On the ninth anniversary of the passing of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, we held an exclusive conversation with the political scientist and sociologist Atilio Boron. teleSUR
00:00As we continue on topic remembering the legacy of Commander Phil Castro, let's welcome political scientist and sociologist Atilio BorĂłn.
00:08Welcome once more to From the South, Atilio.
00:11Hello, good afternoon. It's a pleasure to be with you in your program.
00:16Thank you for being with us.
00:18Atilio, today we remember Commander Phil Castro not just as a historical figure, but as a continuing symbol of resistance and sovereignty.
00:25How would you summarize the core, enduring legacy of Phil Castro within Cuba itself?
00:30What is the essence of Fidel's ideals that persists today?
00:35Well, I would say that Fidel was an extraordinary political leader.
00:45He was the most important, I would say, the most important political figure in the second half of the 20th century, without discussion.
00:55Perhaps you can say Kennedy, some other guys, but Fidel had a profound influence in the shaping of the modern world.
01:08Because he was a person with an extraordinary capacity to know things before they happened.
01:23He was like a person whose sight was always beyond what is normal for any one of us.
01:33He was able to identify problems long before any other people do that, and also to go in deep, to understand the situations of the world.
01:48He was a person of extraordinary capacity to organize things.
01:55And I say, I have for me the conviction that the day of his passing away, of his death, was not by chance.
02:07Fidel wanted to make sure that he would die on November 25th.
02:13Less for a special date for him, but more in order to make people remember that the same day, November 25th of 1956,
02:30started the grandma, the trip from Mexico to Cuba to start the revolutionary process.
02:39You know very well that Fidel said he didn't want at all, and he was quite radical in this, to have any square, any monument, any scenes bearing his name.
02:56And of course, nobody in Cuba there to challenge the very profound desire of Fidel, just to be remembered by his works, by his deeds, of all that he did, not only for Cuba.
03:13Fidel was a leader of an extraordinary international projection, racism in Africa wouldn't have been unable to disappear without the help of Fidel.
03:29The Argelian revolution in Argentina was also, to a grand extent, to a grand extent, helped by Fidel, okay, and so with many processes of change, in other words.
03:45But Fidel didn't want to have no avenue, no street, no building, nothing.
03:53But there is one who did not follow Fidel's exigency.
04:01And this happened in Moscow, in which there is a square, very nice square, with a monument of Fidel.
04:12The president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, agreed to have a statue and a square known Fidel Castro square in Moscow.
04:23It's the only one that we know, but there are not any other square of public buildings, of monuments devoted to this,
04:34which was one of the greatest leaders of the second half of the 20th century.
04:39Let me tell you just one thing, I'm sorry if I am going very fast.
04:42But in 1992, in the first summit of the Earth, which took place in Rio de Janeiro, in 1992,
04:54Fidel pronounced a unique speech, okay.
04:59The uniqueness is not because the fact that it was a short speech, of no more than six minutes,
05:08but because he, for the soul, questions that nobody else, none of the chief of state which were there,
05:20right, Felipe González, Alberto Fujimori, Carlos Menon, Ricardo Lagos from Latin America,
05:34there were, of course, people coming from all over the world,
05:39was a United Nations summit of the Earth, right.
05:43And Fidel pronounced a fantastic speech, six minutes, no more than that,
05:49whose first sentence said more or less this,
05:54there is, there is a species which is suffering,
06:00the deterioration of the conditions which made possible the apparition of this species on the Earth,
06:13and that species is the human species, you know,
06:17saying that anticipating in 1992, question that nobody pay attention,
06:23it is interesting, for instance, if you are public,
06:29go and explore the reactions of the people who were there,
06:34for instance, the president of Brazil was Fernando Color de Melo,
06:39who was a sort of playboy,
06:41and he, Color de Melo, Felipe González,
06:46Carlos Menon, Alberto Fujimori,
06:50smiled like patronizing Fidel,
06:55saying, well, this old man always saying all these catastrophical ideas about revolution,
07:01capital, exploitation, colonialism, and so on.
07:04They didn't believe what Fidel was saying,
07:09but after a few years, what Fidel said in that conference
07:15became common sense of the large part of human mankind,
07:21except the leaders of many, many nations, okay,
07:25which are committed to serve the interests of the big oil companies,
07:31and so on, all the fossil industry,
07:35which is deteriorating to some point at the level of irreversibility
07:41the conditions of the Earth.
07:44Fidel saw this 20 years before all the rest.
07:49This is something which struck me very, very strongly,
07:54because I gave a concrete explanation
07:56of the different nature of Fidel as a leader.
08:01And so, I'm sorry I'm going to take too much time,
08:06but this led me to the conclusion
08:08that Fidel decided in which moment he was going to die.
08:13And I am sure that he wanted to make sure
08:17that on November 25th not only was he going to be remembered,
08:24but also, many people would say,
08:27this is the day in which all the revolutionary process in Cuba
08:32started with the grandma leaving Mexico
08:36and going toward the island of Cuba.
08:39This is my view of this extraordinary man,
08:44which, as I mentioned to you,
08:47left an indelible mark in all the second half of the 20th century
08:53and also to the beginning of this century.
08:56The defeat of the ALCA project of the US,
09:05the project to create a common free trade area
09:10in all the Americas,
09:11which took place in Mar del Plata
09:14in the year November 2005,
09:18had a great strategist of that battle.
09:21And that strategist was Fidel.
09:25And there was a general in the film
09:29who was following the directions of Fidel
09:33in a very creative manner,
09:35and that was Hugo Chavez.
09:37Fidel could not be in that meeting in Mar del Plata
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