Victor Paz
Estensoro's Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR, by its Spanish acronym)
on April 9, 1952, that is, before the start of our armed struggle. The
revolutionary miners defeated the repressive forces and the MNR seized
power.
The revolutionary objectives in Bolivia were not attained and in 1956,
according to some well-informed people, the process started to decline. On
January 1st, 1959, the Revolution triumphed in Cuba, and three years later,
in January 1962, our homeland was expelled from the OAS. Bolivia abstained
from voting. Later, every other government, except Mexico's, severed
relations with Cuba.
The divisions in the international revolutionary movement had an
impact on Bolivia. Time would have to pass with over 40 years of blockade on
Cuba; neoliberalism and its devastating consequences; the Bolivarian
Revolution in Venezuela and the ALBA; and above all, Evo and his MAS in
Bolivia.
It would be hard to try summing up his rich history in a few pages.
I shall only say that Evo has prevailed over the wicked and slanderous
imperialist campaigns, its coups and interference in the internal affairs of
that country and defended Bolivia's sovereignty and the right of its
thousand-year-old people to have their traditions respected. "Coca is not
cocaine," he blurted out to the largest marihuana producer and drug consumer
in the world, whose market has sustained the organized crime that is taking
thousands of lives in Mexico every year. Two of the countries where the
Yankee troops and their military bases are stationed are the largest drug
producers on the planet.
The deadly trap of drug-trafficking has failed to catch Bolivia,
Venezuela and Ecuador, revolutionary countries members of ALBA like Cuba
which are aware of what they can and should do to bring healthcare,
education and wellbeing to their peoples. They do not need foreign troops to
combat drug-trafficking.
Bolivia is fostering a wonderful program under the leadership of an
Aymara president with the support of his people.
Illiteracy was eradicated in less than three years: 824,101 Bolivian
learned how to read and write; 24,699 did so also in Aymara and 13,599 in
Quechua. Bolivia is the third country free of illiteracy, following Cuba and
Venezuela.
It provides free healthcare to millions of people who had never had it
before. It is one of the seven countries in the world with the largest
reduction of infant mortality rate in the last five years and with a real
possibility to meet the Millennium Goals before the year 2015, with a
similar accomplishment regarding maternal deaths. It has conducted eye
surgery on 454,161 persons, 75,974 of them Brazilians, Argentineans,
Peruvians and Paraguayans.
Bolivia has set forth an ambitious social program: every child
attending school from first to eighth grade is receiving an annual grant to
pay for the school material. This benefits nearly two million students.
More than 700,000 persons over 60 years of age are receiving a bonus
equivalent to some 342 dollars annually.
Every pregnant woman and child under two years of age is receiving an
additional benefit of approximately 257 dollars.
Bolivia, one of the three poorest nations in the hemisphere, has
brought under state control the country's most important energy and mineral
resources while respecting and compensating every single affected interest.
It is advancing carefully because it does not want to take a step backward.
Its hard currency reserves have been growing, and now they are no less than
three times higher than they were at the beginning of Evo's mandate. It is
one of the countries making a better use of external cooperation and it is a
strong advocate of the environment.
In a very short time, Bolivia has been able to establish the Biometric
Electoral Register and approximately 4.7 million voters have registered,
that is, nearly a million more than in the last electoral roll that in
January 2009 included 3.8 million.
There will be elections on December 6. Surely, the people's support
for their President will increase. Nothing has stopped his growing prestige
and popularity.
Why is he not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?
I understand his great disadvantage: he is not the President of the
United States of America.
Fidel Castro Ruz
October 15, 2009
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