Taking Note / Regina Coyula

A few days ago Fidel met with the panelists of the television program Mesa Redonda (Round Table)* and he encouraged them to pose more difficult questions to him, as if he were a student well-prepared for an exam. The week ended, and a printed version of the encounter ran in the newspaper Granma, but I was left waiting for the broadcast of Mesa Redonda in its normal television time slot. There are various speculations: it has called the attention of those who notice these kinds of things, that they haven’t televised the meeting; there are even those who think that censorship has been imposed upon “Him.”

In his latest writings, customarily titled Reflections, Fidel offers his opinions on a book about world governance, and with his habitual process of copying and pasting, he gives us some very long quotes from the book in question by an author named Daniel Estulin, which leads me to ask myself, wouldn’t it just be simpler to have the book published in Cuba so that no one has to read it to us? This could be arranged if Fidel, who has even invited the writer to Cuba already, were to divert a portion of the 500,000 copies of La victoria estratégica (The Strategic Victory), the first of his books dedicated to the struggle against Batista, to make a modest print run of this other book that has inspired so much enthusiasm in him!

*Translator’s note: Mesa Redonda is a weekly current events/debate roundtable discussion program. Before taking ill, Fidel Castro was an almost permanent fixture, along with other rotating guest panelists (depending on the week’s topic) and the program’s regular panelists and moderator.

Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

August 31, 2010