In a workshop dedicated to the analysis of the book “The social economic crisis of the world”, published 40 years ago, scholars from the Economic Research Center (CIEM) highlighted the text is an analysis of the thoughts of the leader during the pro tempore presidency of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) from 1979 to 1983.

Economist José Luis Rodríguez recalled that Fidel Castro’s ideas on development were already implicit from his self-defense plea “History will absolve me” where he insisted on eradicating six fundamental problems such as land, industrialization, unemployment, housing, education and health.

Rodríguez added that after the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the leader advocated for the necessary industrialization of third world countries and for the strengthening of agriculture to achieve this purpose.

It also meant that as early as the year 1960, Fidel Castro was already proposing that for third world countries, socialism is a condition for development, a thesis that -in his opinion- was strengthened over the years.

He also highlighted aspects raised at that time by the leader of the Caribbean nation and that remain fully valid, his insistence on reducing military spending to finance development and the fight to pay the foreign debt.

For his part, Faustino Covarrubias pointed out that in that text, Fidel Castro drew the panorama for the sharpening of the current global multi-system crisis and also with the clarity that the great victims of this are the developing nations.

He explained that the island’s leader warned in his reflections about the trend to structural and cyclical economic crises in capitalist economies and the consequences of neoliberal policies.

In this sense, he said that the International Monetary Fund is warning about five more years of crisis, seasoned with the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Likewise, the researcher Jonathan Quirón referred to the thought of Fidel Castro in the field of international trade and integration. He explained that the Commander in Chief addressed topics such as the importance of world trade for underdeveloped countries, the hegemonic nature of free trade and the deepening of unequal exchange.

The current director of CIEM, Dr. Ramón Pichs, dedicated his speech to Fidel Castro’s ideal in Energy and the Environment, expressing that he called attention to the rational use of natural resources, unsustainable growth patterns and the long-term effects of damage caused to nature.

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