Humanism or “humanitarianism”

By Sara Rosenberg on July 21, 2021

The war that has been raging against Cuba for more than 60 years is a war against humanity. Against the very sense of humanity which is the exact opposite of the “humanitarianism” wielded to invade, bomb, destroy and plunder peoples.

Marti’s concept of humanity calls into question the capitalist system itself, because it concerns the deepest sense of what it means to be a human being. To exist for (collective) life, with history as a mirror of the future, or to exist for the destruction of life.

Here, in the countries that are part of the imperialist arc, it is difficult to imagine a human being that breaks with selfishness and prioritizes the collective over individual pettiness, that form of forced and consensual slavery that is destroying our planet.

Is it possible for human beings to show solidarity, to be aware of their social, responsible, equitable and just being? Is it possible to achieve a human society freed from the economic, political and cultural exploitation to which capitalism subjects us? Is it possible for us to be capable of being -and together- more human?

Yes, Cuba has said yes and it has said it very loudly and in the worst moments, when the USSR collapsed, not only because of the long and cruel “cold war” but also because it had abandoned that communist concept of Humanity and because it had cooled down until it lost the ideological battle, the battle of ideas of which Fidel spoke so much to us.

Yes, the Cuban people have demonstrated many times how to resist and defeat the constant attacks of imperialism and also of those who from pseudo-democratic and/or social-democratic positions make a plaintive echo, when what is essential and relevant is that the strength of the Cuban revolution lies in the construction of that New Man, as Che used to say, capable of imagining another humanity, another form of human relationship, freed from all exploitation.

It is a crucial issue and it is a profound struggle in the field of language, for the truth and against lies and with the strength of those of us who say without half-measures that we are committed to the construction of a different humanity, of a socialist world.

And I was saying that this war is against the whole of humanity, because it embraces us, commits us and clearly shows that imperialist barbarism needs to destroy that which is properly human: dignity, equity, culture of solidarity, internationalism and justice. That is Cuba and that is intolerable for the imperial oligarchies and their sad puppets who have taken to the streets pushed by mercenary networks, who know how to take advantage of the pain inflicted by the blockade, now added to the covid.

A few days ago there were more than four hundred people at the Cuban embassy in Madrid supporting the Cuban people and their revolution. Outside, a small mindless horde led by Mrs. Monasterio (of Cuban origin, daughter of slavers and leader of the fascist Vox party) was shouting, and it was sad to see them shouting in favor of the executioner, with the inhuman language of hatred and irrationality typical of Nazi totalitarianism.

While this was going on, a Cuban comrade commented to me “we are not a number, we are a family and each one counts, each one killed by Covid weighs on our souls and we are going to defeat it”, and listening to him I felt the greatness of that humanity that the Revolution has forged.

It is enough to listen to how the Cuban Minister of Health, President Diaz Canel, the doctors, the journalists, the students, the people in the street speak to know that their language itself is completely different from the chatter of the bread and circus of the Spanish and European dis-information media. And if -following Brecht- we distance ourselves sufficiently from this debased media discourse, we understand that its function is to obscure, to stultify, that they do not speak for human beings but for consumers, with a poor, brutal, emotional (not to say yellow) language where lies rule.

Undoubtedly, and in spite of the hard situation imposed by the blockade, the conscience and the culture of the Cuban people are in the future, in the future that we wish so much for the whole world. Someone will tell me that there is hunger in Cuba and I will reply that “millions of children in the world die of hunger, but none of them are Cuban”, and I will recognize that the blockade causes scarcity and suffering and that this is its objective: to suffocate, besiege and destroy socialism.

It is as simple as it is criminal, the country that has produced its own vaccines, the one that has fewer deaths by covid, cannot buy syringes because the warlords control the market and block those transactions.

And we cannot forget that in that institution called UN, 184 countries voted against the blockade, but that once again two rogue states -USA and Israel- opposed it but so far it seems that they can more than the whole world.

Is this the much-talked-about Western democracy? Is this the Spanish democracy that condemns the alleged “violence” in Cuba, that recognizes the mafioso Guaidó and hosts his henchmen and is silent about the crimes against humanity in Colombia, in Chile, in Palestine, in Yemen and in so many other parts of the world where business is succulent and democrat ethics repugnant?

We were born and grew up in a Latin America illuminated by the Cuban Revolution, and I say illuminated because it was the light that showed us the way and sustained us in very dark times of institutional crime and state terrorism. And we continue to grow in the difficulties that every revolutionary process implies, permanently attacked by a genocidal blockade.

There has been no punishment that our island has not received, attacks, invasion attempts, assassination attempts, bio-terrorism, blockade, bestial media campaigns to sink the spirit that the Revolution sowed more than half a century ago.

And this barbarism is exercised against humanity itself, I said, because they need to destroy the possibility of a just future for human beings, and they know perfectly well that this condition is only possible in a world of equals, without exploitation and without accumulation of capital/and destruction, two inevitable characteristics of capitalism.

No matter how much the democrats of NATO, NED, the CIA, the European Union, that is to say the World Bank and the IMF with its vast tentacles, may crow to the contrary.

Accumulating capital means destroying human lives and destroying the planet. We are seeing it and living it every day. It is not enough that they try to cover up with euphemisms such as “climate change”, (+”human rights”, +”freedom of speech”, etc. ) what is the intensive and sinister exploitation of the planet without law or limit, because the capitalist warlords dictate the laws while they deceive the great majorities of the planet to steal better and count on an immense cultural apparatus that enhances this cannibal feast (green, purple, orange and technicolor) that then votes for the rotten democracy that the warlords control from their entrails.

They sell us tons of cultural garbage to convince us of the danger of the existence of another alternative, of another way of life, of another concept of humanity : a socialist humanity.

It’s funny and it’s a significant detail that I learned studying Russian. There is a letter that does not exist in our alphabet (Russian z) which we call, “the z of the bad Russian in movies”.

Thousands of bad Russian movies ended up making that sound easily recognizable. Evil Russians always attack the good West with a rattlesnake sound. In the same constant way they inoculate propaganda against any country that is able to challenge the iron law of the market.

It happened with the USSR (they attacked the USSR to the point of undermining it from within), it happened with Vietnam (triumphant, in spite of the brutal destruction of the war), it happens with China (which has surpassed them by far and with another model of production and management), it happens with Korea and with demonized Iran, it happens with the attacked Syria that has defeated them, it happens with Venezuela, with Nicaragua, with Bolivia, and it happens and continues happening with Cuba.

All these reflections to arrive at what seems essential to me today: to recover and be reborn with firmness in the defense and construction of the new world, of the socialism that Cuba meant and means.

We need to unite internationalist forces against barbarism and organize in every place of this drifting Europe, -which has lost the strength that the communist parties had before the neoliberal/eurocommunist catastrophe-, to continue building socialism and fighting for it. On this road Cuba will always continue to light our way, hence it is essential to defeat the blockade and to unite in demanding that what has been voted in the UN be fulfilled.

That is the urgent task in Europe, we must demand that each of the governments that voted against the blockade at the UN comply with and enforce that decision. Enough of wet papers, the citizens of the countries that are represented in that vote must demand that what was voted for is now complied with.

Now more than ever we must call for unity and international organization against the blockade of Cuba.

It is not only a moral obligation but an urgency for the very survival of the human species. Not to act is to allow the crime against humanity to reign supreme and lead the disoriented masses towards what we painfully know: fascism. It is up to us to stop them and transform ourselves.

Nothing could be further from Humanity than Humanitarianism: they are antagonistic.

The “humanitarian intervention” that the warlords and their acolytes promote has always been the same: create chaos, weaken the state, destroy-debt and intervene militarily. They are experts in the technique of creating chaos and pay mercenaries who shamelessly call for invasions of their own homeland.

This “humanitarianism” is based on the law they called “responsibility to protect” (R2P) which consists of creating chaos (blocking-stifling-arming mercenary groups) within a country to justify later military intervention and the destruction of millions of human lives. It is enough to remember what they did in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Panama….

The only possible Humanity is that of equal rights and non-interference, our humanity is “the humanity that has said enough and has started to walk” against the trickery and cruelty of imperialism.

We want peace, we want social development and true democracy.

that is why once again we demand an end to the blockade of Cuba.

(And to Venezuela, Nicaragua and all those countries suffering the devastating consequences of this undeclared war called blockade).

No to the genocidal blockade!

Fatherland or death! We shall overcome.

Source: La Pupila Insomne, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English