Fidel: ¡PRESENTE!
For Fidel to have been the target of so many failed assassination attempts by the CIA, you would have to agree he must have been doing something really good to annoy the imperialist monster so much!
He must have been doing something that really upset the rich and the powerful.
But more than that, we can say that for Fidel to have been the target of so many failed assassination attempts says something about the power of the Cuban revolution.
The powerful CIA tried and tried and tried — over and over again — and still they failed! Thanks to the power of the Cuban revolution.
History will record Fidel as a great revolutionary leader, but this reflects more than his qualities as an exceptional individual. His leadership reflects the power of the Cuban revolution.
All around the world today, millions of people who are part of the many ongoing struggles for liberation will be mourning the passing of Fidel.
But we will also be reflecting on his legacy, and the legacy of a world-shaking revolution in a small Third World country on the doorstep of the richest and most powerful imperialist state in the world.
Revolutionary Cuba has made — and continues to make — a critical difference to many liberation struggles around the world.
Today, there is a lot of despair and fear as far right politicians gain ascendancy in many parts of the world. The progressive forces are on the retreat.
Bu, at the heart of this latest reactionary tide are the ever deeper contradictions of a system that has made a tiny minority richer and more powerful than ever before.
Never have so few monopolised so much wealth and so much power.
For the Cuban revolution to have survived all this time in the “backyard” of US imperialism should give us hope that, one day, that revolution’s great promise for for a radically different world will be shared all around the world.
When I think of Fidel, I think of this hope for the future.
Fidel: ¡PRESENTE!
[Peter Boyle is a member of the Socialist Alliance national executive and is a co-convenor of its Sydney branch. He gave this tribute to the Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro on November 27 at a short-notice event organised by the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society coinciding with an exhibition of the photographic collection “Fidel Is Fidel”.]