Mariela Castro Espín, in addition to being the head of CENESEX (Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education), is an active militant in all aspects of internationalist solidarity. Completely committed to the defense of the Palestinian Resistance and against Zionism, she now adds among her priority concerns, first, joining her people in developing to the fullest extent the political and military defense of Cuba against imperialist attack, and then, for the same reasons, total support for Bolivarian Venezuela.
Mariela and I discussed the harsh reality our communities face, and this is the result we offer to our readers.
We are living in a truly turbulent time in the world; a time marked by the perversity and cruelty inherent in capitalism, but now expressed in a completely stark and unsubtle way. Within this context, there are two or three fundamental paradigms, and we would like to hear your opinion on them. One of them is, obviously, what just happened in Bolivarian Venezuela: a planned attack, an act of war that ended with the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his partner, Congresswoman Cilia Flores.
In that scenario, there was combat, in which 32 Cuban combatants were vilely murdered, along with a significant number of Venezuelans, both civilians and military personnel. The first two questions are: To what extent does capitalism advance in its voraciousness, exercising this level of violence with complete impunity? Are you surprised by what has happened, this brutal attack against the sovereignty of a people who are not at war with anyone?
Honestly, yes, it surprises me. Because theoretically, everyone talks about how capitalism is in decline, and that in this process of decay, it will drag the entire world down with who knows what, with how many more catastrophes. And that’s what we’re witnessing. This isn’t new, but these are new ways of acting.
Because the two world wars were about dividing up the world. The colonization of the American continent was what allowed them to accumulate new wealth and strengthened the capitalist system.
But there have been many other times when we saw that new magnates need to accumulate more than they already have; and to do so, they need to appropriate certain resources, which leads them to develop all kinds of policies, speeches, economic forums, and mechanisms for economic control of other countries. Because what they have in their own nations is no longer enough for them; they are magnates and represent less than 1% of the world’s population.
This has been going on for a long time: the division of the world’s wealth. Now, the United States, after World War II, has occupied a position of leadership, of hegemony, which is becoming increasingly absolute. They truly want to control absolutely everything, deciding which riches to seize, which countries to invade to plunder their wealth and then manage it. And above all, they do so from a global dictatorial stance, not only from the U.S., but also from the figure of Donald Trump and the entire group of cronies who follow him and who benefit from all these policies.
I’m sure that none of what he’s doing crossed his mind. These are the orders, the mandates, given to him by the truly powerful, those who actually control most of that wealth. So, of course, it surprises me to see a man without limits, unpredictable, without ethics, a man sick with power since childhood, one of those who can buy anything with money and for whom anything goes.
A man with these characteristics, who has become president. Everyone who has sat in the emperor’s chair of that empire has had to do terrible things in accordance with that colonizing strategy, and now with these more clearly neo-Nazi, fascist nuances, and with a very strong economic power that conditions it, and that is Zionist capital, Zionist business.
Zionist capital that has collateral in different countries of the world, and of course also in Latin America.
That’s right. Many of those political hacks, like Argentina’s President Javier Milei and others, play into their hands and facilitate the continued appropriation of wealth by this global mega-corporation. Look at the current situation in Argentina, which is in danger of becoming an extension of Israeli territory. But this has been happening quietly in Central America as well. They have already been positioning themselves, buying up, and occupying the territories of the Indigenous populations, who are the ones who truly protect the land and natural resources.
In other words, these signs have been visible for a long time. All the wars that the empire has waged, led by the U.S., have taken place between the 20th and 21st centuries—mainly. It’s really a continuation of this process of dividing up territories and their resources. And of course, developing a narrative within the realm of cognitive warfare to distort reality and manipulate international public opinion to gain the support they need.
Or at least to eliminate the key opponents to their projects, those who could have stopped them.
Therefore, they have neutralized the United Nations and the mechanisms that humanity built to protect the entire system of rights. International law and the documents generated by the United Nations have truly been nullified and dismantled.
As the Canadian president surprisingly stated, there is no longer an international order, despite humanity’s efforts to create a new, equitable, and just global order. This order no longer exists, but what is coming is worse: a world without order, without rules, tailored to Donald Trump and his imperial whims.
Furthermore, these magnates, who represent less than 1% of the world’s population, must be pleased to have a representative like the U.S. president, who has no limits or scruples, who is not guided by any norms, not even the U.S. Constitution.
Speaking of that lack of external boundaries, it’s worth noting that the same applies to Trump operating within his own backyard. Do you see it that way?
The American people are suffering terribly; they are suffering as they have in other periods of their history, because what is happening is not new. And with ICE’s brutal persecution of migrants, which affects men, women, and even children, where people are murdered with incredible ease and impunity, it is clear that Trump’s fascism is lethal.
The American people have suffered this many times before; and they have been experiencing it recently with the protests in support of the Palestinian people and against the Zionist-imperialist genocide. Let us remember that this nation was created in the same way as the State of Israel, by usurping the territories of what we have called the First Nations. There were cultures, there were different Indigenous nations, many people who also died, as the Palestinian people are now, through genocide and ethnic cleansing.
What is happening today in Lebanon, Syria, and Palestine is the same thing they did to occupy and colonize the territories of North America, but also a large part of the world. Countries that have been plundered and impoverished, or that suffer theft through genocide. Thus, the same historical mechanisms that have characterized imperialism continue to repeat themselves, not only in their suffering, but also in their expansionist phase.
Many people, when talking about Trump or Milei, characterize them as somewhat “crazy.” Do you believe in that theory, or is there something more behind Trump’s actions?
No, he’s not crazy. He’s a psychopath who also grew up without limits. Anything goes, and “I get what I want,” by any means necessary.
And that’s what they did with this military aggression against Venezuela, where they bombed five Venezuelan cities—mainly the capital—to create a distraction while they went in to kidnap the legitimate constitutional president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro Moros, and his wife.
Let’s remember that Cilia Flores is a congresswoman with a long career, the First Lady, and also the First Combatant. Her kidnapping is also illegal; it has consequences and is a violation of internationally established norms. Truly, if international law existed, they wouldn’t be able to kidnap anyone; but ultimately, they do it to anyone who opposes them. They are brazenly unpunished.
Notice that the Mossad’s modus operandi doesn’t differ from the methods of U.S. imperial power, because they are one and the same; they were born almost simultaneously and have developed and strengthened each other. And they do the same thing everywhere they need to seize wealth, territory, eliminate entire populations, and assassinate popular leaders who bother them.
There are countless examples of leaders and scientists they have murdered in Iran, Palestine, and Lebanon. This way of acting is constant, and the world prefers to look the other way, especially the politicians, who make the decisions in each country, and who always put themselves at the service of the empire, out of cowardice, opportunism, but also out of great fear.
In many cases they say that the U.S. pressures and blackmails them.
Of course, they are pressured, they are coerced. This coercion doesn’t just lead to public humiliation, public attacks, or the creation of a global psychological and media environment to discredit certain leaders. The example of the Spanish president is relevant here. He wavers in his decisions because he suffers popular pressure within his own parliament, but he also faces very dangerous pressures. Not just pressure, but threats!
This has also happened to the judges of the International Criminal Court, who have been accused and threatened with death, along with their families. And yet they remain steadfast despite all these mechanisms employed by vandals, by international criminals. They use mechanisms of terror because they are inflicting terror to dominate. And that is how the capitalist system has developed, through terror and barbarity.
So, it’s a shame that there is so much distraction when the world is moving in such a dangerous way, putting all of humanity at risk. There’s a lot of distraction; some people don’t even know what’s going on and think nothing will happen to them. Some are far from certain geographical areas or say, “No, it won’t happen here, we’re friends with the U.S.” All of this is going to lead to a catastrophe that’s truly hard to imagine.
In this same context, returning to Venezuela, at the opposite end of the spectrum from what you’ve so aptly described lies the resistance of both the Venezuelan people and their revolutionary leadership. Amidst the catastrophe of the kidnapping of a president and the killing of civilians and military personnel, the effort was made to maintain constitutional order and move forward with a government whose fundamental objective is to rescue the hostages.
This is no small feat, given the blackmail of this imperialism that tells you: “Well, if you fight, I’ll bomb you; if you fight, I’ll torture you.” That’s the kind of blackmail that people in general face. And on another note, I also want to highlight—and I want us to discuss both aspects—the role of Cuba’s internationalist solidarity, its sending fighters to protect the Venezuelan president, fighters who battled to the bitter end.
It had been a long time since Cuba had lost so many combatants. Because Cuba isn’t invading countries. Cuba sends doctors, literacy teachers, and athletes. But what has happened is extremely serious. I wanted to ask you what the impact of this painful situation was on Cuban society.
The biggest shock was the first news that came that morning. First, a journalist friend called me: “They’re bombing Venezuela.” I told her, “That can’t be.” And she replied, “Go to Telesur so you can stay informed.” And I started watching the events, the kidnapping of the president and his wife.
Then I thought to myself, “No, this has gone too far.” Now we have to see how the world reacts to this situation, because it can’t be allowed. So the pain was immense, even physical, very painful. And I said to myself, “Our comrades were fulfilling an internationalist mission protecting President Nicolás Maduro ;and his wife, because there were already threats, and it was known that they were studying the president’s movements for some kind of attack.
That was known. And the threat was a kidnapping, openly declared, since the threats were blatant. But it sounded more like boasting. The thing is, in Cuba we take boasting seriously; because we’ve already had painful experiences, including the loss of valuable lives. So, the first thing I thought was: how many comrades must have fallen in that U.S. military operation, which wasn’t surgical, it was crude; the thing is, they have a lot of technology and they also suffered many casualties, but they don’t want to admit it. They suffered many dead and many wounded; because our comrades fought.
Of the 32 Cubans killed, some were sleeping during the changing of the guard, or they were drivers. But 21 fought directly. Just 21 soldiers faced 200 robots. Because you know how the U.S. army operates, heavily protected. But they are incapable of hand-to-hand combat. They lack that skill because it requires conviction. They’re defending the richest people in the world, not even their own people.
We know what our fighters are like; we know how Fidel, how the leadership of our country, has trained our fighters in the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the armed forces of the Ministry of the Interior. I knew we were going to suffer casualties. And they fought to the death, but they inflicted casualties on the enemy. And the U.S. doesn’t want to talk about that, because that would be a disgrace.
It wasn’t a successful surgical operation; it was a disaster.
And the worst part is all the violations of national and international laws and regulations to kidnap the president of a sovereign state without even having any grounds for argument. There isn’t a single valid argument to condemn him. Besides, who are they? They think they’re the world’s police!
In fact, they already have a lot of control, with new technologies, over people and countries. And they decide arbitrarily and always unjustly, against their own people and against other peoples.
Now with this Greenland situation… please! They are the ones jeopardizing relations with their allies. But they have proven to be so cowardly that we don’t know what will happen. We imagine they will take Greenland. Because they want it, because they have been coveting it for more than 150 years. There are many arguments justifying why Greenland should belong to them.
Do you think the Venezuelan revolutionary leadership is handling these difficult circumstances well?
I see that they are responding very intelligently, very united. In other words, this aggression has united the Venezuelan people. They recognize their leaders. They know that Nicolás Maduro is still in charge, he is still the president. And there are close relations, and decisions are being made amidst the very complex circumstances they are experiencing, which those who don’t understand will question. And they will say—as they are doing with so much fake news and so many lies they are spreading—that there are betrayals, that they are already surrendering to the United States.
But between Cuba and Venezuela there is a very strong, unbreakable unity. And we do not allow, and we are also combating, all these false reports that are trying to divide, to create distrust toward the current Venezuelan leadership. They are trying to discredit the interim president, Delcy Rodríguez, and other important figures in Venezuelan politics. They are trying to create informational chaos so that people will become complacent, just like they did with Gaza, where they tried to demonize its leaders.
They have brutally demonized the insurgent organization that has led everything that has happened in the last two years since the Al-Aqsa Flood, even though the leaders of this organization were elected by their people at the ballot box. So they have dedicated themselves to demonizing everything that has a positive impact and mobilizes consciences. Like when the Zionist Netanyahu said that they created this leading Palestinian insurgent organization, which is a lie. They did try to sell weapons to one side during the conflict and civil war in Gaza, but they never created it.
In the same way, now Trump says he likes Delcy, that she is wonderful; all to confuse people and make them believe that she is at his service and not at the service of her people. And fortunately, Venezuela has demonstrated, through all its internal work, its strengthening, and the popular support for President Nicolás Maduro and the policies initiated by Hugo Chávez. Venezuela is preparing for what’s to come.
And Cuba does the same, calling for the defense of the country.
Since the triumph of the revolution, Cuba has suffered attacks and aggressions of various kinds from successive U.S. administrations. Therefore, Cuba has had to develop a defense strategy that integrates its own experiences and those of other countries, such as Vietnam, as exemplified by the doctrine of people’s war.
This is a permanent strategy that is constantly being strengthened, and at this time, certain tasks are being reactivated with the entire population so that everyone knows how to respond to different types of aggression, and above all, so that we are kept up-to-date on the latest military tactics used by the U.S. military, particularly the use of new technologies, as we have seen in Gaza, or as we see now in the aggression against Venezuela.
In other words, this is one of the lines of world governance developed in Davos in recent years, which aims almost to eliminate national governments and establish a global government, a world government. Of course, to establish it, it has to be through a fascist and neo-Nazi dictatorship like the one they are developing. In short, our people are preparing for different scenarios in order to defend themselves. Cuba is not an aggressor nation; Cuba will defend itself, and in turn, support other nations in their defense.
This will be done through prior, consensual agreement, and at the request of the people, as happened in the past in Angola, and as happened recently in the protection of President Nicolás Maduro. In other words, what Cuba has strongly developed is the principle not only of sovereignty and independence but also of solidarity among nations. Fidel always taught us that these are non-negotiable principles. Principles are not negotiable. There is no possibility of negotiation with imperialism and all its facets.
As Jean-Paul Sartre said: one does not negotiate with fascism, one fights fascism. And many other intellectual figures around the world have expressed themselves around this same idea. That is to say, there is no possibility of negotiation, only dialogue. Because the principles of the sovereignty of nations cannot be negotiated. We’ll see what happens with this president’s other aspirations, because what he shamelessly and openly wants is to seize wealth, especially Venezuelan oil, the riches of Greenland, and those of other nations.
And in the case of Cuba, what interests him most is dismantling the example of how we have resisted the empire for 67 years. They have tried everything, as Trump himself said, and they haven’t been able to destroy this Revolution. And the more aggression there is, the more united the people become; the stronger the Revolution grows. Our people’s defensive capacity and capacity to respond are remarkable.
Notice that, despite the surprise attack on Caracas, our comrades fought to the death. And they suffered significant losses that they will never acknowledge, because they fear it will weaken their image as powerful, white, blond men who aspire to dominate the world. So, we are in a new era of declining imperialism. But a very dangerous new era, in which humanity no longer has any mechanisms to protect itself because they have all been dismantled.
Finally, knowing how much what is happening in Palestine hurts you and us, we see that the empire is now setting up a “Peace Council,” an initiative that is truly a farce. How do you see the resolution of the Palestinian issue within this framework of a genocide that continues unabated, and in which this new Hitler aspires to build a real estate project in Gaza on the corpses of so many Palestinians?
They had this project planned for a long time. And nobody wanted to talk about it. It even came specifically from a retired U.S. military officer, but then nobody else pursued the issue. Or those who did were silenced. This “Greater Israel” plan, since there are more countries they’re going to invade, despite their being so subservient and cowardly, as is the case with Egypt.
Really, what’s happening now is the demonstration of that project, which they’ve been enriching, modifying, and adjusting to the current circumstances. They had it planned. The Al-Aqsa Flood was the pretext they used to commit this great genocide, in which they never respected the ceasefire in either Palestine or Lebanon. Then, suddenly, this new proposal for a “Peace Council” for Palestine—which isn’t just for Palestine; it will surely be worldwide—is for them to impose and rule in a dictatorial manner.
Surprisingly, and painfully, we’ve seen how many countries we least expected are supporting, or considering supporting, the U.S.-Zionist proposal. This is what truly leaves me speechless, wondering: how is this possible? They weren’t going to accept this under any circumstances, yet they have. There are others who are U.S. puppets, licking the emperor’s boots, like Milei, who is essentially handing over national territory to the Israelis. And to say Israelis is to say the United States.
Trump’s speeches are utterly absurd, unimaginable. But they are happening, they are being broadcast; and although his pronouncements are ridiculed, he continues to wield exorbitant, unprecedented power. The BRICS have been unable to move forward, and we have had Trojan horses that have hindered certain processes. Unexpected Trojan horses, but heavily pressured by their national oligarchies and by imperialism. Sadly, this has happened, as was the case with the impediment to Venezuela joining the BRICS.
It’s exactly as you say, a seemingly unstoppable process, although it’s absolutely necessary to creatively imagine a way to put a stop to this fascist advance. Where do you think we can look for the light at the end of the tunnel?
The question is something like, what are we doing? Resistance is growing stronger around the world, even within the U.S. The Black Panther Party has resurfaced, social self-defense movements have organized; and yet they still have the civility and culture of respect for the law that is killing them. They don’t respond with firearms to the brutal enemy that is attacking and murdering them. They don’t. Instead, people like those in ICE are doing horrible things that are raising awareness even within the U.S., but there’s no decisive leap to stop this barbarity.
We’ll leave it there, on that last sentence. How much work still needs to be done to move from protest to confrontation with imperialism. Because time is running out. And, truly, with each passing minute, the imperial offensive intensifies. Thank you, Mariela, for your responses, which help us shed light amidst so much darkness.
Translated by Walter Lippmann
Many thanks to Melinda Butterfield for multi-leveled assistance
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano
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