• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• 08 / 15 / 2007

President Fidel Castro stated Wednesday that the history of Cuba in the last 140 years is the struggle to preserve national identity and independence.

In his article "The Empire and the Independent Island," Fidel Castro tackles the evolution of the empire in the northern nation, based on history and Washington's perennial intention to appropriate Cuba, including when Spain had dominance.

"The genesis," writes the statesman "begins with a doctrine known as ripe fruit, formulated in 1823 by then Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, later president of the United States.

The main idea was that the newly American Union would inevitably achieve, by law of political gravitation, appropriation of the Caribbean island when it broke colonial subordination to Spain.

The Cuban leader first refers to the interference of the US army in the Cuban independence war against the Spanish power and after, the "imposition of the Platt Amendment as an appendix of the Cuban Neocolonial Constitution of 1901."

The island's president summarizes the attitude and active participation of politician and soldiers from the neighboring nation, among them William McKinley, Leonard Word, Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root and Orville H. Platt, in incidents that led to Cuba's subjection to Washington.

In contrast to those, Fidel Castro counterpoints Manuel Sanguily, Juan Gualberto Gomez and other Cuban patriots who "maintained the most severe criticism of the Platt Amendment."

The worst of the Amendment was the hypocrisy, deception, Machiavellianism and cynicism in the plan to dominate Cuba, to the point of publicly proclaiming the same arguments of Quincy Adams arguments, he writes.

According to Fidel Castro, these reflections, which will continue in the coming days, are especially for new generations, so that they learn very important facts and decisions on the fate of our homeland.