CASTRO VOICES MARXIST OPPOSITION TO ASSASSINATION
The world was provided with another example of Fidel Castro's remark=able political talent when he rose to the defense of the Cuban Revolution and the Marxist outlook as the Dallas police and the most reactionary elements in the United States sought to utilize the assassination of President Kennedy to touch off a nation-wide witch-hunt.
Jean Daniel, a well-known correspondent of the Paris weekly. 1'Ex ress, happened to be with Castro when the news was flashed to the Cuban premier. Daniel gave a step by step account of Castro's reactions in an article that was widely republished. Of highest interest was the repugnance that Castro displayed over the murder and his alertness to the political implications.
On the very next evening -- after Oswald, the alleged assassin, had been arrested but before he had been executed by the sinister strip-tease entrepreneur who had connections with both the underworld and the Dallas police -- Castro appeared on the radio and TV networks of Cuba. Ina remarkable speech, he analyzed the meaning of the assassination, its political implications, and the glaring contradictions in the account | offered by the Dallas police. He took the dispatches as they came over the wires of the United Press International. and the Associated Press and demonstrated sentence by sentence how these powerful agencies, especially ‘the UPI, were deliberately seeking to convict Oswald in advance and to turn the assassination against Cuba, the Soviet Union and "communism" in general.
_ From the evidence at that point, Castro proved, it was impossible to determine whether Oswald was the actual assassin, whether he was mentally , sick, or whether he was the victim of a frame-up.
One of the most instructive points in the speech was Castro's affirmation of the Marxist attitude of complete opposition to assassination as a political means, Since Castro has been maligned times without count’as a bloodthirsty monster, it is worth noting-his words. [Our translation is from the text of the’ speech as reported in Diario de la Tarde, November 25.]
He said about Kennedy's policies: "The international policy of the United States cannot be defended. Its policy of aggression -- its imperialist policy -- of violation of the rights of. other nations, of intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, of domination, repression, bloodshed, alliance with the most reactionary sectors of the world, participation in. bloody wars against the peoples who are struggling: for’ their Liberation -- as in the case of South Vietnam -- its attitude toward the peoples of Latin America, its attitude toward. -us, in short, its international poliey, is not defensible in the slightest from the moral point of view.
’ Nevertheless Kennedy did not represent the worst Forces. “within American society, within the political field of the United States, there are elements who are partisans of policies.even much more reactionary, of policies much more aggressive, of policies much more bellicose.. This means that within a definite situation there are degrees and within bad policies there are degrees: from bad, to worse, and the very worst,"
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Castro spent considerable time. explaining how the death of Kennedy _ could open the road to the most reactionary and even fascist-like elements in the United States; and, therefore, why no Marxist or friend of Cuba could possibly wish for anything sO damaging as the assassination of this president. despite the most intransigeant opposition to his policies.
As for the murder itself, Castro said that "the emotions of man, of any man, are effected by an act of this kind, by a crime, an assassination; I say that, leaving aside these questions [political opposition to Kennedy], I always react -~- I am sure that this is the reaction of the immense ma Jor— ity of human beings -- we always react by rejecting murder and crime,
Castro explained the Marxist attitude and the attitude of the Cuban revolutionists toward Kennedy's assassination in the following way:
"From the circumstances surrounding the assassination of the President of the United States, we know that it had no justification,
"But, analyzing the question from the political point of view, objec« tively, at can also be said that it was grave news, bad news.
"And some will ask: ‘How -- - precisely how can the Cubans -- who have _ been on the receiving end of so many aggressive acts from the United States, from the Kennedy administration itself -- have an attitude like that in the face of this news?!
"Ttts because the Cubans must, in the first place, react as revolutionists. In the second place, the Cubans as conscious revolutionists, must not confound systems with men. We must begin by considering that we do not hate men, we hate systems,
"We hate the imperialist system, we hate the capitalist system. But this does not mean that we should hate men as men, as individuals who are part of a machine, who are part, more or less important, of a system.
"Because of this, we must not confound hate for the system with the feeling that we must harbor toward men, which is a different feeling. It is not a feeling of hate, still less a feeling of hate in this case which would be a feeling of base hate.
"As Marxist-Leninists, we know that the role of men is a relative role in each historic epoch, in each society, at each definite moment. And we must know the role that men play in each society. And above all -- a ques= tion of elementary principle -- we do not hate men, we hate systems,
"We rejoice over the death of a system; the disappearance of a system. . always causes us joy. The triumph of a revolution always causes us joy.
"The death of a man, even though | this man is our enemy, is no cause’ for rejoicing. In the first place, as a matter of principle, this must be our attitude, And in addition, because of something else that is very much part of the character of us Cubans, of us Latins, of us Hispano Americans -because of what we are, a mixture of races of definite peculiarities -always before death, we cease our belligerency, always before death we bow with respect even if it is a question of an enemy,"