President-Comandante Daniel, and Compañera Rosario, Vice President of Nicaragua
Commemorate the 85th Anniversary of the birth of Comandante Carlos Fonseca Amador
June 23rd, 2021
Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, families of this Heroic People, of Diriangén, of Rubén, of Sandino, of Zeledón, of our hero Andrés Castro...
Nicaragua, a land of heroes, of patriots, like Carlos. Today Carlos is turning 85 years old, 85 years! Tomás was a little older than Carlos, both born in Matagalpa, a land that like all the municipalities and towns of Nicaragua, have given Men and Women willing to defend their home, their family first of all. That is what we defend!
When we defend the Nation, we are defending our home, we are defending the rural workers with their plot of land that they tend with great effort, we are defending the Right to Work, the Right to Education, the Right to Healthcare. That is why patriots are multiplying so much, in the world, and in our country.
Precisely in Cuba, a People of patriots, who extended their fraternal embrace to our brother Carlos. A heroic People, where Cubans have known how to defend their Basic Rights, and continue to defend them, despite a brutal blockade. This blockade has lasted longer than any other blockade, than any other siege, in the history of Humanity.
There have been blockades, sieges, which lasted a long time and where a lot of blood was spilled. In this case it has been a blockade in which imperialism has combined military aggression and terrorism, with an economic blockade. That is to say, denying the right of the Cuban people to work, denying the right of the Cuban people to Education, to Healthcare, they have tried to deny these rights to the Cuban people, but they have not been able to take them away!
The brutal blockade that has caused immense economic losses, and also the loss of human lives due to the lack of a medicine that has been blocked. Even when Cuba has the money to be able to buy it, even when the medicine is being bought in a country that is not the United States, the claws of the Empire simply reach out to that country and prevent it from selling that medicine to Cuba, or forbid it from selling Cuba machinery and equipment, and prohibit it from selling Cuba anything.
There has been a vote in the United Nations and the vast majority of the countries of the world have voted against the blockade; they have said with 183 votes: We are against the blockade! Let the blockade be lifted! They have said so clearly in the United Nations, where the Cuban Foreign Minister, our brother Bruno, gave a complete presentation of the damage that the blockade has caused to the Cuban people.
Only two countries voted against it, the United States and Israel. Two countries voted against! Three Latin American countries that used to vote against the blockade submitted to the Empire, although really they have always submitted to the Empire, but they still had the decency, they still had the minimum of dignity to vote against it together with all the countries of the world, and this time they abstained, they did not dare to vote along with the United States and with Israel, instead they abstained. Well, thank goodness they abstained.
And on this day when we commemorate the anniversary of the birth of Carlos, our Comandante Carlos Fonseca, together with him we express our Solidarity once again to the People of Cuba. Cuba experienced tyranny, the dictatorship imposed by the yankee Empire, for centuries, until it was finally liberated. And that is what the Empires do not accept. They do not accept that a Nation, a People once colonized by them, occupied by them, exploited by them, where they have always placed their governments, that suddenly that People chooses independence, stops being a Colony, ceases to be subjugated.
And that is what irritates the Empire, that a small nation like Cuba, being a small country, with little territory, its territorial extension is even smaller than Nicaragua's although it has a larger population, liberated itself in 1959, breaking the chains of the yankee Empire, just a few miles off the coast of the United States. A real challenge!
For the Empire it was a great irritation, they felt irritated, angry, that a small country, with Fidel at its head, and Raul, decided to declare itself a free State, and then a socialist State. It is Cuba's right to declare itself a free State, a socialist State, just as it is the right of any country to declare itself a State of any kind, each one with its own model, according to its characteristics, according to its history. And there began the battle against Cuba, the isolation of Cuba.
Those were the moments when that organization which has been and remains an instrument of imperialist policy, the OAS, received its orders. That is to say, most of the Latin American countries represented there took orders from the yankee government, from the Empire.
Who took that order? The Somoza government, ah, because Somoza was a "democrat", because he submitted to the yankees, he had been put there by the yankees after assassinating Sandino. So, Somoza voted there in the OAS for the expulsion of Cuba. Just imagine! And so all the Latin American dictatorships, because America at that time was full of dictatorships, all those dictatorships, offspring of the curse of the yankee Empire.
The yankee Empire is a curse for Humanity, the yankee Empire is offspring of the devil, of the caverns of evil. That is to say, it is a scourge of the Peoples of the World, and a scourge against its own People, even of the white population, not just the black population, not just immigrants, the people from Central America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, who come to the United States, but also a scourge of the white population born right there in the United States, who are subjected to economic discrimination.
Because there is economic discrimination, there is economic tyranny in the United States, there is economic dictatorship in the United States, there is dictatorship and tyranny in the field of Healthcare, in the field of Education, none of that is free, everything must be paid for; to the extent that not all young people can graduate there in the United States, and those who can graduate, when they do graduate, already carry an enormous debt that they have to pay back later.
And so then, what happens to the great wealth accumulated by this country, if it is the country with the greatest accumulation of wealth in the world? Where is this wealth? It remains in the hands of the big capitalists, of big business, military businesses, commercial businesses, transport businesses, business of all kinds.
The major companies that exercise monopoly regionally and seek ways to exercise monopoly globally, and do not allow other countries trying to compete with them in what they call the free market. Because the free market does not exist, it is a fiction. There is no such thing as a free market! For them, yes, there is free market, for them to do whatever they want.
But if another country emerges that is developing, then they have to act against that country.... And so they act against Russia, they act against China, they act against Iran, and they act against Turkey, in fact they move against any country that is growing economically; and countries that seek to develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes, they go against them too. Oh, and all the while they are developing atomic energy for military purposes. The yankees have not stopped doing that, they are still doing it.
But on the other hand, they insist that small countries, like the Democratic Republic of Korea, disarm themselves of their nuclear weapons; that is to say, for them only powerful countries can have nuclear weapons, and if a developing country wants nuclear weapons, they will condemn them, because that is justice in their view.
It is true that we have declared this entire region as a Zone of Peace, which means not developing atomic weapons, but if we are going to talk about Justice, by what right and on whose account is it that only developed countries or rich countries have the right to arm themselves with atomic weapons enabling them to threaten any other country that does not have atomic weapons?
In fact, laws have been established internationally where this situation is recognized despite being totally asymmetrical, because if we are going to act in accordance with Justice, then both developed countries have the right to seek atomic energy for peaceful purposes or for military purposes, and developing countries too have the same right to try and develop atomic energy for peaceful purposes and for military purposes.
But of course, they do not want developing countries to have atomic weapons, because they know that if a developing country has atomic weapons, then it is harder to push around. They know that if a developing country does not have atomic weapons, then they can invade it; even if it means a few thousand deaths for them, they go ahead and invade it and occupy it. But if they know that this country has atomic weapons, then they think twice, and if this country has atomic weapons they could drop on the United States, then they are even less able to push it around. And they'll say all kinds of outrageous things against that country.
They think they should be the sole owners of atomic weapons and deny that right to other nations. They threaten them even if they are developing atomic energy for peaceful purposes, which is the case of Iran. Then they say no, Iran is going to make atomic weapons. And if it wants to do so, so what? Doesn't Iran have the right to make atomic weapons?
Who says, where are the 10 commandments that only the rich can develop atomic weapons, and that this must be respected by the rich, by big capital, by the economic powers, and that poor countries are forbidden to develop atomic weapons? That means the law of the strongest is being imposed, because if I have atomic weapons at any moment I can attack a country that does not want do what I want, and I can impose economic sanctions which constitute aggression, and I can impose a blockade, as has been done to Cuba.
In other words, that is the reality of the world, a world where democracy is not the rule. That is not democracy, for only some have the right to atomic weapons while others do not, that is not democracy! That is tyranny, the dictatorship of the powerful.
Of course, the ideal would be for atomic weapons to disappear, then the world would be calmer, countries would no longer feel threatened by those who have atomic weapons, who can destroy them, such a threat would no longer exist and countries would no longer be easily subjected to the extortion by developed countries. So, that would be ideal.
But the Empire's spokespersons, boast about how they speak in the name of democracy... What democracy? Which democracy? Which democracy has the Western world ever practiced? The "democracy" of occupying territories on other continents that did not belong to them, and the great powers killing each other to see who could be first to occupy territory in Africa, in Asia, and then in America.
By what right? Who espouses democratic principles saying that the most powerful can take possession of any lands they find along the way, no matter if they are inhabited, if they have a population, if they already have owners? Democratic principles permitting that just because peoples are impoverished that endows the right to evict them or even to murder them. That is what they call "democracy". That is their history.
It is a history of having made the traffic of human beings a business, the traffic of slaves. A business! Ah, the "democrats" of the time, very saintly to all appearances, very holy to all appearances, organized the caravans of ships to sail to Africa and there the slave merchants concentrated in their dungeons, men, women, children, of all ages, all chained to wait for the buyers to arrive.
Who were the buyers? Logically, the buyers were not Africans, the buyers were those from "civilized Europe", the ones who came to buy this merchandise. They arrived, the buyers came and examined those human beings as if they were examining an animal to purchase, they undressed them, they looked at their physical condition, they opened their mouths, they looked at their teeth; in other words, as if they were buying an animal. Well, and then they bought them, they embarked again and the ships left for Europe.
In other words, the "civilized" Europe of the time, the "democratic" Europe of the time, the Europe that already had a parliament in many of its countries and it was said that because they had a parliament they were the most democratic in the world, when in fact that very parliament approved the slave trade, and from Europe the slaves also went to these regions and to the United States, where the European population that had occupied the United States had already wiped out the native population and they needed labor to exploit those lands of which they, as good "democrats", had taken possession.
The present owners of the United States, and it is not their fault of course, we are not blaming them, are descendants of those who murdered and stole American territories, when they arrived in the first ships from England to the United States, and said "these lands are mine, and that's all there is to it", in the name of the King, in the name of the Queen. Just as they came here to America, with the cross and with the sword, and said "these lands are mine, and that's all there is to it".
Those lands are not theirs, nor have they ever been theirs, and the wealth that those lands have produced, is wealth that has been stolen from the true owners of those lands. But the day will come when the Peoples who are going through difficulties in rich countries and in developing countries, will be able to recover those lands, they will be able to recover that wealth, they will be able to distribute that wealth, they will be able to truly install democracy. Democracy will one day be truly installed in those countries.
That day will come... Why? They talk a great deal about, and this has now become a trite pretext for these countries... they say "We have to change the regime in Venezuela", or "we have to change the regime in Cuba", or "we have to change the regime in Nicaragua", wherever things are not going well for them, they say "we have to change the regime". Regime change means to removing the legitimate authorities, taking away the power of the People, so as to install themselves with their "governors" to exploit the People.
We do need a change of regime in the world, of course we do, we all agree we have to change the regime. We have to change the Capitalist regime, because it is the savage Capitalism ruling those countries which has destroyed Humanity, it is responsible for the Poverty, for the Hunger suffered by developing countries, it is responsible for failing to do what they should to address crisis situations, as we have now with the pandemic, and we see that they make token offers here and there, but that is no solution.
Let them change their regime! The United States has to change its regime, the European countries have to change their regime, because there are centuries-old dictatorships that have been enthroned. n that point one might say that slavery was put to an end in Europe some years ago. Ah! But what was the reason for that? It resulted from the contradictions between the empires of France and England.
There was the slave trade, there were slave trade companies in France; France benefited a lot from that slave trade because of its geographical position in Europe; but also the slave trade benefited England, and from England it reached America, and there were people back then, aware, combative, in their parliaments, who fought for the suspension of the slave trade.
In other words, they did not dare, the conditions were not ready to argue that slavery should disappear, they did not have the support to do that, so instead they argued that the slave trade should be suspended, or at least that slaves should not pass through England. And there was a whole battle in the British parliament over it, and of course, the proposal did not pass, why? Because the slave traders, the slave merchants, those who did well out of with the ships trafficking slaves, making a lot of money, and so they refused the proposal.
What finally determined that the slave trade operations were suspended? It occurred to one of the supporters of those opposed to the slave trade to argue something that was true, namely that France was doing best out of the slave business. France was an enemy of England, and they argued: Well, if France gets stronger, it will overcome England, because the countries have been at war, and France is getting stronger with the slave trade; therefore, if we want to hurt the French economy, we have to shut down the slave trade, which will affect French companies.
In other words, they did not do it out of humanism, they did not do it to recognize the humanity of the slaves, they did it simply as an economic calculation, as a political calculation, as a commercial calculation.
And this system that calls itself "democratic" and is still imposed on the planet, this system is a regime, the same feudal regime remade and modernized for these times, but it is the same regime. That is why the whole world demands a change of regime, a change of the social and economic system, but for this change to take place, savage Capitalism will have to disappear once and for all, and if savage Capitalism does disappear, the conditions will then be there for the world to live in Peace, and to build in Peace.
Carlos fought for those ideals, and we continue fighting for those ideals, and we continue doing so in all fields. We are fighting the battles we have to fight. If the police catch someone stealing a bicycle, or a mobile phone, the police have to arrest that person, even if they are from a very poor family; because otherwise, young people with cell phones would be terrified of being assaulted, because sometimes they are not only threatened, but even killed for their mobile phone.
That is a crime, a crime according to the law, quite simply. It may be possible to find a sociological, psychological explanation of the reasons why this young person, or many young people are falling into crime, but that is not why the Police are entitled to detain people, send their case to the Public Prosecutor, and then present them to the Judge. Rather it is a principle, and that principle applies to everyone.
Here there is no question that, just because someone is better off, that the Prosecutor's Office cannot touch them, that the Police cannot touch them, that they cannot be brought before the Courts, or cannot go to jail. Why is this so? Because despite someone being of a high social class, even though they come from that high social class, they are agents, willing employees of the yankee Empire and have conspired against their country, conspired against Nicaragua. And to what end? To overthrow the government.
This is nothing new, we already saw what they did in 2018, we saw them in action! Who could forget how they colluded together and how they destroyed a consensus of understanding, of agreement, which was going very well, and they did so simply because they listened to the yankees telling them to provoke regime change in Nicaragua and that they had to bring "democracy" to Nicaragua, that is, to turn Nicaragua over to the somocistas, the pro-capitalists, the servants of the yankees, the "sell outs".
Now, what causes simple astonishment to some people, is that suddenly the Police, the Public Prosecutor's Office, have uncovered a network, a network that has been denounced for a while, that had already conspired around the issue of Social Security reform, that conspired when the fire took place there on Nicaragua's Caribbean Coast, that plotted and launched its offensive in April 2018, commiting the most brutal crimes that have been committed in recent times here in Nicaragua. We saw all that. We lived through it.
But they also demanded that the police stay in their barracks, so that they themselves could go around killing, destroying, burning, destroying schools because they are symbols of our good government, destroying health posts because they are symbols of our good government. They had to destroy every symbol of our good government that enables our People to recognize all the work we have been doing.
Then, the investigators had to continue studying how the funding for all that arrived, where those finances came from, how those finances were transferred. And Nicaragua is part of an international organization that regulates with money laundering, and we are obliged to pursue those finances.
And so the network has been discovered, and that network has first and last names, the names of non-governmental organizations, the names of well known people who served as cover to introduce the resources, and if it was too difficult to introduce the resources here in Nicaragua, then they opened other offices in other countries, nearby countries here in Central America, in Costa Rica and in other countries.
In other words, the proof is coming out, the evidence, and for that reason the enemies of the Revolution, the enemies of the People are crying out about those unfortunate individuals, about how it can be possible that they are being arrested, or that they are in prison, how it can be possible that they are being prosecuted? And they are launching offensives against Nicaragua, campaign after campaign. And some countries dare to attack Nicaragua when in fact their own roof is made of glass, and not only the roof, the floor too is also made of glass, they are countries as rotten as any that we know of.
But we are respectful, we do not interfere with any country to criticize, to offer our opinion on whether what they are do is right or wrong. Ah, but they use their local agents for what? To attack Nicaragua, and call for more sanctions. There they are on their knees pleading for sanctions from the yankee Empire, begging for Sanctions before the Yankee Empire. They think that with sanctions they are going to subdue Nicaragua.
Nicaragua has gone through much more difficult times, much harder times, like those Sandino went through, like those we went through with Carlos leading us during the struggle against the Somoza dictatorship. Those were hard times, difficult times, times of pain, of death, while fighting for Life of course. And the difficult times after the Triumph of the Revolution, when what I have mentioned before was exposed, namely that the Yankees wanted to maintain Somoza.
And when we came along, we said, here we are going to do what Nicaraguans say, what Nicaraguans decide, and they did not like it. They felt better with the Somoza Regime, which for them was a "democratic" regime, the same Regime that called for a vote to expel Cuba from the OAS, the same regime the yankees used to train mercenaries here in Nicaragua, on the Caribbean Coast, to invade Cuba in that notorious attack they carried out, which was quickly defeated by the Cuban people led by Fidel.
Then, the Revolution triumphed, which was unacceptable to them, and another war took place, a painful war, with thousands of dead, thousands of wounded, thousands of mutilated, much destruction of the economy. So much grief! And the People fought on under those conditions. And the People did not surrender. And the People did not give up.
Thus we advanced until we achieved our goals, and the goals included two elections, the elections of 1984 and then the elections of 1990, respecting the results, of course, respecting the results. But, having already secured the right to continue fighting to retake power, to retake the government.
They thought that we had already been elimnated, that regime change in Nicaragua had already been achieved, with the departure of the Sandinista Front government in 1990. In other words, they were happy, euphoric, Yankee officials went in and out of government offices, giving orders to ministers; they had special entrances to go in and out of government Offices, looking for ways to recover properties, to steal properties that the revolutionary government had given to rural workers, to families, houses, land, etc.
Well, they felt they already had their "democracy", and so they said, "we are in democracy" And what did "we are in democracy" mean? That the health service that we had managed to maintain in the midst of the war was collapsing. That Health and Education were privatized, developments to cover the country with electricity stagnated, and they began to cheat, to privatize in exchange for huge bribes, millions and millions in bribes, privatizing the the People's and the country's basic services. And so they did whatever they wanted during those years from 1990 onward.
Then came another neoliberal government, which continued doing the same, and worse; and afterwards yet another neoliberal government which continued doing the same, and worse, so that illiteracy grew in our country, and hunger, misery proliferated. What housing programs were there in those periods? What Health programs, what Education programs, reaching out to rural people, to impoverished people? No, everything was for the rich!
Then, with the strength of the People, with faith in God, in our Heroes and Martyrs, we returned to the Government in 2007, just when they thought we were already extinct, we returned to government. And that is when the campaign against our government started up again, the campaign started immediately.... They were outraged that we had managed to win the elections and that we were not democrats...
And the offensive began and the so-called sanctions began, since then, mind, and they began organizing paramilitary groups, assassinating peasants in the mountains, and that increased with all the funds that they began plowing into Nicaragua. They sent millions, millions of millions!
We are going to see, when the authorities, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Judiciary present the results of these investigations, how many millions came in to fund death, to sow death and also toset aside a good part of those millions for the individuals concerned. All that is going to come out.
And so they should not come up with the story that they are "candidates", since not a single candidate is registered here yet, there are no candidates, the time has not yet come for candidates to be registered. They could not even come up with one candidate, let us remind ourselves very well, even when they got them together at the US embassy to force them to unite? Yes, various embassies were involved, the yankee embassy above all, and other embassies too were deeply involved, calling them togther that they would unite. But it was impossible for them to unite! And time went by, and still it was impossible for them to unite.
So then why are now they stating as calm as you please in the global right wing media that so many candidates or so many pre-candidates are detained, if they were not even pre-candidates of their own little group, much less were pre-candidates of a united opposition that never existed?
We are not judging politicians here, we are not judging candidates. Here we are judging criminals who have acted against our country, against the country's security, against the lives of our citizens, trying again to organize another April 18th, another attempt at a coup d'état, seeking to bring about what they call "regime change". That is what we are pursuing, that is what is being investigated, and that is what will be punished in due course, as required by law.
And they should stop the absurdity that they are demanding of us, telling us to set them free. Ah, are we going to ask another country, are we going to ask the United States to release the 400 Americans they have in prison, who were among those who assaulted the Congress of the United States? They have them imprisoned there, they are investigating them, they are judging them. There have more than 400 there, and here they are making a fuss about 20? They have 400 of them! That is why I have been saying to them: OK, release those 400, then! Release the 400!
And we could well say to the Europeans: Release the hundreds of prisoners you have for immigration reasons, those who are imprisoned for political reasons, because there are political prisoners in Europe, over the issue of nationality.
Just today they have pardoned the high authorities of the Catalan Region, who have been imprisoned for a long time, and I have not seen anyone, no authority, neither political, nor religious, of any country, calling on Spain to release those authorities, who were imprisoned simply for having organized in their territory, with their own resources, a referendum for the People to decide whether Catalonia should declare itself an independent state, yes or no.
So it was over that act, remember, they were not blowing things up, firing bullets, they were not burning anyone, they were not destroying health centers or schools. But for organizing a referendum they put them in jail, the region's high authorities, the president; some had to flee to Brussels to protect themselves; others were imprisoned, most of them were imprisoned and have spent a long time in jail because of that, and it has taken a lot for them to be released now, but there are also many more detainees there in Europe, a great number of detainees.
Or are we going to get start here in Latin America going around telling Latin American governments: Go on, release all those people you have in prison? How gross! How barbaric! All those people arrested in one place or another, with thousands arrested every day, and also thousands killed every day in Latin American countries... Thousands! Thousands!
They die in Colombia, young people, health promoters die, environmental conservationists die, defenders of Nature die.... assassinated every day, every day! And so if we go through Latin America, we are going to find thousands of dead, thousands and thousands of dead. That is why we say with all firmness, with absolute certainty, and this can be verified by anyone who visits our country, that Nicaragua is the safest country in the entire region, there is more security, more stability here than in the entire region. So, let them forget about claiming that in Nicaragua there is no Justice. In any case they will do whatever they want.
In how many countries here in the region, at the last minute, presidential candidates, very high in the opinion polls, already registered as candidates, I remember for example the presidential candidate there in Guatemala, partner of former President Alvaro Colom. She was a presidential candidate, high in the opinion polls, in first place, the elections were about to go ahead, they were just days away from the vote. And at that moment, she was eliminated! What happened in that case? Nothing!
And in other countries where they have held elections, the power goes out, for 3 days, 4 days or 5 days and after all the uproar nothing happened; the OAS says that everything is fine. But when the OAS wants to do harm, it does what it did in Bolivia, provoking a coup d'état against our brother Evo Morales; or they drag out announcing a result that is clear in Peru, there it is clear who the winner is, it is the teacher, the comrade teacher who is the winner. But there they do not accept it, they do not want it, and the right-wing governments, the yankees too, have said very clearly that they do not accept it, but well, there the victory of the teacher will have the last say. A teacher will be president of Peru, God willing.
These are the struggles that we are waging, beloved Brothers and Sisters, ones that we will continue waging, and rest assured that all that we are doing, we are doing in accordance with the laws, in accordance with the established institutional norms, the legal codes that we have established, to investigate, prosecute and try those who have committed crimes against the Nation, those who have laundered money, the same as when a drug trafficker is tried, the same, the very same, there is no step backwards, there will be no step backwards, only forward, onward and forward, with our Brother Carlos, Carlos Fonseca, Eternal Comandante!
Long Live Comandante Carlos!
Long Live Blessed and Forever Free Nicaragua!
Sandino Lives on, the Struggle Continues!
A Free Nation or Death!