Some days before, on May 6, through an undersecretary of state, they had already tossed out the heinous slander that a biological weapons program was being developed in Cuba.

Yesterday, on May 21 at around midday, the State Department Annual Report was released where, as in many other issues, they judge and decide which countries sponsor terrorism, support drug trafficking, violate human rights, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

As usual, they sportingly included our country on a list of countries that support terrorism. However, this is not just any year nor just any sport.

Only a few months ago, the American people were the victim of a brutal terrorist crime. If one also takes into account that Cuba is repeatedly and arbitrarily included on such a list to cause Americans to fear and dislike our country, one can appreciate just how cynical and reckless is the behavior of the ignorant and sinister mob that carries most leverage with the U.S. President’s inner circle.

The slander about biological weapons was so blatantly untrue and feeble that some senior government officials had the good sense to distance themselves discretely from the stupid fabrication. A dangerous political Nazi-style blitzkrieg was unleashed against Cuba; the idiots thought that they could take us by surprise and plant confusion.

There was Mr. Bush on Miami TV screens with his angry expression, his bad-guy pose and his strange grimaces. He looked like a man who wanted to kill someone, who knows whom. He started talking and then he stopped; he wanted to say something else and then hesitated. He used threatening words, hoping maybe to scare those he knows only too well —or should know— will always remain unmoved when faced with an outrageous insult, the rabid fury or murderous weapons of a trigger-happy powerful emperor. All that was missing on the television image was Mr. Bush foaming at the mouth.

The hysterical audience made up of yesterday’s and today’s traitors, mercenaries, and racketeers —and especially the terrorists who have sown mourning and death in our people over more than 40 years— who wildly applauded any threatening words against our country and the promise to be tough on Cuba and to tighten the economic blockade, caused repugnance and disgust in our heroic people, who are more united and prepared to fight than ever.

Mr. Bush’s arguments, deceit, tricks, demagogy, lies and slander will be demolished one by one.

It does not matter how long this difficult combat in our long struggle goes on. We are deeply involved in a great battle of ideas, an unprecedented struggle between truths and lies, ignorance and political and historic knowledge; between education and barbarism, ethics and a total lack of moral values and principles, honesty and hypocrisy; between oppression and liberation, justice and injustice, equality and inequality, the nightmares of the past and the dreams of the future, the destruction and preservation of nature, the extinction and survival of our species.

On May 19, the day he fell in battle, a permanent watch was posted at Martí’s tomb. And it will be there forever.

There does not exist, and never will, a force in the world that can make us turn away from, abandon, or betray our noble causes!

And nothing will make us stray from our path, as we continue to be the steady friends and allies of the American people and of any other country in the world in the fight against terrorism.

(Published in Granma, May 22, 2002)