BY FIDEL CASTRO
[The following is part of the speech delivered by Cuba's President Fidel Castro Ruz to a rally of 1 million people in Havana's Jose Marti Revolution Square on May 1, 2003.]
Our heroic people have struggled for 44 years from this small Caribbean island, just a few miles away from the most formidable imperial power ever known by humankind. In so doing, they have written an unprecedented chapter in history. Never has the world witnessed such an unequal fight.
Some may have believed that the rise of the US empire to the status of the sole superpower, with a military and technological might with no balancing pole anywhere in the world, would frighten or dishearten the Cuban people. Yet, today they have no choice but to watch in amazement the enhanced courage of this valiant people.
On a day like today, this glorious international workers' day, which commemorates the death of the five martyrs of Chicago, I declare on behalf of the 1 million Cubans gathered here that we will face up to any threats, we will not yield to any pressure and that we are prepared to defend our homeland and our revolution, with ideas and with weapons, to our last drop of blood.
What is Cuba's sin? What honest person has any reason to attack her?
[In 1959,] with their own blood and the weapons seized from the enemy, the Cuban people overthrew a cruel tyranny with 80,000 men under arms, imposed by the US government.
Cuba was the first territory free from imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the only country in the hemisphere, throughout post-colonial history, where the torturers, murderers and war criminals who took the lives of tens of thousands of people were exemplarily punished.
All the country's land was recovered and turned over to the peasants and agricultural workers. The natural resources, industries and basic services were placed in the hands of their only true owner — the Cuban nation.
In less than 72 hours, fighting ceaselessly, day and night, Cuba crushed the [1961] Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion organised by a US administration, thereby preventing a direct military intervention by this country and a war of incalculable consequences. The revolution already had the Rebel Army and hundreds of thousands of militia members.
In 1962, Cuba confronted with honour, and without a single concession, the risk of being attacked with dozens of nuclear weapons.
The Cuban people defeated the dirty war that spread throughout the entire country, at a cost in human lives even greater than that of the war of liberation. They stoically endured thousands of acts of sabotage and terrorist attacks organised by the US government. They thwarted hundreds of assassination plots against the leaders of the revolution.
While under a rigorous blockade and economic warfare, which has lasted for almost half a century, Cuba was able to eradicate in just one year the illiteracy that has still not been overcome in the course of more than four decades by the rest of the countries of Latin America, or the United States itself.
Education
It has brought free education to 100% of the country's children.
It has the highest school retention rate — over 99% between kindergarten and ninth grade — of all of the nations in the hemisphere. Its elementary school students rank first worldwide in the knowledge of their mother language and in mathematics. The country also ranks first worldwide with the highest number of teachers per capita and the lowest number of students per classroom.
All children with physical or mental challenges are enrolled in special schools. Computer education and the use of audiovisual methods now extend to all of the country's children, adolescents and youth, in both the cities and the countryside.
For the first time in the world, all young people between the ages of 17 and 30, who were previously neither in school nor employed, have been given the opportunity to resume their studies while receiving an allowance. All citizens have the possibility of undertaking studies that will take them from kindergarten to a doctoral degree without spending a penny.
Today, Cuba has 30 university graduates, intellectuals and professional artists for every one there was before the revolution. The average Cuban citizen today has at the very least a ninth-grade level of education. Not even functional illiteracy exists in Cuba.
There are schools for the training of artists and art instructors throughout all of the provinces, where over 20,000 young people are currently studying and developing their talents and vocation. Tens of thousands more are doing the same at vocational schools, and many of these then go on to undertake professional studies.
University campuses are progressively spreading to all of the country's municipalities. Never in any other part of the world has such a colossal educational and cultural revolution taken place as this, which will turn Cuba, by far, into the country with the highest degree of knowledge and culture in the world, faithful to Jose Marti's profound conviction that "no freedom is possible without culture".
Health
[Since the revolution,] infant mortality has been reduced from 60 per 1000 live births to a rate that fluctuates between 6 and 6.5, which is the lowest in the hemisphere, from the US to Patagonia. Life expectancy has increased by 15 years. Infectious and contagious diseases like polio, malaria, neonatal tetanus, diphtheria, measles, rubella, mumps, whooping cough and dengue have been eradicated; tetanus, meningococcal meningitis, hepatitis B, leprosy, haemophilus meningitis and tuberculosis are fully controlled.
Today, in our country, people die of the same causes as in the most highly developed countries — cardiovascular diseases, cancer, accidents and others, but with a much lower incidence. Illegal drug use is negligible, and is being resolutely combated.
A profound revolution is underway to bring medical services closer to the population, in order to facilitate access to health-care centres, save lives and alleviate suffering. In-depth research is being carried out to mitigate or reduce to a minimum the problems that result from genetic, prenatal or childbirth-related causes.
Cuba is today the country with the highest number of doctors per capita in the world, with almost twice as many as those that follow closest. Our scientific centres are working relentlessly to find preventive or therapeutic solutions for the most serious diseases.
Cubans will have the best health care system in the world, and will continue to receive all services absolutely free of charge.
Social security covers 100% of the country's citizens. In Cuba, 85% of the people own their homes and pay no property taxes on them whatsoever. The remaining 15% pay a symbolic rent, which is only 10% of their salary.
There is no cult of personality around any living revolutionary, in the form of statues, official photographs or the names of streets or institutions. The leaders of this country are human beings, not gods.
In our country there are no paramilitary forces or death squads, nor has violence ever been used against the people; there are no extrajudicial executions or torture. The people have always massively supported the activities of the revolution. This rally today is proof of that.
Solidarity
Light years separate our society from what has prevailed until today in the rest of the world. We cultivate solidarity among individuals and peoples both in the country and abroad. The new generations and the entire people are being educated about the need to protect the environment.
Our country steadfastly defends its cultural identity, assimilating the best of other cultures while resolutely combating everything that distorts, alienates and degrades. The development of wholesome, non-professional sports has raised our people to the highest ranks worldwide.
Scientific research, at the service of our people and all humanity, has increased several-hundredfold. As a result of these efforts, important medications are saving lives in Cuba and other countries.
Cuba has never undertaken research or development of a single biological weapon, because this would be in total contradiction with the principles and philosophy underlying the education of our scientific personnel, past and present.
In no other people has the spirit of international solidarity become so deeply rooted. Our country supported the Algerian patriots in their struggle against French colonialism, at the cost of damaging political and economic relations with such an important European country as France.
We sent weapons and troops to defend Algeria from Moroccan expansionism, when the king of this country sought to take control of the iron mines of Gara Djebilet, near the city of Tindouf, in south-west Algeria.
At the request of Syria, a full tank brigade stood guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the Golan Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized from that country.
The leader of the Republic of Congo when it first achieved independence, Patrice Lumumba, who was harassed from abroad, received our political support. When he was assassinated by the colonial powers in January of 1961, we lent assistance to his followers.
Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was shed in the western region of Lake Tanganyika, where Che Guevara and more than 100 Cuban instructors supported the Congolese rebels who were fighting against white mercenaries in the service of the man supported by the West, Mobutu, with US$40 billion. That is the same amount that he stole.
The blood of Cuban instructors was shed while training and supporting the combatants of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, who fought under the command of Amilcar Cabral for the liberation of these former Portuguese colonies.
The same was true during the 10 years that Cuba supported Agostinho Neto's MPLA in the struggle for the independence of Angola. After independence was achieved, and over the course of 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers participated in defending Angola from the attacks of the South African apartheid regime's troops, in complicity with the United States, planted millions of mines, wiped out entire villages, and murdered more than half a million Angolan men, women and children.
In Cuito Cuanavale and on the Namibian border, to the south-west of Angola, Angolan and Namibian forces together with 40,000 Cuban troops dealt the final blow to the South African forces. This resulted in the immediate liberation of Namibia and speeded up the end of apartheid by perhaps 25 years. At the time, the white minority South African regime had seven nuclear warheads that Israel had supplied to them or helped them to produce, with the full knowledge and complicity of the US government.
Throughout the course of almost 15 years, Cuba had a place of honour in its solidarity with the heroic people of Vietnam, caught up in a barbaric and brutal war with the US. That war killed 4 million Vietnamese, in addition to all those wounded and mutilated, not to mention the fact that the country was inundated with chemical compounds that continue to cause incalculable damage. The pretext: Vietnam, a poor and underdeveloped country located 20,000 kilometres away, constituted a threat to the national security of the USA.
Cuban blood was shed together with that of citizens of numerous Latin American countries, including that of Che Guevara, murdered on instructions from US agents in Bolivia. In Grenada [in 1983], the blood of Cuban construction workers, who were completing an international airport vital for the economy of a tiny island fully dependent on tourism, was shed when it was invaded by the US under cynical pretexts.
Cuban blood was shed in Nicaragua, when instructors from our armed forces were training the brave Nicaraguan soldiers confronting the dirty war organised and armed by the United States against the 1979 Sandinista revolution.
More than 2000 heroic Cuban internationalist combatants gave their lives fulfilling the sacred duty of supporting the liberation struggles for the independence of other sister nations. However, there is not one single Cuban property in any of those countries. No other country in our era has exhibited such sincere and selfless solidarity.
Internationalists
Cuba has always preached by example. It has never given in. It has never sold out the cause of another people. It has never made concessions. It has never betrayed its principles. There must be some reason why, just 48 hours ago, it was reelected by acclamation by the United Nations Economic and Social Council to another three years to the Commission on Human Rights, on which it has now been a member for 15 straight years.
More than 500,000 Cubans have carried out internationalist missions as combatants, teachers, technicians or doctors and health care workers. Tens of thousands have provided their services and saved millions of lives over the course of more than 40 years.
There are currently 3000 Cuban specialists and other health-care personnel working in the most isolated regions of 18 Third World countries. Through preventive and therapeutic methods, they save hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and maintain or restore the health of millions, without charging a penny for their services.
Without the Cuban doctors offered to the UN in the event that the necessary funds are obtained — without which entire nations and even whole regions of sub-Saharan Africa face the risk of perishing — the crucial programs urgently needed to fight AIDS would be impossible to carry out.
The developed capitalist world has created abundant financial capital, but it has not in any way created the human capital that the Third World desperately needs.
Cuba has developed techniques to teach reading and writing by radio, with accompanying texts now available in five languages — Haitian Creole, Portuguese, French, English and Spanish — that are already being used in numerous countries. It is nearing completion of a similar program in Spanish to teach literacy by television.
We are not interested in patents and exclusive copyrights. We are willing to offer them to all of the countries of the Third World, where most of the world's illiterate people are concentrated, without charging a penny. In five years, the 800 million illiterate people in the world could be reduced by 80%, at a minimal cost.
After the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, nobody would have bet a penny on the survival of the Cuban Revolution. The US tightened the blockade. The US Torricelli and Helms-Burton acts were also adopted, the latter being extraterritorial in nature. We abruptly lost our main markets and sources of supply. The Cuban population's average calorie and protein consumption was reduced by almost half. But our country withstood the pressures.
Today, Cuba has largely recovered with regard to its nutritional requirements and is rapidly progressing in other fields. Even in these conditions, the work undertaken and the consciousness built throughout the years succeeded in working miracles.
Why have we endured? Because the revolution has always had, still does and always will have to an ever-greater degree, the support of the people, an intelligent people, an increasingly united, educated and combative people.
From Green Left Weekly, May 21, 2003.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.