NO to Fidel Castro at the Meeting of Heads of State in Mexico

THE President of Mexico, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, hosted a summit meeting in Guadalajara on July 18th and 19th, bringing together the President of Portugal, the King of Spain and the presidents of the Latin American nations, in order to encourage cooperation. The Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, was also invited to attend.

It is well known that the old Cuban caudillo represents before the entire world that which is most unacceptable in communism. He has shown himself to be tenaciously faithful to the pre-Gorbachevian communist ideological line.

For this reason, his invitation to Guadalajara raised profound displeasure in the Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) established on the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America. This led them to send President Salinas a letter of vehement protest in which they did not forget to mention the many injustices and atrocities of the Cuban communist regime.

Besides agreeing with our sister TFP organizations regarding the vehement exclusion of Fidel Castro, the American TFP, of its own accord, would like to ponder the following:

As world opinion turns its attention toward next year's commemorations of the 500th anniversary of the discovery and evangelization of the New World, we are somewhat uneasy that a meeting clearly pan-American in nature was held on our continent without the participation of its English, Dutch and French speaking countries.

Could it be that this summit meeting of Guadalajara was the first step toward the creation of a new pan-American organization– one parallel to the Organization of American States? Will this new organization replace it? Will this be an OAS without the United States and Canada, but with the participation of Fidel Castro?

This is an old dream of Latin American leftists.

Recent declarations of the Cuban tyrant seem to support these suspicions. The EFE Agency informs us that Fidel Castro proposed that these meetings be held yearly, following the example of the European and African nations. "We never considered these summit meetings before," said the Caribbean dictator. "The United States prohibited them, and Washington needed only to raise its finger for the world to go running to the capital of the empire," he affirmed.

With these considerations in mind, we present the text of the important letter sent to the President of Mexico by the TFPs of the Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Europe and America, through their appointed representative Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, founder and president of the Brazilian TFP, the oldest TFP. Each TFP also sent a copy to their respective Head of State.

São Paulo, July 8, 1991

His Excellency

Don Carlos Salinas de Gortari

President of Mexico

Presidential Palace

Mexico City, Mexico

Mr. President:

Greeting Your Excellency, I request permission to call your attention to the following important subject.

Undoubtedly Your Excellency has heard of the fifteen Societies for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP), the largest network of anticommunist associations of Catholic inspiration in the world, firmly established on five continents. I address you in the name of the Brazilian TFP, as president of its national council, and as the appointed spokesman for the ten TFPs of the following countries: Portugal and Spain on the Iberian Peninsula; Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela in South America.

With heartfelt sentiments, the attention of the whole world turns toward the commemorations of the 500th anniversary of the discovery and evangelization of America. Innumerable nations the world over are likewise preparing manifestations of solidarity and joy toward the countries comprising the great family of Iberian and Latin American countries.

The Conference of Guadalajara, Your Excellency's lofty and opportune initiative, will be attended by the heads of state of the two explorer-nations who brought about the colonization and evangelization of the vastitudes governed by the Portuguese and Spanish crowns. Obviously, it is most convenient that this conference take place in an atmosphere where a harmony of longings and interests prevails. However, Mr. President, innumerable Spaniards, Portuguese, and Latin Americans would not have expected a strongly incongruous element to appear in the panorama, which could provoke irreparable fissures and could threaten to pollute the emerging cordial atmosphere.

There is presently no dissonant note in inter-Hispanic or Hispano-American relations. The unexpected element will introduce, into our political-diplomatic panorama, a cause for a discord overflowing with resentment, apprehension and just and inevitable repugnance whose final and real cause has its roots far from us.

As Head of State of one of the largest Latin American nations, Your Excellency well knows the fears and alarms that the Soviet presence has caused around the world, from the advent of the communist regime in Russia in 1917 to the fall of the Iron Curtain and the first hopes aborning in people around the world with the Gorbachevian promises of glasnost and perestroika.

Your Excellency is, of course, well aware of the uncertainties and apprehensions that, despite everything, continue to torment the world following the Soviet assault on the Baltic nations, especially against valiant and industrious Lithuania.

Furthermore, Your Excellency must have well in mind the concerns, on a worldwide scale, regarding Gorbachev's dubious policy during the war in the Persian Gulf. And you also continue to witness the apprehensions, not to say alarm, of all men in face of the dangerous uncertainties of the Soviet Union's internal politics. These are uncertainties that may at any moment deteriorate into a civil war that, in turn, could easily lead to a world war.

Yes, Mr. President, the whole world is experiencing perplexing and distressing days in face of the perspectives presented by today's world scenario. It is impossible to deny that the nightmares of innumerable contemporaries, whether by day or by night, result from a present scenario that is even more threatening than that of the final days of the pre-Gorbachev era.

To wit:

1. Before Gorbachev, it was general knowledge (with the exception of the local communists in the West!) that the Soviet world lived in profound misery. However, with the fall of the Iron Curtain and the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the blatant reality was more sinister than public opinion could have imagined.

2. In the years just before Gorbachev took office, the dangers of an international nuclear war seemed considerably attenuated. Once the Gorbachevian reforms had been launched, the danger of revolutions and civil wars increased considerably in the Soviet Union when considering that Gorbachev does not know how, does not want or is unable to maintain, in the vastitudes of the USSR, the somber peace of the sepulcher that the former Russian dictators imposed with their characteristic brutality.

3. In the pre-Gorbachev era, the communist parties—well-financed, well-indoctrinated and well-trained for political crime as well as for the war they waged in almost all the nations—suffered from a clear electoral failure on the five continents. This fact eased Western public opinion.

Today, the failure of the Soviet administration in the USSR itself has demoralized communist ideological imperialism in face of world public opinion, and the communist parties are so discredited that one would say they are finished. However, like ghosts with neither brain, nor heart, nor entrails, the communist parties obstinately survive everywhere. Now, this elicits a frightened cry from innumerable contemporaries: "What fanatical ideological germ is this that so confronts unvarnished reality and endeavors to make shameless propaganda of an ideology that today is the opprobrium of men?" The mere organized existence, on an international scale, of such obstinately blind fanaticism raises problems and perspectives no less important, in their own right, than that of the celebrated nuclear danger.

In face of this aggravated picture, the communist presence is even more dissonant than it was before Gorbachev. Mr. President, according to news divulged by the media in general, the head —the hangman—of the Caribbean island-prison has been invited to the illustrious conference of Guadalajara.

The strident dissonance created by the perspective of the presence of this bloody tyrant in Guadalajara—a "conservative" tyrant in the specific current sense as the "Shiites" of international communism are classified—has already started to have repercussions in the three Americas and will have repercussions in the whole world. What is not surprising is that Fidel Castro has proudly proclaimed himself the champion of all the forms of despotism and cruelty that have sustained the communist regime there for so many decades!

A question comes to the mind of every impartial observer. All contemporary Hispanic leaders, whether Portuguese or Spanish, pride themselves on being democratic. Why, then, have they not conducted a referendum in their countries asking their people if they do or do not want to see the sinister Fidel seated among the heads of state who presently govern the Iberian peninsula and the world discovered by Columbus?

This situation, Mr. President, leads to an alternative imposed by logic: Since Fidel Castro has already accepted the enticing invitation, to cancel it would be brutal. But to see him participate in the conference of Guadalajara is to be brutal toward innumerable citizens of Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.

No matter how hard the first alternative, we ask Your Excellency, as host to this great meeting, to choose it. It is unspeakably easier to be brutal toward a tyrant than toward so many free nations.

Our frankness, Mr. President, is imposed by the unfortunate circumstances that constitute contemporary reality. If love of our countries and of Christian civilization lead me—and the presidents of the aforementioned TFPs—to be so frank, it is with pain in our hearts. It is with this same sentiment that each one of us will deliver a copy of this letter to our respective Head of State.

We all love, respect and admire the noble Mexican nation. We all have well in mind that the exalted patroness of Latin America, Our Lady of Guadalupe, established her throne in Mexico. And we all desire that your noble country, Mr. President, attain as soon as possible the plenitude of Christian grandeur to which it was called by God Himself.

Imbued with these sentiments, we pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe for the valiant Mexican nation and also present Your Excellency with the testimony of our high esteem and distinguished consideration.

Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

President of the National Council of the Brazilian TFP

TFP Newsletter, vol. 5, No. 10, 1991.