"(...) that everything that today contributes to underdevelopment and poverty is tantamount to a flagrant attack on the ecology. As a result, tens of millions of men, women and children perish every year in the Third World, far more than in each of the two world wars. The unequal terms of trade, protectionism and the foreign debt are also an assault on the ecology and facilitate the destruction of the environment".
“Our revolutionary and truly socialist conception is perfectly compatible with the idea of foreign investment and the utmost possibilities, guarantees and security for those who invest in our country”.
“With a pitiless blockade lasting for almost 60 years, and those who have died in mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers exploded in mid-flight, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and force? Nobody could be so naive as to think that this noble and self-sacrificing people would renounce glory and their rights, and the spiritual richness they have earned with the development of education, science and culture”.
“We have rather a powerful adversary: our closest neighbor the United States. We warned them that we would resist the blockade even though it would mean a very high cost for our country. There is no greater price to pay than that of capitulating to an enemy who is attacking you without right or reason”.
“To begin with, I will say that neither in the first or the second half of this century nor at any other time in history has a country done or achieved as much in sports as Cuba in an extremely short period of time. And it is a small Third World country, one that is additionally subjected to an economic blockade by the wealthiest and mightiest nation on Earth as well as to a thousand different forms of harassment and aggression”.
“The peoples of the Americas freed themselves from Spanish colonialism at the beginning of the last century, but they did not free themselves from exploitation. The feudal landowners assumed the authority of the Spanish rulers, the Indians continued in painful servitude, the Latin American man in one form or another remained a slave and the minimal hopes of the peoples succumbed under the power of the oligarchies and the strap of foreign capital”.
“The peoples think that the only thing incompatible with the destiny of Latin America is misery, feudal exploitation, illiteracy, starvation wages, unemployment, the policy of repression against the masses of workers, peasants and students, discrimination against women, blacks, indigenous people and mestizos, the oppression of the oligarchies, the plundering of their wealth by the US monopolies, the moral suffocation of their intellectuals and artists, the ruin of their small producers by foreign competition, the economic underdevelopment, the peoples without roads, without hospitals, witho
“We Caribbean countries face the challenge of surviving and advancing in the midst of the most profound economic, social and political crisis ever sustained by our hemisphere and the world, as neoliberal globalization threatens to destroy not only our right to development, but also our cultural diversity and national identities. It is only through integration and cooperation, not only among states but also among the various regional organizations and entities, that our peoples can find a way out of this predicament”.
“I am firmly convinced that the current economic order imposed by the wealthy countries is not only cruel, unjust, inhuman and contrary to the inevitable course of history but also inherently racist. It reflects racist conceptions like those that once inspired the Nazi holocaust and concentration camps of Europe, mirrored today in the so-called refugee camps of the Third World, which actually serve to concentrate the effects of poverty, hunger and violence. These are the same racist conceptions that inspired the monstrous system of apartheid in Africa.”
"Our firm unity and the nature of our social, economic and political system will make it possible to reach the goal we have set ourselves.We shall certainly be the first in the world in the health field, and its noble and human benefits will be within reach of all of our compatriots in health centers of excellence where they will not pay a penny".