Speech delivered by Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, President
of the Republic of Cuba, at the Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of his
admission to University of Havana, in the Aula Magna of the University of
Havana,
on
Text
reviewed and shaped up by its author with absolute respect for the integrity of
the ideas expressed during his speech.
Dear students and professors of
Universities fro all over
Dear comrades, leaders and guests who have
shared with us so many years of struggle:
This is the most difficult moment, when I
must say some words in this Aula Magna, where so many words have already been
spoken. A universe of ideas comes to
mind, and it’s only logical, because time has passed.
You have been very kind to remember that
today is a very special day: the 60th anniversary of my timid entry into
this University.
There is a photo somewhere, I was just
looking at it: I was wearing a jacket, and I have an angry face, or tough, or a
nice, or irritated because that photo was not taken on the first day; I think I
had already been here for several months, and I was starting to react to so many
things, that were happening then. It was not a deep-seated thought. There was this
eagerness for ideas, and also a desire to learn, and a spirit that was perhaps
rebellious. We were full of dreams that couldn’t be described as revolutionary,
but certainly full of illusions and energy, and possibly also an anxiety to
take up a struggle.
I had been active in sports, I had climbed
mountains. I had even been promoted to
some kind of Boy Scout lieutenant, I’m not exactly why, and later on they made
me a general of the Boy Scout. So, when
I was in high school, I had been given more ranks than I have today (Laughter).
Because later on, I became Comandante, but nothing more than Comandante;
this thing of being Comandante en Jefe doesn’t mean any more than
being chief commander of that small troop of about 82 men, the men who came in
the Granma yacht.
That
title came up after the landing, on
Perhaps some special circumstances in my
life made me react. I had to face some difficulties from a very early age and, maybe
because of that, I grew up to be some kind of a professional rebel.
I’ve heard talk about rebels without a
cause; but I seem to remember, whenever I think about it, that I was a rebel
with many causes; and I thank life that I have continued being a rebel over the
years, even today, perhaps more rightly so today, because I have many more
ideas and more experience; because I have learned a lot from my own struggle, or
because I have a better understanding of this country where we were all born and
of this world where we live, this globalized world living now a decisive time
for its destiny. I wouldn’t dare say a
decisive time in its history, because its history is shorter, really brief, when
compared to the life span of a species that in recent times, perhaps 3,000 or
4,000 or 5,000 years ago, took its first steps after its long and brief evolution. I say long and brief because it evolved to
the point of becoming a homo sapiens some hundreds of thousands of years after
life came into existence on this planet, as scholars believe it to be; if my
memory doesn’t fail me, around 1 or 1,5 billion years ago a life form was born
and after that came millions of species. And we are only that, we are one of
the species born on this planet. And
that is why I said, after a brief and at the same time long life, we have come
to this point, in this millennium, which is said to be the third millennium
since the beginning of the Christian era.
Why am I circling around this idea? Because I would dare say that today this
species is facing a very real and true danger of extinction, and no one can be sure,
listen to this well, no one can be sure that it will survive this danger.
Well, the fact that the species would not
survive was discussed about 2,000 years ago.
I remember that when I was a student I heard of the Apocalypse, a book
of prophesy in the Bible. Apparently, 2000 years ago someone realized that this
weak species could one day disappear.
Of course, so did the Marxists. I remember Engel’s book, Dialectics, very well. He said there that one day the light of the
Sun would go out, that the fuel feeding the fires of that star which
illuminates our world would run out and the light of the Sun would cease to
exist. So, a question remains in my
mind: a question that maybe you, or your professors, or hundreds of thousands
of you have also asked yourselves, and that is if there is any possibility that
this species can emigrate to another solar system.
Have you never asked yourselves that
question? Well, at some point you will,
because many questions come to our minds during our lifetime, particularly these
questions, which are asked mostly when there is a reason to do so. I believe that mankind never had more reasons
than it does now to wonder about this, because if that Marxist considered the
problem of solar heat and light disappearing, and if that scientist considered
that one day the solar system would cease to exist, we too, as revolutionaries,
giving wings to our imaginations, must ask ourselves what will happen and if
there is any hope for this species to escape to another solar system where life
already exists or could exist. All that we know today is that there is one Sun
four light years away, among the billions of suns that exist in that enormous outer
space of which we still don’t know whether it is finite or infinite.
For the little we know of physics and
mathematics, of light and the speed of light, and those traveling to the
closest planets, nothing has been found, and those who travel to Venus –I
believe that Venus was the Roman goddess of love-- those that have the
privilege of reaching that planet will find hurricanes that are many hundreds
of times worse that Katrina or Rita or Michelle or Mitch, or any of the others
that hit us with ever increasing fury as it has been said that the temperature on Venus
is 400 degrees, and that there are masses of air or heavy atmosphere constantly
blowing around.
Those that have been to Mars, a place
where they said life could exist –Chavez jokes about the likely existence of
life there in the past-- and it disappeared, everything vanished. They keep searching
for some particle of oxygen or some sign of life. Well, anything could have
happened, but the most probable is that no developed life form ever existed on
any of these planets. The combination of factors that made life possible
occurred after billions of years on planet Earth, this very fragile life form
that can only survive between a few limited degrees of temperature, between a
few degrees below zero and a few degrees above zero, since nobody can survive
in a water temperature of 60 degrees; just
20 seconds without any protection and no human being would survive; a few
scores degrees below zero, with no source of artificial heat, would be enough
to cause anyone’s death. It was in that
limited margin of temperature that life came into being.
We are speaking of life, because whenever
we speak of universities, we speak of life.
What are you? If I were asked that question right now, I
would have to say that you are life, you are symbols of life.
We have been speaking of events in our
lives, in our university, in our Alma Mater, about those of us who came here a
few decades ago and who are present here today, those who are in their fresh
year or are about to graduate, or those who have already graduated and are
engaged in tasks that others with less experience would not be able to do.
I was trying to recall how those
universities were, what we did, what our concerns were. We were concerned about this island, this
tiny island. There was no talk then of globalization; there was no television or
Internet; instant communication were not possible from one end of the planet to
the other; the telephone had just been invented and there were a few propeller
driven airplanes. In my time, back in 1945, our passenger planes could hardly
make it to
There had been a terrible war that took
the lives of some 50 million people. I
am speaking of the time in 1945 when I entered the university, on September. Well,
I started on that date, and you, of course, have taken the liberty to celebrate
the anniversary that day; it could be the 4th or the 17th,
it could be in November, it could be today, the day that you choose as the
date. There are so many events to commemorate, and I certainly could not attend
that many, and the greatest sorrow of my life would have been not being able to
attend, especially at this time, this event in the Aula Magna, as your guest.
I have many events to attend everyday and I am speaking with large groups for hours and
hours on end, especially with groups of young people, students, with medical
brigades who go out to work in glorious missions that almost nobody else in
this world would discharge, because no other country could send 1000 medical
doctors to a sister nation in Central America. We have sent just such a group that
is now confronting pain and death, in the aftermath of the greatest natural
tragedy that anyone in that country can remember.
One after another, I have been speaking to
these brigades, and I’ve been seeing them off; the same with those who are leaving
for the other side of the world, flying for 18 hours to where almost
simultaneously another of the greatest human tragedies struck. I remember no other catastrophe of such
dimensions, because of the place where it hit, and the humble people who were
affected. These people are shepherds living on very high mountains and the
tragedy struck on the eve of winter where the cold is most intense, where there
is great poverty while the insensitive world that wastes a trillion dollars
each year on advertising to bamboozle the immense majority of humanity that
pays for the lies that are spread depriving the human being of the capacity to
think for himself, as he is forced to buy a soap that is the same soap with 10
different names, and he must be deceived because a trillion dollars are spent
on it and this money is not paid by the companies, it is paid by those who buy
the product due to the advertising.
This insensitive world that spends one
trillion dollars each year on the military –it’s already two trillion-- this
insensitive world that extracts various trillions of dollars a year from the
impoverished masses, from the immense majority of this planet’s inhabitants,
remains indifferent when it is told that around 100,000 people have died, among
them maybe 25,000 or 30,000 children, or that there are 100,000 injured, and
the large majority is suffering from bone fractures in their arms and legs of
which barely 10% have been operated on, that there are children with mutilated
limbs, and young people, women and men, old people.
This is the kind of world we are living in.
It is not a world full of goodness, but a world full of egoism. It is not a
world of justice, but one full of exploitation, abuse and pillage, where millions
of children die every year –and they could be saved--, just because they are
lacking a few cents worth of medicine, or some vitamins or re-hidration salts and
a few dollars worth of food, enough for them to live. They die every year due
to injustice, almost as many as died in that colossal war that I mentioned a
few minutes ago.
What kind of world is this? What kind of world is this where a barbaric
empire proclaims its right to launch pre-emptive attacks on 70 or more
countries, and is capable of bringing death to any corner of the globe, using
the most sophisticated weapons and killing techniques? It’s a world where brutality and force
prevail, with hundreds of military bases on the entire planet. There is one of
these on our soil, where they arbitrarily intervened after the Spanish colonial
power could no longer stand by itself, and when hundreds of thousands of our
country’s dearest sons --in a population of hardly a million-- had perished in
a long war lasting almost 30 years. And they left us with the revolting Platt
Amendment, attached to an equally repugnant resolution that treacherously gave
them the right to intervene in our country whenever they considered there to be
a lack of order.
More than a century has gone by and this
piece of our territory is still forcibly occupied today bringing shame and horror
to the world when it is known to have been turned into a torture center, where
hundreds of people pulled in from different parts of the world are kept in
detention. They do not take them to their own country because there may be laws
that would make things difficult for them to illegally hold these people by
force, kidnapped for years, overriding any legal procedure, and to the
amazement of the entire world, these people are being subjected to sadistic and
brutal torture. The world learned of this only when in
New things come up every day. Recently, the
press reported that the
Which of us, which of you, which of our
compatriots would quietly admit to a story of torturing even one citizen, in
spite of thousands of barbaric acts of terrorism perpetrated against our
country, in spite of the thousands of victims of the aggression of that empire that
has blockaded us for the last 45 years and has tried to suffocate us by
whatever means possible? And now these
scoundrels are saying --as one of them recently did before the overwhelming
vote of 182 UN members, with one abstention-- that the difficulties are a
result of our failure, and that great accomplice of the bandit, which is the
pro-Nazi state of
Even today, the empire is threatening to
attack
We know that country very well. It is a
country with 70 million inhabitants bent on its industrial development and
believing, quite correctly, that it is a great crime to use its gas or oil
reserves to feed the potential of thousands of millions of kilowatt hours
urgently needed by this
In 30 more years, oil reserves will run
dry. Presently, 80% of oil is in the hands of
The day is far when hydrogen may become
the ideal fuel, through still emerging technologies. Meanwhile, mankind has
reached a certain level of technical development and cannot live without
fuel. This is one present problem.
Our Minister of Foreign Affairs has just
visited Iran, since Cuba will be the venue of the next Non-Aligned Countries
meeting within a year, and Iran is demanding its right to produce nuclear fuel
just like any industrialized nation and not be obliged to destroy the reserves
of a raw material, which can be used not only as an energy source but also as a
raw material for numerous products such as fertilizers, textiles and many
others currently used worldwide.
That’s the way of the world. Let’s see what happens if they decide to bomb
We have a different type of nuclear weapon:
it’s our ideas. We possess a weapon as powerful as nuclear power and it is the
immense justice for which we are struggling. Our nuclear weapon is the
invincible power of moral weapons. That
is why we have never even considered producing them, nor have we ever
considered seeking biological weapons, what for? It is to the weapons that defeat death, that
defeat AIDS and cancer that we dedicate our resources. That bandit –I can’t
recall the name of that guy they appointed, was it Bolton, Bordon, whatever--
the man who represents the United States at the United Nations, a super-liar, the
shameless liar who fabricated the idea that Cuba was doing research in
biological warfare in the Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering Center.
They have also accused us of collaborating
with
Those impertinent liars! Everybody knows that even the CIA discovered
that what the current
Everyday that gentleman who rules the
I was speaking to you about the prisons in
various countries, secret prisons where they send their kidnapped victims on
the pretext of conducting a war against terrorism. It is not only at Abu-Ghraib and
But that’s not all. This morning there was news about the use of
live phosphorus in Fallujah. It is there
that the empire discovered that a nation, to all intents and purposes unarmed, could
not be defeated and the invaders found themselves in the situation of not being
able to leave or to stay. If they leave,
the combatants would return; if they stay, these troops would be required in
other locations. Over 2,000 young
Don’t you think for one minute that they
have abundant reserves of US troops.
Every day less Americans enlist, even when enlisting in the army has become
an employment opportunity. The ones who enlist are the unemployed and very
often they try to enlist greater numbers of Afro-Americans to fight their
unjust war. However, news is coming out
that fewer Afro-Americans are enlisting in the army, despite their high levels
of unemployment and their marginalization, because they know full well that
they are being used as cannon fodder. In the ghettos of
They are chasing after Latinos, immigrants,
who cross the border trying to escape hunger;
this is a border where more than 500 emigrants die every year, many more
in only 12 months than those who died during the 28 years of the Berlin Wall.
The empire talked about the Berlin Wall
every day; not one word is spoken about the wall between
Live phosphorus in Fallujah! That’s what the empire secretly does. When it became known, the
There is news like this every day, and all
of these things are part of life, all of these things are part of our
world. Just look at the enormous
difference between now and those days when we came to the University brimming
with ideals, full of dreams and good will even though we lacked the experience
of a profound ideology and the ideas that are accumulated over the passage of
years. Young people entered this
University exactly like that. It must be remembered that this University was
not for the poor, it was for the middle class, for the rich, although young
people tended to rise above class ideas and many of them were capable of
struggling, as in fact they did throughout the history of
Eight students were executed in 1871. They
were like the seeds of the noblest of sentiments and of the rebellious spirit
of our people which showed their indignation at this colossal injustice. Today we commemorate the deaths of nine
students, who were no different from them, murdered by the Nazis in
Our youth always keeps alive the memory of
those medical students and of all those students who fought against tyrannical
and corrupt governments. Mella was one
of them, also coming from the middle class because the children of farmers who
could neither read nor write, were unable to attend high school, let alone enter
university.
As the son of a landowner, I was able to
finish sixth grade, and when I graduated from seventh grade, I could enroll in
a senior high school.
If you couldn’t attend high school, you
couldn’t go on to university. The
children of farmers or workers, living at the sugar mills or in a municipality
(unless it was a municipality in
I could come to
My own case was like that of many others,
I mentioned Mella. I could have mentioned Guiteras, or Trejo who died in one of
those demonstrations on September 30, fighting against Machado. I could mention
names like those that you listed at the opening of this event.
Before the Revolution, there were always
many noble students opposing the Batista tyranny and willing to make sacrifices,
willing to die. And so, when the Batista
tyranny returned with a vengeance, many students fought and many students died,
and that young man from Cardenas, Manzanita as he was called, always smiling,
always jovial, always affectionate with everyone, became well-known for his
bravery, his integrity as when he descended the university stairs, facing the
water hose of the fire trucks, or the police. That is how all of them came to
be known.
If you visit the house where [Jose
Antonio] Echevarria lived –Jose Antonio, we’ll call him—you’ll see that it is a
good house, an excellent house. You could see how the students were often oblivious
of their social or class origins; at that age of so many hopes and dreams.
At that university, there was only one medical
faculty, and one teaching hospital, yet, many students received prizes and
awards, first prize in medicine and even in surgery without ever having
operated on anybody.
Some made an effort; they were active and
made contact with a professor who helped them, taking part in his practice or
in some hospital. That’s how there were good doctors, not a huge numbers of
good doctors –certainly there was a huge number of doctors who wanted to travel
to the United States-- they were unemployed and with the triumph of the
Revolution, that’s where they went, straight to the USA and Cuba was left with
half of all her medical doctors, 3,000 of them, and 25% of her professors. We started at that point, until we got to
where we are today, standing up almost like the capital of world medicine.
Today, our people have at their
disposition at least 15 doctors for every one that remained in the country, and
they are much better distributed.
I wanted to bring up the differences from the
year when I entered university; what was our country like then? We should ask ourselves that question and
meditate on it. What is our country like today, in all areas?
I was speaking about Barberan and Collar
disappearing in their light plane full of gasoline tanks, because that’s what
you had to do in those days; they took off, and left almost in the same way
that we did in Mexico in 1956; “if we set out, we arrive; if we arrive, we
enter; if we enter, we win”, we said then.
It seems like other men before us undertook something as audacious as
that, when they crossed the
I was speaking of a ship that set sail;
this was like a ship setting sail a long time ago, a small plane that seemed to
be powered by an elastic band. Maybe you
have seen those little planes which you wind up an elastic band and then you
let go and they take off and land. When our Revolution triumphed in this
hemisphere, right beside the empire and surrounded, with a few exceptions, by
the empire’s satellites, we started on a very difficult journey. Now it is different times, quite a few years
after we entered the university.
We came to the university at the end of
1945 and we began the armed struggle in Moncada on
The stage when we began the struggle is
where we will start now. We set off, we attempted to set off, not even being
too knowledgeable about the laws of gravity. We headed upwards, struggling
against the empire which was already the most powerful one but at a time when
another super-power also existed. And we continued marching upwards, gaining
experience, seeing our people and the Revolution gain in strength, until this
point where we are today.
I wish I had more time to speak to you,
but this moment now is without precedent. It is a time that is different from
all the others. It is nothing like it was in 1945; it is nothing like it was in
1950 when we graduated, but we had all those
ideas that I mentioned that day, when I affirmed with love, respect and the
utmost affection, that I came to this University with a rebellious spirit, with
some elemental ideas of justice, then here I became a revolutionary, I became a
Marxist-Leninist and I acquired the ideas that I have never abandoned, nor have
I ever been tempted to do so, not in the least.
For that reason, I dare say that I will never abandon them.
In a spirit of confessions, I could say
that when I finished studying in this university, I thought I was very
revolutionary and basically, I was just starting on a much longer path. If at that time I felt that I was a
revolutionary or a socialist, if I had absorbed all the ideas that made me who
I am, and I could be nothing other than a revolutionary. I assure you today, in
all modesty, that I feel ten times, twenty times, even a hundred times more
revolutionary than I was then. (applause)
If at that time I was willing to give up my life, today I am a thousand
times more willing to give up my life for the revolution. (applause)
One is willing to give up one’s life for a
noble idea, for an ethical principle, for a sense of dignity and honor, even
before one becomes a revolutionary. Tens of millions of men died on the battlefields
of World War I and in other wars, impassioned by a symbol, by the beauty of a
flag, by the emotional strains of an anthem like
It
is amazing that in spite of the differences between human beings, they can
become as one in a single instant or they can be millions, and they can be a
million strong just through their ideas. Nobody followed the Revolution as a
cult to anyone or because they felt personal sympathy with any one person. It
is only by embracing certain values and ideas that an entire people can develop
the same willingness to make sacrifices of any one of those who loyally and
sincerely try to lead them toward their destiny.
You are constantly reading the works of
the great thinkers, you are constantly reading history. In our country’s history you read the works
of Marti, you read the works of many distinguished patriot and in the history
of the world and in the history of the revolutionary movements you read the
theoreticians, those great theoreticians who never faltered in their
revolutionary principles. It is the ideas that bring us together, ideas make us
a combatant people on a collective and not just an individual basis; ideas make
us a mass of revolutionaries. Then, when all of the forces unite, then the
people can never be defeated, and when the number of ideas grows, when the number
of ideas and values to be defended grows and multiplies, that is when a people
can truly never be defeated.
And so, when we remember our comrades, and
we see the youth who are taking on such important tasks; many of the others
were leaders in this university and have behind them many years of struggle;
some have more than 50, others might have more than 40 and today each one has
his responsibility; many of them are students, others come from humble
backgrounds, I see them all here today, those who were at Moncada, those that
came on the Granma, fought in the Sierra Maestra and participated in all
the battles; I see them all here, each one of them, defending a cause, a flag.
I see, for example our dear comrade
Alarcon. I remember him because here we
have been speaking of the struggle for the five imprisoned heroes, and he has
been their indefatigable champion for justice.
This was the task given him by the Revolution and he has shouldered the
responsibility with his talent and in his capacity as President of the National
Assembly.
I see comrade Machadito, a former doctor,
but not an old doctor, who was with us in the mountains. I see Lazo, Lage and Balaguer, I see many
more out there, I still have a good sight (laughter)/ I think I see Saez, I
think we can see the Minister of Higher Education, I think I can see Gomez, with
a few more pounds perhaps, and further along, I see Abel, with a biblical name,
who has just come back from Mar del Plata where he waged a glorious battle.
Look at this world and see all the
changes, all the aims we are pursuing today.
Look at the strategies that are being designed, leading us into the
strategies of the world. We are a tiny country,
I saw it with my own eyes, nobody told me
about it, I saw it hardly 48 hours ago. I saw it there at the Convention Center,
first a group of a few hundred, dressed in their blue T-shirts; I saw it in the
young people who graduated as social workers, and today they are al, without
exception, university students, from the first to the fifth year of their
courses, after a year of intensive study to become social workers, after
several years studying for this profession, first there were 500 and now there
are 28,000.
I think it was Agramonte, others say it
was Cespedes, who responded to the pessimists when he had just 12 men with him:
“I don’t care about those lacking in confidence, because with these 12 men I
can make a nation”. If a nation can be
made with 12 men, how many times greater than 12 men are we today? And 12 men, many times multiplied, armed with
ideas, knowledge, culture, knowing all about the world, knowing about history,
geography, about the struggles, because they possess what we call a
revolutionary conscience, which is the sum total of many consciences, it is the
sum total of a humanist conscience, the conscience of honor and dignity and the
best values that man can grow. This
nation is born of love for the homeland and love for the world; and we cannot
forget that the homeland is humanity, a statement made more than a hundred
years ago. Homeland is humanity, and we
must repeat that every day, when someone forgets those living in
That is all that the infamous empire and
its repugnant system can show as a result of a history where the species set
out on a long march for a just society that has not been attained over thousands
of years, which is the very short, relatively well-known history of a species in
its quest for a just society. And they
have always been as far away from that society as we are close to it today,
that is, closer to that just society we want to construct. And I dare say that
regardless of the many flaws we still have, of our errors and inefficiencies, this
is the society which in all human history comes closer to being described as a
just society.
Where is justice that I cannot see it? I cannot see it because that one over their
earns twenty, thirty times more than me as a doctor, or more than me as an
engineer, or more than me as a university professor. Where is justice? And, why is this happening? What does the other produce? How many does he educate? How many does he heal? How many are made happy with his knowledge,
his books and his art? How many does he
make happy by building a home? How many
does he make happy by growing something to eat?
How many does he make happy by working in factories, in industries, in
the electrical system, in the drinking water system, in the streets, on the power
grids, looking after communications or printing books? How many?
We must to say that there are several
dozens of thousands of parasites who produce nothing and just take that
individual driving a vintage car from Havana to Guantanamo, buying and stealing
fuel all along the way, who charged one of those young students 1000 pesos,
1200 pesos, when he had to travel just at a time when transportation difficulties
were at their greatest. He knows his ways that alongside those highways, full
of pot-holes in many places and missing a lot of signal, things that couldn’t
be finished for a variety of reasons, because of resources we lack, for conditions
we still haven’t been able to fix, for lack of controls over the managers and
other staffs.
Yes, we have to bear that in mind and not
forget it, for we are faced with a great battle, which we must begin to
undertake. We shall undertake it and we will win. That’s what is most important.
Yes, we are very much aware of this, and
we think about this more than about anything else: our flaws, our mistakes, our
inequalities, our injustice.
I wouldn’t dare to mention this subject
here if I was not firmly convinced and sure that we are quickly getting closer
to reducing them and to obliterating them so that, barring world catastrophes
and colossal wars, we can truly accomplish something. Listen to this well: our
country’s citizens, who at one time suffered a 10%, 15%, 20% or more rate of
unemployment, our citizens who at one time numbered one million illiterate
people, some being totally illiterate and some being semi-illiterate, up to 90%
of the population, this nation today, and in a very near future, will have
every one of her citizens living fundamentally on their work and their pensions
and retirement incomes.
Never forget those who for years were our
working class, going through decades of sacrifice, suffering the attacks of
mercenary bands in the mountains, invasions like Giron, thousands of acts of
sabotage that killed our sugar cane workers, our industrial and factory workers,
those in the merchant marine or in the fishing industry, those who were
suddenly attacked with cannons and bazookas,
only because they were Cuban, only because they wanted to be independent, only
because they wanted to improve the lot of our people; and there were the
bandits, doing as they pleased, those bandits recruited and trained by the CIA.
Some are criminals, some are terrorists who blew up planes in mid-air or
attempted to blow them up, careless of how many would die, and those over there
who organized attacks of every kind and organized acts of terrorism against our
country.
Did the empire change in any way? I ask you, “little Bush”, where is Mr. Posada
Carriles, what have you done with that nice gentleman who despite his shameful actions
keeps trying to have the empire on a tight rein? When are you going to answer that very simple
question which we have asked you so many times?
Where and how did Posada Carriles enter the
Who welcomed him? Who gave their permission? Why is he strolling the streets of
The authorities of our sister country,
Mexico, haven’t had the time either –yes, of course, they are very busy-- to
answer the question; it’s not asking too
much, sir, to say whether Posada Carriles, such a naïve kid, naïve and
innocent, took that ship from that port,
just as Cuba has charged.
They have a lot of nerve, these people,
telling all those lies; and if you ask them one little question, a simple
little query, they take months and months and they still have no answer, not
one word. Months went by and they didn’t
know where their man Posada was.
That young bright girl, what’s her
name? The girl who is the Secretary of
State (Laughter) Condoleezza or Condoliza? OK, Countess Rice (Laughter) She
doesn’t know anything either, doesn’t have a clue; and the spokespersons don’t
know anything, either; they haven’t lied, they haven’t sinned one little bit,
they are pure and deserve our congratulations and the trust of the entire
world.
Of course, it’s a lie that they tortured
anybody; it’s a lie that they were the accomplices of terrorism; it’s a lie
that they invented terrorism; it’s a lie that they used torture anywhere; it’s a lie that they
used live phosphorus in Fallujah. Or
rather, they say it’s true, but it’s legal, very legitimate and terribly decent
to use live phosphorus. So who are they
trying to scare?
We were witness to the colossal battle
fought in
Speaking of history, never before in the
history of this hemisphere did such a battle take place, one that resembled the
battle waged by that sad-faced gentleman, not because of any connection with
Cervantes, but because that gentleman was grimacing, he was bored. They put him
to bed at midnight and the world may fall apart; on any given day, the planes can
take off from the aircraft carriers and drop bombs on that bandit territory which
disturbed the slumber of the horseman who holds the reins of the empire, and while he sleeps, the horse wanders
wherever it wants and it could be that, as the horseman sleeps, the horse is
more aware of the empire’s destiny than his master who had to go to bed early.
(applause)
It’s really a pity that we can’t delay his
awakening just a bit longer, because the world could be a better place.
And that’s how it all goes. We have seen many things that cannot be
forgotten.
Some have been asking whether
Apparently, some thought, or pretended to
think, that there were no Cubans at Mar del Plata, that a first-class Cuban
revolutionary force was not present in the glorious march in which thousands of
world citizens, and mainly Argentines, took part; those who were offended by
the emperor’s parked aircraft carriers, his army, his renting hotels and hiring
thousands of police officers. Nobody was
going to do anything to him physically, really, what they wanted was that someone
would throw a rotten egg at him. No, really, I think that would have been an
honor he doesn’t deserve (laughter).
The highly civilized Argentineans,
together with the increasingly expert and aware citizens of our hemisphere,
where the imposed order is not only untenable but beyond salvage, know exactly
what they are doing. They said that it
would be a peaceful demonstration, that not a blade of grass would be disturbed. This mass of people, coming together under
the cold drizzle, marching for hours to the stadium and making their presence
felt in that stadium, taught an unforgettable lesson to the empire, because they
showed that the people know what they are doing and, they who know what they’re
doing, march straight to victory. Those
who do not know what they are doing, are crushed by the people.
We don’t want to give the empire any
excuse to put on a little show. We shall
see who is going to check-mate in this 50-piece chess game.
When I use the word “empire”, I am not
referring to the American people, make sure you understand me well. The American people will salvage many of the
ethical values, many of the forgotten principles. They will adapt to the world
we live in, if this world can save itself, and this world must save
itself. Everyone should struggle and we
should be the first in that struggle for the salvation of the world. Ideas are our invincible weapons.
Some speak of the battle of ideas, that
battle of ideas which we have been waging for several years now and which is
becoming a battle of ideas throughout the world. These ideas will triumph, these ideas must
triumph. Let’s carry this message, let’s open the eyes of a humanity that seems
condemned to extinction. It won’t be
eternal, as it is very likely that even the light of the Sun will go out one
day. It is almost certain that there
will be no way to move living, solid matter to a distance that is light years
away from Earth; the laws of physics are much more rigorous, much more exact
than historical or social laws.
In any case, I believe that this humanity
and all the great things it is capable of creating must be preserved while it
is still possible to do so. A humanity
that doesn’t care about the preservation of its species would be like the young
student or leader, who knows that his life is very limited to just a few short
years and, nevertheless, worries only about his own existence.
I have mentioned the names of a few
comrades present here today, some are older, some are not so old, but we never
know how long we have left. In no way do
I think that any of them wants to save himself without considering the fate of
this admirable and marvelous nation. Yesterday, it was but a seed and today it
is a mighty tree with deep roots. Yesterday, it was filled with noble potential
and today it is filled with true nobility. Yesterday, it dreamed of knowledge
and today that knowledge is real, when we are just beginning in this huge
university that today is
Just look how new cadres are springing up,
young cadres. There is Enrique who is
leading a small army of 28,000 social workers, plus the 7,000 who are still in
school perfecting their skills in that noble profession.
As you know, we are presently waging a war
against corruption, against the re-routing of resources, against thievery, and
there is this force which we didn’t have before we started with the battle of
ideas, one designed to wage this battle.
I am going to say something, just to see
if it will raise the sense of honor of the construction workers because when
they want to be heroic, they are. But
don’t you think for a moment that stealing resources and materials is just a
present-day illness, nor is it an exclusive phenomenon of the Special
Period. The Special Period aggravated it,
because in this period we saw the growth of much inequality and certain people
were able to accumulate a lot of money.
I recall, we were building an important
biotechnological center in Bejucal.
There was a little cemetery close by.
I was making my rounds, and one day I passed by the cemetery. There I
saw a colossal market where the construction crew, both the foremen and many of
the workers, had put up a market selling cement, steel rods, wood, paint, you
name it, all kinds of construction materials.
You know that construction has always been
a very serious problem. We have
resources now; sometimes there have been shortages, but now we have the
possibility of improving the situation of construction materials. However, it’s
tragic the dilemma with the workers, the weaknesses of the foremen, and of
others in leading positions.
But this is nothing new. In the times I’m referring to, we needed
In this battle against vice there will be
no truce for anyone and we shall be thoroughly scrupulous. We will appeal to everyone’s sense of
honor. We are sure of one thing; every
human being possesses a healthy dose of honor.
When one looks in the mirror, one is not always the harshest of judges,
even though, in my opinion, the first responsibility of a revolutionary is to
be extremely severe with oneself.
We are speaking of criticism and
self-criticism, that’s true, but our criticisms tend to be almost grouping
criticisms; we never resort to criticism in a wider circle, we never resort to
criticism on a larger scale.
For example, if an official from Public
Health fudges the data documenting the existence of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito,
he is summoned, he is criticized. I know
some people who say: “Yes, of course, I criticize myself.” And with that they
are content. What a laugh! They are actually happy. So, you criticize yourself, and what about
all the harm you have caused and all the millions that were lost because you were
careless or acted incorrectly?
Criticism and self-criticism, it’s all very
good, as it did not exist in the past.
However, if we are going to war we need weapons of greater caliber; we
must carry out criticism and self-criticism in the school room, in the party
cells and then outside the party cells, in the municipality and finally in the
entire country.
Let’s make use of that sense of honor
which, undoubtedly, we all have, because I know many who are what we call
“shameless” people, and they truly are shameless but when in some local newspaper
they report what this individual has done, they are filled with shame.
The thief deceives, and the person who
deserves to be criticized for some lapse and he is deceitful, he is also a
liar.
The Revolution has to use these weapons,
and we shall use them whenever necessary!
It shouldn’t have to be necessary.
The Revolution will establish the necessary controls.
Many have been quite pleased with the way
things have been going, as the song goes: “And how are you?” This is a question we could well ask of the
folks who were going around with their little hose, putting gasoline into their
big old cars, or receiving cash from that new rich who wasn’t even willing to
pay for the gasoline he was using.
Judge for yourselves whether what I am
saying describes the reality of today; the general state of disorder, not just
in this, but in other things as well, with losses of millions of dollars, maybe
80 –listen, 80 is a huge bunch of millions!-- it could even be 160 or 200
million dollars. Can you even conceive
of what 200 million dollars mean? You’ve
studied math. You’ve heard of the
universities throughout the country, right?
Yes or no? You are university
leaders, and all the students have their rights, in some form or another, all
kinds: regular day students, night students, students of this or of that. Do you know how many university students
there are today? If you don’t know, we
can analyze it. I arrived here today, asking for data: let’s see, tell me the exact number,
360,000. Yes, 360,000 as a result of the
universalization of higher education.
No doubt Vecino knows. Don’t get upset, Vecino, when I ask you for
these figures, if you don’t know them, don’t worry about it.
How many regular day students are there in
all the schools of higher education in the country, including the military?
If he doesn’t know, someone must know.
(Someone tells him: 230,000)
Enrique, does it match with your figures?
(Enrique explains the distribution of the
students’ figures.)
Yes, 500,000, but we have to keep on
adding.
Those are the students in the universalization
program, adding the regular day students, these two figures, that’s what I was
talking about, it’s 500,000.
But there are other categories, I have
them here.
(Enrique explains that the figure includes
associate professors, adding up to 75,000, together with 25,000 university
professors, coming up with the sum of 100,000)
Here it says it’s subdivided: “141,000 students in the regular day
courses”.
Do we all agree on this?
“One hundred and forty thousand students are
studying in the courses for workers.”
Are these the same ones, or not? Are they included in the 360,000? They are included in the 360,000 of the
universalization program. Is that correct, or not?
(Enrique explains that it is independent,
that there is the regular day course, the workers’ course and the
universalization.)
You mean the regular day group? (It is explained that this is the figure they
are talking about).
There are courses for workers who already
attend university; when they enter university I think they add to the figure of
360,000. Then, there are 32,000 students in distance education. What category are those in? Are they in the 360,000? They’re not in the regular day group, they’re
not in the workers group, yet they are students. This educational group exists.
Fine, let’s go with the most conservative
figure, which is enough for my purpose here.
Today, there are more than 500,000
university students.
In addition, you know that we already have
958 university campuses. There’s the
reason why you, the FEU (University Student Federation), are already out there
in the municipalities, where a total of 45 university courses are offered, and
each year it grows. There are 169
municipal university campuses run by the Ministry of Higher Education; 130
university campuses in the “Alvaro Reinoso” area; of these, 84 are located in
the sugar mills communities and a lot of these are included in the earlier figure;
there are 18 located in prisons, campuses for higher education that have an enrolment
of
There are almost 100,000 professors, full
professors and associates. Many who were part of the bureaucracy in the sugar
mills and in other areas are today teaching courses as associate professors; thus,
the number of professors at the higher level has grown. The two groups –and I am not even mentioning
the other university workers-- students and professors combined, add up to a
total of about 600,000. Among the students, more than 90,000 were young people
who were neither attending school nor employed, many of them from poor
backgrounds, and today they are showing excellent results in their university
studies.
Shall I ask some questions or shall I go,
more or less, by the data I have?
I’ve been asking about the cost, the budget
for these higher education centers, right up to the last minute tonight. Carlitos handed me a figure, I believe it
said 830. Vecino should know, because he
is up on this data. Do you recall that
one, Vecino?
(Vecino says that in last year’s course,
it was 230 million pesos.)
No, I wish! There’s a figure that someone should know.
Look here, this is our Ministry of
Finance. That was 2004 and I was asking
about 2005, there has been an enormous growth.
Last year’s figures don’t help me much, Vecino.
Well, what’s happening to Vecino, happens
to all of us, and it’s a life or death matter.
A few days ago, I was standing before a group of 200 university
professionals, excellently prepared individuals, and I asked them: “Which of
you can tell me your household’s electrical bill?” Listen to this, comrades. How many do you think answered me? Just guess, use your logic.
What do you think? You just spoke here. And he’s very smart, all of you are smart,
but some of you are smarter. How many do
you think answered my question, among those 200 university professionals? (He tells him: 100)
What do you think? Do you know how much electricity you
use? (He indicates that he has some
idea) What’s your idea? Tell me in pesos and in kilowatt.
(Laughter) No, wait, even more; can you
tell me how many incandescent bulbs you have, what brand is your refrigerator,
what is your TV set (black and white or in color) and how old it is, what kind
of fan you have, how much water you boil each day, what do you boil it in, do
you have liquefied gas supplied by pipes, kerosene or liquefied gas supplied in
small containers. No, I don’t want to
ask you that question, be careful, I just wanted to know how many out of the
200 knew what their electric bill was.
You, you’re laughing, let’s see, and make
a guess, an estimate…50, 70, 120. (Someone says it’s the third) And what about you? (He says, at least 100) You must be thinking about how much you use,
just in case you are asked, but I’m not going to ask you. (Laughter)
Do you know how many of the 200 were able
to answer? You know how many? 0.0000 to the infinite power. You’ve studied some math, you can understand
that: no-one, not one single person.
I think that all our people should
meditate on that for a while
Can I ask you a question? Why did that happen? Come on, we need to think about this. We have said that we must change the world,
that we must save it, that we are living
in a world in its critical hour and very close to a tragic finale; I’m not
exaggerating here just to impress you. That
could happen when you are all younger than I am now. I am speaking for all of you, for your
children, your siblings, whether they are younger or older. It’s never been
proven, throughout the brief history of man, not the savage history but from
the time it was a man and developed a mental capacity but still did not live in
society, nor had he developed writing or a rudimentary technology.
You need to think. What kind of university leaders are you? Carlitos, where did this group that can’t
tell me why those 200 university professionals weren’t able to answer the
question about energy consumption come from?
How long do you need to meditate on this? How about a minute? Would that be long enough? (One comrade
explains that the reason is because the Cuban family can afford their
electrical bill, unlike in other places where people have to be more vigilant
about energy consumption.)
And you, what do you think? (He suggests that no university professor
ever has to worry about paying the electrical bill).
What do you think? (The answer is that this happens because the
bill is so insignificant.)
What do you think? (Another believes that the revolution
subsidizes a large portion of our expenses and that saving is a concern.)
Fine, I’m going to ask you another
question. You are zeroing in on the
exact answer, at least one that I can agree with, and I’m not alone in my
opinion. There are several questions
that could complicate the matter some more, but we must make the people think.
We have to call upon all our honest compatriots, even the dishonest ones,
because after all there could be some dishonest individual who will come up
with the truth, saying: “This is the reason.”
There are many. Simply stated,
electricity is practically a gift, and I can prove it to you.
Afterwards, we might have other
questions. How much are we earning? And if the question deals with how much we
are earning, we might begin to understand the dream of everyone being able to
live on their salary or on their adequate pension.
Let’s add a bit more to this: consider the case of two sisters. One of them was a teacher and now the two are
living together, having some problems, difficulties, earning a pension of 80
pesos because years ago, the salaries were much lower. And then there were periods of: “I’ll pay you for overtime, I’ll pay you
because it is after hours, I’ll pay you because it is night-time, I’ll pay you extra
because you had to work on a Sunday”.
None of this touched on the basic salary. It affected the teacher’s take-home pay, but
not the actual teacher’s salary or the subsequent pension, according to the
laws. Many of these laws were outdated
and we have to begin to get rid of them.
I can assure you that we have become aware of this. The entire life is a learning process, right
up to our last breath.
Many things become clear at a certain
time, and thinking of a million different subjects, one can become distracted
and not notice a certain phenomenon, such as the raises in personal salaries at
the outset of the Special Period: these were implemented following these norms
and not following a basic salary guideline.
And so there was no hesitation, recently, when the worker’s minimum pension
was raised to 150 pesos. The lady was
earning 80 pesos, 50 was the minimum in a category, in another it would be 190
and in yet another it would be 230. So
now, imagine if you will, that teacher who had worked for 40 years, before the
farmers’ free market came into being and the intermediaries attacked the
Republic. Because everyone knows very
well that the farmer does go there to sell three pounds of rice. The farmer is not a merchant, he is a
producer. The other one will have a
truck because he stole it, or because he bought it, or because he bought it
with stolen money, or because he put the motor in, for many reasons.
This is not speaking badly about the
Revolution, this is in fact speaking very well of the Revolution, because we
speak of a Revolution that can discuss all this and can grab the bull by the
horns, even better than the Spanish bull-fighter. That one will take a red cloth, he’ll close
his eyes and sometimes he’ll give it the coup de grace, pierce it with a
pointed stick and infuriate the bull; but we have to take the bull by the horns
in order to win the prize.
I’ve never been a fan of bull-fighting,
even though I did read Hemingway. When I
was in
I recall that at the beginning of the
Revolution, one of us, I can’t remember who it was, started to talk about
bull-fighting. We were somewhat ignorant
about the subject, because we had seen it done in
You are laughing, I’m glad because you are
encouraging me to go on.
Here is a conclusion I’ve come to after
many years: among all the errors we may have committed, the greatest of them
all was that we believed that someone really knew something about socialism, or
that someone actually knew how to build socialism. It seemed to be a sure fact, as well-known as
the electrical system conceived by those who thought they were experts in
electrical systems. Whenever they said:
“That’s the formula”, we thought they knew. Just as if someone is a
physician. You are not going to debate
anemia, or intestinal problems, or any other condition with a physician; nobody
argues with the physician. You can think
that he is a good doctor or a bad one, you can follow his advice or not, but
you won’t argue with him. Which of us
would argue with a doctor, or a mathematician, or a historian, or an expert in
literature or in any other subject? But we must be idiots if we think, for
example, that economy is an exact and eternal science and that it existed since
the days of Adam and Eve, and I offer my apologies to the thousands of
economists in our country.
All sense of dialectics is lost when
someone believes that today’s economy is identical to the economy 50 or 100 or
150 years ago, or that it is identical to the one in Lenin’s day or to the time
when Karl Marx lived. Revisionism is a
thousand miles away from my mind and I truly revere Marx, Engels and Lenin.
One day I said: “I became a revolutionary
in this university” but it was because I came in contact with those books. Well before I had committed myself, without
having read any of those books, I was questioning capitalist political economy. Even at that time, it all seemed irrational
to me; and I took a political economy course in first year, taught by Portela,
900 mimeographed pages, really difficult, almost everyone failed. What a holy terror, that professor!
It was an economy that explained the laws
of capitalism and examined the various theories about the origin of value; it
also mentioned the Marxists, the Utopians, the Communists, in short, every
economic theory. But once I began to
study the political economy of capitalism, I began to have great doubts, I
began to question all that, because I had grown up on a large rural estate and
I remembered things, I had spontaneous ideas, just as any other utopian in this
world.
Then, once I learned what utopian
communism was, I realized that that’s what I was a utopian communist because
all my ideas took off from the idea: “This is not good, this is bad, this is a
crime. How can we possibly have an
overproduction crisis and hunger at the same time, when there is more coal,
more cold, more unemployed, because there is more capacity to create wealth? Wouldn’t it be simpler to produce and
distribute the wealth?”
Just as Karl Marx thought in the period of
the Critique of the Gotha Program, it seemed like limits for abundance were inherent in the social
system; it seemed that just as production forces developed, they
could produce everything that the human being needed to satisfy all his
essential requirements almost limitlessly, be they material, cultural, etc.
We have all read that Program, and
it is certainly very respectable. It
established with total clarity the difference in his concept between socialist
distribution and communist distribution.
Marx didn’t like to play the prophet or paint pictures of the future; he
was very serious, and would never have done that.
When he wrote political books like The
18th Brumaire and the Civil War in France, he was a
genius with a crystal clear interpretation.
His Communist Manifesto is a classic. You can analyze it and be more or less
satisfied with this and with that. I
moved on from utopian communism to a communism that was based on serious
theories of social development such as dialectic materialism. There was a lot of philosophy, much fighting
and arguing. But of course, it is
important to pay due attention to different philosophical tendencies.
In our real world, which must be changed,
every revolutionary tactician and strategist has the obligation to conceive of
a strategy and a tactic that will lead to the fundamental objective, to change
the real world. No divisive tactic or
strategy can be a good one.
I had the privilege of meeting the
followers of the Liberation Theology once when I visited Allende in
The world is desperately crying out for
unity and if we cannot achieve a minimum of unity, we are not going to go
anywhere.
Yesterday, in a meeting with the
representative of the Holy See in our country, on the occasion of the 70th
anniversary of uninterrupted Cuba-Vatican relations, I was saying that one of
the things I most appreciated about John Paul II was his ecumenical
spirit. I attended religious schools
from first grade until my last year, the schools of the De La Salle Brothers
and the Jesuits; it was all religious and we had to go to Mass every day. I don’t criticize anyone who wants to go to
Mass, but I am against forcing someone to attend every day; that’s what
happened to me.
Yesterday, I was also talking respectfully
and in a good spirit to the bishops about many of these subjects; I recalled
what I had said about ecumenism and I remembered that in my day I had witnessed
a war to death, of all religious faiths fighting against each other. The Catholics were against the Jews, the
Protestants, the Muslims, and everyone was against the other, to speak of one
to the other was akin to speaking of the devil.
Many years later, I was quite surprised; I
believe it was following the Council held in
Just imagine many powerful churches, the
Catholic Church, all the other Christian churches, the Muslim faith. We ourselves are observing extremely
interesting things, things we didn’t know about the very powerful cultures,
beliefs and customs in the Muslim faith, because our doctors are over there in
a Muslim country, saving lives. They
treat us with great affection and respect.
I won’t go into more detail, only to say that these are things that have
a great impact. There are many very
strong religions and some of them are 2500, 3000 years old, some of them are a
little younger at 2000 years and others are only hundreds of years old.
This is a good example, because if
religious sentiment is unable to be united, despite their various ethical
ideals, or moral values or religious aims of any one religion, then unity can
never be attained if seven, eight, ten or more churches struggle against each
other, all of them refusing to talk to one another.
I have a very clear idea on this subject;
ethical values are essential. Without ethical values, there can be no
revolutionary values.
I don’t know why the communists were credited
with the philosophy of the end justifying the means, and sometimes one even
asks oneself why the communists didn’t defend themselves from that accusation
of the end justifying the means. My
explanation is that it is due to historical reasons. There was an enormous
influence exerted by the first socialist state and by the first true socialist
revolution born in a feudal country that still, by and large, has feudal
customs and habits and a large percentage of illiteracy; but it was the first
working class revolution springing from the ideas of Marx and Engels and
developed by the other great genius, Lenin.
Above all, Lenin studied State issues;
Marx did not speak of the worker-peasant alliance because he lived in a country
that had a highly developed industrial base; Lenin recognized the
under-developed world, he was aware of the country where 80 to 90 percent were
peasants, and even though it had considerable strength in its railroad workers
and in some other industries, Lenin saw with utmost clarity the necessity to
forge a worker-peasant alliance. No one
before had spoken of this; they had philosophized, but they hadn’t talked about
this. The first socialist revolution,
the first real attempt at a just and egalitarian society, takes place in a huge
semi-feudal, semi-under developed country.
None of the previous societies slave-based, feudal, medieval or
anti-feudal, bourgeois, or capitalist could ever propose the existence of a
just society even though much was said about liberty, equality and fraternity.
Throughout history, the first serious
human attempt to create the first just society began less than 200 years ago;
the Communist Manifesto was written in 1850 and in 45 years, yes, in 45 more
years, it will be 200 years old. After
it was written, the evolution of revolutionary thinking could be appreciated.
One could never have arrived at a strategy
through dogma. Lenin taught us a lot,
because Marx taught us to understand society.
Lenin taught us to understand the State and the role of the State.
All these historical factors had a
tremendous influence on revolutionary thinking, and of course there were
abusive practices, at times even repugnant ones.
This is what gave rise to the slanderous
accusation that for communists “the end justifies the means”. I have reflected a great deal about the role
of ethics. What is the ethic of a
revolutionary? All revolutionary
thinking begins with a bit of ethics; some values acquired from parents, others
from teachers, but no one is born with these ideas. No one is born with the gift of speech,
either; someone has to teach us to speak.
The influence of the family is huge.
Upon studying the cases of young people
who go to prison between the ages of 20 and 30, we see where they came from,
the cultural level of the parents and we note that this has a decisive
influence. Such an influence in fact,
that during the battle of ideas, after all kinds of sociological research on
this subject, we reached the conclusion that crime in
It was astounding to see how very few
children of university professionals and intellectuals turned to a life of
crime. It was likewise incredible to see the numbers coming from economically
disadvantaged families that lacked a cultural base. Another problem was of great influence: the
disintegration of the family cell in the low income family with an inferior
cultural level. Some children ended up staying with neither the father nor the
mother, but with an aunt or a grandmother who might have health related
problems or something else. This would have a noteworthy influence upon the
future of the child.
It was then that we began using university
brigades to visit the poorest of our districts, and we decided to mobilize
7,000 students for that. These were the students who later received a diploma,
signed by me in a plane, coming back from
It was then that we discovered, for
example, the case of a working mother, earning a salary, with a severely
mentally handicapped and bed-ridden child who needed constant care. Some family member would look after the
child while the mother was at work. One
day, the family member left, or died, and that woman was forced to choose
between the job, which supported her, or the care of her child.
I’d like to tell you that we decided that
every woman in similar circumstances ought to have the possibility to choose,
according to her job and according to the needs and importance of her work for
society, whether to receive a salary so that she could look after her child, or
the State would pay someone a salary to care for the child while she was at
work. This is just one example among
many.
The student brigades also helped in saving
the lives of persons who, for example, were going to commit suicide due to
mental illness or depression or some other reason. We learned so many things! There were about 20,000 or 30,000 people
older than 60 who lived alone and didn’t even have a bell to let someone know
that they might have a chest pain or some other health problem. Such was our society.
We looked into the income these people
were receiving from a pension or from social security. Much of the data doesn’t even appear in any
statistic, or census. We kept on
discovering more and more, accomplishing things and forging ideas. We put together more than 100 social
programs, many of which have come to fruition a while ago. We haven’t publicized all that we have
accomplished. What glorious days those
were! Starting basically with the groups
of young people and with the support of the Party and all the institutions, we
developed that battle of ideas around the return from the
We shall always be grateful for the
circumstances that accelerated our knowledge of society and our learning
process. I think that we would not be
doing what we are doing today if it had not been for that experience.
We created the first course for social
workers. We needed to know what the
minimum salaries were. I would like you
to know that the minimum salary increase was made after we had crossed the
country from end to end. Social
assistance was one third of everything that was established that year, taking
it up to 129 pesos on average. When the
pensions were increased, the effect was much stronger as the minimum pension
was raised to 150, to 190 in the following category and 230 in the one following
that. The minimum salary was also
substantially raised.
We were speaking of the importance of the
ethical factor. We would have to
research the reasons for the confusion.
I believe that historical events influenced the idea that for a communist
the end justifies the means. There were international events that were
difficult to understand –I’ve mentioned them on more than one occasion-- in
spite of everything, there was the precedent of
Before this pact, the necessity for
unification in the anti-fascist struggle led to the alliance in
These were very difficult events, and one
followed on the heels of another; the most disciplined communists in the world
–and I say that with all sincere respect- were the communist parties of
Today we can speak of this subject because
we are entering a new phase.
The members of the Cuban Communist Party
were the most disciplined people, the most honorable and the most self-sacrificed
for this country. The Party legislators
handed over a portion of their salaries. They were the most honorable people in the
country notwithstanding the erroneous direction that was imposed by Stalin on
the international movement. How can we
blame them? They were faced with the
dilemma of accepting or not something which was, in my criteria, absolutely
correct: the unity of all
communists. “Workers of the world,
unite!”, or openly destroy, under the circumstances, all discipline.
I am not one of those people who criticize
historical characters demonized by world reaction so that they become a joke
for the bourgeoisie and the imperialists.
Neither am I going to commit the stupidity of not daring to say what
needs to be said on a day like today. We
must have the courage to recognize our own errors exactly for that reason, for
only in that manner will we reach the objective that we hope to attain. A tremendous vice was created, the abuse of
power, the cruelty and, in particular, the habit of one country imposing its
authority, that of one hegemonic party,
over all other countries and parties.
For more than 40 years we have maintained
relations with the Latin American revolutionary movement and they have been
extremely close relations. But, it has never even occurred to us to tell
anybody what they should be doing. We have
seen every revolutionary movement zealously defend its rights and its
prerogatives.
I remember crucial moments. I will state this here, and it will only be
part of the story. When the
I would tell them: “You cannot ask us our
opinion, as it will be you fighting the battle, and you alone who will die, not
us. We know what we are going to do and
what we are prepared to do: but these are decisions which each one must make
for themselves.” That was the highest
expression of our respect for the other movements. We have never attempted to
impose ourselves on the basis of our knowledge and experience, or the enormous
respect they show for our revolution which motivated them to listen to our
point of view.
At that moment we didn’t know whether
there would be advantages or disadvantages for
Hitler wins in the elections against the
liberal bourgeois parties and the militant communist and revolutionary
forces. But a much more decisive factor
was the terrible resentment of the German people against those unfair
conditions dictated by the victors. And it is against this background that
Hitler comes to power. In a book he
wrote, Hitler casually declared that his aim was to seek vital space in
In our country, after son many revolutionaries
had fallen, since the communists were the most conscientious, the most militant
and the most honorable, the Marxist Leninist Party was led, of course, to that
alliance with Batista, the same who had repressed students and the public in
general. The young people resented his
power very much; the workers who had always seen their interests continuously
defended by the communist leaders were firmly loyal to the Party, but it was
among the youth and wide popular sectors of society that there was the most
justified rejection of Batista.
I believe that the experience of that
first socialist State, a State that should have been fixed and not destroyed,
was a bitter one. You may be sure that
we have thought many times about that incredible phenomenon where one of the
mightiest powers in the world disintegrated the way it did; for this was a
power that had matched the strength of the other super-power and had paid with
the lives of more than 20 million of her people in the battle against fascism.
Is it that revolutions are doomed to fall
apart, or that men cause revolutions to fall apart? Can either man or society prevent revolutions
from collapsing? I could immediately add
to this another question: Do you believe
that this revolutionary socialist process can fall apart, or not? (Exclamations of: “No!!”) Have you ever given
that some thought? Have you ever deeply reflected
about it?
Were you aware of all these inequalities
that I have been talking about? Were you
aware of certain generalized habits? Did
you know that there are people who earn forty or fifty times the amount one of
those doctors over there in the mountains of Guatemala, part of the “Henry
Reeve” Contingent, earns in one month?
It could be in other faraway reaches of Africa, or at an altitude of
thousands of meters, in the Himalayas, saving lives and earning 5% or 10% of
what one of those dirty little crooks earns, selling gasoline to the new rich,
diverting resources from the ports in trucks and by the ton-load, stealing in
the dollar shops, stealing in a five-star hotel by exchanging a bottle of rum
for another of lesser quality and pocketing the dollars for which he sells the
drinks.
Just how many ways of stealing do we have
in this country? Why is it that we read
every day in the opinion polls that people are asking about when the “kids” are
coming to the dollar stores, to the drugstores, or to all the other places?
Everyone is full of admiration for these “kids”, I mean the social workers, who
came out of economically disadvantaged environments and are now highly prepared
and trained.
I looked at those faces, as I look at you
now and faces tell me more than any article, any book or cliché. You are aware that since the beginning of
civilization, since the inception of private property, there has been a class
difference. The world has only known a class based society, all the rest is
pre-history.
How is it that I can tell that you come
from economically disadvantaged environments?
None of you entered university because you were the son or daughter of
an important land-owner.
Here we are and I have been given the
honor of sitting here. Which of you has
a father who owns 1,000 hectares, or more than 10,000 hectares? I won’t ask each one of you, because all I
need to do is to look at you to know whether by chance one of you is the child
of some professional, of the middle class.
You applauded loudly because I know where you are coming from, and you
know that today, there is no one left that cuts sugar cane by hand. Who were the cane cutters?
I could also explain why we no longer cut
cane today; there are no cane cutters here and the heavy machinery destroys the
sugar cane fields. The abuses of the developed world and the subsidies have led
to sugar prices that were scraping the bottom of the trash bins, on the world
markets. In the meantime,
In the days when the USSR paid our sugar
at 27 or 28 cents, and paid in oil because it was cheaper to pay for sugar with
oil than to buy the beet sugar produced labor intensively in the Russian
fields, the USSR was a country whose economy grew extensively, not intensively,
and so their labor force was never enough and the beet harvest required many
workers.
So, we are now coming to the point of
asking ourselves this question –I have already reached this point myself, some
years ago-- in the face of this super-powerful empire that stalks us and
threatens us, that has transition plans and military action plans in this
specific historical moment.
They are awaiting a natural and absolutely
logical event, the death of someone. In
this case, they have honored me by thinking of me. It might be a confession of what they have
not been able to do in a long time. If I
were a vain man, I could be proud of the fact that those guys admit that they
are waiting for me to die, and this is the time. They are waiting for me to die, and everyday they
invent something new: Castro has this, he’s suffering from that, and now the
latest is that they say Castro has Parkinson’s disease.
Yes, it’s true, I had a very bad fall and
I’m still in rehab for this arm (He shows the arm), and its improving. I’m very grateful for the circumstances which
caused me to break my arm, because now I’m forced to be even more disciplined,
to work more, to dedicate more time (almost 24 hours a day) to my job. I had been doing this ever since the Special
Period began, and now I dedicate every second to my work and I fight harder
than ever. Luckily, I feel better than
ever because I’m more disciplined and I exercise much more. (Applause)
So
they call it Parkinson’s. I recall that the day after my fall, when I was told
I had fissures, in the plural, on my upper humerus. When I was about to write a report about what
had happened, I was told: “No, the plural of fissure is fracture.” At that time, there was nothing to do but to
say: “Write fissure and I will explain to the people that it isn’t a fissure,
but fissures.” I made that clear, because
in any case, I don’t fear the enemy; but I believed that I was in good shape,
that it had been an accident and that I hadn’t hit my head. If I had hit my head, I probably wouldn’t be
here today. I got into the ambulance and
was driven to
I have been very diligent, and I continue
in my efforts. What I have learned is
that I shall be exercising until my last breath, I cannot let anything go, and
I have better eating habits what is good for me and not eating one gram more
than is necessary.
Now they say that the CIA has discovered
that I suffer from Parkinson’s. That’s a
little like the guy who discovered that I was the wealthiest man in the
world. What a faux pas! That’s a little tale that is still floating
around. I’ll tell you this; I haven’t
talked about it because in the last few months I haven’t had any available TV
time: there was Posada Carriles over there, and the bandits, and a million
other things. But I’m saving this little
story, and they are going to lose this one.
The guy and all his cronies are going to have a bit of a problem for
having invented this one; they don’t know what to do now, perhaps the best
thing would be to correct themselves.
They say that I have Parkinson’s.
Whenever you are exercising, the arm gets stronger gradually, muscle by
muscle. How many people have I had to
greet? Literally thousands, and some of
them come up to me and pull on my arm what can I do? I should do what some others do when someone
touches you there, you tense up the shoulder so that it appears to be stronger
and made of iron. Every time I have to
shake hands, I do that. So this arm is
stronger than the other one (He shows the right arm), what do you think of
that?
But the CIA has discovered that I have
Parkinson’s. Truly, I don’t care if I do
have Parkinson’s. The Pope suffered from
Parkinson’s and he spent many long years traveling all over the world with
great energy, they even tried to assassinate him; so, this is what I did:
“Let’s see how my Parkinson’s is doing, let me aim (he points firmly with his
index finger) (Applause and exclamations), and so I say, it’s the right one.”
I’ve been lucky that I’ve always had great
aim. And I still have it, even without a telescopic lens.
The day following the accident, they take
you to a hospital, they send you here and there, you don’t protest, but you
know exactly what they are doing to you.
In my case, they had to consult on the operation to know what they were
going to do and how they were going to do it.
What to do with the knee cap and how to do it. What to do with the arm. So I said: “Give me local anesthesia,”
because if I was really not feeling up to doing anything I would call the Party
and say: “Look, I’m not up to doing anything.”
Because of this, I have criticized the doctors, because they minimized
the seriousness of the situation somewhat.
The surgery, good; the rehab, here’s what I said: “Fine, in the long
run, I have no plans to pitch in the next baseball championship, and I’m
certainly not going to participate in the next Olympics”. It was more risky to
undergo the operation, with the steel pins and everything else. They need to be doing this with a 20 or 25
year old. But, anyway, the correct thing
had to be done, and if you know you are not going to be able to fulfill some
obligation, you say: “This is what is happening, please, find somebody else to
take over because I don’t feel up to it.”
If my time to die comes, I will die, and if I don’t die and recover, one
has some level of experience, some sense of authority and nothing is gained
with lies and dishonor. Those were my
concerns at that moment.
Once I said that the day I really die,
nobody will believe it; I’ll probably carry on like El Cid, astride his horse,
winning battles, even after death.
You can never trust imperialism; it is treacherous
and capable of anything. It tortures in
The first thing I wanted to do was to see
if my arm was strong enough to fire this gun that I had always used. I always have it around, close to me. I removed the bullet holder, loaded it, put
on the safety, took it off again, removed the bullet holder, took out the
bullets, and said: Relax. That was on
the next day.
Measures have been taken and measures
prepared so that there can be no element of surprise, and our people should
know what to do in any scenario. Listen
to me well; it is necessary to know what to do under any circumstances.
We are not going to describe these
measures to “little Bush”; we are not going to tell him what we have prepared.
But I can say this: “Look, little gentleman, you cannot stand it, that is, if
they haven’t already given you a swift kick in the pants and removed you for
having violated the US laws.” Everyone
is protesting against him, and all that keeps coming up are news of crimes, and
still more crimes.
Today, I certainly don’t want to suggest
to the CIA –I hope I won’t have to tell them-- that I have been doing some
research on the emperor while they are
busy researching the state of my health and the alleged Parkinson’s I’m
suffering. But, I don’t think I need to do so.
I don’t aim to personally insult
anyone. I say what I say because it
reveals concepts, it reflects contempt, it reflects the clear idea we have
about mediocrity, stupidity and many other factors; but I don’t wish to mention
certain subjects, we have abundant material, and we could mention to the CIA
–this organization is angry because it has been humiliated-- certain facts we know regarding the health of
the emperor. Of course, the CIA has not
said a word either about how Posada Carriles entered the
I asked you a question, comrade students;
don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten, and I’d like to believe that you will never
forget it. It is the question that I ask in view of historical experiences we have known, and I
ask you all, without exception, to reflect on it: Can the revolutionary process
be irreversible, or not? Which are the
ideas or the degree of conscience that would make the reversal of the
revolutionary process impossible? When
those who were the forerunners, the veterans, start disappearing and making
room for new generations of leaders, what will be done and how will it be
accomplished? After all, we have been
witnesses to many errors, and we didn’t notice.
A leader has a tremendous power when he
enjoys the confidence of the masses that put full trust in his abilities. The consequences of errors committed by those
in authority are terrible, and this has happened more than once during the
revolutionary processes.
Such is the stuff for meditation. One studies history, one meditates on what
happened here and there, on what happened today and on what will happen tomorrow,
on where each country’s processes will lead, what path our own process will
take, how it will get there, and what role Cuba will play in this process.
The country has endured limitations in
resources, many limitations; but this country has wasted resources, thoughtlessly.
So, while you received the soaps that had no perfume and the toothpaste, regularly
every month, and even though sometimes
certain activities in the schools were neglected which, for example caused the
excellent state of dental health among our youth to decay, some thought that
socialism could be constructed with capitalist methods. That is one of the great historical
errors. I do not wish to speak of this,
I don’t want to theorize. But I have an
infinite number of examples of many things that couldn’t be resolved by those
who called themselves theoreticians, blanketing themselves from head to toe in
the books of Marx, Engels, Lenin and many others.
That was why I commented that one of our
greatest mistakes at the beginning of, and often during, the Revolution was
believing that someone knew how to build socialism.
In my opinion, today, we have relatively
clear ideas about how one goes about building socialism, but we need many
extremely clear ideas and many questions answered by you who will be the ones
responsible for the preservation, or not, of socialism in the future.
What kind of a society would this be, how
worthy of joy could we be when we assemble on a day like today, in a place like
this, if we were not minimally aware of what we need to know, so that on our
heroic island, this heroic people, this nation which has written pages in the
history books like no other nation in the history of mankind can preserve the
Revolution? Please, do not think that this who is speaking to you is a vain man or a charlatan, or someone inclined
to bluff.
Forty-six years have passed and the
history of this country is known and the people of this nation know it well. They
also know their neighbor very well, the empire, with its size and its power, its
strength and its wealth, its technology and its control over the World Bank,
the International Monetary Fund, all the world of finances. That country has imposed
on us the most incredibly iron-clad blockade, which was discussed at the United
Nations where 182 nations supported
It would have been naïve of us to think, or
to ask for, or to expect that one super-power would fight against the other, in
this day and age of modern technological development, to intervene in this
island 90 miles away. We came to the
conclusion that such support would never happen. And another thing: once we asked them
directly, a few years before the collapse:
“Tell us frankly.” : “No,” they
said. It was the answer we knew they would give and from that point on, more
than ever, we accelerated the development of our concept and we perfected the
tactical and strategic ideas which have seen to the triumph and victory of the
Revolution. The Revolution’s strength
began with the struggle of seven armed men against an enemy with 80,000 troops
including marines, soldiers and police, tanks, airplanes and all kinds of
modern weaponry of the time. What an
infinitely huge difference between our weapons and the weapons of that army,
trained by the
They may have tanks to spare, but we have
just what we need, not one to spare! All
their technology collapses like ice-cubes beneath the noon-day sun in a hot
summer. And again, just like when we
possessed only seven guns and a handful of bullets. Today, we possess much more
than those seven guns. We have a people
who have learned to handle weapons; we have an entire nation which, in spite of
our errors, holds such a high degree of culture, education and conscience that
it will never allow this country to
become their colony again.
This country can self-destruct; this
Revolution can destroy itself, but they can never destroy us; we can destroy
ourselves, and it would be our fault.
I have been fortunate to have lived many
years. That is not a special merit but rather, it is an exceptional opportunity
to share with you everything that I am telling you, young leaders, all the
leaders of the masses, all the leaders of the workers’ movement, the Committees
for the Defense of the Revolution, the women’s groups, the farmers, the
veterans of the Revolution, organized throughout the country, hundreds of
thousands who have struggled through the years carrying out glorious
internationalist missions, students like yourselves, intelligent, well
prepared, healthy, organized. You are everywhere, in each one of those 900 or
so campuses and the 1000 plus and the 2000 plus that we shall quickly have; and
it will continue growing until more than 500,000 and 600,000, with new
graduates every year. And those that
graduate, like our physicians in Venezuela, will be studying with the aid of
computers, videos and cassettes, all the audio-visual means necessary, to
attain that scientific degree, that Master’s or that Doctorate in medical
sciences, everyone, one hundred percent of them.
Today we may speak about thousands of
specialists in comprehensive general medicine and tomorrow we will be speaking
about thousands of professionals in medical sciences, just to mention one
branch. Let’s not forget that once we
had 3,000 doctors and no university professors.
Many left this very university.
Today, we can say that in a few short years, there will be 100,000
doctors. When those are not enough,
there will be 150,000. And we will have
university professors, just as we have thousands of programmers and program
designers and researchers. Many changes
are coming because we need to know much in a short time.
I was just telling you about a battle and
I asked how much it cost. Don’t think
that these 28,000 social workers will be working for nothing. I’ve already told you how I knew that they
came from the most modest of the segments of the population, I saw it in their
faces. Involuntarily, I have developed
the habit of guessing the province from which my compatriots come. I mentioned it in jest, and I say it to the
doctors who are leaving on their missions, to the social workers, that each one
belongs to a micro-tribe. I recognize
those that come from Manzanillo, for example, those from
The coliseum teaches us about
Marxist-Leninism; it teaches us about social classes. A short while ago, about
15,000 doctors and medical students, some of them from
The image of those 15,000 white coats all
together on graduation day can never be forgotten. That was the day that the “Henry Reeve”
Contingent was created following in the tradition of many doctors who have been
to places where exceptional events have taken place, in a time span much too
brief to even imagine.
A short while later, the more than 3,000
young art instructors graduated; it was the second group, following that first
graduation in
And what can we expect from the work of
these youth? We shall put a stop to many
of these vices: thievery, diversion of materials and money draining away
towards the new rich.
Does anybody think that we are going to
confiscate funds? No, money is sacred;
everybody who has their money in the bank cannot be touched.
But look at something new, we are going to
battle against an abundance of vices, theft, re-routing, one by one, we will
get to them all, in some order. They don’t
suspect it. Do you have any ideas? Very
good, then!
Certain vices can be very
deep-seated. We started with Pinar del
Well, what is happening in
Human capital is not a non-renewable
product. It is renewable, and better, still
it can be multiplied. Each year human
capital increases and receives what was called, in my time, a compound
interest. Add up what it is worth and
receive an interest for what it is worth and for what it has earned; in five
years you have much more capital, and in 100 years, it boggles the mind.
Allow me to tell you that today, human
capital is practically superior to almost all of the others put together, and
it is advancing very quickly to become the country’s most valuable
resource. I’m not exaggerating.
I was asking about the cost; what was the
economic cost of all our universities.
Just by using the new income collected by
the gas stations in three months –and, of course, they are not going to be
doing this forever, as you may guess-- but if they were to grow another 50%
next year, they would collect the necessary funds in four months. All they have to do is force the new rich to
pay for the fuel they consume, and in this way, within a year, they would pay
no less than four times over what 600,000 university students and their
professors cost. That’s something, isn’t it? And there would be a couple extra
Do you know what a “couple extra” is? The people from
They arrived in
Eventually, those that don’t want to
understand will correct themselves, but in a different way: they are going to
cover themselves in their own garbage.
They just don’t want to understand.
So what was happening in the meanwhile in
In
Today, the social workers are in the
refineries; they get on board the tanker trucks that carry 20,000 or 30,000
liters and they watch, more or less, where that truck goes, and how much of the
oil is re-routed.
They have discovered private gas stations,
supplied with oil from these trucks.
We all know that many of the state owned
trucks go all over the place, and sometimes they visit a relative, a friend, a
family or a girl-friend.
I remember the time, several years before
the Special Period, I saw a brand new Volvo front-loader on
Some things you’ll see, Mio Cid –I think
it was Cervantes who said this— that would make the stones talk.
So, this is some of what has been
happening. In general, we all know, and
many have said: “The Revolution can’t do that; no, it’s impossible; no, nobody
can fix that.” But yes, the people are
going to fix it this time, the Revolution is going to fix it, any way we can. Is it merely an ethical matter? Yes, it is above all an ethical matter; but
even more, it is a vital economic matter.
Our nation is one of those that waste the
most combustible energy in the world.
We had proof of it right here, and you very honestly pointed it out; it
is very important. No one knows the cost
of electricity; no one knows the cost of gasoline; no one knows its market
value. I was about to tell you that it
is very sad when a ton of oil can cost 400 dollars and a ton of gasoline can
cost 500, 600, 700 or on occasion 1000;
this is a product which does not get cheaper. Whenever that happens it is circumstantial,
and it does not last long. But the
product itself will run out. It’s very
simple: oil will run out just as many of the world minerals.
Take a look at our nickel mines, leaving
great holes where once there used to be a lot of nickel. This is happening to oil; the great oil
fields have all been found and every day there is less of them. This is a subject about which we have had to
think long and hard.
For example, do you know how many kilometers
per liter it takes to operate a Zil-130? 1.6 kilometers. It transports sugar cane or delivers snacks
to the secondary school students. The
Ministry of Sugar was told: Look, the
Ministry of Food Industries needs your help to distribute the snack to the
junior high schools. How many trucks can
you spare? We have to reach 400,000
children, free of charge, to bring them their yoghurt and their bread. Of
course, of those they could spare they offered the ones running on gasoline,
the most cost inefficient.
If you were to exchange this Zil running
on 1.6 kilometers per liter for a vehicle that has the appropriate size, let’s
say a two ton truck, and that one was a 5 ton truck, even a 1.2 ton truck would
do. We started to see this in a
discussion with the electrical industry company. They raised the problem of
trucks needed to repair power grids and said:
“We have to exchange 400 Soviet gas-guzzlers, because we’re spending too
much on gasoline.” We studied them one
after another, to see how much they used and what should replace them. The discussions were long; don’t you think
that the directors of our companies outstand for their discipline. And everyone can’t be happy, I warn you; and
I warn all of you as well, because this promises to be a tough fight. Till now, nobody has complained but, if I
remember correctly, there were around 3,000 entities that were handling
convertible currency and were managing their profits with generous expenditures
in convertible currency, buying this and that, painting their houses, buying a
new car and getting rid of the old clunker.
We realized that, given the conditions this country is living in, such
habits must be broken. We called a
meeting with the main companies and they commenced to put some changes into
place.
When you go to war with a lot of bullets,
you’re not too worried whether the guns are shooting that efficiently, however,
if you have few bullets (something that always happened to us in the war) you
must be familiar with each gun’s bullets, even knowing the brand name, even
though they may be of the same caliber, some bullets function better with a
certain gun, others may jam up.
Sometimes, in the name of economy, you have to prevent them from being
fired and just shoot when the enemy is breeching the trenches. For example, there is nothing as terrible as
an automatic weapon being fired, and that’s how we operated.
Let’s speak of banks. We have excellent
banking institutions. The banks today manage all the resources for all the
expenses of the nation; they pay out in accordance to the established
programs. You will never see the
director of any bank out to lunch with the representative of some powerful
corporation. Directors are never invited to dine in a restaurant, or to travel
to
Now we come to larceny, or the re-routing
of resources from the gas stations. There
are ways to deliver gasoline because that gentleman, who is my very good
friend, uses his vehicle in a very useful way and so I can see that he gets a
certain amount of gasoline. This is just
one way of thousands. There are dozens
of ways to waste or to re-routing resources.
If the controls in place are not enforced, or if we cannot find the best
solution to stop this, theft will continue and increase.
Today, in our country, we could be saving
more energy, more than is possible in any other country. There are 2,400,000 vintage refrigerators in
family dwellings which use four or five times more electricity per hour, on a
24 hour basis.
A single data, so that you don’t forget
it. In Pinar del Rio there are 143,000
refrigerators; of this number, 136,000 are INPUDs, Minsks and other ancient
Soviet brands, Frigidaire and the other capitalist brands consume, according to
my calculations, around 20% --I am using another figure but here I will use the
most conservative one-- of the
electricity generated by power plants for Pinar del Rio during peak hours.
Earlier on, I was speaking of a Zil truck;
we have thousands of these. Worse than
that, there are many institutions with old trucks, which are not operational, but
they are not reported in that condition and the central administration has
become accustomed to negotiating with government ministers. The central State
Administration doesn’t need to negotiate with any minister, it must issue
orders to the ministers. “How many
trucks do you have?” “This is how
many.” It is necessary to delve into the
problems and then make decisions.
The sugar industry produced eight million
tons and today this figure barely reaches one and a half tons. We had to
radically cut back on tilling and seeding the land while oil was costing 40
dollars a barrel, it was ruinous for the country, particularly if you added to
that equation the hurricanes that were passing through with increasing
frequency, the prolonged droughts, and because the cane fields had a life span
of four or five years when once they lasted 15 or more, and when the market
price was 7 cents. I remember that one
day I asked a company which sells our sugar about the price of sugar and about
production at the end of March, and they didn’t even know how much sugar was
being produced for months, much less the cost of a ton of sugar in American
dollars, the answer came up about a month and a half later.
Quite simply, we had to shut down sugar
mills or we were going to disappear down the Bartlett Trench. The country had many, many economists and it
is not my intention to criticize them, but speaking with the same honesty I
used to describe the errors of the Revolution, I would like to ask why we
hadn’t discovered that maintaining production levels of sugar would be
impossible. The USSR had collapsed, oil
was costing 40 dollars a barrel, sugar prices were at basement levels…so why
did we not rationalize that industry instead of sowing 20,000 caballerias
that year, equivalent of almost 270,000 hectares, obliging us to till the land
with tractors and heavy ploughs, sowing cane that afterwards had to be cleaned
using machinery, fertilize with expensive herbicides, etc. None of our
economists seemed to have noticed any of this, and we practically had to
instruct them, order them, to stop the procedure. It is like saying: “The country is being
invaded”; you cannot reply: “Hold on, let me have a thirty meetings with a hundreds
of people.” It’s as if we had said in
Giron : “Let’s hold a meeting for three days to discuss what we should do to
repel the invasion.” I assure you that
the Revolution, throughout her history, has been a constant and real war, with
the enemy stalking us and ready to strike at us if we should let down our
guard.
I called the minister and I told him: Tell
me please, how many hectares are ploughed?”
The answer: “Eighty thousand.” My
response was: “Not one hectare more.”
That wasn’t really up to me, but I had no option; you just can’t let the
country go down the tubes, and in April I was looking at 20,000 caballerias of land being
ploughed.
We have had to do many more things like
this, things that would make the stones speak.
It’s not your fault, but, what was happening to us? Why did we not see all this? The
Maybe it was all necessary, for we have
committed many errors. It is these
errors that we are trying to correct, if you will, that we are in the process
of correcting.
One of the corrections made by the Party
and the Government was to put an end to the prerogative of 3,000 citizens to manage
the country’s currency, in the situation of debt –they could have a debt of
such and such a size-- nobody was guaranteeing the payment of that debt; when
the debt expired the State was obliged to pay it. It might have been an unnecessary or
subjective debt, and if the State did not pay it, its credit could be
considerably affected.
Today that has changed; I would like to
tell you that the country is paying off every last cent, with not even a
second’s delay, and credit grows constantly.
Money is not being thrown out of the windows; it is spent in great
quantities, yes, but not in those colossal amounts that we saw in the sugar
industry.
You will be even more amazed when I tell
you that, according to its inventory, the Ministry of Sugar has 2000 to 3000
more trucks than it had when it was producing 8 million tons of sugar. It’s tough, but I’m going to tell it like it
is; I’m going to talk about it, and no matter how many times I tell it, and no
matter how I criticize this in public, I am not afraid to shoulder the
responsibility for what needs to be done, we cannot afford to be soft. Let them attack and criticize me, I know the
reality of the situation, I know it very well.
There must be quite a few who are hurting: kings, czars, emperors.
Is everyone like that? No! Are all our
ministers like that? No. Some ministers have been very inefficient. Sometimes we are soft on officials who hold
important positions, but I have this old habit:
I like to work with the comrades who have made mistakes. I’ve done that many times over. As long as I see positive qualities and what
is missing is the correct guidance.
Sometimes it is just a question of short-sightedness, in spite of all
the mechanisms and institutions in the country to defend itself, to struggle
and to fight with honor, without abuse of power, for nothing would ever justify
the abuse of power. We must be audacious
enough to tell the truth, but not all of it, because we don’t need to say
everything at once. Political battles
follow certain tactics, with adequate information, following their own
path. I am not telling you everything; I
am telling you the indispensable. Don’t
worry about what the bandits are saying or what the news services will report
tomorrow or the day after: he who laughs last, laughs best.
There are some news reports saying that Castro
is launching an offensive, Castro is launching his social workers that we are
renouncing all the progressive advances made so far. The progressive advance means that you are
selling a pound of rice for four pesos, it’s robbery! What retiree would be able to buy that? A pensioner with his 80 pesos and five pounds
of rice in his ration book cannot buy that.
Today, everybody receives two more pounds
of rice. I’d like to see the day when
that will be enough. It’s not far, but
now they throw it at the chickens. Well,
that’s a whole other story. We are getting
close to the time when everyone will have enough rice. We are also preparing conditions so that the
ration book will be a thing of the past.
We want to change something that was once useful and now is in the
way. And if you would like to buy more rice,
buy more rice and less sugar, or something else, not just red beans or black
beans. You can buy whatever color of
beans you like and cook them as you like.
I warn you, you will have to pay a lot of attention to cooking, and quite
soon.
Some were also commenting on the
chocolate: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” That’s what happened with the
pressure cookers, and today there are millions of believers. Others said: “How is this chocolate?” “What does it cost?” “Eight pesos.” “It’s pretty expensive to be
subsidized.” Moral of the story:
Everything subsidized should be as economical as electricity. “So, how much does it cost?” “Ah! Eight pesos.” “How many cents of a devalued dollar?” Thirty two cents. What’s it like? It has 200 grams; in each 11 grams seven are
whole milk powder. Let everyone check
for himself. Take it to a lab and get it
examined. Four grams of cocoa, the strongest…as
strong as it is healthy.
The road to reach what I am saying is: the
worker must receive more. Everyone who
works should receive more. All
pensioners should receive more. We are
really talking about more income and more products.
There are two over there, they’re not bad,
and some of you are discovering the chocolate.
I know that our doctors over there in
I assure you that we are measuring all the
protein in every bean and in every egg.
Most of the country is getting five.
Yes, but then came the chocolate and you
need to get 8 pesos, and the coffee and you need 5, and 8 more, 13; add it to the 5.25, 18.25.
Well, you have two more pounds of rice,
and this cost 90 cents of a peso each one, let’s call it a little less than 4
cents of a dollar. That’s new: the country must spend 40 million dollars on
those two additional pounds of rice, and we don’t hesitate in doing so. And the one who got a raise of 50 pesos, now
he is left with a little less. But we
are thinking how much of an increase the pensioner will get so that he can buy
more…and the money must be guaranteed before it is distributed. It’s not just a matter of printing bills and
distributing them without having them backed up with merchandise or services,
because then those magnificent intermediaries will charge five pesos for the
rice instead of three. Don’t forget that
those who can will charge what they like.
“Pay me eight pesos for a pound of beans,” they’ll say.
All 5 million in the country, who received
10 ounces, will be receiving 20, and those who were receiving 20 will be
getting 30, and those who were receiving 10 and then 20 will be getting 30,
tripling the amount of beans, or grain as they call it, not including rice or
corn. Five million, three times more,
and the rest at 50% more.
This too cost us several million dollars. I
am not going to ask you where we got it, because that is a
subject for the great theoreticians: “That’s too little for a salary raise,”
they ay say. Sure, the ideal would be
triple. And where do we get it from? My dear sir, are you going to tell me where
we are going to get this, who do we have to rob, or are we going to have to
pull your leg to give you much more than this so that you are deceived?
There
are a few questions that we need to ask the fools, not that everything they think
is foolish, but there are many foolish remarks that are due to ignorance: the
price is high, the price is high, and price is always high.
We ended up giving away the houses, some
people bought theirs, they were the owners, they had paid 50 pesos a month, 80
pesos, or, if the money was sent to them from Miami, it amounted to about 3
dollars; some sold theirs in 15 000 or 20 000 dollars, when they had originally
paid less than 500.
Can the country resolve its housing
problem by giving away houses? And who will get them, the proletariat or the humble
people? Many humble people were given houses for free and then they sold them
to the new rich. How much can the new rich spend on a house? Is this socialism?
Maybe it’s down to necessity at a certain
moment in time, maybe it’s a mistake, because the country suffered a shattering
blow when overnight the great power fell and we were left alone, all on our own,
and we lost all the markets on which to sell our sugar and we stopped getting
supplies, fuel, even the wood with which to give a Christian burial to our
dead. And everyone thought: ‘This will fall apart’, and the idiots still
believe that it is all going to fall apart here and that if it doesn’t fall
apart now it will fall apart later. And the more illusions they entertain and
the more they think, the more we should think, the more we should draw our own
conclusions, so that this glorious people who has so trusted all of us is never
defeated. (Applause)
Let there never be a
Before we go back to living such a
repugnant and miserable life there better not be any memory, even the slightest
trace, of us or our descendents.
I said that we are more and more
revolutionary and I said this for a reason. Now, we understand the empire
better and better, we are increasingly aware of what they are capable of while
before we were skeptical with regard to some things, they seemed to us
impossible.
They had fooled the world. When the mass
media grew in full force it took control of peoples’ minds and exercised its
power through not only lies, but also conditioned response. A lie isn’t the
same as a conditioned response: a lie affects one’s knowledge whereas the
conditioned response affects one’s ability to think. And being misinformed
isn’t the same as having lost the ability to think, because responses have been
created for you: ‘This is bad, that is bad; socialism is bad, socialism is
bad’, they say, and all the ignorant people and all the humble people and all
the exploited people are saying: ‘Socialism is bad’. ‘Communism is bad’. And
all the poor people, all the exploited people and all the illiterate people are
repeating it: ‘Communism is bad’. ‘Cuba is bad, Cuba is bad’, the empire has
said it, it has been said in Geneva, it has been said all over the place, and
all the exploited people around the world, all the illiterate people and all
those who don’t receive medical care, or education or have any guarantee of a
job, or of anything are saying: ‘The Cuban Revolution is bad, the Cuban
Revolution is bad’. ‘Listen, the Cuban Revolution did this and that’. But listen
to this too: ‘No-one is illiterate in
What are they talking about? What can the
illiterate people do? How can they know if the International Monetary Fund is
good or bad, or that interest is higher, or that the world is being ceaselessly
subjugated and pillaged by a thousand different methods put into practice by
this system? They don’t know.
They don’t teach the masses to read and
write, yet they spend a million dollars on publicity every year; but it isn’t
the fact that they spend it, it’s the fact that they spend it on creating
conditioned responses, because someone bought Palmolive, someone else bought
Colgate, and someone else bought Candado soap, just because they were told to a
hundred times over, because they associated the products with a pretty image
and this sowed its seed and carved its place in the brain. They who talk so
much of brainwashing, it is they who carve their place, who mould the brain,
who take away from the human being his capacity to think; it would be less serious
if they were taking away the ability to think from someone who had been to
university, who could read a book.
What can the illiterate
read? What means have they of realizing that they are being conned? What means
have they of knowing that the biggest lie in the world is the one that claims
that the rotten system that reigns over there and what they have in many places, if not almost
all of the countries that copied that system is a democracy? The damage that
they are doing is terrible. And people are becoming aware of this, and day
after day more people are becoming aware, day after day, after day, they feel
more disdain, more disgust, more hatred, more condemnation, and more desire to
fight. This is what, in the end, makes everyone much more revolutionary than
they were when they were unaware of many of these things, when they only knew
about elements of injustice and inequality.
At the moment, while I’m talking to you
about this, I’m not theorizing, although it is necessary to theorize; we are
working, we are moving towards full changes in our society. We have to change
again, because we have gone through some very difficult times, and these
inequalities and injustices have arisen, and we are going to change this
situation without abusing anyone’s rights in the least, and without taking
money away from anyone. No, we’re not going to take anybody’s money; in our
eyes, the faith that our people have in the bank is the most important thing of
all. And because the Revolution is creating wealth, and because the Revolution
is going to create a significant input that isn’t derived from the sugar
industry or any of that, it will mainly come from that capital, and also from
experience, because knowing what must be done is very important.
If I tell you about the gas stations in
the capital you’re going to be amazed; there’s more than double the amount that
there should be, its total chaos. Every ministry wanted one and got one, and
they’re scattered around everywhere. The People’s Power institution is a
disaster, total chaos, in the sense that all the oldest trucks, the ones that
consume the most fuel, and all that, were given to the People’s Power. When it
seemed that the use of these trucks was being rationalized, really the country
was being permanently mortgaged.
Can we do the same when fuel costs 2
dollars as when it costs 10 or 20, or 40, or 60? One of the worst things that
happened to us was precisely that we believed in the strategies of the power
system. Many questions were asked, and, really, we discovered that the main
problem was that we were operating on a concept that corresponded to the days
when fuel cost 2 dollars; the sugar policy corresponded to the days when that
cost two dollars, too.
The price of oil nowadays is not in
keeping with any supply and demand rule; it conforms to other factors like the
shortages, the extensive squandering by the rich countries, and it’s not a
price that is anyway in keeping with economic rules either. The reason behind
it is the shortage of this product together with the increasing and
extraordinary demand for it.
In fact, this very morning I was informed
of some news: by next year there will be a demand for 2 million more barrels a
day; the year after that the demand will have risen to more than 84 million
barrels a day, and the United States, which is the empire’s main territory,
goes through 8.6 million barrels of fuel a day. This is one of the key points.
We invite everyone to take part in a great
battle, it’s not just a fuel and electricity battle, it’s a battle against larceny,
against all types of theft, anywhere in the world. I repeat: against all types
of theft, anywhere in the world.
What is the cost of the total amount of
energy that the country uses at the current oil prices? It’s around 3 billion
dollars.
Of course, saving measures aren’t the only
way to increase income, there are several ways. Let me tell you that there are
quite a few and they are significant. I am almost certain –the final result
could be a bit more or a bit less, I don’t want to say for certain, I’m always
conservative when it comes to calculations– that this country, in light of all
the information that we now have, can save, in a short amount of time, two
thirds of the energy that it now consumes, adding up all the factors: electricity,
oil, diesel, fuel oil, etc; with a price like that currently charged it could
decrease slightly and then increase considerably. This would mean more than 1,
5 billion dollars. And you may ask: What does the country currently do with
those 1, 5 billion dollars? My answer to that would be: one part is stolen,
another part is squandered and the rest is thrown away.
As we are in the middle of this offensive,
in the middle of the activity, I can’t give you all of the information; but I
think that within 10 years the work of these young social workers may save the
country up to 20 billion dollars with regard to energy. Did you hear that? You
know how much a million is, don’t you? And 100 millions? And 1 billion in
convertible pesos?
Carlitos, you gave me a document:
‘The total cost of education: 4,117
million pesos; the cost of higher education: 886 million.’
‘Information from the Ministry of Economy
and Planning, confronted with the Ministry of Finance and Prices, on
So, it is 886 million pesos. We have that
700 million pesos is 35.4 million dollars. And let me say once again: it’s a
small part of what is stolen or extracted from the fuel reserves, less than
20%. That is what the universities cost, according to this information.
When I say 1 billion dollars saved, I am
talking about 25 billion pesos. All the wages paid in this country, at
international exchange rates, which are exceedingly arbitrary towards
Every word uttered has to be carefully
weighed. I’m not improvising, I have reflected extensively on this information
and I have it in my mind, and I weigh my words: I’ll say this, I won’t say
that, because we have enemies who are trying to thwart everything and mix
everything up, like those who say that we are abusing the sacred freedom of
trade. And they say other things besides, one example is: ‘What can they get
with a dollar that was sent over by someone who is most probably a university
graduate? As you all know, they didn’t have to pay a cent. Following the
triumph of the Revolution no-one who left here for the
And every year was the same, those who had
sixth grade, a seventh grade of education, those who new a thing or two, those sectors
that went to university were the first to go there, the richest sectors of
society, and for more than 40 years the empire stole tens of thousands of
university graduates and hundreds of thousands of skilled workers, whom they
now try, at all cost, to prevent from sending remittances to Cuba.
What bitterness there was that day when
the dollar shops opened, as a means to collect a little bit of the remittance
money, and those with this money went to spend it in those shops, that were
expensive, and aimed at collecting a bit of this money and redistributing it to
those who didn’t get any, at a time when the country was in a very difficult
situation.
Now then, what do they do now with a
dollar? They send it over here. I don’t know whether they send you a dollar or
two. (Talking to someone) I have relatives who receive money. I don’t mess about
that.
One day we asked and were told that in
some provinces 30% or 40% of the people receive something, a little; but
sending over a dollar is a good deal, a really good deal! So good that it could
easily ruin us because of the enormous purchasing power they have in a
blockaded country, with highly subsidized rationed products and free or
amazingly cheap services.
I have an example of
this, going back to electricity. Do you know how much it costs the country in
convertible pesos to produce one kilowatt with this system that has had so many
problems, with the ‘Guiteras’, the Felton and other power plants, that have
caused so many power outages and many other problems? Do you know how much it
costs the country in convertible pesos? Around 15 cents per kilowatt, but if
you –this comrade, undoubtedly an intelligent man, who spoke so well– were to
receive, say, one dollar, what could you do with it? You’ve acknowledged that
electricity is very cheap, it’s practically given away; we give it away to the
pensioners and to the workers, we give it away; but we are also giving it away
to the hustlers, to those who made 1000 pesos from here to Guantánamo, or who
make twice what a doctor earns in a month by taking him from Havana to Las
Tunas, with stolen fuel, bribing the gas station attendants.
I’m
not against anyone, but neither am I against the truth. I don’t believe any
lies, I’m sorry, but I’m telling them all now that they are going to loose the
battle, and it won’t be an act of injustice or abuse of power. We are giving
away electricity to those who sell a pound of beans for 8 pesos. And, please,
don’t stop selling them, don’t go doing that and blaming it on me. Sell them,
we’re not going to prohibit it, what I want is to know what they’re going to do
when beans are more plentiful. I don’t know if they’ll drop the price or not,
but half of the population has seen their quota triple, and the other half has
seen it increase by 50%. I think that they’ll have to lower it somewhat. Most
probably, sometime in the future, with a bit of money, from the energy that we
will be saving, we will assign another 10 ounces and the moment will come in
which all sellers will be honest and not one single bean will go astray and
produce that isn’t bought is returned, because there will no longer be any
means by which to pinch it, nor reason, nor circumstances, the speculator will
end up with nothing to sell and will have to eat it all himself.
The farmers eat
their produce and sell the rest. The speculator steals and doesn’t produce
anything. A cable from Reuters portrayed the government as beating down the
‘progressive advances’ of the special period. Progressive is what I have been
talking about.
They don’t
mention that the crook, or whoever, he’s probably not a crook, the lucky fellow
over there sends you a dollar and you spend very little on electricity, you
consume less that 100, you have spent 9 Cuban pesos for 100 kilowatts of
electricity. Okay? Divide 24 by 9 (he works out the sum)
You spend 2400
cents, and for your 100 kilowatts you paid 900 cents, that’s not even half a
dollar, you’ve still got 1500 cents left, you’ve only used 100; you are a very
thrifty young lad, you turn off the lights, you turn everything else off as
well, you don’t have any incandescent light bulbs, all yours are fluorescent
light bulbs, your refrigerator uses less than 40 watts an hour, you don’t have
one of those old Frigidaire models that once belonged to your grandmother, you
are very good. (Laughter)
Now, maybe you
spend 150 kilowatts, but it’s going to be a bit more expensive for you because
the extra 50 cost 20 instead of 9, which is 10 pesos; so you, who paid a bit
more because of those 50, have spent 19 pesos. But, listen, you still haven’t
spent a dollar, you don’t live in
How much do the
Cuban people spend because of that dollar that is sent to you from over there?
Because that wasn’t a dollar that you earned, or a peso, by working for it, or
that that middleman made by selling a pound of beans for eight pesos; it was
sent to you by a healthy person, who studied free of charge right from primary
school, who isn’t ill, they are the healthiest citizens that go to the United
States, where there is an Adjustment Act, and where the sending of remittances
is also prohibited.
Okay, so for
less than two dollars the country had to spend 44 dollars to subsidize that
dollar that was sent from the
Now, to collect
45 dollars I have to collect 4500 cents. I have to collect them from all of
you. How many people are there here? (He is told 405) So, it’s four hundred and
five? Well then, before you all go can you please hand over 11 cents, that is
what you pay, that money with which the State pays is your money, that is to
say, the Cuban people’s money. All of you hand over 11 cents to subsidize the
electricity bill of that person for one month. Don’t forget! We are going to
put someone in charge of watching you all and registering the information as
well. (Laughter) Isn’t that right?
So if this
person is given his quota of rice, how much do those five pounds of rice cost
him? Let’s see, with a dollar. How much does it cost him? How much can he buy
with a dollar, even with the deduction, even with the revaluated price of the
peso? He buys a hundred pounds of rice, not in one day as some fools believe,
but saves it for this month, and the next month, and the following months.
Obviously, you
didn’t spend any of what they sent you on medicine, for medicine here are
subsidized, if you bought it in the drugstore, that is, what wasn’t stolen and
resold, and then you spent 10% of what it costs in hard currency. If you went
to the hospital and had an ankle or even heart operation, your operation could
cost 1000, 2000, 10,000 in the United States; if you suffer a stroke and are
given a valve, this could cost one of our employees over in the Interests
Section 80,000 dollars, but here you’re treated. There could an incident of
mistreatment in a hospital, but have you ever been to a hospital where you have
not been treated?
Of course, our system
didn’t have the organization that it is now starting to have and will have,
fully, in the future, or the equipment that is now starting to be used in the
majority of hospitals, high quality standardized equipment, that therefore can
receive maintenance, or the computerized multi-section tomography machines,
with 64 sections, the best in the world, that are now starting to arrive, that
have been bought and paid for. You see. And how have they been paid? They have
been paid with the savings and with the country’s newly increasing income. It
doesn’t cost you anything.
From the moment
that you enroll in nursery school until the day that you graduate with the honorable
PhD in agricultural science, physical science, medical science, it never costs
you penny. If you’re lucky you get an apartment, although it is likely that you
will never be that lucky –okay, let’s say your father was given it because he
was a construction worker--, but you don’t pay rent, you don’t pay taxes.
Perhaps you are quite sharp and you say: ‘I am going to rent it out to some
visitors, in convertible pesos. So, I am charged 30 cents in tax for every
dollar that I receive; okay, I was practically given this house, it cost me 500
dollars, I make 800 a month and I give 240 to the State, a few dollars here and
there, and I earn 500 dollars; 5 times two 10, 12 500 pesos. You can go,
by virtue of those sacred freedom of trade laws, and buy a pound of rice for 3
pesos on the open market, you can go up to a gas station attendant and say:
‘Look, I have a 1950’s car because I bought it from such and such a person, I
paid for it in hard currency or in convertible pesos, and I have someone who
gets me the fuel, and I’m going on a 300 km trip, and I have three
girlfriends’, and this hunk of tin is an attractive offer with all the problems
with transport. Who’s not going to want me with this car?’ (Laughter)
If you want,
dear students, I could add that those who use 300 kilowatts consume 40% of the
residential electricity produced in the country; 40% of this electricity could
represent –a cautious and conservative figure– 400 million dollars generously and benevolently
given by the State to the biggest users. And who are the biggest users? Go and
visit one of the new rich and take a look at how many electrical appliances
they have.
I remember that
when we were analyzing the issue of power consumption we discovered that a ‘paladar’ [private] restaurant consumed
11,000 kilowatts and that this stupid State was subsidizing the owner, the
owner of the place where the bourgeoisie likes to take their guests so that
they can taste the lobster and the shrimps, all of it stolen from Batabanó, a
miracle of the private business, that little place with four or five tables. But,
of course, this totalitarian, abusive State is against progress because it is
against plundering. So, the State is subsidizing the ‘paladar’ with more than 1,000 dollars a month, and I found this out
because I asked how much they spent, how much it was worth, and this fellow was
paying the electricity at that price, 11,000 kilowatts; I think that once the
total exceeded 300 he was paying 30 cents of a peso per kilowatt. Didn’t you
know? No, none of you know anything. (Something is said to him) No, don’t make
things up, I have made a lot of enquiries and I have been misinformed on many
occasions. It is 30 cents, 11,000 kilowatts, he was paying 3,000 pesos. Look
what he was paying, the State was getting rich because he paid 3,000 Cuban
pesos, some 120 dollars; but it costs the State…, on that occasion I calculated
that a kilowatt was 10 cents of a dollar, now 11,000, at a cost of 15 cents for
the State, we’ll have to pass the collection plate here, I don’t know how you
are all doing for cash but we have to subsidize that ‘paladar’, and as it costs 1,250 dollars a month and there are 400
of you, don’t just hand over the 20 cents when you leave, also donate around 3
dollars please, for the monthly payment, pay the bill because someone has to
subsidize that ‘paladar’. That’s free
trade, that’s progress, that’s development, that’s a step forward.
We are going to
show them what progress is, what development is, what justice is, what it is to
end the theft. And I warn them: it will be with the wholehearted support of the
people. We know what we are doing, it is pure math and it’s in the numbers. We
know how much everything that we are going to save is worth. I don’t want to
talk about what we are buying now, nor do I want to elaborate much more about
the billions, regardless of whether or not the power cuts will come to an end,
and believe me, they will end, of that you can be sure.
Now we have
around two and a half million electrical pressure cookers, we’ve not
just got the rice cookers, we’re also going to have some gadget that
saves more than 80% of the energy that you use to boil one liter of water.
I’m sure that I
can ask you a question and that you will answer it. Raise your hands all of you
who don’t use warm water to wash with in August. Honestly now. Be careful,
don’t get mixed up.
(A girl raises
her hand)
Okay, so you’ve
never used warm water? (She tells him that she hasn’t) And what about winter? (Again
she replies negatively) Congratulations. You make up approximately 10% of the
population. You do, in winter? (A boy answers that he does) What a responsible
man you are (laughter) And you know I have asked other people, not like I have
here, I asked students and work colleagues, and I asked them to raise their
hands if they didn’t use it. Do you know when that was? It was on my birthday,
on August 13. I asked 10 of them to tell me if they didn’t heat the water to
take a shower and none of the 10 raised their hands. I’m talking about water to
take a shower, people also heat water to purify it, and for the children, in
summer. When it’s cold I want to see which of you takes a shower without
heating the water first. (Laughter)
And do you know
what university students in the halls of residence do with cans to heat water?
Do you know? Ah! And why don’t you find out how much electricity they use? I
can tell you, I can tell you that there are some methods of heating water that
use more than forty times more energy. Forty times!
Tell me
honestly, have any of you ever used electricity to heat a homemade burner when
the gas has run out? I’m not referring to those of you who have mains gas, that
is the most economic, and should not be touched on. Those of you who cook with
liquid gas or kerosene, have you ever used a homemade burner to cook anything?
Raise your hands if you have never used one.
Let’s see. Who’s
here? What about that person there who raised their hand. Have a look, find out
about that gentleman, maybe my eyesight’s failing me, and let’s see. Really,
raise your hand if you have never used one. One. Stand up young lady. Please,
come here. Yes, you who raised your hand, yes you, stand up. Come here please.
Now then, answer my question. You’re telling the absolute truth? (She tells him
that she is) You have never used one. Where do you live? (She tells him that
she lives in the country, in Santa María) Is there electricity there? (She
answers affirmatively)
I wanted to find
the ideal citizen, someone who has never used a homemade burner.
Tell me
something, is it ever hot there? And another thing: do you have an electric
fan? Because I’m sure there are mosquitoes out there, aren’t there? What type
of fan do you have? What type of motor does this fan have, Aurika? (Laughter)
(She tells him that it is a Sanyo with an efficient electric motor)
Your parents are
farmers, is that true? (She says that it is)
But you don’t
sell anything on that market do you? (Laughter) She is honest, she has slightly
more resources.
Do you have any
incandescent bulbs? (She tells him that she does)
How many? What
size are they? How powerful are they? (She tells him that they are 60 watt
bulbs)
And can you see
okay with those? (She answers affirmatively)
How many hours a
day do you have them on for? (She tells him that they are on for quite a few
hours)
What, five, six?
(She tells him that there is one that stays on all night)
One is on all
night? How many hours is that? Of course, it’s so that the place isn’t shrouded
in darkness. So that’s 10, 12? (She tells him 12 hours)
Twelve hours. Oh
my!
And the other
light, how long is that on for? (She tells him that it is on from six in the
evening until after ten)
After ten, that
is, so let’s say six hours. Twelve plus four, 16 hours; times 60 equals 960
watts. Instead of using 960 watts you are going to be given 2 fluorescent light
bulbs that use 7 watts each if they’re on for 12 and 4 hours; 16 times 7 equals
112 watts and more light.
Do you want to
do something for your country? Do you want to? I’m sure that you do. Do you
live there? I didn’t want to ask, but anyway, the problem has now been solved.
I am going to tell you how much you are going to give your country very soon,
starting from tomorrow if you wish.
Enrique, send
them two 7 watt bulbs, or 15 or 20 if you want, you’ll be able to see better
that you do with the incandescent bulbs and you’ll have less thieves sneaking
about nearby, The cost of these little 7 watt bulbs, I’ve already worked it
out, is 112 watts, which I’ll subtract from the 960 that the incandescent bulbs
use: 960 minus 112 equals 858 watts, multiplied by 365, the number of days in a
year, if it’s not a leap year, equals 313.170 watts, divided by 1000 it would
be 313,17 kilowatts, multiplied by 15 cents, with the cost of production in
hard currency, brings the total to 46 dollars and 97 cents.
I would like to
thank you in advance, you, who are going to give the country –wait a minute,
don’t go, yet– from the payment that you have to make now, you are going to
give Cuba 12.7 cents a day, in 100 days you would have given the country 12.7
dollars, and by next year you will have given all of us 46.45 dollars, with
which to buy a few more beans or whatever. So, let me tell you, and this isn’t
some kind of tax, and you will see better, by just changing two light bulbs you
are going to give us 46.45 dollars; we’re not going to charge you or anyone for
the two light bulbs. They last five times longer that the incandescent light bulbs
and they generate less heat, you won’t have to use that Sanyo fan of yours so
much.
So that’s the
situation, explained with that example. Imagine if there were 15 million light bulbs
instead of 2, and not just those in people’s houses, who have more than
calculations show, but also in the schools, general stores, and in all types of
shops and stalls; 15 million. Of course, she only has two and she uses them
quite a lot, there are others who use them much less and some people use them
very often, so we can’t extrapolate like that. But we must save, maybe for
quite a few hours, between two and three 100,000 kilowatt power generators,
plus the cost of fuel and other things needed to produce the electricity that
is squandered, a power the country needs in order to ensure that these bulbs
are on for an hour, which make this expenditure necessary.
What are you all
talking about? What are you laughing at? (They point up to the ceiling of the
theatre hall where there is a large amount of small incandescent bulbs) Ah! No,
I’m prepared to pay for those to stay there, they are very pretty. It isn’t a
waste, it’s a traditional and historical setting and, besides, there aren’t
events here all day every day, and in any case, the guilty party here is me,
because this building has been lit up the whole time that I have been up here
on this rostrum.
Well, thank you
very much.
(He
turns to another young woman from Ciego de Avila, who stood next to the other
young woman from
It’s not working?
Wasn’t it fitted with the seal or the thermostat? (She tells him that it was)
So why did it
break again? (She tells him that the motor burned out)
The motor burned
out? When? (She tells him that it was a while ago)
What type is it?
(She tells him that it is Russian)
Russian, Minsk,
or made with a Russian motor, INPUD, in Santa Clara and now it’s not working,
you were using much more energy that those light bulbs.
Let us assume
that it is working, we’ll have to say what we must do in your case, because
we’ll have to change the refrigerator as it uses too much energy.
The day before
yesterday I was seeing off some of the social workers who were going to go and
talk to the truck and tractor drivers, they were going to find out where they
were, where they lived, what they were called, what their identity numbers
were, how much fuel they used, if they used diesel how many kilometers did they
travel on one liter; but it’s not necessary to know a lot to realize that your non
operational Minsk used a lot of energy.
Don’t you
remember? It must have been using around
300 watts an hour; you certainly were ruining the republic, because this one
faulty refrigerator must consume seven kilowatts a day. If instead of this you
had a new one, that consumed less than 40 watts an hour, you could be –I’m
going to tell you how much you would be saving, I am going to try, I am going
to calculate just 200 watts per hour– using 4.8 kilowatts a day. Learn to
multiply, because you are all going to have to do this. (He makes the
calculation) At 15 cents per kilowatt, she is going to be giving us 15 and 15,
30 and 30, 72 cents a day. She shall have her refrigerator. Let’s note that
down, Enrique.
You don’t have
one at the moment? (He is told that the situation is being sorted out)
Where are you
going to get the machine from, tell me that? (He is told that the motor is
going to be repaired by self-employed workers)
Wait,
we’re going to be increasing rates by about 30% then because those repaired
motors are a disaster. Enrique, how much do the repaired motors consume? Many
people have done that because their motors have broken and they didn’t have any
other choice, we can’t blame them. But the State can be blamed. I can assure
you this: within six months you will have a refrigerator that won’t consume
more than 40 watts an hour. I’m talking about what is wasted, what is thrown
away, in your case we’ll be set to save 200 per hour. That’s what you’ll save
yourself, it’s a pity that the 150 that we had in stock have just been distributed.
Maybe, Enriquito, we’ve got seven left, we could have a trial over there. At
the moment we have 150 trials underway in the city, we are going to hold a
short meeting with the representatives of Arroyo Naranjo, where 30,000 use
liquid gas. We are going to visit them.
Enrique,
how many went to visit the residents of Arroyo Naranjo, the 50,000 homes?
(Enrique tells him that that day 1,098 social workers had gone to visit around
55,000 homes. He points out that each worker visits an average of 20 houses a
day, so according to calculations, they would have visited 20,000)
So,
in two days they will have visited them all. They will have recorded what domestic
appliances are used in this municipality. We are carrying out important social
experiments. We are going to change the gas, they may be listening to me now,
they are the lowest income people in this city and they have been given liquid
gas. The price of liquid gas is more than 700 dollars per ton.
(Calculating) That’s
We’ll do an important experiment, we’ll
collect all the data and then we’ll meet with the direct representatives from
the communities, the popular councils, the trade unions, the mass
organizations, 1,500 of the people closest to the neighbors to discuss this
experiment that we propose to carry out and I’m sure that it will be a success,
and you will immediately be saving the energy expenses.
We’ll see the winter consumption rate;
we’ll see what the new light bulbs we are distributing from now until the end
of December will save us; we’ll see those new fans that will substitute the
homemade ones, which amount to one million, and then we’ll add to that an equal
amount of the simple but highly efficient manual electrical water heaters that
are going to considerably reduce the cost from what it takes to boil water.
In December we will be distributing 14,000
pieces of equipment: rice cookers, electrical pressure cookers, water
heaters. The energy efficient light bulbs replacing the incandescent are
not included in these figures.
We shall see what happens to certain
vehicles after the conversations with the social workers, and how many of them
will receive a good Christian burial. When each Ministry receives the
appropriate number of trucks and they are asked to keep 90% of them on the road
and that all of them should be registered, it will be surprising to see how
much energy is saved.
Actually, we have ideas that we won’t be
explaining now: the exact time it will take to remove every single one of the
gasoline powered trucks and other gas guzzlers off the road.
We’ve been speaking about saving
two-thirds of the same. By the end of 2006, we believe we shall have
saved no less than a million kilowatt/hours in electricity. Today this
amount is generated and inefficiently used. With the new equipment, we
shall have the capacity to generate at least 1.4 million kilowatt/hours, not
counting the plants that are being built. That is more certain than
everything which has been announced and accomplished, and everything that has
not been mentioned and accomplished.
I don’t like to talk much about it, but
there are ideas which we have already begun to apply extensively. We will
take advantage of the fact that in winter there is a 15% decrease in energy
consumption, since each new piece of equipment must have its energy
assured. We need to be sure that the family has cooking facilities if
this should fail; now there are many problems, but they are all being studied
in detail, and all of them are being solved conscientiously, as Marx would have
said.
I won’t go on any more, but soon I shall
return and we will continue talking.
I have broached many different
subjects. We have to be resolute: either we defeat these deviations and
strengthen the Revolution by destroying any of the illusions that the empire
may have, or we can rather say: either we radically defeat these problems
or we die. We must repeat the motto: Patria o Muerte! (Homeland or
Death!) This is all very serious and we must use all necessary forces, if
need be, the 28,000 social workers. I would guess that all those who are
out there re-routing gasoline should be well advised so that we don’t have to
discover, point by point, who it is that is stealing fuel. The 10,000
social workers are ready and the city of
If 28,000 are not enough, and some of
these are already on the job creating anti-corruption groups, so that each
problem needing observation is in the hands of a group; you can find members of
the communist youth, of the mass organizations, of the veterans of the
Revolution, as we said at the coliseum.
The problems I have mentioned are all
being seriously addressed; you cannot imagine the enthusiasm, the seriousness,
dignity, and pride they feel when they realize the great good that they are
bringing to the country.
Fuel and energy are the most important
issues, but not the only ones. How much has been stolen from factories
such as those that produce medicines. There is one such in La Lisa where
it was necessary to remove the manager and almost 100 others; they were
involved in the theft of medicines. A hundred were let go; now we need
find people to replace them. This is not enough, nor is it the only
solution.
And what’s next? We must also use
all the technical means available. We have already acquired a large
number of the new pumps needed for one third, approximately, of the gas
stations that will remain in operation in the country, and also a number of new
tanker trucks that won’t be an obstruction in traffic or cause traffic jams or
accidents. For the most part, they will be operating at night when there
is less traffic. We haven’t drawn up the figures yet of fatalities that
occur because of accidents.
One day, the Revolution will be able to
trace the location of every truck anywhere, using the most sophisticated
technical instruments. Nobody will be able to take that truck to pay a
visit to auntie or to the sweetheart. Not that there is anything wrong
with looking after your private business, but it cannot be done in a vehicle
used for work, much less at a time when there is a worldwide fuel crisis; then
it becomes a crime. We will not forget any detail that is within our means to
improve, whether it is that little soap with no smell, or the toothpaste or any
other essential.
We have already bought 1000 busses, but
not to charge the historical prices. Some of these are already resolving
some of those problems mentioned, and the others will be here in a few months
time.
Transportation will receive some subsidy,
but not 90%; that would ruin us, so it must be minimal. We have to apply
maximum rationality to salaries, prices, pensions. There should be zero
over-spending and wastage. We are not a capitalist country where
everything is left to chance.
Subsidies and free services will be
considered only in essentials. Medical services will be free, so will
education and the like. Housing will not be free. Maybe there will
be some subsidy, but the rents that are paid in installments need to come close
to the actual cost. You may well ask: “What are we going to pay all this
with?” It will be in a large part from what is being wasted and stolen
today, and from the non-negligible income the country is receiving.
Everything that is within our reach, everything belongs to the people, the only
thing not to be allowed is egotistical and irresponsible wastage of our wealth.
I really had no intention of getting
involved in a dissertation on such sensitive matters, but it would have been a
crime not to take advantage of the moment and tell you some of the things
related to the economy, to the material life of the country, to the future of
the Revolution, to revolutionary ideas, to the reasons why we began this
struggle, to the colossal strength we possess today, the country we are today
and we may continue to be, which is much more than we are now.
I could never show my face again if I were
lying or exaggerating. I prefer to do things rather than to make
promises. In any case, I do not do anything, because a man alone cannot
do a thing. I avail myself of the experience or the authority which I
have in order to wage this battle. There are millions of Cubans ready to
wage this war which is a war of all the people.
I mentioned that we have reached military
invulnerability, that this empire cannot afford the price of the lives that
would be lost, numbering as many or more than in
And let’s see what will happen with this
dirty blockade. There are many Americans upset because they couldn’t
accept the help of our Cuban doctors; the majority was in favor and the
local authorities more so.
Let’s see, because we can show them that
it would be better to get rid of that trash, because it will never destroy our
Revolution. We can tell
I have been speaking to you with all the
trust that I can. I have told you about every one of the main tasks facing the
social workers’ brigades and about their important activities. Sometimes
they had to go out without warning, quickly and with discipline and efficiency.
We had thousands in the city of
They are already accomplishing many
tasks. If we don’t have enough of them, how many students are there in
this university? Right now I will say to you what I said to them:
if 28,000 are not enough, we will meet with you, students of the glorious
Federation of University Students and you will find 28,000 other students for
us (Applause), and in pairs, together with the social workers who have been
acquiring some experience, you will be mobilized; and if 56,000 are not enough
we will meet with you again and you will find 56,000 reinforcements for us.
You know who will shelter them? The
people will, for they have great respect for these kids, and they no longer
say: “These can’t fix anything.”, “This will never finish.” And together with
you, together with the people, we will be proving that it can be done.
And I think that we shall have many more resources, not just to meet the
necessities, but so that we may further develop; because we are managing things
much better. Much of what we accomplish, we do with the resources that we
have saved. We are saving hundreds of millions of dollars and now it will
depend on the rhythm and efficiency with which we proceed on every task.
New ideas come up everyday. What we
can save in energy we can immediately convert into resources. The worst
and most inefficient thermo-electric plants will still be around, but we won’t
need them; they will be around as back up, ready to fill in if anything
unexpected happens on each step of the way.
The country spends 3,800,000 tons of fuel
yearly just for the production of electricity. Today, our energy system
works at only 60% capacity.
We shall never again build a
thermo-electric plant. The plants that shall be built will be using gas,
the one that comes with extraction of oil; they will be plants running on
combined cycles that can be paid off within four or five years and can produce
a kilowatt for 2 cents of a dollar.
We shall never again build a “Guiteras”.
Those were crazy schemes, born out of dogma and shortsighted plans.
In a system that needs to produce around 2 million kilowatts, buying a plant
for 330,000 means that you are concentrating more than 15% of all effective
generated electricity in one single plant; when it goes out, or is hit with
lightning as it happened a few weeks ago in “Guiteras”, the black-out strikes
with a fury, affecting both the population and the economy. How long was the
revolution going to put up with such an erroneous concept in the development of
the power system? Such concepts, I assure you, are not limited to
I won’t say more on this, because I could
be adding details that have much more importance.
We will make the transition from being an
idiot country to one that will leave everyone else far behind. I’d like
to warn others that they are limping badly and repeating the same mistakes.
No, I won’t be going into detail. I
promise that one day I will tell you, student leaders, the whole story, maybe
when we are all together again. But it won’t be today. Today, I
must keep quiet because talking too much could tip off the enemy or give them
information. Still, there are things that they cannot stop, like the two
and a half million electric pressure cookers that are already here and on their
way, that, they cannot stop. Domestic appliances are also on their way from
I told you that our credit has
grown. Our country has the ability to mobilize millions and millions of
dollars. Tell that to “little Bush” so that he and all his schemers can
become bitter if they want. Let them say what they want tomorrow, about
the “poor guys”, these “noble individuals” who were stealing “ever so little”,
about those persons who charge anything they want for just about
anything. I tell them as I am telling you: “Pay for the fuel that you are
using.” Actually, why are we handing over everything to that bandit, that
miser or that egoist who would like us to pay 15 cents for every kilowatt that
he uses? What world economic law obliges us to do that? Let them
get ready for the bill that we are preparing for them. We have already
devaluated the dollar, but that dollar is still enjoying too many privileges.
Of course, neither the dollar nor those
that go around stealing; they don’t have our Meteorological Institute and our
Dr. Rubiera, and now a hurricane is coming. Nobody knows where this
hurricane is going or how strong the winds are going to be. The only sure
thing is that it is a Category Five Hurricane. (Laughter) A Category Five
Hurricane is one that leaves nothing standing and it won’t abuse anyone, it
won’t starve anyone, it just uses the simplest of principles: the ration
book must disappear; those who work and produce will receive more, and they
will be able to buy more; those who worked for decades will receive more and
will have more. The country will have much more but it will never be a
consumer society. It will be a society of knowledge, of culture, of the
most extraordinary human development imaginable, development in art, culture,
science but not for chemical weapons, with a breadth of liberty that no one
will be able to dismantle. We know this already, we don’t need to
proclaim it, but it is worth remembering.
We have earned the right to do what we are
going to do today, to have at our disposition almost a million professionals,
intellectuals and artists, to have at our disposition 500,000 university
students, in all areas of science, capable of all activities.
I am proclaiming that our society will
truly be an entirely new society. In this long distance race, we are
already several laps ahead of our closest competitors. The merit lies
with the empire for it presented us with an enormous threat and it was this
challenge that spurred us on. Theirs is the merit and the only thing our
noble, generous, brave and intelligent people have done is to take up that
challenge; today it does so, with the force of a multitude of developed
intellects.
Today, as we speak of 500,000, we know
that this number was produced in a very short time, just three short years ago,
and look at how many are here today, and how many there will be tomorrow.
And there will be more for we have
thousands of Latin American students studying medicine. In our country
alone, we will be educating 100,000 doctors in the next 10 years. We are
involved in creating the best medical capital in the world, not just for us,
but for the peoples of
The ELAM ([Latin American School of
Medicine] will have not just 12,000 medical students, there are also 2,000
Bolivian undergraduates here; some are at the ELAM, others are in Cienfuegos
living with serious, professional and culturally prepared families whose
psychological profile was investigated together with that of the student and his
or her family; a new and unique experience.
I was talking about this yesterday,
calling it solidarity transformed into a colossal wealth. How could we house
100,000 higher education students? We know what it costs to house and
feed each one of them.
In the first phase of the Revolution, we
constructed hundreds of high schools and today we have less than half of the
enrolment of the seventies. We know what it costs to repair these schools
and how long it takes to do so. There will be many medical schools for
400 to 450 students with excellent conditions, with all the necessary materials
for study, audiovisual equipment and interactive programs. As we all
know, and as comrade Machadito said, if he had had such resources during the
five years of his education, he would have been able to acquire in one year all
the information it took him five years to achieve at that time. This
doesn’t mean that we shall produce doctors in one year, but that in the course
of six years of study, a doctor will acquire the knowledge that traditional
methods would have given him in 20 years! We are thinking of excellence,
and this is what we are constantly increasing.
We are aware of what our compatriots are
doing in other areas. We are in constant communication. They are
the ‘Henry Reeve’ Contingent and many others like them. A beautiful story
is being written these days, the like of which has not been seen in history or
during the life of our Revolution.
I am very happy that on a day like today,
the Day of the Student, and the date you have chosen to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of my entry into this university, I feel very well both physically
and spiritually, meeting with you here. There were many ideas running
through my mind, and I had to organize my memories of yesterday with the new
ideas of today, and be careful so that I wouldn’t say anything I shouldn’t and
so that I would say everything that I wanted to.
This month I think that we will have to
take some measures; I was discussing this with the comrades. We cannot
lose a second because things are going on constantly, and so it must begin this
month.
We urgently need to discourage the wasting
of electricity. I call it “discouragement”; it is not the definitive
formula. That will be something else. But as of now we need to be
distributing a massive amount of equipment. The more we save, the more
equipment we can distribute, and the more equipment we distribute, the more
energy we’ll save and the more money we’ll begin to collect starting at the end
of this month and going to the beginning of next year. That is why it is
urgent to begin in December, establishing certain limitations on the wasting of
electricity.
Not a cent more of increases for those who
are consuming 100; a little more for those consuming 150, 200 and 300
kilowatts. There will be people who consume 300 who will have to pay a
bit more, but not too much. Instead of two dollars they will have to pay,
perhaps four for 300. But don’t consume more than 300; turn off your lights and
the fan; don’t leave the TV turned on. I haven’t even mentioned that
there are a million television sets, 40,000 already here and more coming, 50
watts, so that there will be no more black and white sets.
And we we’ll continue saving. The
laboratories will determine what each piece of equipment consumes, everything
will be measured and all calculations will be less than the figures show; no
detail will escape notice, or at least very few. Every day there will be
more experiments, and more experiments. There will be a test run in a
municipality, the poorest one, and that’s why all the social workers are here
today. Another group is covering
Enrique, when will the gas stations in
that province be occupied? It doesn’t matter, they know it’s going to
happen, they can imagine.
(Enrique explains that it will begin on
Saturday; that 158,000 light bulbs have been replaced in
(Two energy efficient light bulbs are
handed to the Comandante so that he can give them to the student from
the
Hey, Enrique, come over here. The
one she is holding is not the right one. You are consuming electricity
for no reason. Quickly, we are finishing up here.
Ah, the girl is over there. No, this
one is 7. (Enrique explains that one is 7 and the other is 15)
No, she has two 60s. Don’t turn off
the lights at home. She told me that she had two 60s. I asked for
her to be given two 15s.
Here, not you, her. Take it to her;
tell her she already has one. (They give her two 15 watts bulbs.)
We already know what we will save each
year. It’s quite a bit. (Applause)
We’ll discount it from what she has to pay
for the subsidy for the one over there.
They are changing. How many bulbs
are they going to exchange in
How many more did they find? (He is
told that there was more demand and they will send 100,000 more)
We had said a hundred and fifty thousand
for
Correct. The day after tomorrow we
are in the gas stations. Let them get everything ready. In any case
we will be finding out what the people are buying, and then they will install
the perfect distributing machines and the nation will know where each one is
located.
How much gas do the vehicles use, not the
trucks, the front loaders used in construction, like the last time? What
do all the MINAZ [Ministry of Sugar Industry] tractors consume? What do
all the tractors in the fields use? There are thousands of them being
used instead of jeeps. When they don’t have enough kerosene, how much do
they use? What do most of them use, do they use diesel to cook?
There are hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands.
Besides that, I’m telling you, entirely
new machinery to drill, new seismic, that’s very modern, drilling everywhere
and using accompanying gas to build plants on the combined cycle. This
will replace the “Guiteras” [power plant] and those enormous plants in Santiago
de Cuba which would consume half a million barrels of diesel turned out by that
city’s refinery, using up between 300 and
I’ve already told you that there are 1000
buses for long distance rides, and they will have their cost. Not just
yet, because we prefer to wait. Sometimes it’s better to wait in order to
understand something better. To better understand, for example, some
measure. The Revolution always needs the understanding and the support of
the people for every step that it takes. I assure you and I repeat it,
that everybody who works will receive more, everyone who works for the country
and the Revolution will receive more. The abuses will end; many of the
inequalities will disappear, as will the conditions that allowed them to
exist. When there is no one left that needs to be subsidized we will have
advanced considerably in our march towards a society of justice and
dignity. That is what true and irreversible socialism demands.
The empire was hoping that
Next year there may be fewer abstentions
when the United Nations votes against the blockade, even though really there is
no one left besides the fascist and genocidal ally that always votes
unscrupulously with the empire. The world has to wage this battle.
Firstly, nobody should have the right to
manufacture nuclear weapons. There should be no privileges for
imperialism to impose its hegemonic rule and to take the natural resources and
raw materials away from the nations of the
Secondly, we will strictly defend, in all
the public squares of the world, the right to produce nuclear fuel. And
we are not afraid to do so, let us make that perfectly clear. (Applause)
There must be an end to stupidity in the
world, and to abuse, and to the empire based on might and terror. It will
disappear when all fear disappears. Every day there are more fearless
countries. Every day there will be more countries that will rebel and the
empire will not be able to keep that infamous system alive any longer.
Salvador Allende once spoke of things that
would happen rather sooner than a later. I believe that sooner rather
than later the empire will disintegrate and the American people will enjoy more
freedom than ever, they will be able to aspire to more justice than ever before;
they will be able to use science and technology for their own improvement and
for the betterment of humanity; they will be able to join all of us who fight
for the survival of the species; they will be able to join all of us who fight
for opportunities for the human species.
It’s only fair to struggle for that and
that is why we must use all our energy, all our effort and all our time to be
able to say with the voice of millions, or hundreds of thousands of millions of
people: It is worthwhile to have been born! It is worthwhile to have
lived!
(Ovation)