A Vociferous Pep Rally : Havana Conference Backs Castro on Debtors’ Revolt

In a five-day meeting that concluded here Saturday night, Latin American leftists and liberals strongly endorsed President Fidel Castro’s campaign for a foreign debt revolt in the region.

“The foreign debt is a cancer,” Castro said in the meeting’s closing session. “Imperialism has created that cancer, and it must be totally eradicated by surgery. I see no other solution.”

Although the meeting issued no resolutions or conclusions, it served as a vociferous pep rally on the debt issue, which Castro is trying to turn into a popular cause for Latin America.

“It is a struggle of national liberation,” Castro declared Saturday night. “It is a struggle for our independence.”

In previous sessions, speaker after speaker agreed with his contention that Latin America’s foreign debt of more than $360 billion is “unpayable.” Many speakers also blamed the debt crisis on U.S. “imperialism,” as Castro does.

Would Refused to Pay

The Cuban leader proposes that Latin American and Caribbean countries collectively refuse to pay their foreign debt, much of which is owed to American banks and the U.S. government.

His 1,200 guests at the Havana gathering ranged from Marxist guerrillas to conservative businessmen, but the overwhelming majority were politically on the left.

Castro attended the meeting’s long sessions since opening day in the large, air-conditioned auditorium of Havana’s convention center, sitting in the front row on the speaker’s platform, sometimes taking notes, sometimes slumping down in his chair.

Participants’ speeches were supposed to last no longer than 12 minutes each, but many exceeded the limit. All were broadcast live on government television and published the next day in Granma, the official newspaper of Cuba’s Communist Party.

Andres Pascal Allende, a Chilean guerrilla leader, told the delegates Saturday that to fight against payment of the foreign debt is to fight against imperialist domination.

“In repudiating the debt, we will repudiate oppression, injustice, misery,” he said.

Pascal Allende is a nephew of the late Chilean President Salvador Allende, whose Marxist-led government was overthrown in a 1973 military coup. Pascal Allende heads the Revolutionary Left Movement, an outlawed Chilean guerrilla organization.

Guerrilla Leaders Present

Other guerrilla leaders at the Havana meeting included Ferman Cinfuegos, one of the top commanders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front fighting the U.S.-backed government in El Salvador; Pablo Monsanto, head of the Armed Rebel Forces of Guatemala, and Antonio Navarro Wolf, a leader of the M-19 rebel army in Colombia.

Colombia’s former President Alfonso Lopez Michelsen, whose government fought the M-19 guerrillas, was one of several former heads of state who attended the meeting. Others included former Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica and former Presidents Juan Bosch of the Dominican Republic and Wolfgang Larrazabal of Venezuela.

A recurrent theme in the speeches was the need for Latin American unity to deal with foreign creditors and to demand better terms of trade with industrialized nations.

‘A Form of Aggression’

“The foreign debt is a form of aggression,” Vice President Sergio Ramirez of Nicaragua said. He asserted that countries that confront their creditors run the risk of economic and even military reprisals by the United States. “Therefore, continent-wide action is required to face the debt,” he said.

Most speakers, including some non-leftists, took similar positions. One of the few who differed was Rene Bucaram, an Ecuadorean businessman.

“It is my opinion that the foreign debt should be paid,” Bucaram said. “I believe that each country should renegotiate its foreign debt independently.”