Message of President-Comandante Daniel during the Commemoration
of the Tenth Anniversary of the Transit to Immortality
of Eternal Comandante Hugo Chávez Frías in Venezuela
March 5th 2023
Beloved Venezuelan brothers and sisters, bolívarians, sons and duaghters all, of Bolívar and sons and daughters of Chávez.
Thanks to Sandino, who had to fight one of the many battles that Nicaraguan people have fought and have had to fight against Yankee Imperialism, I was able to meet Chávez, because before meeting Chávez I met Fidel, Raul, Ramiro, Comandantes of the Cuban Revolution.
We were in the battle, under the flag of Sandino, to achieve Independence, Freedom for Nicaragua, trampled on throughout history by Yankee Imperialism, but with Nicaragua defeating Yankee Imperialism.
Since the year 1855, when Nicaragua was invaded by the Yankee slavers, there emerged the first anti-imperialist hymns, of the blood, of the soul of the People: Death to the Yankee thirsty for gold! Death to the vile and cowardly invader! From there was born the anti-imperialist sentiment of Nicaragua's People, a humble People, a working People, a People wanting Peace.
And the Nicaraguan people defeated the Yankee. A detachment of Nicaraguans, of brave patriots led by General Jose Dolores Estrada and heroic fighters like Sergeant Andres Castro, who after running out of ammunition took a stone and threw it against the attacking Yankee, and knocked him down. That is why we cry in Nicaragua and we Nicaraguans do not forget it: “Andrés, throw the stone, throw it, the enemy is the same, the Yankee aggressor!”
Then the battle of Sandino and Zeledón, facing the Yankee troops, the most powerful army on Earth. Sandino managed not to be defeated by the Yankees and the Yankees were forced to withdraw from Nicaragua. They had to admit it as a defeat in their history of wars. And the Yankees had no alternative but to devise traps, betrayals, dialogue, a dialogue for Peace.
Naturally, Sandino had fought for Peace and he was convinced because the invading troops left Nicaragua and the President at the time, President Sacasa, proposed a dialogue for Peace. Sandino knew the risk was enormous, as indeed the comandantes of the Army Defender of National Sovereignty told him. But Sandino reasoned saying the struggle had become more complex, more difficult, because the enemy, the Yankee troops that had faced him, had already left.
So then, there was President Sacasa who seemed to be a person full of good intentions, and there was Somoza whom the Yankees had put in charge of the troops they had organized in Nicaragua, and on Sandino's first visit to Managua, coming down from the mountains, with the anxiety of all his leading officers that the enemy were going to assassinate him, Somoza told Sandino that they were brothers.
There is a famous portrait of Somoza and Sandino embracing. The Judas embrace, the embrace of betrayal, because Somoza was nothing but an instrument of the Yankees, and Sacasa was also a useful instrument. We can say that Sacasa was not in favor of assassinating Sandino, he really believed in dialogue, in Peace, and he invited Sandino to a dinner on February 21, 1934, to finish signing the Peace Agreements, he invited him to the Presidential residence.
Sandino went with his principal compañeros to the dinner, and then after the dinner with the President along with his family, his daughters, Sandino was coming down to return to the house where he was staying in Managua, right there he was captured by order of the Yankee Empire represented by the gringo Ambassador in Nicaragua, and Somoza carried out the betrayal, so Sandino was captured and assassinated. That is why we have learned throughout history that dialogue with the Empire is a death sentence, a death sentence!
Accepting dialogue with the Empire is like trying to buy candy in hell, because when they speak proposing dialogue, and at this very moment the greatest assassins of history are proposing dialogue, whenever they speak about and everywhere they propose dialogue, they carry with them the dagger seeking to destroy, to assassinate, because for them and the hegemony of the Yankee Empire, the essence of that hegemony, namely capitalism and the oppression of the world's Peoples, is something that is not up for negotiation.
That is why for many Peoples, as in the case of Nicaragua, we had no alternative but to take up arms; then, with a Revolution, a revolutionary struggle, very costly unquestionably, we managed to overthrow the last marine that the Yankees had installed as President in Nicaragua, and that was the victory of the Sandinista Revolution.
And in that final phase of the war we had the solidarity of Fidel, Fidel our big brother, Fidel, one of those men and women who live forever, and we were already in the phase of the final offensive, we were already in a war of positions, we had already managed to capture the army barracks of many cities, of the main cities, Except for Managua, and we were fighting in Peñas Blancas, which is the border with Costa Rica, and all the Somoza forces, the forces trained in the United States, with weapons delivered by the United States, with airplanes that dropped bombs delivered by the United States, were mobilized there.
But Fidel had gathered in Cuba the Latin American brothers and sisters who were part of the army there, who were going to school and undergoing training, it was the period of the armed struggle in Latin America, and Cuba was opening its arms to the region's Peoples so that they could defend themselves. He brought them together and told them that Nicaragua, Sandinismo was living a crucial, decisive moment. Naturally, they already had more advanced military formation than us Sandinista guerrillas, being already trained in handling heavy weapons that we did not have, for example artillery and mortars; there was no time for us to send people to Cuba to train.
And Fidel said to them: "Who's willing to go to Nicaragua to do battle? And there immediately, Latin American brothers and sisters, Chilean brothers and sisters, Argentine brothers and sisters, from the different nations, and Cuban brothers and sisters of course, Venezuelans too, joined that solidarity battalion which was decisive, with 82mm mortars and light artillery that were decisive to be able to defeat the elite forces, the elite battalion Somoza had.
That final battle took place, that final victory which was of course the result of the courage and decision of the Nicaraguan people, hence the admiration and respect that Fidel had for the Nicaraguan people. Cuba was the first to publish the first book on Sandino, just after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, and Fidel, with that extraordinary vision and that commitment to the Peoples, to Sandino, to Zeledón, to Estrada, to Andrés Castro, to Carlos Fonseca, to our indigenous ancestors, to our indigenous ancestors who battled against the invaders, because the battle has been the same throughout History, and in our blood runs indigenous blood, yes, of course there runs indigenous blood, it's from there that our vein of resistance come, of heroism, against the oppressors.
Thus, Fidel was a determining factor in the victory of the Sandinista Revolution.
He too entered triumphantly that July 19th, as did Sandino, as did all our Heroes and Martyrs, and as did Bolívar. Because Sandino, having already formed the Army for the Defense of National Sovereignty, Venezuelan brothers and sisters, Sandino was familiar with Bolívar's thought and wrote a document called "Bolívar's dream, making it come true", where he developed the points for Latin American unity, how we could unite, how we should unite, the Peoples, the governments, the Latin American armies.
All this was written by Sandino in that document at a time, undoubtedly, when the most he could do was to circulate it among the Presidents who were meeting in Havana with the Yankee. Naturally, that document was never the object of discussion in that meeting, but it did circulate among the Peoples, it circulated throughout time, in everything that was made known about Sandino's struggle as Sandino, Sandino son of Bolívar, Fidel son of Marti and also son of Bolívar, because he too fought for Latin American Unity, and then Chávez, the youngest of Bolívar's sons.
Right here, I remember, in one of the many meetings with Chávez, I remembered the moment in which, we may well say, God makes miracles, while I was in Cuba, Chávez arrived in Cuba, at a time when nobody thought Chávez would become President of Venezuela, and when there were some "leftist" compañeros and compañeras who looked at him with suspicion, but in any case, Fidel received him.
And then he invited me to an event at Plaza Bolívar, in Old Havana. I went there and a historian from Havana introduced Chávez, we sat down; Fidel sat me next to him, with Chávez, then Chávez began to speak and I was surprised listening to Chávez: This is a miracle, I thought, a miracle, because, that a young man formed as a soldier had that lucidity, had the courage to make a statement like the one he made with complete clarity, no one could think he was any kind of coup leader.
No, he was not a coup leader, he was a Revolutionary, a Revolutionary who had been forging himself, and had been organizing comrades in the military academy, in the Army, and then, the first rebellion which appeared to be a military rebellion... Well, no, it was a revolutionary rebellion!
It was a revolutionary rebellion of the Venezuelan People, of the People of Bolívar!
And that was when Fidel invited him, then, when he arrived in Havana, Fidel received him at the airport, that speaks of Fidel's vision, and after Chávez spoke, I was totally amazed at his lucidity, his clarity, his firmness, and then Fidel invited us to get into his vehicle, the three of us in the back seat and we began to make a tour until we arrived at the house where I was staying in Havana.
When we got out of the vehicle, we stood talking a little, and I told Chávez: A meeting of the Sao Paulo Forum is coming up, it will be in El Salvador, it would be good for you to go there, we are going to be there fighting for you so there will be no problems. Because we knew that among the Latin American Left there are always those complications, at that moment there was insufficient clarity to understand the process the Venezuelan people were living through.
Because from that moment on, when Chávez met with Fidel and we all had that meeting, really, I found myself talking with a compañero, with a comrade, that is, I no longer felt distance, because this was not merely some military figure before me, but a revolutionary convinced that the military must be revolutionary so as to become instruments of Peace and Security for their Peoples.
Then... I don't want to overrun, Raul already alerted me, I don't want to overrun. Indeed, Raul alerted me, telling me that he wants me to deliver a message like the one we made on the July 26th Anniversary, we were all there, and they told us to read a written message no more than five minutes long. Well, I was disciplined for once, on that occasion I was disciplined, the comrades made me disciplined. I prepared the speech and I tried to deliver it quickfire, you might say. So five minutes, and only five minutes, and the comrades were amazed that I managed a five minute speech.
So, beloved brothers and sisters, beloved compañeros and compañeras, we could spend all evening until dawn and continue on tomorrow, and I would not tire of sharing with you what Chávez has meant and what he means, and how valuable Chávez is. He is valuable because Chávez is the synthesis of the struggles waged by the Venezuelan People, since the time of the first invaders, right up until the victory was finally achieved through elections.
That was Chávez's other great challenge, because he always had the armed option and it was a temptation for him, and there were comrades who insisted, if we do not make an armed revolution here we will never make it..., if we go to elections they will cheat us, they will cheat us once, they will cheat us again.
But there, as I said on one occasion here in Caracas in a meeting in the streets with Chávez, here the Bolívarian Revolution has managed to defy the Law of Gravity, because it did not seem possible by electoral means. Allende had already reached government, and what was the response? The brutal and cowardly coup of Yankee imperialism.
Then, Chávez and you compañeros and compañeras, you all had the vision, the wisdom to know that you had, in the first place, a People and also that you had armed forces where the seed of the Revolution had already been sown and that those armed forces were never going to overthrow a legitimate government, like the one that emerged with Chávez's victory.
Beloved brothers and sisters, beloved comrades, I convey to you the Love, the affection of the Nicaraguan People, who always have Chávez in their hearts. Chávez and Fidel, we feel them as ours, they are part of our history, they are part of our lives, they are a part of our families.
As for Venezuela's People, how much the Venezuelan People have excelled themselves by fighting these battles! And how decisive the Venezuelan People were and the armed forces in the reversal of the coup d'etat against Chávez and enabling our brother President and Commander in Chief, Nicolás Maduro, to move forward, move onward, move ahead, in spite of the brutal aggression of the Yankee Empire, in spite of the blockade of the Yankee Empire, in spite of the assassination attempts, because there was an open, cowardly assassination attempt against Nicolás, against his General Staff, against his Ministers. And what did the so-called "democrats" say? Nothing! For them that's in the past. And for them it was worth trying, it was worth it for them.
And you have been going through a period that Cuba, indeed, as we know vey wellr, Heroic Cuba and how it has resisted, how it has resisted 60 years of blockade there. And what good has the United Nations been? None! None! What democracy is that? In the United Nations, 180 countries, up to 190 countries have voted against the blockade, in other words, the vast majority of the countries of the world, and nothing happens, the blockade continues.
So what use is the United Nations? What's it for? To foment, justify, support aggression, invasions, terrorism against the world's Peoples, blockade against the world's Peoples, and to slander, calumny, condemn those Heroic Peoples who defend their Dignity, like the Venezuelan People, like the Cuban People, like the Nicaraguan People, like those Peoples around the World who are not willing to submit to the Yankee Empire.
Long Live the Bolívarian Revolution!
Chávez Lives, the Struggle Goes On!
Chávez Lives, Chávez Lives on, the Struggle Goes On!
We will overcome!