“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”.
Quotes
“It is essential that we believe in work consciousness. Because capitalism created the consciousness of the exploitation of work, not in the consciousness of the need to work for the well-being of society.”
“If there is something we are sure of, is that never again the predatory eagle symbolizing the empire will perch on these columns which were turned into a monument of what the empire was in our country and what will happen sooner or later, to its desire for enslaving the world.”
"Let it be the merits, the ability, the creative spirit and what man can contribute to the well-being of humanity that determine their differences and not theft, speculation or the exploitation of the weaker. A humane spirit should truly be proclaimed, not with hypocritical words but with deeds"
“Once and for all, they crushed the absurd idea that the suffering endured, and the blood and tears spilled throughout almost a hundred years of struggle for independence and justice against Spanish colonialism and its slavery-based model of exploitation, and later against imperialist domination and the corrupt and bloody governments imposed on Cuba by the United States, were to serve for the rebuilding of a neocolonialist, capitalist and bourgeois society.We did it at the exact and precise moment in history, not a minute before and not a minute later, and we were daring enough to attempt it”.
Speech delivered by Fidel Castro, on the 40th Anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution
"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".
“Developed capitalism, modern imperialism and neoliberal globalization, as systems of world exploitation, have been imposed on the world, as has the basic lack of the principles of justice demanded for centuries by thinkers and philosophers for all human beings, yet still very far from being a reality on Earth”.