All photos by Revolution Studios
Speech delivered by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the closing of the International Meeting of Solidarity with Cuba and Against Imperialism, at the Palace of Conventions, on May 2, 2024, "Year 66 of the Revolution".
Dear friends, defenders of international solidarity,
Sisters and Brothers of the Cuban Revolution:
We want to thank all of you for being here in Cuba. We thank you for your participation in this meeting, in which we share the same sentiment and the same commitment: that of human solidarity, which is also for you, with your expressions, solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and with the struggle of the peoples for their true emancipation.
Celebrating International Workers' Day, as we did yesterday in Cuba, together with representatives of the working class and of the solidarity movements and friends of Cuba is a great honor and it is a gesture of courage that our heroic people thank all of you for.
It is also an honor for the Cuban people to have the significant presence and participation of young people in the International May Day Brigade and in the trade union delegations that visit us.
More than 1,000 delegates participated in this meeting, which was part of the activities to commemorate International Workers' Day, and 70% of them are arriving in Cuba for the first time. That means that Cuba continues to be a benchmark and meeting place for those of us who aspire to a better world; This means that the family of solidarity is also growing; And that means that in the new generations, too, the feeling of solidarity is germinating (Applause).
These have been intense days. We recently held two days of wide-ranging debate of analysis of the exclusionary and unjust International Economic Order and also on the proposals for a much-needed New International Economic Order.
Yesterday, friends and organizations in solidarity with Cuba, Canada, Uruguay, the United States, Argentina and Ecuador were also honoured and awarded. To all of you we reiterate our congratulations and our thanks.
We also salute the work of the Latin American and Caribbean Continental Network of Solidarity with Cuba and Just Causes. the approval of more than 100 resolutions against the blockade in the United States; the 40th anniversary of an uninterrupted friendship with the Australian Friends of Solidarity, who will visit us in December this year; and also the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Che Guevara Brigade, present here (Applause).
We acknowledge the valuable work of trade unions and solidarity organisations in Europe and the United States to publicise the results of the International Tribunal against the blockade, which took place in Brussels in November 2023.
We emphasize the importance of the continental meetings of solidarity with Cuba, which are planned for this year in the People's Republic of China for the Asia-Pacific region, and in France for the European area.
We are sure that these events will also be scenarios of vital importance for the continuity and strengthening of the solidarity movement with Cuba.
In the same way, we are grateful for the demonstrations, caravans of cars and bicycles, the sit-ins and other public actions that take place every weekend, every month, in different cities of the world, led by you, demanding the lifting of the intensified blockade and the exclusion of Cuba from the list of countries that allegedly support terrorism.
We recognize the importance of continuing to promote the movement of international brigades and the visits of groups to Cuba, because there is no better way to know our reality than by sharing it with us, as you have done in these days, living our resistance, our creativity and our spirit of struggle and victory.
At the same time, every friend who visits us is further evidence that Cuba is not alone or isolated, but that it continues to beat in the chests of millions of women and men around the world.
We appreciate the generous efforts you make to combine solidarity actions with cooperation projects. From here we reaffirm that Cuba will continue to raise the flags of peace, solidarity and cooperation with the peoples.
The three declarations adopted today by acclamation also represent the sentiments of the Cuban people, of its workers and peasants, of its intellectuals and artists, of its youth and students, and constitute a commitment for us.
The work in the three commissions reflects the understanding of the attendees about the global scenario and about the situation in Cuba. At the same time, it reflected the agreement that exists in the face of the main demands of the friends of the island.
Yesterday our people gave a demonstration of unity and discipline in all the municipalities of the country. Economic conditions forced us to celebrate the historic International Workers' Day with rallies and not with the traditional and massive parade in Havana; but in almost all the provinces and municipalities, despite the guidelines, there were parades (Applause). This has a lot to do with revolutionary fervor, and it was a day of extraordinary joy.
It was also a worthy tribute to the legacy of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, paradigm of the solidarity of the Cuban people, in the context of the 65th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution.
In this way, the May Day rallies and parades, led by the people, in which you, international delegates, participated, are also a clear sign of unity, commitment and support for the Revolution, that Cuba lives and works and that we are going all out.
In the face of the enemy's media and subversive actions, whose objective is to provoke a regime change in Cuba, the vast majority of the humble and working people have demonstrated, once again this May Day, in squares and cities, that they are willing to defend their independence, their sovereignty, their right to live in peace, without blockades, without sanctions and without surrender, without selling out or kneeling, without renouncing their history and their principles.
I was struck by the fact that today the cables of the international agencies, as always, with their media intoxication, manipulated the number, the content and the success of the May Day celebration in Cuba. Some of them said: thousands of Cubans participated in very small, non-traditional events.
We have to make it very clear to the imperialists that thousands of Cubans did not take part: more than four million Cubans took part! (Applause.)
I believe that all of us are convinced of the complexity of the international and regional situation, which moves us to concern and also summons us to action.
This event takes place at a time of extreme global complexity: there are threats to world peace, war is the language used by hegemonic powers to resolve conflicts; poverty is growing; the impacts of climate change are increasing; there is a depletion of natural resources, and a growing inequality between rich and poor, which explains and expresses the limits to which the current International Economic Order has reached. The current international economic order must be changed, and this change must also be promoted through unity and solidarity.
We must constantly analyze the contradictions of this world full of uncertainties that we must change.
In the midst of the most colossal scientific and technical development of all time, the world has gone back three decades in terms of reducing extreme poverty, with levels of hunger not seen since 2005.
Eight hundred million people in the world suffer from hunger; 760 million people, mostly women, cannot read or write.
The so-called Third World has more than 84 million children out of school; more than 660 million people are without electricity, and only 36 per cent of the population uses the Internet in the least developed countries and landlocked developing nations.
By turning to financial markets, nations in the South have faced interest rates up to eight times higher than those of developed countries. About one-fifth of developing economies liquidated more than 15% of their international foreign exchange reserves to cushion pressure on national currencies.
In the year 2022, twenty-five developing nations had to devote more than a fifth of their total revenues to servicing public debt, amounting to a new form of slavery. That year alone, global military spending, as mentioned here, reached $2.24 trillion.
Achieving inclusive universal participation in the digital economy will require investing at least $428 billion in our countries by 2030. This demand could be met by just 19% of this annual expenditure on armaments.
The International Monetary Fund's financial support to the least developed and other low-income countries, from 2020 to the end of November 2022, did not exceed the equivalent of what the Coca-Cola company has spent on its brand advertising alone in the last eight years; meanwhile, less than 2% of the already deficient Official Development Assistance has been dedicated to science, technology and innovation capacities in our countries.
According to ECLAC [the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, ed.], in 2024 the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will continue on the path of low growth, and all subregions will grow less than in 2023. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we will continue to be the most unequal region on the planet.
There are 183 million inhabitants of this region who qualify as poor, equivalent to 29% of the population, and of these, 72 million live in extreme poverty. It is deeply painful that half of these figures are children and adolescents.
Job creation between 2014 and 2023 has been the lowest in the region since the 1950s. Of the 292 million people employed, one in two are in informal jobs and four in ten have incomes below the minimum wage. The gender gap in employment and income widens.
Four out of five children under the age of ten in Latin America and the Caribbean cannot read or write. And these are not data invented by Cuba, they are in ECLAC's preliminary balance sheet of the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean, published in December 2023 in ECLAC's Social Panorama of Latin America and the Caribbean; in the United Nations World Economic Situation and Outlook Report 2024, published in January 2024; and in The Crossroads of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, a report by UNICEF and the World Bank dating from March 2023.
That is why our peoples have a historic thirst for justice. And, in the face of so much uncertainty and despair deployed by the capitalist elites, we need more and more certainty and confidence in the triumph of our ideas, in the triumph of unity and in the triumph of solidarity.
Far from globalizing solidarity, friendship and respect, the world resorts to war, sanctions, coercive measures, pressures, blockades, walls and, above all, war and genocide. This shows that capitalism has no answer to the current problems of humanity.
There we have the case of Palestine. In some way and on more than one occasion, we have all pointed out the dangers of the impunity with which Israel acts, thanks to the complicity and support of the United States Government and despite the serious risks of regionalization of the conflict in the Middle East, a serious threat to international peace and security. Only an imperial mentality, an interventionist purpose, can deny that peace and stability in that region depend, in the first place, on a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which includes the creation of a sovereign and independent Palestinian State with the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and guaranteeing the right of return of refugees to their land.
Together with you, we demand the immediate entry of the State of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations.
We cannot be indifferent to the daily crime that has been committed against the comradely Palestinian people for 75 years. Nothing can justify the brutal Zionist escalation of the last six months, the serious violations of International Humanitarian Law, the war crimes and crimes against humanity that have turned a tiny strip of inhabited land into a training ground for a bloodthirsty army.
The United Nations Security Council must fulfill its mandate and put an end to the impunity of Israel, the occupying power, before the questionable credibility of its resolutions, besieged by the US imperial veto, finally disappears into the rubble of Gaza.
Cuba has always stood in solidarity with the Palestinian cause. Today hundreds of Palestinian students study in our country, with them we have a permanent exchange, with them our people have paraded in front of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba demanding an end to the aggression against Palestine. Together with them we have shared conversations, debates and also public demonstrations.
We have told these young people that they are also children of Cuba (Applause), and all Cubans feel like fathers and mothers of these young Palestinians who study with us, who also share in the daily life of the Cuban people. We do everything possible to forge them as good professionals, as good patriots, so that in the future they will be useful to their people and their cause. In all of them we increasingly observe determination and commitment to the Palestinian cause, and that is why we are sure that from here, from Cuba, they are also part of the present and the future of Palestine. Long live free Palestine! (Shouts of "Hurrah!")
In the same way, we express our support for the cause of the Saharawi people, who can continue to count on a faithful and loyal friend in Cuba.
We support the cause of the Syrian people.
We also express our support for the young people who are demonstrating today at the universities of the United States and who are being repressed and brutalized by the police.
With regard to our region of Latin America and the Caribbean, it is well known that the Monroe Doctrine, two centuries after it was enunciated, continues to threaten the destiny of what Martí called Our America.
Imperialism persists in its project of domination over our lands and finances and promotes violence, destabilization, and increasingly engenders hate speech, attacks leftist and progressive forces and seeks to erase the history of struggle and resistance of the Latin American and Caribbean peoples.
Despite the sanctions and coercive measures imposed by the United States, to which are added the pressures and blackmail of our nations, the nature of the revolutionary processes in Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua were preserved; the governments of Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Honduras, governments headed by López Obrador, Lula, Petro and Xiomara (Applause), together with their peoples, contributed to maintaining the correlation of forces in favor of progressivism in our region.
The right wing, however, has shown a capacity for reaction to hinder the management of governments that assumed mandates with leftist social agendas, and its strong opposition overthrew some governments and continues to torpedo others.
In some countries the progressive forces were unable to return to or maintain executive power, and the effects are visible with governments servile to the United States, potentially very dangerous for peace and stability in Latin America and the Caribbean, because they are countries and governments that have opened their borders to the U.S. Southern Command.
The United States has opted for the erosion of progressivism and the deepening of divisions within the alliances to hinder its advance and prepare right-wing alternatives with a chance of returning to power.
Our dear Caribbean brothers and sisters, who stoically resist the pressures of the United States to divide them and achieve the breakdown of their cherished and historic unity, deserve a special mention in this situation.
We reiterate our strongest condemnation of the violent raid by the Ecuadorian police on the Mexican embassy in Quito on April 5. This flagrant violation of international law, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, the right to asylum and the sovereignty of beloved Mexico is absolutely unjustifiable.
We urge that former Vice President Jorge Glas be restored to his pre-assault status in the Mexican Embassy and that his case be brought back on track in accordance with international law.
Ten years after the adoption in Havana of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, we call for respect and strict compliance with its postulates: that the region continue to be internationally recognized for its commitment to regional peace and stability. That is a matter of the utmost importance for the present and future of peoples.
We congratulate the Venezuelan people for the development of the new electoral process in a climate of peace and in accordance with their Constitution, for the fulfillment of the electoral schedule despite the threats and actions of the right wing in complicity with the United States. The assassination attempt against Nicolás Maduro, our brother Venezuelan president, remains present, an issue on which we have expressed our full denunciation.
Some thirty electoral processes developed in the twenty-four years of the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution show the credibility and strength of the Venezuelan electoral system.
We reiterate once again Cuba's rejection of external interference and impositions that seek to influence the functioning of Venezuelan institutions and affect the stability and tranquility that characterize the society of that sister country.
We express our recognition and full solidarity support to our Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, who are resisting the media siege and the interventionist attempts of imperialism and its allies to break their constitutional order.
To the Plurinational State of Bolivia we extend our support and solidarity in the defense of its sovereignty over its natural resources and in the face of destabilizing attempts.
The sister Republic of Haiti is facing a new and very serious crisis. The international community owes a great debt to its people, who were subjected to reprehensible punishments by imperial powers and have been unjustly forced to pay a high price for leading the continent's first social revolution.
Haiti needs genuine, sufficient and effective assistance and cooperation for development, not aggression and interference in its internal affairs. The Haitian people have the right to find a peaceful, sustainable and lasting solution to the challenges they face, based on full respect for their self-determination, sovereignty and independence.
Cuba has offered fraternal and selfless cooperation to Haiti in areas of great impact for its people: even in the current circumstances, we maintain a medical brigade there that provides services to the children of that people in need.
We also endorse the just demands for reparation and compensation for the damage caused by slavery and colonialism of our Caribbean brothers and sisters, who need and deserve fair, special and differentiated treatment.
Of course, we strongly support the right of the Puerto Rican people to independence. And we express our solidarity with the situation that the beloved Argentine people are experiencing today.
What can I tell you about Cuba, if you know it? We are not exempt from the consequences of the multidimensional crisis of capitalism today. Our situation is further aggravated by the economic, commercial and financial blockade that the United States has applied for more than six decades, intensified to the extreme by the administrations of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Both administrations have tried to suffocate our economy while allocating millions of dollars to subversive plans and media campaigns aimed at breaking national unity around the Revolution and the Party.
We believe that there are two components to this imperial purpose of destroying the Cuban Revolution: economic asphyxiation and media intoxication.
With regard to economic asphyxiation, we can say that it has its references in the Mallory Memorandum of April 6, 1960, in which they claimed that in order to overthrow the Cuban Revolution it was necessary that there be a policy of maximum pressure that would cause the economic asphyxiation of the country, which would then lead to popular discontent, which would complicate the social situation and this would lead to an explosion that would cause the Revolution to fall.
This has worsened in these times, as you have all denounced, and it has worsened even more when we were placed on a list of countries that supposedly support terrorism, which you know is not true: Cuba supports solidarity. Cuba does not send armed forces or troops to any country in the world to attack; we did it in Angola at the request of the African countries and it was to put an end to apartheid and to achieve independence together with the Africans of those countries (prolonged applause). The troops we send to the world are troops of doctors, teachers and internationalist aid workers! (Prolonged applause).
You have been able to appreciate, when you have exchanged with labor centers, in cities and camps that you have visited, the difficulties we face and the creative and determined effort of our people to overcome the difficulties, that keeps intact the will to continue building an increasingly just, prosperous and sustainable socialist society. An endeavour that is given extraordinary encouragement by the countless expressions of solidarity of millions of friends around the world, like you.
As for media intoxication, we can say that there is a well-orchestrated and articulated campaign by the U.S. government with the international media, and especially on social networks, to discredit the Cuban Revolution. That is why social networks also today are a combat trench, and a mobile phone to defend ourselves in that trench also becomes a rifle.
These networks are equally dangerous, in which Cuba is attacked and there is digital murder, virtual lynching, assassination of reputations and leadership; there is a whole surveillance capitalism.
It must be said that social media has become the biggest factory of hate and platform for cultural colonization by the United States. There is cyberbullying, the inducement of violence, the exacerbation of individualism and narcissism; it is filled with slander, perjury, defamation. There is an exploitation of people's imagination and feelings, and, as a famous Brazilian academic – also mentioned by Frei Betto in a conference in January of this year in Cuba – says, all those who are users of social networks become at the same time free labor, free raw material and finally merchandise, because all our data is sold as a commodity; Therefore, it is also a sophisticated system of exploitation. That is why we have to educate our peoples in the ethical use of social networks to defend just causes and also to promote knowledge, solidarity, respect and cooperation.
In this campaign of media intoxication there is already a script that has been written: protests are called, then it is claimed that there is police repression, that there are political prisoners, that the government does not take care of the people and that regime change is necessary. These are the concepts of Unconventional Warfare applied by the Government of the United States against Cuba and other countries in the area.
In view of this, we have made it a priority to continue strengthening our unity based on the call made by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz in his speech on January 1st, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, when he said that unity was the most precious thing we had and that it had to be taken care of like the apple of our eye.
How do we try to strengthen unity? Seeking more participation of our people in all processes and decision-making. That is why we are constantly encouraging the creation of spaces where the people raise their concerns, criticize, propose and from there decisions are made; spaces where, in addition to proposing solutions, they participate in the implementation of those solutions, and spaces where the people can take popular control of everything we do together and in which we participate, because by working in this way we can face adversity; by working in this way, we overcome the challenges imposed on us by the blockade and the policy of maximum pressure imposed by the United States; and if by working in this way we achieve results and the results are shared among all, we are strengthening unity.
We have also made it a priority to perfect ideological work, and for us the concept of ideological work means, above all, what is done well in favor of the Revolution and in favor of our people. That is why we are very insistent that all institutions function properly, that all programs move forward.
We have proposed a system of work in which the main leaders of the Revolution are visiting all the provinces of the country every month, and each month we visit a different municipality in the country. That's when we can appreciate the places that work well and are inspiring, because in those places the collectives of workers and the leaders, despite the intensified blockade, are able to do things in a better way, with more efficiency, with more commitment, and those become inspirational.
We also visit the places that work badly, and we try to establish a matrix between what works well, so that it is inspiring, and what works badly, so that, inspired by this, it moves forward, and that what works well becomes a rule and not an exception. In recent months we have also been able to appreciate how we have an intermediate position where things that worked or had a bad performance last year are now beginning to move towards a good performance, contributing to the people and to the Revolution.
Here, then, we propose the concept of creative resistance. The issue is not just to resist: the issue is to resist, to grow, to overcome difficulties and to move forward, and not to condemn the economic and social development of our country. As we did in the pandemic, when with Cuban vaccines, with the participation of all our people, with our health system, we were able to face that pandemic at a time of intensified blockade; when we were denied the right to medical oxygen; when they denied the right to sell us lung ventilators and to be able to acquire vaccines, and those things were done by the Cuban people with their talent, their will, their determination and their commitment.
We are convinced, and we appreciate it every day in our exchanges with the population, that this country has enough dignity, talent and will to rise with its own efforts above the siege and, moreover, to overcome it.
A third priority is the implementation of a group of economic measures that will gradually lead us, in the midst of this complex situation, to macroeconomic stabilization and also to a whole group of actions that will allow us to strengthen the national economy, national productions, the best relationship between the state sector and the non-state sector of the economy in accordance with the National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030. And here everything will depend on our ability to properly execute and implement the measures already announced and others that will also be applied in these times, which are not at all part of a neoliberal package, as American imperialism has tried to introduce.
The first measure taken was to raise income in the Health and Education sectors. No neo-liberal program ever begins raising incomes in sectors that are very committed to society and which are so important for the life and education of our people.
In all the measures that are being applied, the criterion is always that they are applied when the conditions are created and when the compensation measures are in place to prevent them from affecting the sectors that may be in a situation of greater vulnerability. That approach is not capitalist, that approach is not neoliberal: that approach is a social justice approach that can only be achieved with socialist construction.
The fourth priority is the call within our society, with our people, for a process of reflection, debate and analysis to distinguish deviations and negative tendencies, which in these times of economic crisis have proliferated in our society, in order to counteract, eliminate and overcome them. All these are tasks, priorities of the first order that lead to the critical observance and firm struggle of all Cuban revolutionaries, of all our people, and we have supported them with processes of popular discussion.
We are developing three processes that began with the militancy of the Party, but that are now in all the workers' collectives and will reach the community level, where we are reflecting on the speech of the Army General on the 65th Anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution; on the economic measures announced by the Prime Minister at the last session of the National Assembly last December 2023, and also on material prepared by the Party Central Committee regarding negative trends.
Dear Sisters and Brothers of Solidarity,
Cuba has resisted more than 60 years of a genocidal blockade, simultaneous with terrorist attacks and countless actions to destroy the Revolution.
Today we are living through one of the most difficult times in the face of the strengthening of economic, commercial and financial persecution, but the unity of our people keeps us firm in the defense of our social conquests. That is the legacy of Fidel and Raul and it is our commitment to the present and the future!
Our struggle will continue day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, until the U.S. government lifts this cruel, immoral and unjustifiable policy.
Our people deserve to live in peace and in conditions of equality, to really demonstrate what we are capable of advancing and building in Cuban socialism (Applause and shouts of "Long live Cuba!").
That is why we face every day with the impetus of struggle and work and with the experience gained in more than 150 years of struggle, together with the exemplary Historical Generation headed by the current leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, who in commemorating the 65th Anniversary of the triumph of 1959 has praised, above so many virtues of the brave Cuban people, the sacred unity that is at the basis of every triumph over the neighboring empire that despises us.
Raúl, in that same speech, transmitted to us a synthesis of the lessons he received from sharing the years of revolutionary struggle with his brother Fidel, and in this way he expressed to us that unity was very important and decisive in the present moments – and this is how we are defending it; do not lose your serenity and confidence in triumph, no matter how insurmountable the obstacles, powerful the enemies or great the dangers, and learn and draw strength from each setback until it becomes victory.
From Martí, Fidel, Raúl and Che we learned the value of solidarity; We learned to give solidarity and to be grateful for the solidarity you give us.
From here we declare ourselves for a No to war, to hegemony, to interference, to coercive measures, to aggressions, to the erection of walls and blockades.
Long live friendship, peace, solidarity and unity among our peoples and all the workers of the world! (Shouts of "Hurrah!")
In the struggle for peace, solidarity and cooperation, you can always count on Cuba's modest but decisive contribution! (Applause.)
Until Victory Always! (Shouts of "Always!")
(Standing ovation.)
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