Speeches
Listen, hold on for just a bit longer, because today you will be lucky and I won’t be speaking at great length.
The most up-to-date and dramatic conception of terrorism involving sophisticated techniques and high powered explosives was created and developed by US governments to destroy our revolution. Such terrorism has continued unrelenting, both inside and outside Cuba, for more than four decades.
Before concluding I should say that the author of the report, Gabriel García Márquez, was consulted about it being published. Just yesterday I sent a message to Europe in which I said the following:"It is indispensable that I discuss the subject of the message I sent with you about terrorist activities against our country. This will in no way damage the addressee and much less will it affect your literary glory."
I would have liked to have joined you at this truly important meeting in Qatar, a sister nation to which I am bound by a profound feeling of friendship and the fraternal ties we have established with its people, its government and its head of state.
However, other pressing matters have not allowed me to attend this meeting. We are facing up to the US government efforts to grant safe haven to a notorious and confessed terrorist, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice who is responsible, among many atrocious acts of terror, for the midair bombing of a Cuban commercial aircraft and the…
I can assure you that we won that battle as well, I can assure you of this, because the fighting spirit wouldn’t desist, our stance wouldn’t desist, our peaceful but efficient weapons wouldn’t desist, our truths wouldn’t desist, our messages to the world wouldn’t desist, and they didn’t desist. This is where the slogan, Battle of Ideas, came from, because it was a veritable battle of ideas.
Most honourable collective who have made what we are celebrating today possible.
As everybody already knows, 345 pioneers who were in the 7th grade on 6 September 2002 when the José Martí Experimental Junior Secondary School was inaugurated are graduating.
They are the first to finish ninth grade in this school, educated using the new conception of a general, all round teacher who works with 15 adolescents, accompanies them from 7th to 9th grade and who has been friend, counsellor and guide of each one of them.
I thank our generous and heroic people for the privilege of commemorating this anniversary of the assault on the “Moncada” and “Carlos Manuel de Cespedes” garrisons when so much time has passed since those events took place. It could be that no one has even received such a great honor. It would be unforgivable not to keep in mind that more than 70 percent of the Cubans who today keep the Revolution alive had not even been born back then. They took the banners which, I think, they will never drop, from those who gave their lives in that action. I dare to say thank you on my behalf and on…
Let us march forward! Forward, all of you invincible standard-bearers of such a noble profession, in demonstration of the fact that all the gold in the world cannot subdue the conscience of a true guardian of health and life, who is ready to go to any country where its services are required, convinced that a better world is possible!
These remarks had to be written in a rush, as sometimes happens when things occur quickly and unexpectedly. I’ll explain the reasons for this.
Yesterday, a press conference, the kind typically held in the US State Department, was held. The Department’s spokesman, Sean McCormack, participated.
I will read the spokesman’s declarations verbatim.
The “Henry Reeve” Brigade has been created, and whatever tasks you undertake in any part of the world or our own homeland, you shall always bear the glorious distinction of having responded to the call to assistance our brothers and sisters in the United States, and that nation’s humblest children especially, with courage and dignity.
We are offering to train professionals who are prepared to struggle against death. We shall prove that there is a solution to many of the planet’s tragedies. We are proving that man can and must better himself. We are proving the value of conscience and ethics. We are offering life.
The revolution has given the Young Communists League the huge political task, of contributing to the success of the art instructors’ program, which had a false start in the past but is fruit of our dreams for a better and more educated society. The Young Communists League is responsible for coordinating the work of the “José Martí” Brigade. It must ensure the quality of its work, that it improves itself constantly and that its members honor their commitments. Supporting the work of YCL members who coordinate the Brigade efforts at the municipal and provincial levels is a top priority for this…