Reflections by Fidel Castro
My Shoes Are Too Tight
While the damaged reactors spew radioactive smoke over Japan and monstrous-looking planes and nuclear submarines launch
deadly charges tele-directed onto Libya, a North African Third World country with barely six million inhabitants, Barack
Obama was spinning a tale for the Chileans that sounded like one I used to hear when I was 4 years old: "My shoes are
too tight, my socks are too warm; and I carry in my heart the little kiss you gave me".
Some of his audience was taken aback in that Cultural Centre in Santiago de Chile.
When the president looked anxiously over his audience after mentioning perfidious Cuba, expecting an explosion of
applause, there was icy silence. Behind him, oh, yes! felicitous coincidence! among all the other Latin American flags,
there precisely was Cuba's.
If he were to turn for a second, over his right shoulder he would have seen, like a shadow, the symbol of the Revolution
on the rebel Island that his mighty country wanted to destroy, but could not.
Anybody would be, without a doubt, extraordinarily optimistic if they were expecting the peoples of Our America to
applaud the 50th anniversary of the mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion, 50 years of cruel economic blockade of a sister
country, 50 years of threats and terrorist attacks that cost thousands of lives, 50 years of plans to assassinate the
leaders of the historic process.
I heard myself being mentioned in his words.
In truth, I gave my services to the Revolution for a long time, but I never eluded risks nor violated constitutional,
ideological or ethical principles; I regret not having better health so that I could carry on serving the Revolution.
I resigned, without hesitation, all my state and political positions, including that of First Secretary of the Party,
when I became ill and I never tried to exercise them after the Proclamation of July 31, 2006, even when I partially
recovered my health more than a year later, although everyone continued to affectionately address me in that manner.
But I am and shall continue to be as I promised: a soldier of ideas, as long as I can think or breathe.
When they asked Obama about the coup against heroic President Salvador Allende, promoted as many others by the United
States, and about the mysterious death of Eduardo Frei Montalva, murdered by agents of DINA, a creation of the American
government, he lost his composure and began to stammer.
The commentary on Chilean television at the end of his speech was, without a doubt, accurate when it stated that Obama
had nothing to offer the Hemisphere.
As for me, I don't want to give the impression that I felt any hatred for his person, much less for the people of the
United States; I acknowledge the contributions many of its sons and daughters have made to culture and science.
Obama now has before him a trip to El Salvador tomorrow, on Tuesday. There he is going to have to be quite inventive
because, in that sister nation in Central America, the weapons and training received from the governments of his country
spilt much blood. I wish him bon voyage and a bit more good sense.
Fidel Castro Ruz March 21, 2011 9:32 p.m.