At the closing ceremony of the Cuban Communist Party’s founding meeting, where the members of the Central Committee were presented, Fidel Castro discussed the migration conflict with the United States and the Sino-Soviet split. He also used the occasion to read the letter Che Guevara wrote before he left Cuba with a brigade of Cubans on a mission to support the liberation movements in Africa.
Invited guests;
Compañeros of the Central Committee;
Compañeros of the Provincial, Regional and Local Committees;
Compañero Secretaries of the Party Cells:
I feel obliged to begin with a theme not directly related to the reason for our gathering here, but which, because it is a question of current political interest, must not be overlooked by us.
It stems from what we stated on September 28, in regard to something that has been happening for three years, and that was used by the enemy in a treacherous way to wage a campaign against the revolution, the case of the individuals who, when the flights between Miami and Cuba were suspended [in 1962] were left with one foot here and the other foot there…
I’m going to read an AP cable:
President Johnson announced today that he would obtain a diplomatic understanding with Cuba so that Cubans who wish to leave their country can seek asylum in the United States.
This statement about a diplomatic understanding means an agreement on this [immigration] problem through diplomatic channels.
[President Johnson] said: “I have requested the State Department to seek through the Swiss embassy in Cuba, which is in charge of US affairs, the agreement of the Cuban government in a request to the president of the International Red Cross Committee.”
He also said he had “instructed the State, Justice, Health, Education and Welfare Departments to make the necessary arrangements so that those in Cuba who are seeking freedom may formally enter the United States.”
And another cable, longer than the others, adds that Johnson stated:
”When many of the citizens of a regime voluntarily choose to abandon the land in which they were born for a home where there is hope for them, their decision reveals that the regime has failed. The future has little hope for any government when the present does not permit any hope for its people… [and] the refugees would be welcomed [in the United States] in the expectation that some day they might return to their country to find it cleansed of terror and free of fear.”
From the beginning of the revolution there has been only one policy with regard to this [matter of immigration]. From the beginning of the revolution up until the October [Missile] Crisis, all those who wanted to go and all those who had received permission from the United States continued to leave this country.
When they stopped flights to Cuba, because of the October Crisis, the revolutionary government made no change in its policy, because nearly 300 people a month continued to leave via other routes, such as through Spain and Mexico—some 300 people a month, more than 3,000 people a year. There has not been the slightest change in our policy regarding those who wish to leave the country. What we have done is to expose the ill-intentioned hypocrisy of Yankee imperialism, the only entity responsible for having paralyzed the normal channels for leaving the country, aimed at promoting a certain type of clandestine and risky exit for propaganda purposes.
Maybe Mr. Johnson doesn’t know that in the United States, when the struggle against British colonialism took place, thousands and thousands of Americans left the country after independence and went to Canada.
In all revolutions, whether the French revolution, the Russian revolution, or the Cuban revolution, the privileged classes always leave or emigrate. This is a historical fact.
Moreover, if the fact of people leaving the country in which they were born to go to another country is a reflection on a particular social regime, consider the case of Puerto Rico. More than one million people born in that country have been forced to emigrate to the United States, after Yankee imperialism seized the island and held it under a regime of colonial exploitation. Mr. Johnson forgets Puerto Rico and the million Puerto Ricans living in New York in the worst conditions, in the poorest districts, doing the most humiliating jobs.
Of course, to raise the matter of the Red Cross is a little trick Mr. Johnson uses to dramatize the affair. Really, who ever heard of needing the Red Cross to grant a visa or to authorize a few planes to land in Miami? Is there any need for the Red Cross? What does the Red Cross have to do with it? This is not like an earthquake, a catastrophe or a war. It is only a simple formality to authorize the landing of planes and the arrival of ships in the United States. The Red Cross is not necessary for that.
On the other hand, the Red Cross could well intervene by asking the US government to suspend the criminal measure banning the export of medicines to Cuba. This, indeed, would justify the intervention of the International Red Cross.
In any event, the Red Cross might do a much better job in South Vietnam, where Yankee soldiers are murdering and torturing thousands of citizens. Or in North Vietnam, where the criminal Yankee bombs are dropped indiscriminately over cities, villages, schools or hospitals.
The Red Cross could do something in the Dominican Republic, where the invading soldiers perpetrate all kinds of brutalities against the people and where they have seized schools.
It could intervene in the United States itself to prevent the massacre of black citizens, as happened in Los Angeles, California, recently. But in this matter [of Cuban émigrés], Mr. Johnson, the presence of the Red Cross is not required. It is enough for us to discuss it with the representatives of the Swiss embassy, who are also the representatives of US interests in Cuba, and we might be able to reach a perfectly satisfactory agreement as to arrangements. There is no need for anyone to intervene. We acknowledge the sincerity and dependability of the Swiss officials. But, if the US government doesn’t trust or believe in the ability of the officials of the Swiss embassy, that is the US government’s problem.
And now for a serious discussion on the subject of freedom: I’d like to know if Mr. Johnson could answer a couple of questions.
From the beginning of the revolution we have permitted all those who wish to leave the country to do so, and we have never refused permission to all those who want to visit their relatives and return; there are Cubans who have relatives in the United States and want to join them, and there are also Cubans who have relatives in the United States and who don’t want to leave the country. Since Mr. Johnson, right there under the Statue of Liberty has taken the trouble to concoct a statement full of all this hogwash about liberty, I have to ask him whether he will allow Cubans [living in the United States] to visit their relatives in Cuba and then return to the United States. And I ask him whether those Cubans who don’t wish to live in the United States can visit their relatives there and afterwards return to Cuba. And finally, I ask him whether the United States is willing to allow US citizens to come and visit Cuba.
To the government that talks about how badly a nation must be doing when its citizens want to leave, we could say in reply: A country must be even worse off when, in spite of being a nation that boasts of being free and in spite of having achieved the level of economic development that it has achieved, out of fear and terror it is afraid to permit its citizens to visit this country, a country so slandered and maligned as Cuba.
Therefore, here is a second challenge to the government of the United States: We challenge them to permit those Cubans in the United States who still have families here in Cuba, who do not wish to leave, to visit Cuba. We challenge them to permit residents of Cuba, who do not wish to emigrate, to be allowed to go to the United States to visit their relatives and return. And finally, we challenge them to permit students and any other US citizen to come to Cuba freely, in the same way that we allow any citizen of this country to leave or to return. We challenge them to permit representatives of the black or civil rights organizations in the United States to visit Cuba, so that they can see how, with the disappearance of the exploitation of human beings, racial discrimination has been eliminated in our country once and for all.
Let’s see if Mr. Johnson, before the world and before the people of the United States, can reply to this challenge, in a way that is not gibberish…
And as they talk so much and boast so much about freedom, let’s stop talking about phony freedom, about abstract freedoms. The fact is that a free world is not being created over there, but rather here in Cuba—so free that we don’t want anyone to have to live in this society against their will. Our socialist society, our communist society, must be, above all, a truly free association of citizens. Although it is true that certain citizens who have been brought up in accord with the ideas of the past prefer to leave for the United States, it is also true that this country has become the sanctuary for the revolutionaries of this hemisphere.
It is also true that we consider worthy of the hospitality of this land not only those who were born in this land but all those who speak our language, who have a similar culture, as well as those who, though they do not speak our language, have a similar historical and ethnic origin and a similar history of exploitation. All those persecuted by bloody and imperialist oligarchies have the right to come here—and many have made use of this right. Many people born in sister nations in this hemisphere have come to live here permanently or temporarily. Many technicians and many professionals from different corners of the Americas have lived and worked here for many years.
This is not only a land for Cubans. It is a land for revolutionaries, and the revolutionaries of this hemisphere, including US revolutionaries, have the right to consider themselves our brothers. Some leaders, like Robert Williams, who was brutally persecuted there, found asylum in this land. And like Williams, all those who are persecuted by the reactionaries and exploiters over there can find asylum here. It doesn’t matter that he speaks English and was born in the United States. This is the homeland for the revolutionaries of this hemisphere, just as the United States is the inevitable refuge for all the thugs, all the embezzlers, all the exploiters and all the reactionaries of this hemisphere. There is no thief, no exploiter, no reactionary, no criminal, who does not find an open door to the United States.
This is how we answer Mr. Johnson’s statement, made beneath his discredited Statue of Liberty, that mass of stone and hypocrisy. No one knows what it stands for, unless it is what Yankee imperialism means today to the rest of the world.
Let’s go on now to our own questions. Let’s go on to the question concerning our party. I believe that all the news coming out of here, with regard to our social, economic and political achievements, constitutes very bad news for the Yankee imperialists.
Naturally, everything that permits us to strengthen and advance the revolution, everything that permits us to progress as far as we can, worries them a great deal. Now, as far as returning is concerned—yes, some day a great many of those who left will long to return, repentant. But when Mr. Johnson speaks of their returning as liberators, we can tell him that this is a “Mid-Autumn Night’s Dream.”
The whole country received the news of the formation of our Central Committee with joy and enthusiasm. The names and the histories of the compañeros who form this committee are very well known. If all of them are not known to everyone, all of them are known to a significant and important number of the people. We have tried to choose those who, in our judgment, represent to the fullest extent the history of the revolution. Those who, in the fight for the revolution as well as in the fight to consolidate, defend and develop the revolution, have worked and fought hard and tirelessly.
There is no heroic period in the history of our revolution that is not represented here. There is no sacrifice, there is no combat, no feat—either military or civilian, heroic or creative—that is not represented. There is no revolutionary or social sector that is not represented. I am not speaking of organizations. When I speak of a sector, I speak of the workers, I speak of the youth, I speak of the farmers, I speak of our mass organizations.
There are individuals who have held socialist ideas for many years, as is the case of compañero Fabio Grobart, who was a founder of the first communist party; the case of compañera Elena Gil, who did such extraordinary work with the schools where more than 40,000 farm girls from the mountains have studied, where they have trained thousands of teachers, where more than 50,000 young people and children have studied, work that we consider to be really exemplary; the case of compañero Arteaga, who, in addition to his history of struggle, has worked in the field of agriculture for seven years and has carried out successful plans, in some cases extraordinarily successful, such as the agricultural plan for the Escambray; the case of Lt. Tarrau, a compañero whom many may not know, but who is the compañero that the Ministry of Interior placed in charge of the rehabilitation plans on the Isle of Pines, where, in an exemplary and unselfish way, he has done a brilliant job, about which we will have to speak and write a great deal.
I have mentioned the cases of compañeros, some very well known, others less well known. The list of compañeros of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) would be endless due to their history both before and after the triumph as outstanding revolutionaries, as tireless workers, as examples of self-improvement in their studies, cultural development, cultural and political level—compañeros of extraordinary modesty, in whose hands the defense of the nation has principally rested during these seven dangerous and threat-filled years.
It is not necessary to speak about the best known. That does not mean that they are the only heroes of the nation. No, far from it! Fortunately our country has innumerable heroes and, above all, a mass of new compañeros now being developed, who will some day—without a doubt—demonstrate their sense of responsibility and honor.
If we ask ourselves whether we have left anyone out, of course we have to answer in the affirmative.
It would be impossible to form a Central Committee of 100 revolutionary compañeros without leaving out many compañeros. What is important is not those who have been left out. They will come later. What is important are those who are there, and what they represent. We know that the party and the people have received the formation of this committee with satisfaction.
This committee, which met yesterday, reached several agreements: First, it ratified the measure adopted by the former national leadership. It ratified the Political Bureau, the Secretariat and the work commissions, as well as the compañero elected as organization secretary. The committee also reached two important agreements that had been submitted by the former national leadership [of the party].
One related to our official organ. Instead of publishing two newspapers of a political nature, we are going to concentrate all human resources, all resources in equipment and paper on establishing a single morning paper of a political nature, in addition to the newspaper El Mundo, which is not exactly a political organ. We will concentrate all our resources and we will establish a new newspaper. It will be called Granma, the symbol of our revolutionary concepts and goals.
An even more important agreement refers to the name of our party. Our first name was ORI, which stood for Integrated Revolutionary Organizations. During the first stage in the uniting of all the revolutionary forces this had its positive and negative aspects. Later we became the United Party of the Socialist Revolution (PURS), which constituted an extraordinary step forward, an extraordinary step ahead in the creation of our political apparatus. This effort took three years during which time innumerable valuable individuals emerged from the inexhaustible source that the people and the workers constitute to form what we are today—not only in number, but essentially in quality. The name United Party of the Socialist Revolution says a lot, but not everything.
The name United Party suggests something that is in need of uniting, it still reminds us a little bit of the origin of each part. We consider that we have now reached that level in which all shades and all types of origin distinguishing one revolutionary from another must disappear forever. Since we have already arrived at that fortunate stage of history in which our revolutionary process has only one type of revolutionary, and since it is necessary for the name of our party to show not what we were yesterday, but what we will be tomorrow, what name should our party have now? Yes, the Cuban Communist Party!
That is the name that in view of the development of our party, of the revolutionary consciousness of its members and the objectives of our revolution, was adopted by the first Central Committee meeting yesterday.
As we explained to the compañeros yesterday, it is totally correct. The word “communist” has been maligned and distorted for centuries. Communists have existed throughout history; people with communist ideas, people who conceived of a way of life different from that into which they were born. For example, those who thought in a communist way in other times were considered utopian communists, people who 500 years ago aspired to establish a type of society that was not possible then, because of the minimal development of the productive forces of humankind at that time. To go back to the type of communism from which primitive human beings began, to live in a type of primitive communism, would not be possible except through the development of the productive forces, so that the social utilization of those forces would create the material goods and services in quantities more than sufficient to satisfy the needs of humankind.
All exploiters, all the privileged persons, have always hated the word “communist” as if it were a crime. They cursed the word “communist.” For that reason, when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, outlining a new revolutionary theory, a scientific interpretation of human society and human history, they wrote, “a specter is haunting Europe, the specter of communism.” The privileged classes viewed these ideas as a specter and were really afraid.
Moreover, the privileged classes in every period of history have always viewed new ideas with extraordinary fear. In its day Roman society was afraid of Christian ideas when they first arose, because these ideas were the ideas of the poor and the slaves. And due to its hatred of those new ideas, that society sent a great number of human beings to their deaths. Similarly, in the Middle Ages, as well as during feudalism, new ideas were banned and those who believed in them were slandered and treated appallingly.
Within feudal society, the emerging bourgeoisie espoused new ideas, of a political, philosophical or religious nature, for which they were cruelly condemned and persecuted.
The reactionary classes have always used every method to condemn and slander new ideas. Thus, all the paper and all the resources at their disposal are not sufficient to slander communist ideas; to slander the desire for a society in which human beings no longer exploit one another, but become real brothers and sisters; the dream of a society in which all human beings are truly equal in fact and in law—not simply in a constitutional clause as in some bourgeois constitutions which say that all men are born free and equal. Can all individuals be considered to be born free and equal in a society of exploiters and exploited, a society of rich and poor—where one child is born in a slum, in a humble cradle, and another child is born in a cradle of gold? How can it be said that these people have the same opportunities in life?
The ancient dream of humankind—a dream that is possible today—of a society without exploiters or exploited, has aroused the hatred and rancor of all exploiters.
As if they were going to offend us or as if it were an insult, the imperialists speak of the communist government of Cuba, just like they used the word “mambí” to denounce our liberators. But the word “communist” is not an insult but rather an honor for us.
It is the word that symbolizes the aspiration of a great part of humanity, and hundreds and hundreds of millions of human beings are concretely working toward that goal today. Within 100 years, there will be no greater glory, nothing more natural and rational, than to be called a communist.
We are on the road toward a communist society. And if the imperialists don’t like it, they can lump it.
From now on, gentlemen of UPI and AP, understand that when you call us “communists,” you are giving us the greatest compliment you can give.
Absent from our Central Committee is someone who possesses in the highest degree all the necessary merits and virtues to be included, but who, nevertheless, is not among those announced as members of our Central Committee.
The enemy has conjured up a thousand conjectures. The enemy has tried to sow confusion, to spread discord and doubt, and we have waited patiently because it was necessary to wait.
This differentiates the revolutionary from the counterrevolutionary, the revolutionary from the imperialist. Revolutionaries know how to wait; we know how to be patient; we never despair. The reactionaries, the counterrevolutionaries, the imperialists, all live in perpetual despair, in perpetual anguish, perpetually lying in the most ridiculous and infantile way.
When you read the things said by some of those officials, some of those US senators, you ask yourself: But how is it possible that these gentlemen are not in a stable instead of belonging to what they call Congress? Some of them come out with absolute nonsense. Furthermore, they have a tremendous habit of lying; they cannot live without lying. They live in fear.
If the revolutionary government says one thing, which is what it has consistently been saying, they see ferocious, terrible things, a plan behind everything! How ridiculous! What fear they live in! And you have to wonder: Do they believe this? Do they believe everything they say? Do they need to believe everything they say? Can’t they live without believing everything they say? Do they say everything they don’t believe?
It is difficult to tell. This could be a matter for doctors and psychologists. What do they have in their brains? What fear is it that makes them see everything as a maneuver, as a belligerent, frightening, terrible plan? They don’t know that there is no better tactic, no better strategy than to fight with clean hands, to fight with the truth. These are the only weapons that inspire confidence, that inspire faith, that inspire security, dignity and morale. And these are the weapons we revolutionaries have been using to defeat and crush our enemies.
Lies! Who has ever heard a lie from the lips of a revolutionary? Lies are weapons that help no revolutionary, and no serious revolutionary ever needs to resort to a lie. Their weapons are reason, morality, truth, the ability to defend an idea, a proposal, a position.
In short, the moral spectacle of our adversaries is truly lamentable. The soothsayers, the pundits, the specialists on the Cuba question have been working incessantly to unravel the mystery: Has Ernesto Guevara been purged? Is Ernesto Guevara sick? Does Ernesto Guevara have differences? And things of this sort.
Naturally, the people have confidence, the people have faith. But the enemy uses these things, especially abroad, to slander us. Here, they say, is a frightening, terrible communist regime: people disappear without a trace, without a sign, without an explanation. When the people began to notice his absence, we told them that we would inform them at the appropriate time, and that there were reasons for waiting.
We live and work surrounded by the forces of imperialism. The world does not live under normal conditions. As long as the criminal bombs of the US imperialists fall on the people of Vietnam, we cannot say we live under normal conditions. When more than 100,000 US soldiers land there to try to crush the liberation movement; when the soldiers of imperialism land in a republic that has legal rights equal to those of any other republic in the world, to trample its sovereignty, as in the case of the Dominican Republic, the world doesn’t live under normal conditions. When the imperialists are surrounding our country, training mercenaries and organizing terrorist attacks in the most shameless manner, as in the case of [the attack by counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles on the Spanish merchant ship] Sierra Aránzazu, when the imperialists threaten to intervene in any country in Latin America or in the world, we do not live under normal conditions.
When we fought in the underground against the Batista dictatorship, revolutionaries who did not live under normal conditions had to abide by the rules of the struggle. In the same way—even though a revolutionary government exists in our country—so far as the realities of the world are concerned, we do not live under normal conditions, and we have to abide by the rules of that situation.
To explain this I am going to read a letter, handwritten and later typed, from compañero Ernesto Guevara, which is self-explanatory. I was wondering whether I needed to describe our friendship and comradeship, how it began and under what conditions it began and developed, but that’s not necessary. I’m going to confine myself to reading the letter.
It reads as follows: “Havana…” It has no date, because the letter was intended to be read at what we considered the most appropriate moment, but to be strictly accurate it was delivered April 1 of this year—exactly six months and two days ago. It reads:
Havana
Year of Agriculture
Fidel:
At this moment I remember many things: when I met you in the house of [Cuban revolutionary] María Antonia, when you proposed I come along, all the tensions involved in the preparations [for the Granma expedition]. One day, they came and asked me who should be notified in case of death, and the real possibility of that fact struck us all. Later, we knew it was true that in a revolution one wins or dies (if it is a real one). Many compañeros fell along the way to victory.
Today everything has a less dramatic tone, because we are more mature. But the event repeats itself. I feel that I have fulfilled the part of my duty that tied me to the Cuban revolution in its territory, and I say goodbye to you, to the compañeros, to your people, who now are mine.
I formally resign my positions in the leadership of the party, my post as minister, my rank of commander, and my Cuban citizenship. Nothing legal binds me to Cuba. The only ties are of another nature—those that cannot be broken as can appointments to posts.
Recalling my past life, I believe I have worked with sufficient integrity and dedication to consolidate the revolutionary triumph. My only serious failing was not having had more confidence in you from the first moments in the Sierra Maestra, and not having understood quickly enough your qualities as a leader and a revolutionary.
I have lived magnificent days, and at your side I felt the pride of belonging to our people in the brilliant yet sad days of the Caribbean [missile] crisis. Seldom has a statesman been more brilliant than you in those days. I am also proud of having followed you without hesitation, of having identified with your way of thinking and of seeing and appraising dangers and principles.
Other nations of the world call for my modest efforts. I can do that which is denied you because of your responsibility at the head of Cuba, and the time has come for us to part.
I want it known that I do so with a mixture of joy and sorrow. I leave here the purest of my hopes as a builder and the dearest of my loved ones. And I leave a people who received me as a son. That wounds a part of my spirit. I carry to new battlefronts the faith that you taught me, the revolutionary spirit of my people, the feeling of fulfilling the most sacred of duties: to fight against imperialism wherever one may be. This comforts and more than heals the deepest wounds.
I state once more that I free Cuba from any responsibility, except that which stems from its example. If my final hour finds me under other skies, my last thought will be of this people and especially of you. I am thankful for your teaching, your example, and I will try to be faithful up to the final consequences of my actions.
I have always been identified with the foreign policy of our revolution, and I continue to be. Wherever I am, I will feel the responsibility of being a Cuban revolutionary, and I shall behave as such. I am not sorry that I leave nothing material to my wife and children. I am happy it is that way. I ask nothing for them, as the state will provide them with enough to live on and to have an education.
I have many things to say to you and to our people, but I feel they are unnecessary. Words cannot express what I would want them to, and I don’t think it is worthwhile to keep scribbling pages.
Hasta la victoria siempre! [Ever onward to victory!]
Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death!]
I embrace you with all my revolutionary fervor.
Che
Those who speak of revolutionaries, those who consider revolutionaries as cold, insensitive and unfeeling people, will have in this letter the example of all the feeling, all the sensitivity, all the purity that can be held within a revolutionary soul.
And all of us could answer:
Compañero Guevara: It is not responsibility that concerns us! We are responsible to the revolution. We are responsible for helping the revolutionary movement to the best of our ability! And we assume the responsibility, the consequences and the risks. For almost seven years it has always been like that, and we know that as long as imperialism exists, and as long as there are exploited and colonized peoples, we will continue running these risks and we will calmly continue assuming that responsibility.
It was our duty to comply with and respect the feelings of that compañero, to respect that freedom and that right. That is true freedom—not the freedom of those who seek to impose chains, but the freedom of those who leave to take up a rifle against the chains of slavery!
That is another freedom our revolution proclaims, Mr. Johnson! And if those who wish to leave Cuba to go to live with the imperialists, those whom the imperialists sometimes recruit to serve in Vietnam and the Congo, can do it, let everyone know that every citizen of this country, whenever they make a request to fight—not at the side of the imperialists but at the side of revolutionaries—this revolution will not deny them permission to go!
This is a free country, Mr. Johnson, truly free for everyone!
And that was not the only letter [from Che]. Besides this letter, and the occasion on which it was to be read, we have other letters greeting various compañeros, as well as letters addressed to his children, to his parents and to other compañeros. We will deliver these letters to those compañeros and those relatives, and we are going to ask them to donate them to the revolution, because we believe they are documents worthy of being part of history.
We believe this explains everything. This was what fell to us to explain. As for the rest, let our enemies worry about it. We have enough tasks, enough things to do in our country and with regard to the world, enough duties to fulfill.
And we will fulfill them.
We will develop our own paths, our ideas, our methods, our system. We’ll make use of all the experiences that can be of value to us, and we’ll develop our own experiences.
A new era is emerging in the history of our country, a different form of society, a different form of government. The government of a party, the party of the workers—the best workers—established with the participation of the masses, so that we may justly and reasonably state that this party is the vanguard of the workers, and that it is the representative of the workers in our revolutionary workers’ democracy.
It will be a thousand times more democratic than bourgeois democracy, because we will establish administrative and political institutions that will call for the constant participation of the masses in the problems of society. This participation will be accomplished through capable organizations, through the party, on all levels.
And we will continue developing these new forms as only a revolution can do, and we will continue developing the consciousness and the habits necessary for these new forms. And we will not stop. Our people will not stop until they have achieved their final objectives.
This step means a lot. It constitutes one of the most outstanding events in the history of our country. It marks the historic moment in which the force to unite became mightier than the forces that separate and divide. It marks the historic moment in which a revolutionary people firmly united, in which the sense of duty prevailed over everything else, in which the collective spirit triumphed over all individualism, in which the interest of the homeland overwhelmingly and definitely prevailed over individual and group interests…
We know very well where the enemy is, who our sole and real enemy is. We know it quite well, very well. We have had to fight that enemy under difficult conditions. To face that enemy, we have needed the solidarity and help of many. To defeat the aggressive policy of that enemy, to continue confronting it, we need resources and arms. Here in Cuba, thousands of miles from any other socialist country, unable to depend on anything other than our own forces and our own arms during decisive moments, we are aware of the risks we have to take and will continue taking, we have to be armed to the teeth and prepared for whatever comes.
We might disagree on some point with any other party. Due to the heterogeneity of this contemporary world, with different countries confronting dissimilar situations and most unequal levels of material, technical and cultural development, Marxism cannot be like a church, like a religious doctrine, with its Pope and ecumenical council. It is a revolutionary and dialectical doctrine, not a religious doctrine. It is a guide for revolutionary action, not a dogma. It is anti-Marxist to try to encapsulate Marxism in a sort of catechism.
This diversity will inevitably lead to different interpretations… Marxism is not private property that can be recorded in a register of deeds. It is a doctrine of revolutionaries, written by revolutionaries, developed by other revolutionaries, for revolutionaries.
We will demonstrate our confidence in ourselves and our confidence in our ability to continue to develop our revolutionary path. We might disagree on some point or various points with another party. Differences, when they are honest, are transitory. What we will never do is insult on the one hand and beg on the other. We will know how to keep any different point of view within decent boundaries. We will know how to be friends with those who know how to be friends, and we will know how to respect those who know how to respect us. These norms will always determine our conduct. We will never ask anyone’s permission to do anything. We will never ask anyone’s permission to go anywhere. We will never ask anyone’s permission to be friendly with any party or any people.
We know these problems are transitory. Problems pass, but people remain. Individuals pass away, but peoples remain. Leaders pass away, but revolutions persist. We see something else besides temporary relationships in the relations between parties and between revolutionary countries. We see lasting and ultimate relationships.
Nothing tending to create differences will ever come from our side. We will be guided by this basic principle, because we know it is a correct position and a just principle. And nothing will separate us from the dedication of all our energies to the struggle against the enemy of humanity: imperialism.
We could never say that those who have helped us defeat the imperialists are accomplices of the imperialists.
We not only aspire to a communist society, but to a communist world in which all nations have equal rights. We aspire to a communist world in which no nation has a veto. And we hope that the communist world of tomorrow will never present the same picture as the bourgeois world torn by internal disputes. Our hope is for a free society, free nations in which all countries—large and small—have equal rights.
We will defend our point of view and our position in a rational manner through our actions and our deeds, as we have up to now. Nothing will divert us from that path.
It is not easy to maintain that line, that inflexible independence, in the face of the complexities of current problems and the present world. But we will! This revolution has not been imported from anywhere. It is a genuine product of this country. No one told us how we had to make it, and we made it! No one shall have to tell us how to continue it.
We have learned to write history, and we will continue writing it! Let no one doubt this!
We live in a complex and dangerous world. We will face the risks with dignity and firmness! Our fate will be the fate of other peoples, and our fate will be the fate of the world!
I call on all compañeros present, on all the representatives of our party, on all the secretaries of the party cells who are participating in this general assembly. I call on everyone here who represents the will of the party, of the party which in turn represents the workers, to ratify the resolutions of the national leadership!
We ask for the full and unanimous ratification of the Central Committee of our party. I ask for your full support for the line followed by the revolutionary leadership up to the present, and full support for the policy proclaimed here today.
Long live the Cuban Communist Party!
Long live its Central Committee!
Long live our socialist and communist revolution!
Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death!]
Venceremos! [We will win!]