They won't be able to catch up with us (referring to the US and the social and
political progress achieved in Cuba). This is unbearable for them: their conceit, their pride, their arrogance cannot tolerate it. Well, they will have to put up with it! I promise you this on behalf of the Cuban people! Oh! They place high hopes - you hear this in the media over there, among many other hypocritical statements - on an imminent solution for all this. Yes, because the idiots are counting the seconds of life I have left, forgetting that I am a revolutionary leader who has had the privilege of living the years I have lived, despite the innumerable attempts on my life concocted by the United States. They have had an additional misfortune, as I seem to have been blessed with longevity genes. I am not worried, nor have I ever been worried, about questions of life or death.
Why do I claim to be at ease and ever more at ease? Simply because this Revolution does not depend on a single individual, nor two, nor three. In the White House, they speak as though they knew the date on which I am to die. Their talent for killing is well known. Should I be a bit more careful to make it harder for them? No one can say how many they have killed already. Someday the number will be known, when certain documents are declassified or someone reveals the information. But it is best not to waste time on such matters.
One of the participants of the momentous gathering (White House meeting) declared: “We are seeing the regime grow weaker every day. It depends almost exclusively on the personality of one individual. This individual is getting older every day and his health is less than perfect.” It is really funny. To discover, at this point in time, that a person gets older by the minute deserves a Nobel Prize. And what an honour this is, what a flattering distinction!
I worry that this distinction will continue to grow until it bumps against the moon, the honour of making one individual responsible for their frustrations, their failures, their defeats, of the unheard-of-fact that the super-powerful empire should have clashed against the supposed attributes of one individual, ascribing to him what stems from the unyielding spirit and extraordinary heroism of his people. Their arrogance blinds them and their rage prevents them from seeing or understanding what has become of the former semi-colony where 90% of people were illiterate or semi-illiterate and whose levels of culture act today like a barrier against the lack of common sense, the impotence and the ignorance of those who govern the empire.
We began the struggle against Batista's army and armed forces, a total of 85,000 men, with but a few rifles, only seven. The story is well known: dignity, patriotism, our people's ability to think, meditate, analyse and adapt itself to any kind of war.
We even lived through the experience of being in the sights of hundreds of nuclear missiles in 1962. This country has millions of fighters and millions of weapons, and it knows how to put them to use in case of an aggression. The brainy strategists behind the policy of intimidation, blockade, economic strangulation and aggression against Cuba would do well to sit down and meditate for a few minutes on how things would unfold in this country, which is not an easy target, for several reasons: they know that the price would be impossibly high; they know that the American people would never support such an action because, despite all of the lies and pretexts used for deception, it is ever more opposed to illegalities, arbitrary actions and wars of conquest; they know that the American people are ever more aware of the sheer nonsense and falsity of their government.
The dead one can still do a few things before giving up the ghost! But another shameless bit of nonsense has been said. The small clique got together and an imbecile made a public declaration saying that they were doing everything needed to bring the quickest possible end to the Revolution. That it was not simply a question of bringing this about, but rather of preventing another revolutionary leader from governing the country at all costs, that they would make sure of this, in clear reference to a military intervention.
It would seem they want to install the Miami mob here, or who knows what scoundrels, what criminals, what degenerates, and hope to govern this indomitable people. They just do not get it; they either smoke marijuana - I cannot explain it to myself any other way - or they spend their days knocking back God knows what strange cocktails. They speak as though they truly believed that, come tomorrow, this Revolution will fall to pieces, that this country cannot put up a fight. They do not realise what cause, what reality and what forces move the Cuban Revolution!
We make mistakes in our country, I am not denying this. And I am constantly denouncing, warning, urging people to think, demanding corrections. We know our people very well. The enemy does not know it will find millions of leaders, that it will find an entire people, even children, transformed into leaders; that it will find a political and revolutionary culture with no parallel in any other country. It will find that no political process has ever had more popular support than that enjoyed by this Revolution. They, the enemies, will finally come to the realisation that Cuba does not preserve its peace and tranquillity through the use of force, water cannon, men dressed in uniforms like diving-suits, or the use of tear gas or seven-foot horses, or through violence.
Our government can boast the unparalleled record of never once having used force against our people. They know this to be the case, just as they know that no one has ever been tortured or been the victim of a death squad here, and that such conditions do not exist in Cuba. They know that there have never been illegal executions here, nor any political assassination in the course of 45 years of Revolution…..
You should know that during the disturbance we had in 1994, that 5th of August, not a single police officer, nor a fire truck or anything of the sort, made a single move on the crowd. I was there personally, in the front seat of a jeep and, having strictly forbidden the nine men that accompanied me from using their firearms, I got off near a group of really disgruntled and marginal people, who had been promised by the official counter-revolutionary radio in the United States that they would all be fetched by boats. They were thirsty for provocation, they were irritated and they began to throw stones. No one made a single move, because the first thing I did was instructing the pertinent authorities not to send in the army or the police. People began to come out from everywhere and the very people who had been throwing stones began to applaud. We walked to the port entrance, it was teeming with people, God knows where they came from, and we walked down the whole length of the seafront area. It is the only disturbance we have had in 45 years. No shots were fired, no tear gas was released, no beatings were given, there were no wounded. This is the strength of morals, the strength of dignity, the strength of principles. This is my first public declaration about my personal involvement in that event.
Perhaps, this is the reason that they believe the Revolution will crumble 15 minutes after my death. They are unaware, or pretend to be unaware, of the millions of knowledgeable people in this country, people who are not illiterate, who know more about politics - much more, infinitely more - than those gentlemen over there. They forget the people who know of human psychology, who know the tradition of patriotism of our people, who are capable of doing what our heroic comrades - prisoners of the empire do in the belly of the beast (referring to the Miami Five imprisoned in the United States), who know that this country has hundreds of thousands of men who have participated, of their own will, in dangerous internationalist missions that took them to the most precarious of places, that has 300,000 professors and teachers and dozens of thousands of people who would volunteer to teach in any corner of the world. When aid was being sent to Nicaragua, we had 30,000 volunteers. When one or two of these volunteers were killed, we had 100,000 volunteers. This is what our people are all about: one Cuban is killed and you have more volunteers to go and fight. One Cuban is killed, or a grave injustice is committed against one Cuban, and you will have millions willing to give their lives, if necessary, to demand justice or rectify the wrong.
They know, or should know, what Cuba is all about rather than going around talking nonsense…… wasting their time in these cute little White House gatherings that do not intimidate us.
We are happy for having created a model, we are happy for having demonstrated what man can do, that justice is possible, that the intelligence with which man first enters the world, properly cultivated, can reach heights hitherto considered utopian in the history of humanity. We can be happy for having turned a utopia into a reality.
It is with this spirit that we read the nasty declarations of those repulsive creatures that gather to hatch their criminal designs. When they receive the pleasant news, equally pleasant for me, that the life to which I have devoted my modest efforts has come to an end, millions of Cubans every bit as revolutionary as we are, much better educated and prepared than us, a united and battle-hardened people will carry on with the work of the Revolution.
Long live our nation! Long live life! Long live culture! Long live education! Long live the work and example of our people! Ever onward to victory! |
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