Compatriots:
We extend our gratitude to the admirable personalities accompanying us today, and our recognition to the workers, students and all of the people filling this square.
We are living through days of intense and crucial battle. For five months we have been fighting restlessly. Millions of our compatriots, almost without exception, have participated in this fight. Our consciousness and the ideas sown by the
Revolution throughout more than four decades have been our weapons.
Revolution means to have a sense of history; it is
changing everything that must be changed; it is full
equality and freedom; it is being treated and
treating others like human beings; it is achieving
emancipation by ourselves and through our own
efforts; it is challenging powerful dominant forces
from within and without the social and national
milieu; it is defending the values in which we believe
at the cost of any sacrifice; it is modesty, selflessness,
altruism, solidarity and heroism; it is fighting with
courage, intelligence and realism; it is never lying or
violating ethical principles; it is a profound conviction
that there is no power in the world that can crush
the power of truth and ideas. Revolution means
unity; it is independence, it is fighting for our
dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world, which
is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism
and our internationalism.
In real and concrete terms, for 41 years now we have confronted a neighbor located just 90 miles away, the most
formidable power that has ever existed in a world that has become unipolar and hegemonic.
It is amazing, though, because nobody in Cuba had asked the U.S. government for forgiveness nor had anyone asked it to put an end to this blockade, which is becoming increasingly unsustainable
and is definitely crumbling because it is obsolete and it is ever more costly in political and moral terms for the United States.
The forefathers who instituted our homeland’s heroic tradition of challenging the United States’ two-hundred-year old dream of annexing Cuba taught us that rights are demanded, not begged for. Nothing will be easy with regard to Cuba in the future. Forty years resisting all sorts of aggressions and injustices, and
the war of ideas we have been waging ceaselessly throughout five long months have made us much stronger.
We will fight tirelessly against the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act; against the cruel Helms-Burton Act,
whose sponsors deserve to stand trial for the crime of genocide, according to the conventions signed in 1948 and 1949
by both Cuba and the United States; and against the Act whose namesake, Robert Torricelli, is an ally of the Miami terrorist
mob.
We will fight against the blockade and the economic war that our people have endured for almost half a century. We
will fight against all subversive activities carried out from within the United States, including terrorist acts aimed at destabilizing our nation, and we will fight for the return to our homeland of
the territory illegally occupied in our country. We will fulfill everything we pledged in the Baraguá Oath, in honor of the indelible and immortal memory of Antonio Maceo, the Bronze Titan.
It would be wise for the current and future leaders of the United States to realize that David has grown and that he
has gradually become a moral giant who does not throw stones with his sling, but rather examples and ideas against which
the Goliath of finances, colossal wealth, nuclear weapons, the most sophisticated technology and worldwide political
power based on selfishness, demagogy, hypocrisy and lies is completely helpless.
To ensure that they do not get their hopes too high over their ridiculous and Pyrrhic victory arising from the
loathsome resolution adopted in Geneva, based on slander and imposed by the U.S. government through humiliating
pressures and the backing of its NATO allies, during that same session Cuba put forward six resolutions in favor of Third
World nations. They were all adopted by an overwhelming majority, with the United States voting against every single
one, generally with the sole support or abstention of the small group of its wealthy European allies.
The peoples of an ungovernable world, who suffer poverty and indigence and are exploited and plundered at an ever-
growing rate, will be our best comrades in arms. We certainly lack the financial resources to cooperate with them. Instead,
we have an extraordinary and selfless human capital that the wealthy countries do not have and never will possess.
Long live patriotism!
Long live socialism!
Long live internationalism!
Patria o muerte!
Venceremos!
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