Prensa Latina: We Must Fight, says Fidel Castro to World Intellectuals

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, reiterated the need to keep fighting and keep the population informed, in a meeting with intellectuals of the Network in Defense of Humanity. "We must fight" asserted Fidel Castro in a talk of more than nine hours with several personalities from 22 countries invited to the 21st International Book Fair. He commented on world events in the last three days. For Fidel, "the least we can do is keep the public informed,"he said, while confirming by reading the news of the last three days the gravity of the alarming situation for which they were gathered there. Fidel Castro also proposed to publish a book with all the ideas and proposals raised in this dialogue, which held that "we cannot give in to pessimism. It is our duty." The newspaper Granma and the digital portal Cuba-debate enumerated some of the reflections of the participants in the meeting, such as Zuleica Romay, House of the Americas Award and president of the Cuban Book Institute (ICL). Romay recalled the warning that the leader of the Cuban Revolution launched 20 years ago at the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on the risk of extinction that threatens the human species, at present much more severe, he said. The Spanish writer and journalist, Ignacio Ramonet, denounced the practices of the media system globally, in which information serves as a rarely free commodity and people are sold to advertisers. Equally, the intellectuals demanded action to avoid a planetary catastrophe and to oppose manipulation or silence. The Brazilian intellectual, Frei Betto, asked for an assessment of "our social inclusion" and to generate projects, not only outrage, because this is not enough to solve global injustice.