Fidel Castro Slams "Evil Idea" of Food for Fuel

Even as Al Gore was getting on the plane to head down to the Bush-sponsored First Inter-American Congress on Biofuels in Buenos Aires, Cuban leader Fidel Castro came out swinging against the "evil idea" of using food for fuels ("biofuels") as "ethically and politically unacceptable," in his latest article published in Cuban daily Granma, on May 10.

Unlike Brazil's President Lula da Silva, when Cubans hear the plans to turn the Caribbean islands and large swathes of Mexico, Central and South America back into sugar plantations for ethanol, they remember their history. Castro reported that a documentary film of real-life pictures of cutting sugarcane by hand was shown at a recent conference in Havana, and it "seemed like a reflection of Dante's Inferno."

That conference was the "6th Hemispheric Meeting of Struggle against the Free Trade Agreements and for the Peoples' Integration," where Castro reported that the "irrationality of a civilization" that transforms foodstuffs into fuels, was discussed at length.