From: Cubasovereignty@aol.com
Subject: [change-links] Fidel's speech to largest ever Havana May Day action
To: change-links@yahoogroups.com, laamn@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 22:00:39 EDT
Reply-To: change-links@yahoogroups.com
The following English translation presents Fidel Castro brief closing
speech to one million Cubans in the Plaza of the Revolution on May 1, largest
ever May Day mobilization. Altogether, seven million Cubans--out of a
population of 11 million--participated in similar events across the country,
an immense, popular outpouring called by the country's labor movement.
It is useful to read this speech in light of recent charges by the
Bush administration that Cuba has acquired "offensive biological weapons"
making capacity and is in league with "rogue states" to promote such
ordnance.
This obscene slander indicates Washington's preparation for new
pressures against Cuba, as part of its international war against working
people, including its war at home, "against terrorism." President George Bush
is scheduled to make a major Cuba policy speech in Miami on May 20.
Fidel's May Day speech is a crisp summary of Cuba's achievements,
which are all the more powerful as Latin America's capitalist economies
shatter and crack, ruining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people.
The Cuban president also presents an update of the U.S.-organized "Mexican
operation" against Cuba, and describes the readiness of the Cuban people to
resist.
LOS ANGELES COALITION IN SOLIDARITY WITH CUBA
310.419.2983/213.383.9283
From: Jonhillson@aol.com
Subject: Fwd: [AmigosJulian] Fwd: Fidel's speech on May 1, 2002
To: Cubasovereignty@aol.com
Date: Tue, 7 May 2002 21:38:56 EDT
From: Julián Gutiérrez <julian2000_cu@yahoo.com>
Subject: [AmigosJulian] Fwd: Fidel's speech on May 1, 2002
To: profinv@tesla.ispjae.edu.cu
Date: Mon, 6 May 2002 07:41:00 -0500 (CDT)
Reply-To: AmigosJulian-owner@gruposyahoo.com
Dear friends
A speech to read and study.
Julián
--- Nino Pagliccia <nino_pagliccia@telus.net>
escribió: > De: "Nino Pagliccia"
<nino_pagliccia@telus.net>
A: "Solidarity w/ Cuba" <nino@telus.net>
Asunto: Fidel's speech on May 1, 2002
Fecha: Sat, 4 May 2002 16:28:55 -0700
SPEECH BY DR. FIDEL CASTRO RUZ PRESIDENT OF THE
REPUBLIC OF CUBA, AT THE INTERNATIONAL WORKERS' DAY
CELEBRATION IN REVOLUTION SQUARE, HAVANA, MAY 1st
2002
Official Translation - May 3, 2002
Distinguished guests;
Dear countrymen:
We were condemned in Geneva by those who believe
that this sea of people gathered here, which can be
seen from every corner of the globe, has been
deprived of its human rights. I am certain that not
one of those Latin American countries that promoted,
co-sponsored or supported this project could gather
even 5% of the number here in their respective
capitals.
Are these fanatic, ignorant and uncultured
individuals who lack any historical or political
knowledge? If we were to ask this mass of people if
there were any amongst them who could not read or
write; or if there were any functional illiterate
people who had never studied beyond grammar school,
not one person could raise their hand. But if we
were to ask how many of this same mass have the
education of a ninth grader or above, more than 90%,
would raise their hands. The only ones who wouldn't
raise their hands would be the students who haven't
yet reached their 15th birthdays.
Our people's glorious tradition of rebellion and
patriotic struggle, to which we must today add a
full and profound understanding of freedom, equality
and human dignity; their solidarity and
internationalist spirit; their self-confidence and
heroic conduct; 43 years of tenacious and
unrelenting struggle against the powerful empire; a
broad and solid political culture and an
extraordinary humanism --all of these qualities
cultivated by the Revolution-- have made Cuba a
unique country.
Wretched indeed is the destiny of hundreds of
millions of people in this part of the world who,
from a truly human perspective, have been as yet
unable to emerge from humanity's prehistory. And it
will not be possible for them to escape such
condition while the pillage that slaughtered tens of
millions of their native ancestors, successively
turning their countries into colonies, neo-colonies
and economically dependant and underdeveloped
countries, continues to govern their destiny.
Events prior to, during and after Geneva are barely
distinguishable from the shameful history with which
our people have been more than familiar since the
very first days after the triumph of the Revolution
on January 1st, 1959.
Cuba was the last Latin American country to free
itself from Spanish colonialism after a heroic and
lone struggle. Yet, it was unable to enjoy that
victory, as it immediately fell in the hands of the
fledgling North American empire, from which it once
again liberated itself with the same determination
and heroism 61 years later although it would be
disgracefully abandoned and betrayed by every other
Latin American government.
No book by Marx or Lenin could illustrate the
anti-national, submissive and treacherous nature of
the Latin American oligarchies and the true
significance of imperialism for the destiny of our
people as clearly as the last 43 years of our
Revolution's history. Every oligarchic and bourgeois
government joined in the imperialist policy of
isolation, blockade and aggression against Cuba, the
sole exception being a country that had experienced
its own great social revolution some decades before,
the same that brought justice and real progress to
the people of a nation mutilated by the insatiable
expansionism of its northern neighbor and made the
martyr on numerous occasions throughout its
hazardous and painful history of foreign
intervention and conquest. Tragically, this time the
exception has become rule.
Cuba is no longer the illiterate, uncultured and
inexperienced country of those early days. Today,
the Latin American population, that numbered 208
millions at that time including the English-speaking
Caribbean nations, have swelled to 526 millions.
They have also had the opportunity to learn
firsthand the meaning of imperialist domination,
exploitation, injustice and pillage. Despite the
deluge of slander and lies against our exemplary
people and their admirable struggle, and in the face
of countless capitulations across the globe, there
are ever more people who realize that Cuba is a
powerful moral force, that defends the truth and
shows its solidarity with other people of the world.
Our Latin American brothers have repeatedly been
told stories as fantastic as those in the "Arabian
nights," in which they believe less and less every
day. For 50 years they have been told that the
hundreds of thousands of children that die every
year due to neglect and hunger; the millions that
work for pitiful salaries cleaning car windshields
or shoes, or being traded or sexually exploited
instead of going to school, represent democracy and
respect for human rights. That the hundreds of
millions of human beings living in poverty despite
the immense wealth and natural resources that
surround them; the vast number of unemployed and
underemployed people and informal laborers who
survive without the slightest aid, social security
or protection; the medical neglect of mothers,
children, old people and the poor population in
general; the marginalization, drugs, lack of
security and crime, are called democracy; are called
respect for human rights. That the death squads,
summary executions, torture, and the vanishing and
murder of people; that the bribery,
misappropriation, diversion and bare-faced robbery
of public funds while schools and hospitals are
closed, national assets and resources are privatized
or often given away to domestic and foreign friends
and partners in crime and corruption, constitute the
fullest expression of democracy and human rights. It
doesn't occur to them that the economic, political
and social system that they defend is a total
negation of all possibility of equality, freedom,
democracy, human dignity and justice.
An illiterate person or one whose education barely
surpasses 4th grade, or one who lives in poverty or
extreme poverty, or is unemployed or lives in shanty
towns where the most unimaginable conditions are
rife, or a person who wanders the streets exposed to
the constant poison of commercial advertising sowing
the seeds of fantasies, illusions and the desire for
impossible consumption, a person such as this, that
indeed could include vast numbers of people in the
desperate daily fight for survival, could be the
victim of every kind of abuse, blackmail, pressure
and deceit and could lack any representative
organization or see these crushed. It is certainly
unlikely that such a person could be in a position
to understand the complex problems of the world and
the society in which they live. They are in no
position to exercise their democratic rights, nor
decide which is the most honest or demagogic or
hypocritical candidate, this under a torrent of
propaganda and lies where those with the most
resources spout the most lies and deceit.
No freedom of expression can exist where the
principal and most effective media are an exclusive
monopoly in the hands of the richest and most
privileged sectors, sworn enemies of any economic,
political or social change. The enjoyment of wealth,
education, knowledge and culture are the preserve of
those who, accounting for a tiny fraction of the
population, receive the larger part of the goods
produced in their countries. It is no coincidence
that Latin America exhibits the greatest differences
between the richest and the poorest.
What kind of democracy and human rights could exist
in these conditions? It would be like trying to grow
flowers in the middle of the Sahara desert.
On the other hand, when the total stripping of
natural resources and the appropriation of human
labor is presented as the ideal social and
development model and the FTAA, i.e. the annexation
and absorption of Latin America by the United States
and dollarization are offered as the only way, it is
clear that the prevailing political and economic
system is approaching total crisis.
Events in Argentina, that is today embroiled in an
unbelievable economic and political chaos that has
reduced the country to hunger, with more than 20%
unemployment among the working population and where
the people's bank savings --especially those of the
middle and lower income classes- have been
practically confiscated, point to nothing less than
the swan song of neoliberal globalization. Such a
crisis inevitably produces a complete lack of ethics
and values.
The behavior of many leaders as they watch their
model economies collapse like so many houses of
cards is truly obnoxious.
People's protests are crushed with amazing violence.
Tear gas, people dragged through the streets,
brutality exercised against masses by the police
armed with shields and swathed in the strangest
helmets and outfits giving them the appearance of
recent arrivals from a distant planet, are the
methods used to defend that democracy and their
citizen's human rights.
Similar scenes have never been witnessed in our
country. Never, over more than four decades, has
force been used against our people. The
revolutionary process grows out of the closest unity
and cooperation of all our people, under a consensus
without precedent in any other country in the world,
unworkable and even unimaginable in a society of
exploiters and exploited.
A cultured, rebellious, brave and heroic people such
as the Cuban could never be ruled by force, nor a
force exist that would rule it because the Cuban
people is the force. Never would our people stir up
rebellion against themselves because they are the
revolution, they are the government, they are the
power. It is with their courage, intelligence and
ideas that they have defended themselves from the
most powerful empire the world has ever known.
Such a political phenomenon had never before
occurred in our hemisphere.
Force has always been used by the oligarchs and the
empire against the people.
Each and every one of the Latin American countries
that condemned us in Geneva or co-sponsored the
draft resolution against Cuba are well below
achieving the educational, cultural and social rates
that are essential for a healthy, decent and just
life of their citizens. Not one can match Cuba in a
single one of these rates.
For the sake of time, I will outline just a few
figures for Latin America as a whole as compared to
Cuba.
- Illiteracy rate: Latin America, 11.7%; Cuba, 0.2%
- Inhabitants per teacher: Latin America, 98.4;
Cuba, 43, in other words, 2.3 times as many teachers
per capita
- Primary education enrolment ratio: Latin America,
92%; Cuba, 100%
- Secondary education enrolment ratio: Latin
America, 52%; Cuba, 99.7%
- Primary school students reaching Fifth Grade:
Latin America, 76%; Cuba, 100%
- Infant mortality per thousand live births: Latin
America, 32; Cuba, 6.2
- Medical doctors per hundred thousand inhabitants:
Latin America, 160; Cuba, 590
- Dentists per hundred thousand inhabitants: Latin
America, 63; Cuba, 89
- Nurses per hundred thousand inhabitants: Latin
America, 69; Cuba, 743
- Hospital beds per 100 thousand inhabitants: Latin
America, 220; Cuba, 631.6
- Medically attended births: Latin America, 86.5%;
Cuba, 100%
- Life expectancy at birth: Latin America, 70 years;
Cuba, 76 years
- Population between 15 and 49 years of age infected
with HIV/AIDS: Latin America, 0.5%; Cuba, 0.05%
- Annual AIDS infection rate per million
inhabitants, i.e. those who develop the disease:
Latin America, 65.25; Cuba, 15.6
- The first international study of the Latin
American Laboratory of Evaluation of educational
quality, carried out in 12 Latin American countries
including Cuba, produced the following results.
Although these data have been already mentioned, I
would like to briefly refer to them in detail:
- In Language, 3rd Grade: Cuba, 85.74 points; the
remaining 11 countries, 59.11 points
- In Language, 4th Grade: Cuba, 87.25; the rest,
63.75
- In Mathematics, 3rd Grade: Cuba, 87.75; the rest,
58.31
- In Mathematics, 4th Grade: Cuba, 88.25; the rest,
62.04
What is or will be the future of those countries?
According to these figures, of the seven Latin
American countries that voted against Cuba, four
--Costa Rica, Chile, Argentina and Uruguay-- that
had boasted in the past of being the most advanced
in the region, fall well behind Cuban figures. In
some of these, they reach or scrape past the half
way mark in comparison to Cuba, but in others they
are very well below. This is the case of pre-school
education for 0-5 year olds, for example, that only
reaches 15.8% of the children in that age group in
Chile as compared to Cuba's 99.2%.
It requires a truly cynical person to join such a
Mafia-style adventure, in which they have been
involved at the urge of the imperial overlords.
The response to the emergence of the Bolivarian
Revolution in which the people and the military
joined together to unleash a revolutionary and
democratic process that is also unprecedented, was a
fascist coup d'état.
The privileged oligarchy, that enjoys the bulk of
the country's income and owns the most powerful
media, set its followers on the Bolivarian people
and the headquarters of the President himself under
the influence and support of imperialism. Their goal
was a bloody encounter that could be used to justify
the coordinated actions of a small but extremely
well-placed military force. Miraculously a bloody
civil war was averted, thanks to the reasonable and
sensible behavior of President Chávez, the support
of the Bolivarian people and the loyalty of the vast
majority of the officers and men of the Armed Forces
in that sister nation. A new page in America's
complex and arduous history has been turned by the
very people that began the process of independence
from Spain in this hemisphere.
The stripping of Cuba's right to representation in
Monterrey, the fascist coup in Venezuela and the
disgraceful behavior in Geneva in the order in which
they occurred have exposed and offered evidence of
the dirty and hypocritical politics of the empire's
lackeys. I must point out that the Presidents of
Brazil, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and
the English-speaking Caribbean countries did not
join the celebrations of the coup. In the same way,
Bolivia and Colombia joined the above countries in
rejecting the deplorable behavior in Geneva.
As for the fascist coup, not one condemned it except
for the Argentinean President who was perhaps
nervous considering his delicate political situation
in which even a police Sargent could easily
overthrow him.
One month later, when the scandal broke out after
the shameful Monterrey episode, some leaders
maintained a decent silence. Not so the
distinguished Secretary General of the discredited
and repulsive OAS, as if that organization really
existed. He threw poison darts with his support for
the abuse sustained by Cuba.
What trash are many of those who pretend to be
sovereign governors!
The honorable history of our Motherland, that once
stood alone in battle against practically every one
of the predecessors to those governments that voted
against Cuba, who had allied themselves to the
United States at that time in support of the Bay of
Pigs invasion; that heroically resisted without a
moment's weakness on the brink of being wiped off
the face of the Earth in the October Crisis of 1962;
should shame those conspiring with the United States
in Geneva, if they still have at least, the freedom
to be ashamed of themselves. Neither will they be
able to deny without blushing that when the
socialist camp collapsed, the USSR disintegrated,
the Yankee blockade was tightened to include the
sale of medicines and food, classified as a crime of
genocide by the 1948 and 1949 Conventions, and all
believed that the Cuban Revolution would be on its
knees in just a few weeks, our people endured with
unprecedented heroism and resilience.
Cuba, after withstanding the most unbelievable
difficulties and threats, terrorist attacks and
risks of all kinds, has never and will never lower
its flags before the hegemonic superpower that today
hands out orders to its lackeys and bootlickers in
this unfortunate hemisphere through a terrorist made
Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America,
showing an utter lack of respect by the United
States government and an utter lack of modesty by
its lackeys.
When Cuba's honor, morale and credibility were
called into question by the disagreement with the
host country, it became very clear that hypocrisy
and lies are inseparable and almost unique tools of
the prevailing political and economic system in
Latin America.
My decency and ethics were under question when,
placed in the dilemma of being loyal to a lie or
loyal to the truth; loyal to deceit and slandering
manipulation of the facts, or loyal to our people
and all peoples of the world, I was loyal to the
truth and to the people. The vestal virgins of the
temple of hypocrisy tore their clothes in the name
of privacy. Even honest men who had been outraged
witnesses in the past to electoral incidents and
dishonest traps of political adversaries were led to
believe that my behavior was inappropriate.
I did not invent anything, I called no-one nor laid
any trap for anyone. I gave as much warning as I
could to those who had challenged me for more than a
month with their demands for evidence, evidence and
more evidence. Although by no means did I feel bound
by what was later proved, in the course of events,
to be a deceitful trick to force me into silence and
confidentiality over such a significant issue, I
clearly demanded the cessation of all offences.
Then, when the lies, slander and demands for proof
continued over several weeks, I fulfilled the
warning I had made.
I was also accused of being vengeful because of the
unfulfilled promise related to Geneva. All my life I
have been a gentleman to my adversaries, even in war
situations surrounded by death. I've never
humiliated, offended nor wreaked revenge on a single
prisoner, not even in the case of the Bay of Pigs
while my comrades lay mortally wounded or dead
around me. But I do know how to distinguish the
ethical from the unethical. I delayed presentation
of the evidence demanded from me only out of the
desire to cause no harm to a sister country I admire
and respect. Representatives from some friendly
governments that participated in the Summit
chastised me for not having presented the evidence
in the conference itself.
Lying is and will always be unjustifiable from a
political, ethical and religious perspective. From
what I remember of the catechism lessons I received
in 1st Grade in a catholic school, it violates the
eighth commandment of God's law. One must be
honorable.
I did not seek any pretexts, and I did not hesitate
in expressing the need and duty to leave a
historical record of that conversation which they
asked me to keep private only once it had already
begun. My personal letter to the President was also
private, however, it was published without
consulting me 48 hours later, on the very same day I
left Monterrey.
I truly regret having to include this issue in my
speech, but I felt it was my duty to do so. High
raking officials from that country continue to
attack us on a daily basis over this subject, which
is still too fresh to consign it to the wastebasket
of forgetfulness.
To those who so foolishly speak and repeat the
imperialists slogan that no democracy and no respect
for human rights exist in Cuba, let me repeat:
no-one can question the fact that, despite being
very small, our country today is the freest, fairest
and most supportive country on the planet. It is
also by far the most democratic. There is only one
Party, but this neither nominates nor elects
candidates. This is completely forbidden: it is the
citizens from the grassroots level who propose,
nominate and elect candidates. Our country enjoys an
enviable and ever more solid and indestructible
unity. The media is public and does not and cannot
belong to private individuals. It carries no
commercial advertisements and it does not promote
consumerism; it entertains and informs, educates and
never alienates.
Cuba already occupies world-wide outstanding and
hard-to-surpass positions in a growing number of
fields essential to guarantee life and the most
fundamental political, civil, social, and human
rights to ensure the well-being and future of our
people. The mass political knowledge of the Cuban
people is unrivalled in any other country. Its
cultural and social programs and achievements
advance at an unprecedented pace.
Our dreams become reality. A more humane society is
possible, lies and slander notwithstanding. History
will bear this out.
Long live Socialism!
Motherland or Death!
We shall overcome!
_________________________________________________________
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