Fidel Castro on the 11th president of the United States

This excerpted “reflection” by revolutionary leader and former Cuban President Fidel Castro originally appeared in Granma Internacional on Jan. 22.

This past Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama took over the leadership of the empire as president No. 11 of the United States since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in January 1959.

Nobody could doubt the sincerity of his words when he affirms that he will turn the country into a model of liberty, [with] respect for human rights in the world and the independence of other peoples. Of course [this offended] barely anyone, except the misanthropes out there in the world. He now has said comfortably that imprisonment and torture on the illegally occupied Guantánamo base will cease immediately, which is beginning to sow doubts among those who worship terror as a necessary instrument of their country’s foreign policy.

The intelligent and noble face of the first Black president of the United States since its founding as an independent republic two and one-third centuries ago had transformed itself, with the inspiration of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, becoming a living symbol of the American dream.

However, despite all the tests that he has withstood, Obama has not passed the central one. What will he do when the immense power in his hands proves absolutely useless for overcoming the system’s insoluble antagonistic contradictions?

I have shortened my “Reflections,” just as I resolved to do this year, in order not to interfere or get in the way of the comrades of the Party and state as they make constant decisions about objective difficulties stemming from the world economic crisis. I am fine, but I insist, none of them should feel constrained by any of my Reflections, the seriousness of my condition or my death.

I am reviewing the speeches and materials I have elaborated over more than half a century.

I have had the rare privilege of observing events over such a long period of time. I receive information and meditate calmly on the events. I don’t expect to have that privilege in four years, when Obama’s first presidential term will have concluded.

Translated by Granma International