By Rafael Hidalgo Fernandez, Granma & the Communist Party of Cuba, translated from the Spanish
On March 5, 2013, at just 58 years old, Commander Hugo Chávez Frías became an even greater symbol than he already was. His death impacted Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, who had understood the seriousness of the situation of his dear, generous Venezuelan friend, who was much loved by the Cuban people.
Fidel publicly acknowledged the hard blow when writing We Lost Our Best Friend, finished in the early hours of March 11, three days after the funeral.
The Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution had foreseen the leader that Hugo Chávez would become, even before the first meeting between the two.
Germán Sánchez Otero, then Cuban ambassador to Venezuela, together with political advisor Eduardo Fuentes established relations with him after he left prison.
When he first arrived in Havana on December 13, 1994, Chavez was a familiar figure to Fidel, but he had not yet been able to directly see his sharp and sincere gaze, nor hear the frank tone of his ideas on the emancipation of his beloved Venezuela, and beyond. It would take him 36 hours to identify the quality and potential leadership of the visitor.
It is not a minor detail that he both received and saw him off at the airport, as he used to do with heads of state and other great personalities who were friends of Cuba.
Once again, he showed his ability to see far and wide: Chávez, ended up becoming the best contemporary student of Simón Bolívar, and an essential leader in the process of unity and integration of Our America in the early days of the 21st century. Much of his work continues to influence continental politics, 12 years after his death.
In his March 11, 2013 writing, why did Fidel so categorically assert that Chávez was "the best friend that the Cuban people had throughout its history"?
The question forces us to reflect on three interrelated issues: the human, the ethical, and the strictly political.
The relevance of the topic is related, among other things, to the common "analyses" of the right, which seek to reduce Fidel's actions in his relations with Chavez to mere cunning and pragmatic calculations on his part. The only thing that this approach and its different variants make clear is the inability of its authors to conceive that there are human relations not determined by material costs and benefits.
But there is a more important reason for the falsehoods that Fidel's relationship with Chávez and the Cuban and Bolivarian revolutions have been subjected to: both are linked by emancipatory legacies that are completely relevant for the present and the future.
II
Fidel Castro, like José Martí in his time, was not only a scholar, an admirer and a convinced follower of the Latin Americanist and unitary values of Simón Bolívar, but he also understood the geopolitical and symbolic importance of Venezuela for Our America.
If Martí, after staying approximately six months in Caracas, upon leaving the country said: “Give me Venezuela to serve you, it already has a son in me”, Fidel did so in these terms on January 23, 1959, in the Venezuelan capital, just 22 days after the triumph of the Revolution, on what was his first international trip: "Venezuela is the homeland of the Liberator, where the idea of the union of the peoples of America was conceived. Therefore, Venezuela must be the leading country in the union of the peoples of America; we Cubans support our brothers in Venezuela."
Later, he added: "...if we want to save the freedom of each of our societies, which, after all, are part of a greater society, which is the society of Latin America; if we want to save the revolution of Cuba, the revolution of Venezuela and the revolution of all the countries of our continent, we have to come together and we have to support each other solidly, because alone and divided we fail."
Both 1959 positions were asserted by Fidel in the aforementioned note of March 11, 2013 in these terms: "That's what I said that day and today, 54 years later, I say it again!"
It is evident that, for him, the emergence of a revolutionary process in Venezuela, with a Latin Americanist, unitary vocation and in defense of the sovereignty of Our America, constituted an early central element of his strategic perspective when conceiving the integrationist project and the search for political unity on the continent.
The Cuban Revolution's line of action towards Venezuela during these 66 years was built on the basis of this political key, and not on material interests or circumstantial advantages.
III
Since 1994, the exceptional figure of Chavez has gained a special place and has received increasing attention from the Cuban political-state leadership. Admiration for him has done nothing but grow.
Why? The illustrious plainsman from Barinas had a seemingly inexhaustible capacity to demonstrate, with actions, his exceptional human quality in the broadest sense of the word; to continually express that authentic and scarce sense of gratitude, loyalty and humility that politicians so lack.
He was exceptional at recognizing his own doubts and mistakes, with a natural self-criticism on par with the other true political figures who deserve respect; and, among many other reasons, for his ability to advance the level of complexity and solidity of his revolutionary political thought and an exponential pace.
He was not only an intense reader, but also a keen and persistent observer who learned to listen well and to see better.
Did he not have any defects? The answer, true only for a few: he had greater virtues than lesser defects. To such an extent that he became an idol and paradigm of his people, Cubans and others. Such is the practical and irrefutable historical fact.
Chavez surprised the first Cubans he met with this question: "Please tell me how I can help Cuba." He expressed this without any reservations about our societal project, unlike others.
Later, when he made his first actual physical visit to Cuba, in December 1994 – since he said he had visited it in his dreams long before – in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana he said: "Some day we hope to come to Cuba in a position to extend our arms and in a position to mutually feed each other, in a Latin American revolutionary project, inspired as we have been, for centuries, by the idea of a Latin American and Caribbean continent, integrated as the single nation that we are."
After he became President in 1998 he did this completely and against all internal and external resistance. More than once, Fidel refused to accept his sincere offers of support, because he was aware that there were powerful forces hostile to Chavez within Venezuela, who could manipulate his altruism against him.
This made it easier, dialectically, to materialize the Bolivarian leader's thesis of "mutually feeding each other." A program of cooperation and mutual aid was created wherein lies the evidence of what relations of friendship and solidarity between two peoples and two revolutions can be.
What happened between 1994 and 2013 demonstrated that when leaders and peoples unite in the human capacity to transcend selfishness and arrive at a sense of solidarity; when the principle of loyalty is taken seriously and when the ideals of social and political change come together and are identified, a unfailing comradeship like that of Fidel and Hugo Chávez is born.
This work was translated and shared via a License CC-BY-NC
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