“When I speak of internal threats, I am only thinking about social or moral dangers than could affect our people and jeopardize their safety, education or health. It is well known how hard we have fought against the habit of smoking, and how it has been greatly reduced. We are similarly fighting against alcohol abuse, or the unfortunate practice of its consumption during pregnancy, which can lead to the birth of children with mental retardation or other serious physical disabilities”.
“Put and end to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people that is taking place while the world stares in amazement. May the basic right to life of that people, children and youth, be protected. May their right to peace and independence be respected; then, there will be nothing to fear from UN documents”.
“In Cuba, the social and human nightmare denounced in 1953, which gave rise to our struggle, had been left behind just a few years after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. Soon, there were no longer (…) undernourished, barefoot, parasite-ridden children, without schools or teachers, even if their schooling took place beneath the shade of a tree. They no longer died in massive numbers from hunger, disease, from lack of resources or medical care. No longer were the rural areas filled with unemployed men and women.”
"Can the empire and the system responsible for all this really talk to the world about human rights? Human rights within a system where a large part of the population is unemployed, where women are prostituted, where children are abandoned? The numbers of abandoned children in Latin America are impressive, they number millions, many millions. How can this system offer hope to mankind? How can this system speak of consideration for mankind?
That’s why we have so much faith in socialism, and we have so much confidence in socialism and such deep socialist convictions".
"In his speech, Obama portrays the Cuban revolution as anti-democratic and lacking in respect for freedom and human rights. It is the exact same argument which, almost without exception, U.S. administrations have used again and again to justify their crimes against our country. The blockade, in and of itself, is an act of genocide. I don’t want to see U.S. children inculcated with those shameful values. An armed revolution in our country might not have been needed without the military interventions, Platt Amendment and economic colonialism visited upon Cuba.