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Democracy vs. intervention: Honduras votes amid US pressure campaign

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This article by Zoe Alexandra republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Progressive candidate Rixi Moncada voting on Sunday, November 30, 2025. Photo: LIBRE Party / X

The US escalation of interventionist discourse regarding the polls in Honduras reveals the deep-seated fear of the victory of a progressive project in the Americas

The people of Honduras are voting in general elections to decide their next president, 128 deputies to the Honduran Congress, 20 deputies to the Central American Parliament, 298 mayors, and more than 2,000 councilors. Most of the attention has been focused on the presidential election, which will be decided in a single round. The three frontrunners for the presidency are progressive candidate for the LIBRE Party Rixi Moncada; right-wing Liberal Party candidate Salvador Nasralla; and far-right National Party candidate Nasry Asfura.

Read more: Between progressivism and neoliberalism: Honduras decides its future

Six million Hondurans are eligible to vote in these general elections which have become the subject of debate of far-right figures from across the world, who are all warning about the possible “triumph of communism” in the Central American country. However, the external intervention in the elections has gone beyond comments on social media about the “danger” represented by progressive candidate from the LIBRE Party Rixi Moncada.

In a move shocking many, on Friday, November 28, US President Donald Trump announced that he would pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH), adding, “according to many people that I greatly respect, [he has been] treated very harshly and unfairly. This cannot be allowed to happen, especially now, after Tito Asfura wins the Election, when Honduras will be on its way to Great Political and Financial Success.” In the message, Trump reiterated his support to National Party candidate Tito Asfura and declared that if he doesn’t win the US will “not be throwing good money after bad, because a wrong Leader can only bring catastrophic results to a country.”

Is communism really on the ballot? Why has the electoral process in the Central American country become a focus of the right wing internationally? Peoples Dispatch spoke to Camilo Bermúdez, the Director of Strategic Litigation and Management of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) about what is at stake in this political moment in the country.

Beyond who, what is on the ballot?

As previously mentioned, the candidates polling the highest ahead of the elections are Rixi Moncada, Salvador Nasralla, and Tito Asfura. For Bermúdez, while there are three candidates, there are “clearly two political models in confrontation”.

He explains that at the base of the political project represented by LIBRE veteran Moncada is “a strong criticism of the economic system and the economic elites in Honduras”. Moncada, he emphasizes, “has been very open in criticizing, from her positions as Finance Minister and other roles she has held, the control of the country’s economy by ten families and about 26 economic groups that have [historically] controlled the main sectors of the country’s economy. She has criticized this control, the lack of tax justice, and the lack of economic democratization.” In addition to her critiques of the neoliberal economic model dominant in the country, Rixi represents “a project of continuity with President Xiomara Castro’s social program and LIBRE Party, who are heirs to the resistance and opposition to the 2009 coup d’état that overthrew Manuel Zelaya Rosales.” It is a progressive project which calls itself socialist, but mired with “many internal contradictions due to the same contradictions in LIBRE Party’s composition,” Bermúdez adds.

The other model is represented by Asfura and Nasralla, who, despite running with the country’s historically opposed parties, represent a very similar political project. This is “a traditional project of the Honduran right” which is one aligned with “private enterprise, aligned with the interests of large landowners, of large national and international corporations, and that seeks the approval of the United States Embassy in order to govern.”

The difference, Bermúdez underscores, is that Asfura is “more related to the post-coup regime, an authoritarian regime very linked to organized crime and drug trafficking. He’s from the party of President Juan Orlando, who was extradited and sentenced to 45 years in prison in the United States for drug trafficking.”

Meanwhile, Nasralla, while maintaining similar political and economic proposals to the National Party, has attempted to distance himself from organized crime, declaring himself “clean” and corruption free. Nevertheless, the COPINH organizer warns, “the political support and backing for candidate Nasralla clearly also comes from that background – for example, from business groups, corporate media groups, and also financial companies like Banco FICOHSA, which is linked to the assassination of Berta Cáceres and also to money laundering from drug trafficking.”

Under the National Party rule following the coup d’état in 2009, an all out neoliberal offensive was unleashed in the country to accelerate natural resource plundering in Indigenous and Garifuna territories, establish Special Economic Development Zones ( ZEDES) to favor international investment with the suspension of labor laws, and the privatization of state companies. Rolling back this model, which caused environmental devastation, social conflict, territorial breakdown, deep inequality and poverty, and the extraction of the country’s wealth by national and international private companies, was a cornerstone of Xiomara Castro’s 2021 campaign.

This effort has been the basis of much of the opposition she faces both by Honduran elites and international capital that, for years, had heeded the call of “Honduras is open for business” and profited immensely from the country’s cheap labor, natural resources, and relaxed labor and environmental laws. In 2017, the National Party committed outright electoral fraud, recognized even by the Organization of American States (OAS) in order to maintain their grasp on power.

Is fraud or non-recognition on the table?

The 2017 fraud is fresh in people’s minds, not only for how US President Donald Trump provided the necessary stamp of approval to his ally Juan Orlando Hernández to consolidate the fraud, but also how the event provoked mass protests and unrest across the country and the death of at least 35 protesters, with dozens imprisoned.

This time around, the possibilities for the right wing to influence the outcome of the polls are different. The leading scenario that analysts predict is an attempt by the right wing to orchestrate a non-recognition in the case of Moncada’s victory, which for Bermúdez has the sole purpose of “triggering a process of instability”. Suspicion has already been raised both within Honduras and outside the country by right-wing actors questioning the effectiveness of the electoral system for the mere reason that there is a progressive government in office. Some analysts warn that right-wing media and figures may seek to heavily promote exit polls and any results from the rapid count that would contradict the official results that will take some time to be released. Some may remember this formula from the 2019 Bolivian elections which were followed by a month of right-wing street protest against “fraud”, and ended with the overthrow of Evo Morales. Last year’s elections in Venezuela, saw a similar formula implemented: right-wing fraud allegations, echoed by the United States, which fed and fomented violent street protests a day after the elections, yet popular mobilization by Chavismo was successful in defeating this coup attempt.

Bermúdez explains, “We believe this could be what the opposition wants, with the backing of the United States government: a process of instability in which they seek to delegitimize Rixi Moncada’s victory and try to apply pressures similar to what has happened in Venezuela, trying to destabilize a progressive project, a possible progressive government project like Rixi Moncada’s.”

In this scenario, the COPINH organizer underlines, “The position taken by the Honduran Armed Forces will be very important, since they are supposedly called upon to defend the electoral process – but in 2009 they carried out the coup.” Notably though, “the current Xiomara Castro government has had a very close relationship with this Armed Forces sector.”

Bermúdez highlights that the streets will become the most important scenario in coming days if actions of non-recognition and attempts to destabilize the country after a Rixi Moncada victory go forward. In this case, “the Libre Party militants will take to the streets, because this is a militancy that emerged in the streets, from the post-coup resistance movement, and it’s a party and militancy accustomed to social protest. So we foresee that faced with any such action, there will also be a response of popular mobilization.”

“What will be very important won’t really be election day itself, because there isn’t an immediate vote counting system – moreover, it has been denounced as a system that could have been hacked or is unreliable. So the results won’t come on the same day; results will possibly come the following day, a couple of days later, after all the tally sheets from the polling stations have arrived at a location for manual counting of each sheet, and then that becomes the official result,” Bermúdez emphasizes.

US interference

A constant in Honduran politics, has been the outsized role of the United States leaders, in shaping the country’s present and future. Yet, Trump’s recent statements and actions have gone a step further.

“There is great concern in the country about that statement from the United States government…Obviously the US Embassy and State Department have great influence in Central American countries and great influence in Honduras, but we’ve never seen such blatant and interventionist pronouncements, which demonstrate the nature of US government policy,” Bermúdez remarks.

This in reference to the pardon of JOH couched in the endorsement of National Party candidate Asfura.

JOH was arrested on February 16, 2022, by Honduran police following an extradition request from the United States for conspiring to traffic drugs in the US. Two months later, on April 21, 2022, Hernández was extradited to the United States. In June 2024, JOH was sentenced by a US judge to 45 years in prison for the crime of exporting more than 400 tons of cocaine to the United States and for the possession of “destructive devices”. At the time, the judge, Kevin Castel, called Hernández “a two-faced politician” because, on the one hand, he claimed to fight drug trafficking in his country, while, on the other hand, he supported the drug cartels. Prosecutors alleged that the former president built a “Narco-State” in which he personally received millions of dollars in bribes from drug traffickers.

Read more: Hondurans intensify protests demanding JOH’s resignation after report links him to drug trafficking

Bermúdez believes that the explicit support from Trump and other US officials for Asfura, and the explicit rejection of Moncada and LIBRE, “has to do with an international campaign to fight against any kind of progressive perspective in Latin America, under the outdated discourse of communism linked to a supposed fight against drug trafficking and what they call ‘narcoterrorism.’” “Narcoterrorism”, he explains, “is the policy the United States government develops to attack Venezuela, to enter into deep contradiction with the governments of Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil. So we believe this fits within this dynamic of the growth of the right-wing that we are seeing internationally, of these authoritarian and extreme-right discourses that seek shelter in this narcoterrorism discourse, attempting to link it to the revolutionary processes in Venezuela and Cuba.”

Yet, the outright violations of Honduran sovereignty and rule of law by the US president and their potential to sow chaos, are also telling. Bermúdez said, such actions show “the fear they have of a progressive project that could be executed by candidate Rixi Moncada, and also the expectation and perspective they have that she could be the candidate favored by the popular vote – because if that weren’t the case, we believe they wouldn’t take such a decisive, forceful, and strong position like that of the US president, who, it goes without saying, very possibly doesn’t even know where Honduras is, yet is speaking in favor of one of the candidates.”

Bermúdez states that at the end of the day, “no matter how blatant this interference is and no matter how powerful Donald Trump’s government is, the decision lies with the people. And I think it’s also a call to awareness for the people to take the reins and make decisions about their future.”

This article by Zoe Alexandra republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

Continue ReadingDemocracy vs. intervention: Honduras votes amid US pressure campaign

A billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person

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Image of a private jet by Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Image of a private jet by Andrew Thomas from Shrewsbury, UK.

Billionaire investments in polluting industries such as fossil fuels and cement double the average for the Standard and Poor group of 500 companies – Oxfam  

The investments of just 125 billionaires emit 393 million tonnes of CO2 each year – the equivalent of France – at an individual annual average that is a million times higher than someone in the bottom 90 percent of humanity.

Carbon Billionaires: The investment emissions of the world’s richest people, is a report published by Oxfam based on a detailed analysis of the investments of 125 of the richest billionaires in some of the world’s biggest corporates and the carbon emissions of these investments. These billionaires have a collective $2.4 trillion stake in 183 companies. 

The report finds that these billionaires’ investments give an annual average of 3m tonnes of CO2e per person, which is a million times higher than 2.76 tonnes of CO2e which is the average for those living in the bottom 90 percent. 

The actual figure is likely to be higher still, as published carbon emissions by corporates have been shown to systematically underestimate the true level of carbon impact, and billionaires and corporates who do not publicly reveal their emissions, so could not be included in the research, are likely to be those with a high climate impact.

“These few billionaires together have ‘investment emissions’ that equal the carbon footprints of entire countries like France, Egypt or Argentina,” said Nafkote Dabi, Climate Change Lead at Oxfam “The major and growing responsibility of wealthy people for overall emissions is rarely discussed or considered in climate policy making. This has to change. These billionaire investors at the top of the corporate pyramid have huge responsibility for driving climate breakdown. They have escaped accountability for too long,” said Dabi.

Jeff Bezos's superyacht 'Koru' often travels accompanied by a smaller 'support' superyacht. Image by Conmat13 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia.
Jeff Bezos’s superyacht ‘Koru’ often travels accompanied by a smaller ‘support’ superyacht. Image by Conmat13 under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license via wikimedia.

“Emissions from billionaire lifestyles, their private jets and yachts are thousands of times the average person, which is already completely unacceptable. But if we look at emissions from their investments, then their carbon emissions are over a million times higher,” said Dabi.

Contrary to average people, studies show the world’s wealthiest individuals’ investments account for up to 70 percent of their emissions. Oxfam has used public data to calculate the “investment emissions” of billionaires with over 10 percent stakes in a corporation, by allocating them a share of the reported emissions of the corporates in which they are invested in proportion to their stake. 

The study also found billionaires had an average of 14 percent of their investments in polluting industries such as energy and materials like cement. This is twice the average for investments in the Standard and Poor 500. Only one billionaire in the sample had investments in a renewable energy company.  

The choice of investments billionaires make is shaping the future of our economy, for example, by backing high carbon infrastructure – locking in high emissions for decades to come. The study found that if the billionaires in the sample moved their investments to a fund with stronger environmental and social standards, it could reduce the intensity of their emissions by up to four times.

“The super-rich need to be taxed and regulated away from polluting investments that are destroying the planet. Governments must put also in place ambitious regulations and policies that compel corporations to be more accountable and transparent in reporting and radically reducing their emissions,” said Dabi.

Oxfam has estimated that a wealth tax on the world’s super-rich could raise $1.4 trillion a year, vital resources that could help developing countries – those worst hit by the climate crisis – to adapt, address loss and damage and carry out a just transition to renewable energy. According to the UNEP adaptation costs for developing countries could rise to $300 billion per year by 2030. Africa alone will require $600 billion between 2020 to 2030. Oxfam is also calling for steeply higher tax rates for investments in polluting industries to deter such investments.

The report says that many corporations are off track in setting their climate transition plans, including hiding behind unrealistic and unreliable decarbonization plans with the promise of attaining net zero targets only by 2050. Fewer than one in three of the 183 corporates reviewed by Oxfam are working with the Science Based Targets Initiative. Only 16 percent have set net zero targets. 

Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.

Continue ReadingA billionaire emits a million times more greenhouse gases than the average person

How Motability cuts went from a rightwing online campaign to Rachel Reeves’s budget

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/how-motability-cuts-went-from-a-rightwing-online-campaign-to-rachel-reevess-budget

The Motability scheme was the target of the only significant welfare cuts in the budget. Photograph: makklyu/Alamy

Car lease scheme for people with mobility problems portrayed as ‘free’ but is funded by benefits and their own contributions

A decade ago, Rachel Reeves was pictured with a disabled constituent, congratulating him on being given the “keys to freedom” afforded by a Motability vehicle.

Since then, Reeves – now Britain’s chancellor – has barely mentioned the scheme that leases 300,000 cars a year to people with mobility problems, aside from criticising Tory cuts affecting its users.

Nor did it crop up in Labour’s manifesto, which promised to put disabled people’s “views and voices at the heart of all we do”.

But late last year, the idea that Motability was offering disabled people “free” BMWs and Mercedes became a repeated rightwing talking point fuelled by social media accounts on Elon Musk’s X.

In fact, the cars are funded by people’s disability benefit payments, topped up with their own contributions.

From there, articles began to spring up in the tabloid press reproducing social media memes calling for Motability vehicles to be made more ugly, and the furore spread to the speeches of Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage – and, finally, grabbed the attention of the Treasury.

At the budget, Reeves for the first time publicly identified the programme as a problem, saying it “was set up to protect the most vulnerable, not to subsidise the lease on a Mercedes-Benz”.

…

Continues at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/29/how-motability-cuts-went-from-a-rightwing-online-campaign-to-rachel-reevess-budget

Continue ReadingHow Motability cuts went from a rightwing online campaign to Rachel Reeves’s budget

Trump Claims Venezuelan Airspace Is Closed in Latest Illegal, ‘Dangerous Escalation’

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Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

US President Donald Trump participates in a video call with service members from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, on November 27, 2025, during the Thanksgiving holiday. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)

“Even if unenforced, Trump’s declaration functions as an improvised, extralegal no-fly zone created through fear, FAA warnings, and military pressure,” said the anti-war group CodePink.

Policy experts and advocates on Saturday denounced President Donald Trump’s claim that he had ordered the airspace above and around Venezuela “to be closed in its entirety”—an authority the US president does not have but that one analyst said signaled a “scorched earth” policy in the South American country and that others warned could portend imminent airstrikes.

Francisco Rodriguez, a senior research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said that after months of escalating tensions driven by Trump’s strikes on boats in the Caribbean and other aggressive actions, the US government was treating the Venezuelan people as “chess pieces.”

“A country subject to air isolation is a country where medicine and essential supplies cannot enter, and whose citizens cannot travel even for emergency reasons,” Rodriguez told Al Jazeera.

US strikes on vessels in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific have killed at least 83 people since early September, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly ordering US military officers to “kill everybody” on board when he directed the first strike. The administration claims it is conducting the strikes to stop drug trafficking from Venezuela, though US and international intelligence has shown the South American country is not involved in trafficking fentanyl to the US and serves as only a transit hub—but not a major production center—of cocaine.

The Trump administration has claimed it is engaged in an “armed conflict” with Venezuela, though Congress has not authorized any such conflict. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have introduced war powers resolutions to stop Trump from conducting more attacks on boats and inside Venezuela, where the president has also authorized covert CIA operations and has threatened to launch strikes.

On Thursday, Trump said in a statement to US service members that the military could begin targeting suspected drug traffickers on land “very soon,” before claiming the country’s airspace was closed Saturday morning.

The US has also sent an aircraft carrier and 10,000 troops to the region in the largest US deployment to Latin America in decades.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last week urged civilian aircraft to “exercise caution” when flying over Venezuela due to the “worsening security situation and heightened military activity in or around” the country.

That warning led six airlines to suspend flights to Venezuela, which in turn prompted President Nicolás Maduro’s government to ban the companies, including Turkish Airlines, Spain’s Iberia, Portugal’s TAP, Colombia’s Avianca, Chile and Brazil’s LATAM, and Brazil’s GOL. Maduro accused the airlines of “joining the actions of state terrorism promoted by the United States government.”

The anti-war group CodePink said Trump’s claim about Venezuelan airspace represented “a dangerous escalation with no legal basis and enormous regional consequences.”

“The United States has no authority to close another country’s airspace,” said the group. “Under international law, only Venezuela can determine the status of its skies and enforcing a foreign no-fly zone without UN authorization or host-state consent would constitute an act of war. Even if unenforced, Trump’s declaration functions as an improvised, extralegal no-fly zone created through fear, FAA warnings, and military pressure.”

Trump’s actions in Venezuela in recent weeks—which come two years after the president explicitly said he wanted to take control of the country’s vast oil reserves—“form a familiar pattern,” said CodePink.

“Manufacture a crisis, then paint a sovereign government as a danger to US interests, and finally use the manufactured urgency to justify military measures that would otherwise be politically impossible,” said the group. “Trying to ‘close’ the airspace of another country is an act of aggression. It risks flight disruptions, economic panic, and aviation accidents. It is also an attempt to isolate Venezuela without admitting that the US is imposing a de facto blockade. The people of Venezuela have lived with the consequences of Washington’s reckless interventions. They deserve peace, not another manufactured war.”

“Diplomacy, not domination, remains the only path that respects international law and regional sovereignty,” added CodePink. “Hands off Venezuela. Hands off Latin America.”

Charles Samuel Shapiro, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, emphasized that Trump’s latest move in what he claims is a battle against drug trafficking came a day after he announced a pardon for right-wing former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of working with drug traffickers.

“The whole drug trafficking thing is simply a pretext,” Shapiro told Al Jazeera. “If you look at the US government’s own reports, drugs coming into the United States from Venezuela are minimal, so declaring these people to be ‘narcoterrorists’—it makes no sense.”

Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn't bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.

Continue ReadingTrump Claims Venezuelan Airspace Is Closed in Latest Illegal, ‘Dangerous Escalation’

Fidel Castro’s final reflections

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Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro in 2014. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Nine years after his death, we look back at some of the most relevant themes in Fidel Castro’s final writings after stepping down as President of Cuba.

Fidel Castro is often remembered as one of the most iconic leaders of the 20th century. Despite Washington’s unrelenting attempts to overthrow and even assassinate him, Fidel continued his rule and the development of the Cuban Revolution, which began in 1959 after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista.

Much is written on his reflections on the development of the revolutionary struggle in the second half of the 20th century, his emblematic speeches, and his universal vision that combined the best of Leninist pragmatism with the sharpness of anti-colonial critical thinking. But Fidel’s vision of the future of humanity during his last years of life, an activity that demanded many hours of reading and writing, is often overlooked.

Read more: Fidel

In fact, Fidel resigned as President of Cuba in 2008, with the aim of ensuring that the transition to another leader would not jeopardize the existence of the Cuban Revolution; many believed that after his death, the Communist Party of Cuba’s government would collapse.

And while many said that Fidel continued to lead the country after his resignation, the truth is that his production of essays and articles increased exponentially. Foreign policy, ecology, coups d’état, and even reflections on baseball and sports were all topics that Castro covered in his copious written work, generally published in Cuban and international newspapers.

The right to live

Fidel insisted that if human beings continued down the path of savage capitalism, they would bring about the end of their own existence. For Fidel, climate change was not only a transformation of certain environmental aspects, but also the destruction of human existence: “Continuing the battle and demanding at all meetings, particularly those in Bonn and Mexico, the right of humanity to exist… is, in our opinion, the only way forward.”

Here Fidel took a stance far removed from any short- or medium-term ideological dispute to adopt a long-term vision, according to which human beings have been incapable of properly managing a legacy of billions of years once they appeared on Earth: “[Human beings] benefit from a fabulous legacy of 4 billion years provided by the Earth… They are only 200,000 years old, but they have already changed the face of the world.”

Furthermore, he found any kind of military spending deeply inappropriate in the face of the inexorable arrival of the end of humanity. “The world is suffering the consequences of climate change at the same time;… A war was the most inappropriate thing that could happen at this time.”

The nuclear danger

Few people knew more about an almost imminent nuclear war than Fidel Castro. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world was on the brink of self-destruction. This concern never left Castro, when he warned of the massacre that would take place years later in Palestine: “As soon as the warships of the United States and Israel take their positions… the terrible war will begin.”

Furthermore, he clearly understood that a large-scale war, especially a nuclear one, would not transform the balance of power between social classes. Thus, he warned that after such a war, only “the administration of goods and services” would remain, and it would be carried out by the same elites that currently exist.

Imperialism as a method of domination

Fidel never abandoned the idea that imperialism continued to be the capitalist system’s most refined method for extracting value and subjugating the peoples of the Third World. Militaristic policy, the essence of imperialism, could never abandon its development, even at the expense of other more pressing needs.

He emphasized that in 2008, 42% of global spending was on military expenses: “While USD 1.5 trillion is spent on defense, the number of hungry people in the world reaches 1 billion.” This disparity was no accident, but rather a strategy executed by the great powers, under the pretext of defense cooperation, to impose economic programs and projects that further dispossess Third World countries. Thus, he openly criticized Obama’s foreign policy for Latin America as a ploy to control the Amazon

Science and technology

Fidel’s Marxism could not ignore the impressive technological transformation that took place during the first decades of the 21st century. In this sense, his reflections often focused on the use that transnational companies were making, and could make, in the field of production.

“If robots in the hands of transnational corporations can replace imperial soldiers in wars of conquest… (they can) flood it with robots that displace millions of workers.” Thus, Fidel announced a new process of dispossession of labor, as carried out by the merchant bourgeoisie at the dawn of the Modern Age.

Thus, technology, climate change, imperialism, and so on, could give the impression of rampant pessimism. However, thinking that could be a mistake. It is true that there was a great deal of caution and concern in Fidel’s final reflections, but this should not be confused with a renunciation of collective struggle.

Castro’s final texts always called for organization, for not giving up the strength of will, for continuing to think and work toward another future, one that is not at the mercy of the designs of a few. In short, as Romain Rolland stated and Gramsci popularized, Fidel’s thinking perfectly executed the maxim “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”

Original article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingFidel Castro’s final reflections