“Without socialism, Cuban families could not watch their children grow up healthy, educated and skilled, with no fear of them being lured into drugs or crime, or killed at school by their own classmates.Without socialism, Cuba would not be, as it is today, the most solid barrier in the hemisphere against drug trafficking, something that benefits even American society”.
Quotes
“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
"Even though, after the opportunistic intervention by the nascent U.S. empire, Cuba was ceded by the colonial power to the United States, and the nascent empire imposed a constitutional amendment on us that gave it the right to intervene, the Cuban people today are a free people, who defend their independence".
“We do not go around flattering any government, or asking for forgiveness or favors. We neither harbor in our hearts a single atom of fear. The history of our Revolution has proven its capacity to stand up to challenges, its capacity to fight and its capacity to resist whatever it has to; that is what has turned us into an invincible people. These are our principles. Our Revolution is based on ideas and persuasion, and not on the use of force”.
“The dark clouds on the horizon of the world today, will not prevent the Cubans from continuing to work restlessly on our wonderful social and cultural programs as we are persuaded that it is a human endeavor unparalleled in history”.
"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".
"La Ley de Ajuste Cubano no solo constituye una ley asesina, sino también una ley terrorista, de un terrorismo de la peor especie, que mata conscientemente y sin el menor remordimiento a niños inocentes".
"The Cuban Adjustment Act will become a major irrefutable moral argument. There will always be people everywhere willing to risk their lives to emigrate illegally, but there will never be any justification to encourage them to do it. That is a crime against humanity and an expression of hateful contempt for human life".
"We have offered our sincere cooperation in the struggle against drug traffic, human traffic and any other form of international crime. It is simply due to political arrogance that such cooperation has been either refused or limited to a minimum".
While many recognize the tremendous advances that our country has made in health care, education and sports, as if these were the only objectives, or the final objectives of our struggles or our lives, we would have to add: We are striving for something much more noble, we are striving for justice for all.
“Cuba has twice as many doctors per capita as all of the highest developed nations. No country has given, or is giving, more support to other peoples’ health care services, free of charge, than Cuba and no other has saved more lives. Thus, our people do not have, nor could it have, any inclination to become a bio-weapons producer.”
"In Cuba we have never cultivated hatred against the American people or blamed them for the aggressions perpetrated by the governments of that country. That would have run contrary to our political doctrines and our internationalist conscience, both well-proven throughout many years, and increasingly rooted in our ideas."