“Operation July 26” — Cuban Leaders Campaign
Against Bureaucratism in Government and Party
by W.T. Whitney Jr.
Speaking November 17at the
At issue is a plague of “vices, theft, [and]
re-routing,” at the hands of “social parasites and the new rich.”
Presently under the aegis of “Operation July 26,”
the government is responding to serious losses in its fuel distribution
program. First in Pinar del
The government has assigned 28,000 social work
students to pump fuel, monitor refinery operations, and check on gasoline
trucks deliveries. Thousands of fuel industry employees have been fired. Many
government ministries, the locus of much abuse, now face restrictions on fuel
use for their own vehicles. As a result of these measures, revenues are up by
the equivalent of $100,000 per day.
The origins of the social workers are worth
noting. They have all completed a year long course with pay at one of four
schools established in 2001 to prepare graduates both to assist people in their
own communities and to study at the university level. They were recruited from
the ranks of young people at risk for educational failure, criminal activity,
and joblessness. Many of their families were undereducated, and many are
Afro-Cuban. To pit these students against the newly rich is to demarcate the
struggle along class lines. Members of the Union of Young Communists recruit
students for the schools and support them during their year of training.
The campaign has moved into other areas. In
September, the military took over
President Castro has chided the Cuban people for
disregarding their own individual energy use and berated the newly rich for
squandering fuel and electricity. And ominously he calls upon Cubans and people
everywhere to adjust consumption to the prospect of global oil scarcity. “In 30 or more years. oil will run
out just as many of the world minerals.”
Observers predict that in the history of the
Cuban revolution, the anti-corruption campaign will take on watershed
significance. According to Fidel Castro, “we speak of a revolution that can discuss
all this and can grab the bull by the horns.Let there
be no [fall of] the
Nevertheless, the stakes are high: “Either we
defeat all these deviations and make our revolution strong, or we die.”
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 November 17, 2005
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 from
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
December 2, 1956. There had to be a chief among those 82 men. Later on, they
added the “in.” So, little by little, I went from being Chief Commander to
being the Commander in Chief when we had more commanders, because that was the
highest rank for a long time. I was remembering these things. One has to think
about what one was, what one thought about and what feelings one had.
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 prophecy 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 — Chávez 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-hydration 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 Israel supports the
blockade. We must call it that, because those who commit such crimes are doing
so in the name of a people that for more than 1500 years endured persecution
and were victims of the most atrocious crimes committed during World War II.
The people 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 Guantánamo, but
anywhere in the world you can find a secret prison where defenders of human
rights are tortured. They are the same people who order their little lambs to
vote in
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 [José Antonio] Echevarria lived — José 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 July 26th,
1953, only eight years later, and the Revolution triumphed five years, five
days and five months after Moncada, after a long
journey by way of prison, exile and fighting in the mountains. It was a
relatively short time historically speaking, comparing it to earlier struggles
that were so hard and difficult on our people. There were two stages: coming to
the University, leaving it and the coup d’état on March 10, 1952.
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 “La Marseillaise” was in its
revolutionary time although it later became the anthem of the French colonial
empire. In the name of that colonial empire and for a new distribution of the
world, millions of Frenchmen died en masse in the trenches of World War I. Man
is willing to die, to consciously and voluntarily give up his life; he does not
fight out of instinct like so many animals fight instinctively moved by the
laws of nature. Man is a complete creature, I mean both men and women, and more
often one needs to include women. Yes, I have my reasons but I don’t know if I’ll
have the time to tell you all of them. But the human being is the only one
capable of consciously rising above all instincts, even though man is a
creature of instincts, of egoism. Man is born egotistical, a result of the
conditioning of nature. Nature fills us with instincts; it is education that
fills us with virtues. Nature makes us do things instinctively; one of these is
the instinct for survival which can lead to infamy, while on the other side,
our conscience can lead us to great acts of heroism. It doesn’t matter what
each one of us is like, how different we are from each other, but when we unite
we become one.
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 Martí, 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 Alarcón. 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, 90 miles
away from the colossal empire, the most powerful empire ever in the history of
the world. Forty five years have passed and there it is, farther away than ever
from the possibility of forcing the Cuban nation to its knees, the same nation
they humiliated and offended for some time. (Applause) Once the US owned
everything in Cuba: the mines, hundreds of thousands of the best hectares of
land; the ports and its facilities; the electrical system, transportation,
banking, commercial activities, etc. and the idiots believe that they will
return here and that we will call on them on bended knees: “Come and save us
again, Oh Saviors of the World! Come and we shall give you everything we have,
again, this university too, so that you can put in 5,000 instead of half a
million students; half a million is too much and for your mentality, you would
like to see us unemployed and hungry so that filthy capitalism can function
because it is only with a reserve corps of unemployed that it can function;
come back and make the ranks of our illiterate unemployed grow and stand in
lines out by sugarcane fields, with nobody bringing them water to drink, or
food to eat, or housing, or transportation. Look for them, see if you can find
them because here are their children, hundreds of thousands of them studying in
the universities” (Applause)
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 Guantánamo,
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 Girón,
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 800 kilograms of cement to produce a ton of concrete;
it was good quality concrete, the kind needed to put up floors or columns, and
it was supposed to last much longer than El Morro
castle and La Cabana fortress. Well then, they should use only around 200
kilograms. See the wastage, the re-routing of resources, see the larceny.
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 594 in undergraduate programs in
socio-cultural studies, not that many yet; 240 INDER (Sports Federation)
university campuses, 19 in prisons where they are studying as well, with an
enrolment of 579, where 200 have just finished the first year. This is new,
too: university campuses in the prisons. We also have 169 municipal university
campuses for public health, 1,352 campuses in the polyclinics, health units and
blood banks, in all these places they are studying various
public health related courses.
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 Guantánamo,
it tortures in the prisons of
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 Fifth Avenue.one of those at the time would have
cost 50,000 or 60,000 dollars. I wanted to know where the truck was heading at
that speed so I asked my escort: “Hold on, ask him where he’s going; try to get
an honest answer.” The driver confessed that he was off to visit his
girl-friend in that new Volvo, going down
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 November 17,
2005.”
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 Bataban, 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 300,000 kilograms, 300 tons
of liquid gas, as a minimum, the monthly cost for Arroyo Naranjo.
The approximate yearly cost for Arroyo Naranjo’s
liquid gas is 3 million dollars, if it is really only 30,000 consumers; we
should send a team to check on whether it is running out or not.
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 500 grams of fuel
oil for every kilowatt of electricity. Or those machines gobbling up diesel in
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)