Citas

"From day one of the revolutionary victory our country has never set obstacles to the legal emigration of Cuban citizens to the United States or to any other country. At the time of the triumph of the Revolution many people in Cuba, like in the rest of the Caribbean and Latin America, who endured poverty and underdevelopment, wanted to migrate to seek for better paid jobs and better living conditions than they could find in their countries subjected to centuries of exploitation and plundering. Until 1959, an extremely limited number of visas were issued to Cubans. After that, for obvious reasons, the gates were wide opened and that is how an important number of Cubans began settling in the United States".

References to the original: Key address at a mass rally in the "José Martí" Anti-imperialist Square, November 27, 2001

" It is a real fact that Bush and his group are much more trapped in their foreign policy errors than even Nixon when he resigned in 1972.  The bloody Iraqi War and its rejection by the U.S. people, the toll in human lives, the extremely high number of wounded and maimed for every death in the military adventure, all reveal a situation full of contradictions:  the deteriorated image of the United States and the impossibility of giving up the wars of conquest for raw materials, the dollar and the price of gold, currency devaluations and inflation, consumerism and the inability to supply themselves with consumer goods, production of ethanol and the world shortage of food, fascist methods and democratic demagoguery, torture practices  and secret prisons and human rights, maximum environmental pollution of the country and the species’ right to survival, the benefits of science for health and the use of the same to massively liquidate or invalidate human beings, the brain drain and underdevelopment of poor countries, the price of oil and the ever-greater wasting of energy, the November elections and growing numbers of Latinos dying on the border. The list would be endless.  It is, in essence, a contradiction between life and death".

References to the original: REFLECTIONS "THIRST FOR BLOOD" (II), March 16, 2008

"If the empire managed to secure control of Cuba again, not one of these higher institutions created by the Revolution would remain to guarantee young people this right. It would send most young people to the countryside, to cut sugarcane. It is a declared policy. It would attempt to steal the artistic and scientific talents Cuba has nurtured, as it has done in other countries in our hemisphere. Having more than 70,000 specialists in general comprehensive medicine and hundreds of thousands of other professionals, helping others, the poorest included, and exporting these services, is a sin of which a Third World country cannot be forgiven. Ultimately, we have held our ground in spite of the blockade, their aggressions and their brutal acts of terrorism for nearly half a century".

References to the original: BUSH, MILLIONAIRES, CONSUMPTION AND UNDER-CONSUMPTION, April 10, 2008

"What does the empire decide to do in order to compete with Cuba in our hemisphere? To deploy an enormous ship turned into a floating hospital that works ten days in each country. It can assist a number of people daily but it cannot solve a country's problems. It does not compensate for the brain-drain, and it cannot train the specialists who are needed so that real medical services may be offered on any day of the week and year. All of the world's aircraft carriers, which today are instruments of military intervention deployed across the world's oceans, working as hospitals, could not offer those services to the millions of people treated by Cuban doctors in remote corners of the planet, where women go into labor, children are born and there are sick people in urgent need of attention".

References to the original: Reflections The elephant and the ant, June 18, 2008
“A great number of the cleverest minds in the world are uprooted from their original countries and placed at the service of the system. It is a parasitical and plundering empire.”
References to the original: The November 4th Elections.

“Ignorance, underdevelopment, economic dependency, poverty, the forced return of those who emigrate in search of jobs, the brain drain, and even the sophisticated weapons of organized crime were the consequences of the interventions and pillage coming from the North”.

References to the original: THE TROJAN HORSE, June 2, 2009
“Cuba has many talented athletes but it has not stolen them from anyone.  The people, what’s more, are the ones who enjoy their marvellous performances.  It is already a part of their culture, their well-being and their spiritual wealth.”
References to the original: Reflection by the Commander in Chief, “A Written Record”. August 7, 2007