Fidel
Soldado de las Ideas
It is for me a source of special satisfaction that we can meet again, this time in the land of Errol Barrow, who was a very dear friend of Cuba. Three years have passed since we commemorated in Havana the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the four Caribbean countries that were then independent, a significant and seminal event Cubans will never forget.
After a year of tenacious efforts in preparation and training, for reasons totally beyond our control we found ourselves compelled to cancel our athletes’ participation in a sports event in which our country has always participated, over several decades, right from its inception. Even in the days when the Cuban delegation was a mere handful of athletes who, with courage and patriotism, won a few medals as the glorious forerunners of the sporting power our nation has now become, the product of the justice of a great revolutionary endeavor and the incomparable heroism of our people.
I have not come to discuss politics or the blockade, droughts, hurricanes or calamities of any kind, because I take them for granted (Laughter). I have come to share a few jokes with you, partly at the expense of the words by our very dear and really highly appreciated Minister of Foreign Trade, without blaming him at all for the torture that we have to go through here every year.
However, it is my duty to inform you that, just like in previous occasions when I have traveled to these summits, terrorist groups organized, funded and directed from the United States of America by the Cuban American National Foundation, an instrument of imperialism and the extreme right wing in that country, have been dispatched to Panama intent on my physical elimination. They are already in this city where they have introduced weapons and explosives.
Anxiety was running high. First there was the public news of the uprising on November 30, which was supposed to take place after our arrival, not before it. The fact that it happened in reverse was the result of the irrepressible energy of the combatants in Santiago, and the 48-hour delay in the long and hazardous journey of 1235 miles. Then a man fell overboard into the dark, turbulent seas in the early morning hours of December 2. He could not be left abandoned, even if it meant stealing those extra minutes of life or death from the already scarce time. These circumstances served to heighten even more our impatience to arrive before dawn at the exact point selected on the longed-for coasts of our homeland.
I remember that at the very beginning of the Cuban Revolution, in the midst of all the turmoil, a man with indigenous features and a determined and inquisitive look, who was already famous and admired by many of our intellectuals, proposed to paint my portrait.
The name of Cuba will go down in history for ever because of what it has done and is still doing for humanity in the fields of education, culture and health in the most difficult period that our species has known. Our country is blockaded by the only superpower and almost blockaded by Europe, but these together will not be able to defeat the Cuban revolution, among other things because together they do not have and will never have either the human capital or the moral values to do what socialist Cuba has been able to do.
I promised to say a few words following Comrade Miret’s intervention to explain my absence from this forum.Actually, a great number of activities accumulated in the last few days. There were visiting heads of government that we should receive and converse with as well as other personalities, not all of them reported by the press.
Something special joins us to Algeria. When we were fighting in the mountains, the Algerians were fighting in the wilayas. When the Cuban Revolution triumphed on January 1, 1959, the heroic people of Algeria had still not achieved victory. They were waging a heroic and unequal battle against the formidable forces of a power that had accomplished brilliant feats in the military history of Europe.
On a day like today, exactly 30 years ago, four small countries of the English-speaking Caribbean, having recently achieved their long desired independence, decided to establish diplomatic relations with Cuba. Prior to this, from the very dawn of the Cuban Revolution, they had shown their sympathy and respect for the process we were undertaking. As early as January 1959, the local government of what was still the British colony of Guyana, led by Dr. Cheddi Jagan, leader of the People’s Progressive Party, had declared its solidarity with the Cuban Revolution.
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