I have decided to write this reflection after listening to a public comment disseminated by one of the media of the Revolution, which I will not specifically mention.

We must be very careful about the assertions we make, in order not to play into our enemy’s ideology.

We can not blame the special period for the system that the imperialism has imposed on the world; it was not the one that invented the climate change, or a civilization that depends on the consumption of hydrocarbons, where every individual member of a family moves in automobiles which travel almost empty, or the nefarious idea of turning foodstuffs into fuel.  It did not invent the world wars for the distribution of the planet, the military bases, the nuclear and radio-electronic weapons, the satellites that spy on everything and hit the target with lethal beams, the guided missiles, or the submarines that make their shots from a distance of one thousand meters under the sea. That is science and technology to the service of death and destruction.

It did not invent political geography or determined how much land each nation should own, which resulted from other historical factors.

Everything that is said or asserted should be carefully meditated to avoid making shameful concessions.  The nature and psyche of human beings should be analyzed; their time for action is very brief, is just a fraction of a second in the history of the human species.  To understand this is a great remedy against all vanities.

The special period was the inevitable consequence of the demise of the USSR, which lost the ideological battle and led us into a period of historical resistance we have not ridden ourselves of completely as yet.

How difficult it is to be brief in the battle of ideas!

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 15, 2008

4:45 p.m.