KEY ADDRESS BY ARMY GENERAL
RAUL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE STATE COUNCIL AND THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS AND
SECOND SECRETARY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF CUBA CENTRAL COMMITTEE, AT THE
CLOSING SESSION OF THE 9TH CONGRESS OF THE YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE, HAVANA, APRIL
4, 2010, YEAR 52 OF THE REVOLUTION
Delegates and Guests,
Comrades all:
It has been a good Congress, since last October when
it began with the open meetings attended by hundreds of thousand of youths and
continued with the evaluation meetings conducted by the organization from the
rank and file through the municipal and provincial committees where the
agreements were worked out that would be adopted in these final sessions.
If there is anything we have had aplenty in the
little over five years that have passed since Fidel made the closing speech at
the 8th YCL Congress, on December 5, 2004, that is work and
challenges.
This Congress has been held in the midst of one of
the most vicious and best arranged media campaigns launched against the Cuban Revolution
in its 50 years of life, an issue I will necessarily have to refer to later on.
Although I was unable to attend the meetings held
prior to the Congress, I have been informed of the essentials of every one of
them. I am aware that there has been little talk about achievements in order to
focus on the problems, and to look at the inside the organization avoiding the
use of more time than necessary to examine the external factors. Such is the style that should permanently
characterize the work of the YCL in contrast with those that tend to look for
the mote in the neighbor’s eye instead of doing what it is their job to do.
It has been rewarding to listen to many youths
directly linked to productive activities to proudly explain in simple words
what they do, barely mentioning the material difficulties and bureaucratic
obstacles they must face.
Many of the shortcomings discussed here are not new;
they have accompanied the organization for quite a long time. The previous
congresses had adopted the corresponding agreements on them; however, they have
more or less been reiterated, which is proof of the lack of a systematic and
thorough control of their accomplishment.
In this sense, it is fair and necessary to repeat
something reiterated by comrades Machado and Lazo, who chaired many of the
assemblies: the Party feels equally responsible for every flaw in the work of
the YCL, very especially for the problems concerning the policy with cadres.
We cannot permit that, once again, the documents
approved become dead letter or are kept in a drawer like memoirs. They should become
the guidelines for the everyday work of the National Bureau and for every
member of the organization. You have already agreed on the basics, now you
should act on it.
Some are very critical about the youth of today while
forgetting that they were young, too. It would be naïve to pretend that the new
generations are the same as those of past times. A wise proverb goes: A man
resembles his times more than he does his parents.
The Cuban youths have always been willing to take up
challenges. They have proved it in the recovery from the damages caused by the
hurricanes, the fight against the enemy’s provocations and the defense-related
tasks, just to mention some examples.
The average age of the Congress delegates is 28. They
have been growing up during these hard years of the Special Period and taken
part in our people’s efforts to preserve the main socialist conquests while
facing up to a very complex economic situation.
It is precisely because of the importance that the
youth’s vanguard is aware of our economic situation, that the Political
Bureau’s Commission --considering the positive experience of the analysis of
the same issue made with the Deputies to the National Assembly [of People’s
Power] -- decided to offer the YCL municipal assemblies an information
describing in all its crude reality the present situation and its prospects. Over
30 thousand members of the YCL received this information, just like the main
leaders of the Party, the mass organizations and the government at various
levels.
Today, more than never before, the economic battle is
the main task and the focus of the ideological work of the cadres, because it
is on this work that the sustainability and the preservation of our social
system rest.
Without a sound and dynamic economy and without the
removal of superfluous expenses and waste, it will neither be possible to
improve the living standard of the population nor to preserve and improve the
high levels of education and healthcare ensured to every citizen free of
charge.
Without an efficient and robust agriculture that we
can develop with the resources available to us, --avoiding the dream of the
large allocations of the past-- we can’t expect to sustain and rise the amount
of food provided to the population, that largely depends on the import of
products that can be grown in Cuba.
If the people do not feel the need to work for a
living because they are covered by extremely paternalistic and irrational state
regulations, we will never be able to stimulate love for work or resolve the
chronic lack of construction, farming and industrial workers; teachers, police
agents and other indispensable trades that have steadily been disappearing.
If we do not build a firm and systematic social
rejection of illegal activities and different expressions of corruption, more
than a few will continue to make fortunes at the expense of the majority’s
labors while disseminating attitudes that crash into the essence of socialism.
If we keep the inflated payrolls in nearly every
sector of national life and pay salaries that fail to correspond with the
result of work, thus raising the amount of money in circulation, we cannot
expect the prices to cease climbing constantly or prevent the deterioration of
the people’s purchasing power. We know that the budgeted and entrepreneurial
sectors have hundreds of thousands of workers in excess; some analysts estimate
that the surplus of people in work positions exceeds one million. This is an extremely
sensitive issue that we should confront firmly and with political common sense.
The Revolution will not leave anyone helpless. It
will strive to create the necessary conditions for every Cuban to have a
dignified job, but this does not mean that the State will be responsible for
providing a job to everyone after they have been made several work offers. The
citizens themselves should be the ones most interested in finding a socially
useful work.
In summary, to continue spending beyond our income is
tantamount to eating up our future and jeopardizing the very survival of the Revolution.
We are facing really unpleasant realities, but we do
not close our eyes to them. We are convinced that we need to break away from
dogma and assume firmly and confidently the ongoing upgrading of our economic
model in order to set the foundations of the irreversibility of the Cuban
socialism and its development, which we know are the guarantee of our national
sovereignty and independence.
I know that some comrades sometimes get impatient and
wish for immediate changes in many areas. Or course, I mean those who want it
but not with the intention to play along with the enemy. We understand such
concerns that, generally, stem from ignorance of the magnitude of the work
ahead of us, of its depth and of the complexity of the interrelations between
the different elements that make society work and that shall be modified.
Those who are asking us to go faster should bear in
mind the list of issues that we are studying, of which I have mentioned only a
few today. We cannot allow that haste or improvisation in the solution of a
problem lead to a greater one. With regards to issues of strategic dimension
for the life of the entire nation we cannot let ourselves be driven by emotion and
act losing sight of the necessary comprehensiveness. As we have said, that is
the only reason for which it was decided to postpone for a few other months the
celebration of the Party Congress and the National Conference that will
preceded it.
This is the greatest and most important challenge we
face to ensure the continuity of the work built in these five decades, the same
that our youths have assumed with full responsibility and conviction. The
slogan presiding this Congress is “Everything for the Revolution,” and that
means, foremost, the strengthening and consolidation of the national economy.
The Cuban youth is destined to take over from the
generation that founded the Revolution; and leading the masses with their great
strength requires a vanguard that is convincing and that has a capacity for
mobilization through personal example; a vanguard headed by firm, capable and
prestigious leaders, true leaders and not improvised leaders; leaders who have
been through the irreplaceable forge of the working class where the most
genuine values of a revolutionary are bred. Life has eloquently shown the
dangers that come with the violation of that principle.
Fidel said it clearly in his closing remarks at the 2nd
YCL Congress, on
“No one will learn to swim on the ground, and no one
will walk on the sea. A man is shaped by his environment; a man is made by his
own life, by his own activity.”
And he concluded: “It is by creating that we shall
learn to respect what work creates. We shall teach to respect those goods as we
teach how to create them.”
This idea that he stated 38 years ago, and that was surely
received with an ovation by that Congress, is another clear proof of the
agreements that we reach and then do not fulfill.
Today more than ever we need cadres that can carry on
an effective ideological work that cannot be a dialogue of the deaf or a
mechanical repetition of slogans. We need leaders who bring sound arguments to
the discussion, who do not think they own the absolute truth; leaders who are
good listeners even if they don’t like what some people say; leaders who are
capable of examining other peoples’ views with an open mind, which does not
exclude the need to refute with sound arguments and energy those views considered
unacceptable.
Such leaders should foster open discussions and not
consider discrepancy a problem but rather the source of the best solutions. In
general, absolute unanimity is fictitious, therefore, harmful. When
contradictions are not antagonistic, as in our case, they can become the
driving force of development. We should deliberately suppress anything that
feeds pretending and opportunism. We
should learn to work collegially, to encourage unity and to strengthen collective
leadership; these features should characterize the future leaders of the
Revolution.
There are youths all over the island with the
necessary disposition and capacity to take on leading positions. The challenge is to find them, to train them
and to gradually assign them greater responsibilities. The masses will confirm
if the selection was right.
We observe that progress is being made in the ethnic
and gender composition of the organization. In this sense, we can neither
afford regression nor superficiality; the Young Communist League should work on
this permanently. By the way, allow me to recall this was another thing that we
agreed upon 35 years ago, in the First Party Congress; but we left its
accomplishment to spontaneity and did not follow-up on it as we should, even when
this was one of Fidel’s first statements since the victory of the Revolution
and one he has repeated a number of times.
As I said at the beginning, the celebration of this
Congress has coincided with a huge smearing campaign against
They have cynically and shamefully manipulated the
death of an inmate sentenced to jail on 14 charges of common crimes, who by
work and grace of a repeated lie and an interest in receiving economic support
from overseas was turned into a “political dissident,” a man who was induced to
persevere on a hunger strike making absurd demands.
Despite our doctors’ efforts the man died, something
we also regretted when it happened, and we denounced the only beneficiaries of
the event, the same who are currently encouraging another individual to persist
on a similar attitude of unacceptable blackmail. The latter is not in prison,
despite all the slandering. He is a free person who has already served his
sentence for common crimes, specifically for assault and battery of a woman who
is a doctor and director of a hospital and who he also threatened to kill, and
later an old lady, nearly 70 years old, who as a consequence had to be
subjected to surgery to remove her spleen.
Still, the same as in the previous case, everything is being done to
save his life; but if he does not modify his self-destructive behavior, he will
be responsible, together with his sponsors, for the outcome we do not wish.
It is disgusting to see the double standard of those
in
What would they say if we had imitated them and, in
breach of ethical standards, had forcibly fed these people, as they have
usually done in many torture centers, including the one they have in the
Guantanamo Naval Base? By the way, these are the same that in their own
countries, as we see on television almost on a daily basis, use police agents
to charge on horseback against demonstrators, to beat them and attack them with
teargas and even with bullets; and, what about the frequent abuse and
humiliation of immigrants?
The mainstream press in the West does not only attack
Cuba; they have also initiated a new modality of implacable media terror against
the political leaders, intellectuals, artists and other personalities that all
over the world speak out against fallacy and hypocrisy, and who simply examine
the events with objectivity.
Meanwhile, it would seem that the standard-bearers of
the so much trumpeted freedom of the press have forgotten that the economic and
trade blockade against Cuba and all of its inhumane effects on our people is in
full force and even tightened; that the current US Administration has not
ceased to support subversion; that the unfair, discriminatory and interfering
Common Position adopted by the European Union, sponsored from its inception by
the US government and the Spanish right-wing, is still in force claiming for a
regime change in our country, or to put it bluntly, for the destruction of the
Revolution.
More than half a century of permanent combat has
taught our people that hesitation is synonymous with defeat.
We will never yield to blackmail from any country or group
of countries, no matter how powerful they might be, and regardless of the
consequences. We have the right to defend ourselves. Let them known that if
they try to corner us, we will defend ourselves, first of all with truth and
principles. Once again we shall keep ourselves firm and calmed, and we shall be
patient. Our history is rich in such examples!
That’s how our heroic mambises fought in our independence wars of the 19th
Century.
That’s how we defeated the last offensive of ten
thousand troops sent against us by the tyranny, and initially confronted by
barely 200 rebel fighters who under the direct leadership of Commander in Chief
Fidel Castro Ruz, and for 75 days, --from May 24 through August 6, 1958—engaged
in more than 100 war actions, including four battles in a small territory of
406 to 437 square miles, that is, a smaller area than that of Havana City. That
great Operation determined the course of the war and shortly four months later
the Revolution was victorious. This inspired Commander Ernesto Che Guevara an
entry in his campaign diary that I quote: “Batista’s army ended this last
offensive on the Sierra Maestra with its backbone in tatters.”
Neither were we scared by the Yankee fleet positioned
in sight of the coasts of Playa Giron in 1961. It was under their very nose
that we annihilated their mercenary army in what would be the first defeat of a
And again we did it in 1962, during the Missile
[October] Crisis. We did not give in an inch despite the brutal threats of an
enemy aiming their nuclear weapons at us and gearing for action to invade the
island; neither did we do it when negotiating behind our backs the solution to
the crisis, the leaders of the Soviet Union
--our main ally in such a predicament on whose support depended the fate
of the Revolution-- respectfully tried to persuade us to accept inspection, on our
national territory, of the withdrawal of their nuclear weapons, and we
responded that such inspection could eventually take place on board their ships
in international waters, but never in Cuba.
We are sure that it would be very difficult for worse
circumstances than those to repeat themselves.
More recently, the Cuban people offered an
everlasting example of their capacity for resistance and their confidence in
themselves when, as a result of the demise of the Socialist Camp and the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union, Cuba sustained the fall of its GDP by 35%;
the reduction of its foreign trade by 85%; the loss of markets for its main
export items such as sugar, nickel, citrus and others whose prices plummeted by
half; the loss of soft credits with the subsequent interruption of numerous
crucial investments like the first Nuclear Power Station and the Cienfuegos
Refinery; the collapse of transportation, construction and agriculture as we
abruptly lost the supply of spare parts for the equipment, fertilizers, animal
food and raw material for the industry, which caused hundreds and hundreds of
factories to be paralyzed and led to the sudden quantitative and qualitative
deterioration of food supplies for our people to levels below those recommended
for adequate nutrition.
We all suffered those warm summers of the first half
of the 1990s, when the blackouts exceeded 12 hours a day due to the lack of
fuel for electricity generation. And, while all this was happening, scores of
Western press agencies, some of them with ill-concealed jubilation, were
sending their correspondents to
Amidst this dramatic situation, no one was left to their
own fate; this gave further evidence of the strength stemming from the unity of
the people that defend just ideas and a work built with so much sacrifice. Only
a socialist regime, despite its deficiencies, can successfully pass such a
tough test.
Thus, we do not lose any sleep over the current
skirmishes of the international reaction’s offensive, coordinated --as usual—by
those who do not want to accept that this country will never be crushed, one
way or another, and that we rather disappeared as we proved in 1962.
This Revolution started only 142 years ago, on
Now the external actors have exchanged roles. For
over half a century we have been attacked and continuously harassed by the now
modern and most powerful empire on the planet, assisted by the boycott implied
in the insulting Common Position, which remains intact thanks to the pressure
of some countries and reactionary political forces of the European Union with
various unacceptable conditions.
We ask ourselves, why? And, we simply believe it is
because essentially the actors are still the same and they do not renounce
their old aspirations of dominance.
The young Cuban revolutionaries have a clear
understanding that to preserve the Revolution and Socialism, and to continue
having dignity and being free, they still have ahead many more years of
struggle and sacrifices.
At the same time, great challenges hang over humanity
and it is the first duty of the youth to tackle them. They should defend the
survival of the human species threatened like never before by climate change, a
situation accelerated by the reckless production and consumption patterns fathered
by capitalism.
Today, we are seven billion people on Earth. Half of
this population is poor, while 1.02 billion are going hungry. Thus, it is
worthwhile wondering what will happen by the year 2050 when the world
population is 9 billion and the living conditions on the planet are more
deteriorated.
The travesty in which the latest summit ended in the
Danish capital, last December, shows that capitalism with its blind market laws
will never solve this nor many other problems. Only conscience and the mobilization
of the peoples, the governments’ political will and the advancement of
scientific and technological knowledge can prevent man’s extinction.
To conclude, I’d like to refer to the fact that on
April next year it will be half a century since the proclamation of the
Socialist nature of the Revolution and of the crushing victory over the
mercenary Playa Giron [
Within a few days, on May 1st, our
revolutionary people throughout the country, in public squares and in the
streets that belong to them by right, shall give another resounding response to
this new international escalation of aggressions.
The Young Communist League was born on a day like
this, 48 years ago. That historical
“Believing in the youths is seeing in them not only
enthusiasm but capacity; not only energy but responsibility; not only youth,
but purity, heroism, character, willpower, love for their homeland, faith in
their homeland! Love for the Revolution, faith in the Revolution, and
confidence in themselves! It is the deep conviction that the youth can do it,
that the youth is capable of doing it; the deep conviction that the youth can
carry on great tasks.”
That’s how it was yesterday, how it is today and how
it will continue to be in the future.
Thank you very much.