“To correct matters in their country, Cubans had been fighting for a long time. But there was a greater force which prevented us from correcting things in our country. This force was the imperialist penetration of the United States in our homeland. It was this force which frustrated our full independence. It was this force which prevented Calixto García and his brave soldiers in Santiago de Cuba from succeeding. It was this force which prevented the liberation army from undertaking revolution in the early days of the republic. It was this force which determined the destiny of our homeland from the very first. It was this force which permitted the seizure of the natural resources and the best lands of our homeland by foreign interests. It was this force which appropriated the right to intervene in our country's affairs. It was this force which crushed so many revolutionary efforts. It was this force which was always associated with everything negative, everything reactionary, and everything abusive in our country. It was this force which prevented an earlier revolution in our homeland, and it is this force which is trying to prevent us from correcting things in our country now.”
Quotes
"Forty-five years have passed since the assault on the Moncada. Our country had been struggling for its independence and its rights for more than a century. Maceo, Gómez and other fighters struggled from 1868 until 1898. They suffered the humiliation of not being able to hoist their flag in this heroic city, of not even being able to enter it after 30 years of a self-sacrificing, admirable and heroic struggle. But the day came when those flags were hoisted and their ideas triumphed, ideas which were ever-changing and which never stopped evolving into something better. Every new idea can be a step towards the pinnacle of human progress.”
“Ideas are and always will be the most important weapon of all. Our experience has taught us that if one day our country were to be attacked and even occupied by powerful forces, each and every man or woman, wherever they may be, can be an army. When a combatant or group of combatants are left cut off or isolated, they can and should assume responsibility for their own actions and continue fighting”.