-DATE-
19900316
-YEAR-
1990
-DOCUMENT_TYPE-
-AUTHOR-
-HEADLINE-
Reportage on Castro Visit to Brazil
-PLACE-
CARIBBEAN / Cuba
-SOURCE-
Havana Tele Rebelde Network
-REPORT_NBR-
FBIS-LAT-90-053
-REPORT_DATE-
19900319
-HEADER-
BRS Assigned Document Number:    000004892
Report Type:         Daily Report             AFS Number:     FL1603211090
Report Number:       FBIS-LAT-90-053          Report Date:    19 Mar 90
Report Series:       Daily Report             Start Page:     4
Report Division:     CARIBBEAN                End Page:       5
Report Subdivision:  Cuba                     AG File Flag:   
Classification:      UNCLASSIFIED             Language:       Spanish
Document Date:       16 Mar 90
Report Volume:       Monday Vol VI No 053

Dissemination:  

City/Source of Document:   Havana Tele Rebelde Network

Report Name:   Latin America

Headline:   Reportage on Castro Visit to Brazil

Subheadline:   Discusses Regional Situation

Author(s):   unidentified foreign reporters in Brasilia on 15 March--recorded]

Source Line:   FL1603211090 Havana Tele Rebelde Network in Spanish 1329 GMT 16
Mar 90

Subslug:   [Interview with President Fidel Castro by unidentified foreign
reporters in Brasilia on 15 March--recorded]

-TEXT-
FULL TEXT OF ARTICLE:
1.  [Interview with President Fidel Castro by unidentified foreign reporters in
Brasilia on 15 March--recorded]

2.  [Text] [Reporter] [Passage indistinct].

3.  [Castro] Very good, we have had several. Every time there is a change of
government like this, we always meet so we have made contacts in a climate of
confidence; in a relationship of esteem, of friendship.

4.  [Reporter] And the subjects of today's interview?

5.  [Castro] What?

6.  [Reporter] What do you think of the topics of today's interview? Are they
too general?

7.  [Castro] [Words indistinct] a little of everything.

8.  [Reporter] What do you think about the business with M-19 [19 April
Movement], President Castro?

9.  [Castro] [Words indistinct] find a solution. I have always believed that
you can find the road toward peace. Above all, I expressed to the president my
high regard for the great battle he has waged against this drug-trafficking
problem, the courage with which he has acted, and also the successes that have
been obtained.

10.  [Reporter] Doesn it not bother you, mortify you when they ask you, when
they insinuate that there should be an opening in Cuba as in the USSR? Does it
bother you?

11.  [Castro] No, no, on the contrary, I find it amusing when they ask me that
type of question. I always explain however much they want, to those who want
explanations about this, how we have done things in Cuba, how the circumstances
are different between one country and another, their history, problems, and
even mistakes.  Each one has made its mistakes, and they do not have to correct
the mistakes of others but their own mistakes.

12.  [Reporter] Are you in a position to apply an experience similar to the
Chilean one?

13.  [Castro] Which one? And why would we do that if we do not have the
problems of Chile? In Chile they had a regime that sold out the country and a
regime that, at the cost of thousands of lives, implemented a brutal economic
policy. I have spent 30 years working for the people, [words indistinct].

14.  [Reportert] [Words indistinct] are being left isolated?

15.  [Castro] We do not feel we are alone, but we are not afraid of being left
on our own. We are the kind of men that even fight alone. I was alone, the way
I was alone with two men in the Sierra Maestra after the landing of the Granma
and we had nothing but two guns and three men. At a time like that, anyone
could have found a million reasons to withdraw from the struggle and I did not
withdraw even then. Now, there are millions of people in our country, and there
are millions of people in the world who are suffering many injustices. We have
to right those injustices and I think those problems can be solved.

16.  [Reporter] You won the war in the Sierra Maestra. You are very respectful
of the principle of nonintervention but would you say that guerrilla war is a
phenomenon that has disappeared in Latin America. Would you agree with that?

17.  [Castro] I do not think so. I would not be objective if I said it has
disappeared. There are realities. I think that now there are many problems to
be solved in our hemisphere, but greater cooperation is occurring between
countries, between states, between governments, to confront common problems.

18.  [Reporter] Like what?

19.  [Castro] Like the debt, unequal trade terms, looting, millions of abuses
committed against our countries, the helplessness of our economies, inflation
problems, the causes of these problems, and the terrible consequences that are
being produced by problems of a social nature in Latin American countries.

20.  I could mention to you that 700,000 children die who could be saved. This
is equivalent to dropping on children seven bombs like the one dropped at
Hiroshima. Is this not a reality? Is it not our duty to fight to confront these
problems, or the causes that produce these phenomena, regardless of ideologies?
In some developed countries they have reduced infant mortality. They have
solved some of these problems, but they have not solved our problems in the
Third World, our problems in Latin America. They have not solved them for us.

21.  And so we can meet and analyze all these problems, what the causes are.
Why does capitalism prosper in Belgium, the Netherlands, and France? What are
those economies based on and how do they defend themselves? Who defends the
austral or the peso of other countries, the Venezuelan bolivar, or the
Brazilian cruzado? Who defends them? Because in those economies the dollar
defends the yen and the yen the dollar, and between the two of them, they
defend the mark. The mark defends three of them: the pound sterling, the
Spanish peseta, or the Italian lira.

22.  We have a lot of problems. Why do not you yourselves, who are informers
for the public, send us only insignificant details? We must get out of that
framework; we must think about the strategic problems of our societies.  I
think that [words indistinct] one day we will concern ourselves with that and
work in that direction and put an end to these social phenomena that hit our
countries monstrously hard, and we will be creating solid conditions for peace.
The problem is that there are causes of instability and difficulties and they
must be addressed.

23.  [Reporter] Has the subject of [words indistinct] in Cuba been canceled,
Mr. President?

24.  [Castro] Canceled in what sense?

25.  [Reporter] Because you have waged a very great battle against the
people....

26.  [Castro, interrupting] You are the ones waging the battle.  What we did
was what no one else did. We adopted drastic, exemplary, and definitive
measures. And we did this. We did it quickly. As soon as we become aware, as
soon as we discover something, we act.

27.  [Reporter] I have a final question. What did you say when you were with
the students and they began to jump up and down and shout Yankees no! Yankees
no! You said something that was sort of a question. Do you remember? [Words
indistinct] Brazil?

28.  [Castro] I said, they were playing basketball here at a school I went to
inaugurate. I began to shoot the ball and I felt like I had pulled a muscle.
And then they told me you cannot do that without warming up. The students had
just finished a long march, and they were jumping up and down and saying that
whoever does not jump up and down is a Yankee, so then we had no alternative
but to jump up and down, whatever the risk, without having warmed up or
anything.

29.  [Reporter] How did the shooting go?

30.  [Castro] With a shotgun?

31.  [Reporter] No, in basketball.

32.  [Castro] Good, quite good. My shooting is better than my spinal column.
-END-