Reflections of President Fidel Castro What one prevails immediately is a power revolution Nothing animates to me against Brazil. For few Brazilian, on that they do not stop to hammer arguments in a sense or another one, able ones traditionally not to confuse to people friends of Cuba, we would seem kill-joy to whom does not matter to them to harm the net entrance of outer currency of that country. To keep silence would be for me to choose between the idea of a world-wide tragedy and an assumption benefit for the town of that great nation. I am not going to blame to Lula and the Brazilians of the objective laws that have governed the history of our species. Hardly seven thousand years have passed since the human being left tracks concrete from which he got to be an immensely rich civilization in culture and technical knowledge. Their advances were not obtained at the same time nor in he himself place of geography. It can affirm, that due to the apparent immensity of our planet, in many cases did not know the existence of one or another civilization. Never during thousand of year the being human live in city of twenty million of inhabitant like Sao Paulo or City Mexico, or in community urban like Paris, Madrid, Berlin and other that see journey train on rail and air cushion de aire, to speed of more than 400 kilometer by hour. At the time of Cristóbal Columbus, hardly 500 years ago, some of those cities did not exist or the number of several tens of thousands of inhabitants did not exceed its population. No spent kiloWatt to illuminate its homes. Possibly the population of the world did not exceed then the 500 million inhabitants. One knows that in 1830 it reached the first 1 000 million, one hundred thirty years later was multiplied by three, and forty and six years later the sum of the inhabitants of the planet rose to 6 500 million, in its immense majority poor, that must from now on share nutritional products with the domestic animals and with the biocombustibles. The humanity did not count then on the advances of the computation and reached mass media at the present time, although yes the first atomic pumps had exploded already on two great human communities, in which it constituted a brutal act of terrorism against defenseless civil populace, for strictly political reasons. Today the world counts on tens of thousand of nuclear pumps fifty more powerful times, on carriers several times quicker than the sound and of an absolute precision, with which our sophisticated species can be autodestruir. At the end of World War II, which they freed the towns against the fascismo, a new power arose that was appropriated the world and imposed the present absolutista and cruel order. Before traveling Bush to Brazil, the leader of the empire settled down that the maize and other foods would be the raw material adapted to produce biocombustible. Lula on the other hand declared that, from the cane of sugar, Brazil it could provide the one that was necessary; it saw in this formula a future for the Third World, and the only pending problem of solution would be to improve the conditions of life of the cañeros workers. Well conscious it was, and thus it declared it, that the United States on the other hand had to suspend to the tariff barriers and the subsidies that affect the export from the ethanol to the United States. Bush responded that the tariffs and the subsidies to the agriculturists were untouchable in a country like the United States, first world-wide ethanol producer with maize. The great producing North American transnational companies of that biocombustible, that aceleradamente invest tens of thousands of million dollars, had demanded him to the leader of the empire the distribution in the North American market of not less than thirty and five billion (35 000 000 000) of gallons of that fuel every year. Between protective tariffs and real subsidies the number per year will ascend to almost one hundred billion dollars. Insatiable in its demand, the empire had sent to the world the slogan to produce biocombustibles to release to the United States, the greater world-wide consumer of energy, any outer dependency in the matter of hydrocarbons. History demonstrates that the cañero monoculture was associate closely to the slavery of the African, started by the force of its natural and transferred communities to Cuba, Haiti and other islands of the Caribbean. In Brazil it happened exactly equal with the culture of the cane. Today in that country, almost 80% of the cane are cut manually. Sources and studies contributed by Brazilian investigators affirm that a cutter of cane, worker by piece, must produce not less than twelve tons to satisfy elementary necessities. That worker needs to carry out 36 630 flexions of legs, to cross small passages 800 times loading 15 kilos of cane in the arms and to walk in his task 8 800 meters. He loses an average of 8 liters of water every day. Single in burned cane that productivity by man can be reached. The cane of wasted manual or mechanized cut usually is burned to protect the personnel of or harmful bites and mainly to elevate the productivity. Although an established norm of 8 to 5 of afternoon making its task exists in the morning, that cut by piece does not escape of the 12 working hours. The temperature sometimes reaches the 45 degrees Celsius at noon. I personally have cut cane not not very often by having moral, just as other many companions leaders of the country. Memory the month of August of 1969. I chose a place next to the Capital. It well early moved each morning to me towards there. The burned cane was not green, of early variety and agricultural and industrial high performance. It did not stop to cut a minute during four hours consecutive. Somebody was in charge to sharpen the machete. Nor once I let produce a minimum of 3.4 tons daily. Soon it bathed to me, it had lunch sosegadamente and it rested in a very next place. I gained several bonds by the famous drip jar of the 70. It had then 44 years just fulfilled. The rest of the time, until the hour to sleep, dedicated it to my revolutionary duties. I stopped that personal effort when I caused a wound in the left foot. The sharpened machete had penetrated in the protective boot. The national goal was of 10 million tons of sugar and 4 million tons of molasses approximately, like by-product. It was never reached, although we approached her. The USSR was no disappear, seemed something impossible. The special period, that took us to a fight by the survival and the economic inequalities with its inherent elements of corruption, had not arisen. Imperialism thought that the hour had arrived to end to the Revolution. Also he is honest to recognize that in the years of bonanza we learned to waste and was not little the degree of idealismo and dreams that accompanied our heroic process. Agricultural high productivity of the United States was obtained by means of the rotation of the gramíneas (similar maize, wheat, oats, mijo and other grains) with the leguminosas (soybean, alfalfa, frijoles, et cetera). These incorporate nitrogen and organic matter to grounds. The yield of the maize in the United States in 2005, according to data of the Organization of Nations United for Agriculture and the Feeding (the FAO), reached 9,3 tons by hectare. In single Brazil 3 tons of that grain in the same earth area are obtained. The total production entered of that brother country was that year thirty and four million six hundred thousand tons, consumed internally like food. It cannot contribute maize to the world-wide market. The prices of that grain, main food of numerous countries of the area, almost have been duplicated. What will happen when hundreds of million tons of maize are dedicated to the biocombustible production? And I am not going to mention the amounts of wheat, mijo, oats, barley, sorghum and other cereals that the industrialized countries will use like fuel source for their motors. To this it is added that Brazil is very difficult to carry out the rotation of the maize with leguminosas. Of the Brazilian states that traditionally produce it, eight of them are responsible for the ninety percent of the production: Parana, Gerais Mines, Sao Paulo, Goias, I kill Grosso, Grande River do Sul, Santa Catarina and Mato Grosso do Sul. On the other hand, 60% of the sugar cane production, a gramínea that cannot be rotated with other cultures, are carried out in four States: Sao Paulo, Parana, Pernambuco and Alagoas. The motors of tractors, cosechadoras machines and heavy means of transport to mechanize the harvest, would spend hydrocarbons in increasing amounts. The increase of mechanization nothing would help to avoid the heating of the planet, something that is proven by the specialists who have been measuring the annual temperature for more than 150 years. Brazil yes produces an excellent specially rich protein food, the soybean: fifty million one hundred fifteen thousand (50 115 000) tons. It consumes almost 23 million tons and exports twenty-seven million three hundred thousands (27 300 000). Is that perhaps an important part of that soybean is going away to turn biocombustible? In immediate the producers of bovine meat they begin to complain which the seeded lands of grass are being transformed into cane plantations. The old Minister of Agriculture of Brazil, Roberto Rodrigues, important defender of the present governmental line and today Co-president of the Inter-American Ethanol Council, created in 2006 from an agreement with the State of Florida and Inter-American Development Bank (I.A.D.B.) to promote the use of biocombustible in the American continent, declared that the program of mechanization of the cañera harvest does not generate more use, but that on the contrary would take place excessive of personnel nondescribed. He knows himself that the poorest workers coming from diverse states are those that go to the cut of the cane by urgent necessity. Sometimes, they are people whom they have to separate many months of its relatives. It is what it happened in Cuba until the triumph of the Revolution, when the cut and raises of the cane was by hand and as soon as existed the culture and transports mechanized. When disappearing the brutal system imposed to our society, the cutters, alphabetized massively, left his to peregrinate in very few years and was necessary to replace them with hundreds of thousands of voluntary workers. To this the last report of Nations United on the climatic change is added, when affirming what it will happen in Suramérica with the water of glaciers and the water-bearing river basin of the Amazon as the temperature of the atmosphere continues increasing. Nothing prevents that the North American and European capital finances the production of biocombustibles. They could even give the bottoms to them to Brazil and Latin America. The industrialized United States, Europe and other countries would be saved more than one hundred forty billion dollars every year, without worrying about the climatic consequences and of hunger, that would affect in the first place the Third World Countries. They would always have left to money the biocombustible and whatever the cost to acquire few foods available in the world-wide market. What one prevails immediately is a power revolution that consists not only of the substitution of all the incandescent lights, but also in the massive recycling of all the domestic, commercial, industrial equipment, transport and of social use, that with the previous technologies requires two and three times more energy. It hurts to think that billion tons of fossil fuels are consumed annually 10, which means that every year is wasted what the nature took a million years in creating. The national industries ahead have enormous tasks that to make and with it to increase the use. Thus a little time could gain. Another risk of different character that the world runs is the one of an economic recession in the United States. In the last days the dollars are broken record of loss of value. With that currency of paper and the North American bonds are constituted most of the convertible currency reserves of all the countries. Tomorrow First of May it is a good day to make arrive these reflections at the workers and all the poor men of the world, next to the protest against something incredible and also humiliating that has happened: the liberation of a monster of the terrorism, indeed when being fulfilled the 46 Anniversary of the Revolutionary Playa Victory Girón. ¡Prisión para el verdugo! ¡Libertad para los Cinco Héroes! Fidel Castro Ruz 30 de abril de 2007 6:34 pm.