REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL – A NOBEL PRIZE FOR EVO!
If Obama was awarded the Prize for winning the elections in a racist society despite being African-American, then Evo Morales (president of Bolivia) deserves it for winning in his country despite being an indigenous man, and moreover for keeping his promises.
It was the first time in the two countries that someone from each of their respective ethnic groups became president.
More than once, I noted that Obama was an intelligent, educated man in a social and political system in which he believes. He aspires to extend health services to almost 50 million U.S. people, to pull the economy out of the profound crisis it is experiencing, and to improve the image of the United States, deteriorated due to its genocidal wars and torture. He does not conceive of or desire, nor can he change, his country’s political and economic system.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to three U.S. presidents, a former president and a presidential candidate.
The first was Theodore Roosevelt, elected in 1901, the man of the Rough Riders that landed their riders – without their horses — in Cuba for the U.S. intervention in 1898 to prevent our country’s independence.
In Rome, the filmmaker Michael Moore made a lapidary statement: “Congratulations, President Obama, on the Nobel Peace Prize; now, please, earn it.”
I am sure that Obama would agree with Moore’s statement. He possesses sufficient intelligence to understand the circumstances surrounding the case. He knows that he has not yet earned that prize. That morning, he stated, “I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honored by this prize.”
It is said that there are five members on the famous committee that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, all of them members of the Swedish Parliament. A spokesperson said that it was unanimous. One question fits here: did they or did they not consult the winner? Can a decision of this type be made without first notifying the winning individual? This cannot be judged morally in the same way if the person knew or did not know beforehand about the awarding of the prize. It is also fitting to affirm that about those who decided to award it to him.
Perhaps it is necessary to create a Nobel Prize for Transparency.
Bolivia has major gas and oil deposits and holds the largest known reserves of lithium, a mineral greatly needed in our era for storing and using energy.
Evo Morales, a very poor indigenous farmer, traveled throughout the Andes, together with his father, before he was six years old, shepherding the llamas of an indigenous group. They led them for 15 days to reach the market where they sold them to buy food for the community. Responding to a question of mine about that unique experience, Evo told me that at the time, “they stayed in the 1,000-star hotel,” a beautiful way of referring to the clear skies of the mountains where telescopes are sometimes placed.
During those hard years of his childhood, the alternative for the farmers in the community where he was born was to cut sugar cane in the Argentine province of Jujuy, where part of the Aymara community sometimes took refuge during the sugar cane harvest.
Not very far from La Higuera, where Che, wounded and disarmed, was murdered on October 9, 1967, was Evo, who was born on the 26th of that same month in 1959, not yet 8 years old. He learned to read and write in Spanish, walking to a little public school five kilometers from the hut where, in a rustic room, he lived with his brothers and sisters and parents.
During his eventful childhood, wherever there was a teacher, Evo was there. From his race, he acquired three ethical principles: not to lie, not to steal, and not to be weak.
