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The Fellowship of Humanity

a Humanist Church

and

a Progressive Meeting Hall

is a member of

Oakland/Santiago de Cuba

Sister Cities

The Fellowship of Humanity, in partnership with Oakland / Santiago de Cuba Sister Cities, endorses, encourages, and celebrates all activities of the Cuban people that improve and enlarge their daily lives ─ universal health care, universal education, the universal adoption of permaculture to replace the wasteful, toxic, and destructive practices of agribusiness, and the universal adoption of sane and sustainable products that are safer for the environment.

Cuba is a great example to all the world of healthy, educated, sustainable human survival. The Fellowship of Humanity acknowledges and celebrates Cuba's leadership in living sustainably and economically on the Earth. The Fellowship of Humanity aspires to follow Cuba's example. And it is good to know that Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, and Evo Morales, President of Bolivia, also recognize Cuba's contribution to the world ever since Cuba pioneered ecological living within the limits prescribed by the natural resources of the island.

Cuban Farmers

Practicing Permaculture

in Cuba

The Fellowship of Humanity

a Deep Green Humanist Church

is strengthened by the

Revolutionary Spirit

that's Changing the Colonial Culture of

Latin America

Latin America is successfully rising up today against 500 years of colonial domination. The Fellowship of Humanity supports the peoples in every country of Latin America in their efforts to free themselves of systemic, colonial oppression. This oppression has been disastrous to all environments, plants and animals, as well as human beings. All ecological systems of the Earth are dying. The Fellowship of Humanity deplores the selfish and thoughtless wrecking and robbing of environments and people and honors and supports all endeavors to shake off oppressors and allow the environment and people to live as they need to live to survive healthily and joyfully together on this small and fragile planet Earth. The peoples of Latin America are on their way to living cooperatively, economically, and sustainably, continually gaining more freedoms that bring them more self respect and more capability to heal the environment.

The Fellowship of Humanity joins in the struggles of Latin American peoples to stand up to and overcome gargantuan oppressors, today in the form of multi-national mega-corporations and/or corrupt and violent governments. The Fellowship of Humanity, like forward-looking Latin American communities today, aspires to be a conscious community based on simplicity, generosity, sustainability, cooperative economics, and ideals of communitarianism instead of the deceit, meanness, carelessness, competition, and beliefs in domination that prevail in America today.

Prensa Latina reports that Hugo Chavez said that Cuba's energy-saving program has captured the world's attention for its positive results in combining energy and economic savings while reducing environmental pollution. Hugo Chavez said: "We owe all of this to Cuban President Fidel Castro." But what progressive people everywhere owe to Hugo Chavez is leadership of the current Bolivarian Revolution. Chavez' Bolivarian political agenda includes participatory democracy, socialism, Latin American and Caribbean cooperation, and raising up Venezuala's destitute people ─ freeing them from disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, and poverty; it also includes a critique of neoliberalism, globalization, and U.S. foreign policy. Chavez is an inspirational leader in building a human-friendly and Earth-friendly society in Latin America.

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias

El Presidente de Venezuela

Prensa Latina reports that Evo Morales said that he is beholden to the Cuban revolution for inspiring his literacy policy ("Yes I Can!"), health policy, foreign policy, and energy policy. He said that education is the best kind of development and that Capitalism is the enemy of humankind. Morales is the popular leader of Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism, MAS in Spanish, meaning "more," which took him to the Presidency. The MAS political party calls for the nationalization of industry, legalization of the coca leaf, and fairer distribution of national resources. Its mission is to give power to the country's indigenous and poor communities by means of land reforms and the redistribution of natural gas wealth. Morales is the people's champion and inspiration, a shining icon to them every day that he lives in Bolivia's Presidential Palace.

Juan Evo Morales Ayma

El Presidente de Bolivia

Prensa Latina reports that Fidel Castro, upon meeting with Michelle Bachelet in Cuba, said that he believed that in Chile the ideal of socialism for which Salvador Allende struggled and gave his life will finally triumph with Michelle Bachelet. And truly, all her life she has been passionately involved in helping the people of Chile. Because Bachelet was both a medical doctor and a military strategist, she had been called to serve Chile both as Minister of Health and as Minister of Defense under the President before her, Ricardo Lagos. She had become a doctor in order to relieve the pain and suffering of underserved people and improve healthcare in Chile; she had become an expert in military strategy and defense to normalize relations between the civilian and military sectors of Chile, a relationship which had been ruinous in the past. She was key to convincing the military leadership to follow the commands of the civilian leadership. Bachelet won the Presidency of Chile as a moderate Socialist, promising to continue Chile's free market policies, while increasing social benefits to reduce the gap between rich and poor. Bachelet is Chile's first female elected president ─ and the first woman who was not the wife of a previous head of state or political leader to reach the presidency of a Latin American nation in a direct election. Bachelet is also one of the world's few feminist heads of state. Her cabinet is composed of equal numbers of men and women. And her policies bring women to the fore in every walk of life.

Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria

El Presidente de Chile

Prensa Latina reports that Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner pointed out that Cuba and Argentina are specially linked ─ absolutely identified ─ by the figure of Ernesto Che Guevara. Latin revolutionaries are driven by immense affection for people and joy in bringing them the social justice that 500 years of colonial exploitation has deprived them of. Today Kirchner stresses the need for uniting all Latin American countries through cooperation, that is, love. She said that complementarity, partnership, integration, and technology and biotechnology transfer should be the norm for Latin American countries. She asserts that the more rapid change the countries of the world experience, the more market capitalism fails them. New business models need to be constructed based on Latin American countries complementing one another with respect to their resources, knowledge, and capabilities. Kirchner rejects globalization and promotes diversity of ideas and cultures within a framework of environmentalism. But her primary focus will always be for women's rights. Kirchner grew up in La Plata, a city named for a time after Eva Perón whom Kirchner sometimes identified with. Her highly combative speech style polarized Argentine politics, recalling the style of Eva Perón.

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

El Presidente de la Argentina

Prensa Latina reports that Subcomandante Marcos embarked upon a tour of all 31 Mexican states in 2006 travelling on a black motorcycle in remembrance of Che Guevara's 1952 journey through South America. The comparison with Che Guevara is apt. Marcos is indeed internationally known as a new, internet-savvy Che Guevara. His nickname "Marcos" is the name of a friend and comrade killed at a military road checkpoint. His first name "Subcomandante" comes from his leadership of the Mexican rebel guerrilla movement, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). This new organization and movement, the Zapatista Movement, stems from an older Latin, left, armed, revolutionary movement that was authoritarian and dominated by Marxist and Maoist ideas. Marcos' EZLN uprooted themselves from their familiar urban surroundings and sank themselves into the ranks of the rural poor, agitating for armed revolution in indigenous communities like Chiapas, the poorest of all Mexican poor. But after the failure of the Chiapas uprising, a new path was blazed by Marcos whose weapon, since 1994, is his word, his brilliant writings and eloquent speeches, rather than his submachine gun. He steers the EZLN away from military confrontation with the Mexican Army and towards political confrontation with the State dictatorship. Marcos is an outspoken opponent of globalization, capitalism, and neo-liberalism. He concentrates on the unjust treatment of subsistence, disenfranchised people on the part of both business and the State, giving Zapatista ideology a strong anarchist tinge. His EZLN does not intend to run or promote candidates. Instead it calls for a new constitution that would provide autonomy for some 57 indigenous populations and prohibit the privatization of public resources.

Marcos' extraordinary life as a hero of the people has reached mythical proportions. His popularity has been enhanced first by his brilliant military strategies and later by his profound political analyses ─ not to mention his masked mysteriousness. But as mysterious as he is, always masked, he is agreeably accessible. He has appeared in numerous documentaries, interviews, and meeting halls and his words remain in publications and internet sites. He is a political poet who can engage a five-year-old child as much as the President of the Republic, a peasant farmer as much as the great literary minds of the age. His elliptical, ironic, and romantic writing style makes every Latin tradition count him as representing them: the indigenous say he is one of them; the guerrillas claim him as one of their own; the intellectuals include him in their pantheon; Mexican nationalists see him as a great Mexican nationalist; NGOs see him as an advocate for NGOs; Marxists see him as one of their sect; anarchists claim him as part of their tradition; even the church sees him as an advocate for Liberation Theology. Marcos is a human, agreeable and accessible, who is also a mythical figure who serves as an icon for revolutionary change in Mexico.

Marcos

Subcomandante

del Ejército Zapatista

de Liberación Nacional

The Fellowship of Humanity

is inspired and energized by all the

left-oriented, socialistically-inclined

Societies of Latin America

Latin American countries

with left-leaning Presidents today are:

In Central America

Cuba:              Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz

El Salvador:    Carlos Mauricio Funes Cartagena

Haiti:              René Garcia Préval

Honduras:      José Manuel Zelaya Rosales

Nicaragua:     José Daniel Ortega Saavedra

Panama:         Martín Erasto Torrijos Espino

In South America

Argentina:     Cristina Elisabet Fernandez de Kirchner

Brazil:            Luiz Inacio da Silva

Chile:            Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria

Ecuador:       Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado

Paraguay:      Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez

Peru:              Alan Gabriel Ludwig García Pérez

Uruguay:       Tabaré Ramón Vázquez Rosas

Venezuela:     Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias

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