MESSAGE TO THE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS OF
My dear comrades:
I asked that we meet early, before the heat of our sun becomes too
intense.
This stairway, to which I never imagined I would be returning, keeps
some indelible memories of the years when I began to become aware of our era
and our duty. One can acquire knowledge
and awareness throughout one’s lifetime but never in any other stage of one’s
existence will a person again have the purity and selflessness with which,
being young, one faces up to life. At
that age, I discovered my true destiny.
Thus it is inevitable that, at these moments, I am accompanied by the
memory of so many comrades whom I knew exactly 65 years ago. It was during the first week of September
that I entered this University, the only one in the country. It is best that I don’t even try to ask for
each one of them, and I just hold on to the memory of when they were all young
and full of enthusiasm and, as a rule, selfless and pure.
I am extremely encouraged to have present those who today, as we were in
yesteryear, even incomparably more well-educated, freer and more aware.
In those days, the power of the brute force and the brutality of force
fell upon this university hill, the lack of conscience and the corruption
applied upon our people.
Thanks to the example of those preceding us, to the students massacred
at the demand of the hordes called the Spanish volunteers, many of whom were
born in this country who took up service for the Spanish tyranny, thanks to the
Apostle of our Independence and to the blood spilt by dozens of thousands of
patriots in three wars of Independence, we have really been preceded by a
history which inspired our struggles. We
didn’t deserve to be a colony of an empire that was even more powerful, that
took over our Homeland and a good portion of our national conscience, sowing
fatalism with the idea that it was impossible to shake off such a hefty
yoke.
Worse still, a powerful exploiting sector had arisen which, at the
service of the Empire’s interests, was plundering the wealth of our people,
keeping them shackled and ignorant by force and, not on a few occasions, using
others born in the country to act as the torturers and murderers of their own
brothers and sisters.
The Revolution put an end to those horrors and it is because of that
that we are able to meet here on this September morning.
How far away we were after the triumph to think that, on an occasion
like this, we would be returning to meet in efforts even greater and with
higher aims than those which, at a certain time, seemed to us to be the highest
goals of peoples, in the name of justice and happiness for human beings.
It would not seem to be possible that a country as small as
I am not speaking only in favour of the interests of our nation. One might say that such objectives have been
left behind, in the measure that existence and the well-being of peoples
stopped being our objectives, in the name of world interests, without which the
life of nations is impossible. It is
also certain that, in our struggles for national and social emancipation, our
country, the bastion of Spanish colonialism in this hemisphere, was the first
to be occupied and the last to rid itself of the yoke after more than 400 years
of domination.
Our struggle for national liberation was mixed together with the
tenacious efforts of the workers of our country for their social
liberation. It was not an act of will;
it was an act of fate. The merit of the
Cuban people is that they knew how to understand and strengthen the indissoluble
bonds between both. (Applause and cries
of “¡Viva Fidel!”)
The time humankind has to fight this battle is incredibly limited. Throughout more than three months of
unceasing struggle I modestly made the effort to reveal, to an inattentive
world, the terrible dangers that threaten human life on our planet. It is well-known, and I have no other
alternative than to remember the fact, that we are not living in an age of
chivalry and the steel of the swords accompanied by crossbows that were
preceded for centuries by battering rams that demolished walls or tried to do
so, or war chariots drawn by horses with knives mounted on the wheels; weapons,
in brief, always cruel, but with limited destructive power that humans used to
wage war on each other since they invented the mace, up to World Wars I and II,
when automatic weapons were used , tanks, combat planes and flying fortresses,
submarines, torpedoes, armoured vehicles and aircraft carriers that raised the
toll of lives lost to tens of millions of humans, and to hundreds of millions
of victims of destruction, the wounded, the sick and the hungry, inevitable
consequences of wars.
Two nuclear devices were used at the end of the last war. Mankind had never before conceived such
terrible destruction and extermination.
More than 60 years ago we speak of the bombing of
But that was not enough. The
desire for economic and military domination by the first ones to use those
terrifying instruments of destruction and death lead humankind to the real
possibility of dying out, which we face today.
I don’t need to give you arguments for something you already know very
well. The problem of peoples today,
shall we say, of more than seven billion human beings, is to prevent that such
a tragedy should occur.
I am not happy speaking about the painful truth that constitutes
something of shame for everything that is identified as policy or government. This truth was deliberately hidden from the
world and the difficult task of warning humankind of the real danger it is
facing has fallen upon
Commenting on the first part of the interview published on Monday,
August 30 by the director of La Jornada in that prestigious Mexican
newspaper, a citizen of Our America who read it on the CubaDebate website voiced
his opinion with words that were so profound that I decided to include the crux
of his thoughts in this message to the university students of Cuba:
“I call out to all the countries that today are involved in military
conflicts. Please, always think about
achieving true peace, that is what we need most. Our children, our grandchildren and the human
beings of this world, all of us will thank you.
We need to live in peace and security on a planet that day by day
becomes less liveable. It is very easy
to understand. Nuclear weapons should
disappear, no country should have them, atomic energy should only be used for
good. THE ONLY REAL VICTORY IS IN ACHIEVING
PEACE.
“Today we face two great challenges: the consolidation of world peace
and saving the planet from climatic changes.
The first is to achieve a lasting peace on solid bases, the second is to
reverse climate change. We have to
become aware of these problems that we ourselves have created and that we are
the protagonists of the changes we must attain.
The panorama of the last century was not the same as the one in this
century. Weaponry, at this time, is much
more sophisticated and deadly and the planet is weaker and more polluted.
“World Conference on Climate Change in
“Nobody has the right to use violence against any human being, country
or nation. Nobody can cut down a tree if
he hasn’t first planted three. […] We cannot turn our backs on nature.
Quite the opposite, we must always embrace her
tightly. Because we ourselves are
nature, we are part of that fan of many colours, sounds, balance and
harmony. Nature is perfect.
“
“If we do nothing. Nobody will be
saved, there will be no safe place on earth, not in the air, not in the
cosmos. The great energy that
accumulates daily because of the greenhouse effect, since the solar rays are
trapped and emit more energy every day onto the surface of the earth. It will cause natural disasters having
unpredictable consequences. Would there
be anyone on earth with a button that would be able to stop such a disaster?”
“…we cannot lose any time on anachronistic wars that weaken us and use
up our energies. Enemies make wars. Let us eliminate all
the causes that make men see other men as their enemies. Not even those who face each other in a war
are aware that this is the solution to their problems, they react to their
emotions and ignore their consciences mistakenly thinking that the road to
peace is war. I say, without the least
margin for error, that peace is attained with peace and: IF YOU WANT PEACE, GET
READY TO CHANGE YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS (Applause).”
Here you have the essence of his words, quite simple and within the
reach of any citizen on earth.
On Wednesday, September 1st, as I was writing this message, information
appearing on the CubaDebate website brought us the following news: “A new wave
of leakage about an attack on Iran’s nuclear targets being prepared by Israel
together with the United States might this time have a basis in reality, as
expressed in an article printed this Tuesday by George Friedman, the executive
director of the prestigious Stratfor Centre, which has some former CIA analysts
among its collaborators..” He is a well educated person with prestige.
The information goes on to say:
“There have been numerous occasions on which different versions of the
possible attack on the Islamic Republic presumably filtered from secret
services have been spread. According to
experts, it dealt with an attempt to exert psychological pressure on Teheran to
make it seek consensus with the West.”
“…this technique didn’t work and it is highly unlikely that it will be
used again with the same objective, states Friedman…”
“‘It is a paradox, but the new slew of rumours about war may this time
be directed towards trying to convince Iran precisely that there will be no
war, while in reality, war is now being prepared’ …”
“The analyst completely discards the fact that Tel Aviv is daring to
embark on a military operation without counting on the support of the
Pentagon.”
“At the same time, the expert warns that the most serious consequence of
the possible attack against Iran would be that the Islamic Republic would block
the Strait of Ormuz, between the Oman and Persian Gulfs, and that would
collapse 45% of world oil supplies thus shooting prices sky high and making
world economic recovery after the recession difficult.”
Thus concludes the
information.
I find it incredible that the fear of an attack is due to consequences
that the price of oil may suffer and to the struggle against the
recession. I myself do not harbour the
least doubt that the capacity for
An important AFP dispatch states that former British Prime Minister Tony
Blair warned this Wednesday in a BBC interview when talking about his memoirs
being released, that the international community might have no other
alternative than the military option if Iran were to develop nuclear
weapons.”
It continues:
“Blair concluded that he thought that there was no alternative to this
if they continue developing nuclear weapons.
They should receive this message loud and clear, he added, echoing a
threat that has already been made several times by the
Of course, if they are manufacturing nuclear weapons they have no proof
nor can they have any proof because they are using some research centres, doing
research; they don’t have, for up to two or three years as they themselves have
admitted, any material to begin manufacturing a bomb. This without taking into account that
manufacturers of nuclear weapons have 25,000 nuclear weapons, without counting
the unimaginable conventional ones. They
have no proof of this, it’s a research centre.
Is that a reason to attack them?
Having a plant producing electrical energy, coming from uranium, that’s
nothing constituting a crime and for them it is proof they are manufacturing
weapons. They have already done it, they
did it in 1981 against an Iraqi research centre, and they did it in 2007
against a Syrian research centre; they didn’t talk about that, it’s somewhat of
a mystery why they didn’t speak of it.
Because there are terrible things happening that nobody talks about and
nobody prints them.
Well, that is the proof, because they are talking about attacking those
reactors and those research centres. That’s
why one cannot become confused by the little words “if they try” to manufacture
nuclear weapons.
A new dispatch from the ITAR-TASS agency reports that sanctions against
And the cable goes on:
“We come from the idea that no world problem should be resolved using
force, he stated. Lavrov drew attention
to the position of US President Barack Obama in regard to
I would think that
Now we must sit back and wait to see what they will do in this
situation, how they value world opinion, what effect it will have, if they will
invent another term or not, if they declare they are not going to do it, or if
they ratify that they are going to do it, it might take a bit longer, but it
cannot be a lot of time.
I recommend that we are watchful, that we ask our information media to
communicate to us, so that we can closely follow the situation.
Thanks to the electronic media there are persons in the world, a growing
number of persons who are being informed, because they cannot prevent that,
besides even if the news agencies and the great information media in the hands
of the powerful capitalist corporations keep silent, the world is finding out
about it. I tell you this because of
the number of messages that are arriving.
I read you one opinion that I selected: it is at 4:52, at 4:54, another
at 4:55, the comrades who collect these explain that they are coming from all
parts of the world, not just from
Therefore, I suggest to you, and to all our compatriots that are trying
to be aware, and to our press media that inform us, because at times the
international press keeps strangely silent and then suddenly a series of news
items appears. The ones that are going
to come out next, each day they will be more interesting.
Nobody can say exactly what is going to happen, because these events are
unravelling.
What is going to happen on the 7th, the 9th, the 15th, the 20th? We have to make our plans, work plans,
everyone makes their own. As for me, I
will be concentrating; I am concentrating on this for a while now, collecting
as much information as possible.
But in all this, we all play a part in the job, a part of the
responsibility that doesn’t mean that we have to stop whatever we are
doing.
Also, another very important country, it is the last one mentioned here,
because it was the last cable, yesterday afternoon.
A Reuters dispatch states that the European Union is pressuring
Because besides the famous June 9th agreement, number 1929, establishing the sanctions I mentioned,
these European satellite powers and those from other parts, imposed additional
sanctions to strangle the country and, in this case, they were complaining
about China, also about Russia in terms of what they were going to do, but it
stated thus:
“The official responsible for the European Union foreign policy, Catherine
Ashton, said on Thursday that China had been pressured to ensure that Chinese
companies would not fill the void left by other companies that had abandoned
Iran because of the sanctions …” It doesn’t say what sanctions, whether the
ones by the Council or theirs, they must be referring to all of them, of
course. .
Any honest person can understand
the complexity of the very serious problem that today threatens the world.
Comrades, university students, as in other times which seem far away and
which seem to me to have been just yesterday, I thank you for your presence and
for the moral support you are providing for this struggle for peace (Applause).
I urge you to not give up fighting for this.
In this struggle, as in many others in years past, victory is possible (Applause).
May human life be preserved! May
children and youth enjoy life in a world of justice! May parents and grandparents share with them
the privilege of living!
The fair distribution of
material and spiritual wealth, which mankind is capable of creating through the
fabulous development of productive forces, that is the only possible
alternative.
Thank you very much.
September 3, 2010
(Ovation.)