– Fidel Castro –
Excerpts from the speech Global Economic Crisis at the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo, August 24, 1998
Another terrible problem that we are suffering — perhaps the last one I will touch upon — is that of the aggression against our national identities, the ruthless aggression against our cultures, as never before in history, the trend towards a universal monoculture. How can anyone conceive such a world? It is not a world order that combines the wealth and culture of many countries, but a world order that, by definition, destroys culture, a globalization that inevitably destroys culture.
What is one’s homeland, if not one’s own culture? What is national identity if not a country’s own culture? Can there be a greater spiritual wealth than one’s own culture, created during eons by humankind? Can our customs be simply swept away, ruthlessly swept away? We have to be aware of that, because the battle of ideas and concepts will be a great battle.
If we are to speak about ideology, let us speak about the ideology of saving the world — not later, but as soon as possible. Let’s try to save it and improve it as of now. After we have saved it, we will be able to improve it even more…
We are really sailing in a Titanic with a lot of sea beneath and many icebergs in the way. That dramatic story, has now served to invest $300 million in a movie with more than a billion dollars in profits.
The great films are no longer simply films, but a combination of film and commercial operation, and when they have drawn hundreds of millions from the film, they have obtained thousands of millions from the products connected with the picture that are sold, from lion kings, dolls, toys and myriads of objects that absorb families’ money. It is all a combination, the merging of commercial and recreation enterprises whose objectives have nothing to do with culture.
A question: Who are the only ones in the world who have $300 million for a film? There is only one answer: the growing, uncontrollable monopolies of the mass media in the hands of the U.S. transnationals.
A few examples will suffice, if you allow me to recall some facts: 50 percent of all the films made and shown in the world today belong to U.S. companies, 75 percent to 80 percent of the TV serials, 70 percent of videos, 50 percent of satellites through which any place can be reached, 60 percent of the world’s networks and 75 percent of the internet. All of this is in their hands, and all of this is at the service of neoliberal globalization and the ideas it is putting forward. These are very powerful sources of ideology, information, beliefs, customs that can transform many things.
In the Spanish-speaking Americas, an average of 245 films are premiered per country each year, of which 70 percent are U.S., 10 percent correspond to the local film industry, 14 percent are European and only three percent are Spanish American. Seventy-nine percent of the TV programs imported by the Spanish Americas come from the United States.
Actually, I was amazed when I read not long ago that hamburgers were already in India. The Indians, whose culture is so special, who do not even eat beef, already have McDonald’s produced with buffalo meat. Well, you have had it for a long time now. They are here, they are everywhere, but I am talking of India. I can imagine those who are capable of mixing even the meat of a dead oxen killed by accident on a highway with the buffalo meat. Well, the Indians with McDonald’s, and chains of McDonald’s stores, that is the culture of globalization that is imposed. The Indians have other consumption habits, and they have a lot better and more refined dishes than hamburgers.
The Chinese are consuming McDonald’s, the Africans are consuming McDonald’s, wherever there is the possibility for that product. The Chinese are consuming Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. The Latin Americans have had the habit for a long time now, but the Chinese did not have it, they drank tea and other things. The Chinese and the Indians are consuming Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. The Europeans are also learning very quickly to consume hot dogs and hamburgers. They gradually acquire the Western customs and habits, they even smoke the cigarettes targeted by critical campaigns in the United States to reduce death by cancer, but which are then advertised and exported to the whole world.
The culture of reading, which was a privilege of our ancestors when over 80 percent of the population was illiterate, is losing ground considerably. Reading habits? No. TV serials? Serials, yes, one after the other, never-ending superficiality of all sorts, escapism.
How much time do children have for studying? The average TV time of children with electricity in their homes is three hours of their after-school time. The reading habit is gradually disappearing.
Books? What books are available to the Third World? In Finland, for example, where they have a lot of paper and big forests, which they now prefer to exploit as little as possible, they now buy trees from the Russians; they preserve their forests and go to Siberia. The number of books published in Finland between 1991 and 1994 was 246 per 100,000 people, while in India and Madagascar it was barely one per 100,000. The average number of books published in the developed countries is 54 per 100,000 people, while in the countries still to develop it is seven books. That is their possibility of reading, of knowing at least the history of their country.
It is very sad to hear — and it is true — that if a survey is made among Mexican or Latin American children to ask who were Hidalgo and Morelos, or if you ask Central American children who was Morazán, or in Latin America who was Bolívar, they do not know. Yet a great majority of those children know who Mickey Mouse is. That is their cultural legacy to us; they are destroying the most cherished values of our lives, our peoples, our nations, our communities.
Three transnational news agencies circulate 80 percent of the news disseminated in the world by cables. And that is nothing compared to digital television, the increasing number of channels, fiber optics and the possibilities that keep emerging.
Something as sacred as culture is threatened with extinction, because those media are mainly used for commercial and not for educational purposes. Very few Africans have a TV channel, a radio station, and when they do have a TV channel, then all that is shown comes from abroad, from the developed, consumer societies, from the United States in particular.
Are they going to leave us any freedom? They are not even going to leave us the freedom of choosing our food, nor cooking it as our ancestors historically did. All at the service of that unsustainable order…
Other statistical data show that in many countries there is an average of five to 10 acts of aggression per hour of television, and that in the period 1996-97 the programs showing violence were 61 percent of the total. Violence and more violence, sex and more sex, which differs from reality, for humankind is not violent by nature, even if the Bible tells us that Cain killed Abel, although television did not exist then!
As for sex, the individual needs to be educated, because as it is instinctively, naturally awakened, there is no need to go around proclaiming it. Isn’t that right, young university students? It is exploited and exacerbated for grossly commercial purposes. This also brings about many social phenomena linked to today’s world, such as irresponsibility, emotional instability, disappointments, separations, divorce.
Believe me, this is not a priest speaking from his pulpit. I am not and cannot be against the right to divorce, but as leaders of a country, we wish that there were more stability in the family, so the less divorce the better.
It is because stability really helps the children who are the ones most affected and it helps the individual, for instance, to control one’s instincts. Nothing is gained by exacerbating them.
Violence and sex are two things much resorted to by these media with a commercial orientation. Everything turns out to be commercial. There is nothing human, nothing that seeks human betterment, but anything that can bring profit even if it destroys humankind, even if it makes social life more complicated.
We must nurture values. There is no alternative; authentic values are those practiced in the greatest freedom.
(Capitalism in Crisis, Melbourne 2000, pp. 53-55, 58-59.)