A few years ago, a commercial video for the well-known credit card Mastercard used a clever device: a young woman, a child, and an elderly man each expressed the desire to make a wild dream come true, to which the narrator responded, "with Mastercard, it’s possible." But the final sequence sealed the message in an unexpected way (which paradoxically strengthened the effect of the earlier extravagant claims): a child ran to hug his father, and the voice-over concluded, "No, Mastercard cannot buy the love of your child."
In a system where the value of a human being is often measured by the money they possess (their purchasing power) rather than by their virtues and contributions to Humanity, there are always those who believe they can buy everything. Donald Trump, a capricious and arrogant millionaire leading a declining world power, only knows the means of force: that of money and weapons. Did he bully other children at school, or was he the one being bullied? A tempting question for psychoanalysts. Trump buys and threatens, saying “let my will be done,” sitting on the throne of merchants who were driven out of the temple by Jesus. Everything seems possible: inciting coups d’état (the novelty: in his own country); practicing pedophilia; murdering boatmen who allegedly transport drugs in the Caribbean Sea (already more than a hundred) to intimidate a sovereign government that refuses to surrender its natural resources; stealing oil tankers, foreign companies, or others’ assets; imposing sanctions and blockades on countries and their rebellious leaders; bribing or blackmailing weak governments; (attempting to) annex territories rich in natural resources like Greenland or the Orinoco Belt; being complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people and yet still believing he deserves to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and the devotion of subjugated peoples. Perhaps one day he will appear at the wedding of one of his Latin American lackeys and demand the “right of the first night” (to claim the bride on her wedding night). Some childhood trauma has returned him to Antiquity or the Middle Ages, when kings or emperors were remembered for the extent of their conquered territories and their bloody military victories. But he is nothing like the romanticized memory of Charlemagne; his face, his empty gestures, his arrogance, his historical incapacity resemble those of Hitler and Mussolini.
But I stand firm in the idea that the crumbling Western empire is the last in human history. Enough of declining empires and rising empires. Enough of empires. Multilateralism must lead us to another possible world, where peoples exchange knowledge and wealth, where solidarity establishes true human hierarchies. The economic hegemony of the most powerful must not be sustained by exploiting the weakest. Of course, this is a matter of class—that is, class struggle—both within each nation and externally. I heard online a speaker say that using the term colonialism placed the cause of social contradictions on external factors, and hid the existence of class struggle within the colonized countries.
An absurd idea: the neocolonial aristocracies, as Che Guevara pointed out, are vice-bourgeoisies serving the metropolitan bourgeoisies. And the fundamental contradiction of the 20th century, also pointed out keenly by Che, was produced between exploited peoples and exploiting peoples, following an inevitable pattern: the internationalization of class struggle. That is why when a segment of the subordinate nations rebel and try to assume their own destiny, they challenge the entire imperialist system. It has always seemed to me a great paradox—or perhaps a fully conscious ideological purpose—that science fiction films depict technologically advanced future worlds where rich and poor, exploiters and exploited, conquerors and conquered remain “naturally” as they are: as if class contradictions had a genetic and not a social (historical) origin.
Brute force, however, is the daughter of impotence. The one who threatens and shouts lacks other resources to earn respect. Our America once again becomes, due to its geographical position, riches, and history, the stage where Western imperialism, which is the current form of capitalism, stakes its survival. José Martí wanted a Cuba and Puerto Rico free as bulwarks against imperial expansion. Cornered, displaced from other markets, the once giant needs to forcibly control what it has always called its “backyard.”
Trump’s lies lack sophistication; he has no time to invent them and believes he doesn’t need to: he talks about a crusade against drug trafficking yet frees an allied drug trafficker, a former president of Honduras, to help him subjugate his people; he talks about restoring “democracy” in Venezuela and brazenly declares his intention to seize that country’s natural resources. The Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine does not lie. The unity of our peoples—since that of their governments will not always be possible—is the only alternative for salvation. “The trees must line up so that the giant of the seven leagues does not pass!” wrote José Martí on January 10, though in 1891.
Yes, Trump's megalomania expresses, by contrast, the empire's awareness of its downfall. Unlike our Fidel, who, in his will, requested that no center or street bear his name, and that no statues or busts be erected in his honor—being, like Martí, a believer in the power of ideas—Trump follows the long tradition of the conqueror: the new over the old symbol, so that we remember the force of power. There are no scruples. Of the national anniversaries that provided free admissions to the national parks of his country, Trump has eliminated two very significant ones: Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery. Instead, he has incorporated his own birthday. The magnate-president sponsors the construction of a gigantic American football stadium that will bear his name, and has added his surname to the Kennedy Center. "We don’t want kings," was the slogan of protesters in several U.S. cities.
The year ends badly, but I will not describe what we all know or have experienced. It is true that Capital seems unstoppable in its diabolical "games" of death—in Gaza, in Ukraine, in the Caribbean Sea—that traditional multilateral mechanisms like the United Nations prove useless, that right now children are dying, murdered by bullets or missiles, by hunger or disease, while the world celebrates the New Year. But beware, every day there are more dissenters, those who resist and show an unbreakable will to fight. The cry of the gladiators, forced to fight, echoes strangely: Hail Trump, those of us who will prevail salute you!
(Taken from CubaSí)
