In the last part of his speech on the 25th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro challenged some of the attitudes and practices that he considered were vestiges of capitalism that were corrupting the Cuban revolution. This was further discussed at the special session of the Cuban Communist Party in December 1986 and later became known as the “rectification campaign.”
Compañeros, the party program is now being discussed in our country by all our people. The program will be studied and approved by the delegates to the third party congress in a special meeting later this year.
The conditions under which this ambitious program is going to be carried out are not easy. In fact, the conditions under which we have to meet our economic plans—the 1986 plan, the five-year plan, and the longer-term plans—are anything but easy. Today we must also consider these things. There are circumstances, some of which have arisen after the party congress, that make our task more difficult, although not impossible.
Late last year our country was affected by a natural disaster, a hurricane that flattened 70 percent of our sugarcane, and that made the sugar harvest more difficult. Despite the great efforts made by our workers, there’s no doubt that in the end our sugar plans will be affected by at least half a million tons. And if the figure does not run to a million or a million and a half, it will be thanks to the efforts of our sugar workers.
But it wasn’t only the hurricane. Paradoxical and incredible as it may seem, we were also affected by the drop in the value of the dollar.
Many may wonder how a drop in the value of the dollar could affect Cuba. Right now the imperialists are trying to reduce the value of the dollar because they have a tremendous trade deficit, and in order to compete with the Japanese and the Europeans—the big capitalist countries came to an agreement on this—they took measures to devalue the dollar.
We sell our sugar and all other export products on the basis of dollars—which is the universal practice. If the price of sugar is quoted at four centavos, it means four cents of a dollar, and so a devaluation of the dollar represents a drop in the price paid for our exports.
But basically what affects us is that the price we must pay for imports from the hard currency area increases because we cannot import from the United States. We import from Japan and Europe, where we obtain less German marks, less French francs, less British pounds sterling, and less Japanese yen for each dollar. When we sell a ton of sugar to any of those countries we obtain less products in exchange for that ton.
If we could import from the United States, the situation would be advantageous for us, because the dollar is now cheaper. These are the paradoxes that a country like ours, under a blockade, must put up with, and we suffer some consequences, along with other Third World countries, every time the dollar is overvalued, such as high interest rates, or when the dollar is devalued.
But that’s not all. There’s another surprising thing: The drop in the price of oil is also affecting us to a considerable extent. It’s very simple: We also export oil, that is, a part of our production and all the oil we save from the oil we import from the Soviet Union is exported.
I spoke about this at the Energy Forum, what saving a gallon of fuel meant in terms of hard currency, a barrel, a ton, cent by cent. In the last few years, thanks to the great efforts made to economize and while sugar prices were exceedingly low, oil exports were a key source of hard currency in our country, earning us hundreds of millions of dollars.
With the drop in prices, we have been affected by about two-thirds the value of the oil, and we’ve lost hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency, just like that, hundreds of millions! This largely shattered the great effort we were making to economize, an effort we must still make.
This problem with oil happened a few weeks after our congress. It means more problems for the country and forces us to make even greater efforts.
Why talk about these issues on the 25th anniversary [of the Bay of Pigs invasion]? Because now the enemy isn’t the mercenaries, we don’t have mercenary invasions, but we do have another type of mercenary, or people who act like them. Among them are people viewed as good people, ready to fight for the revolution in the event of war, but who do things that go against the revolution and its interests; and there are others who don’t have a profound revolutionary awareness. This obliges us to make an effort.
Precise guidelines were set out at the party congress. There was strong and penetrating criticism of persistent problems, and we pledged to struggle against them. As I said before, we are discussing the program. Without these problems I’m referring to we would have to implement the line set out at the congress, but now with the added problems we have, fulfillment becomes much more important and decisive.
We must be much more intransigent regarding all forms of misconduct and wrongdoing. We must be much more effective in our struggle against problems that persist and new ones that crop up. That’s what I told the Pioneers during their 25th anniversary, and with more reason the issue must be raised with our people as a whole.
I repeat, our problems are not the same as those we had 25 years ago, but we do have people who are indolent, people who are negligent, and people who, as I told the Pioneers, don’t want to get worked up about problems; irresponsible people, people who aren’t demanding enough in the sphere where they have responsibility, people who are lax. We have people who seek privileges; people who seek easy money, not from work but from shady deals, speculation and illicit trade.
On such a day as this, I don’t want to mention many things, but there are those who put us to shame. For example, some people have earned 100,000 pesos or more a year apparently through legitimate means. How can this be in a socialist society? I know of some people who paint and sell their paintings or do decorating work, mostly for state agencies, who have even earned over 200,000 pesos a year. This is just one example of excessive incomes which I do not believe are the fruits of labor because, let’s face it, the paintings are not by Picasso or Michelangelo.
Obviously, some state officials are irresponsible, because it’s the people’s money that’s being spent in this way. On the other hand, some people have confused freelancing with capitalism or the right to engage in capitalist trade; some people have certainly confused one with the other. Yes, we have these kinds of problems.
Just consider, the person who makes 100,000 pesos is making 20 times the annual salary of those doctors performing heart transplants—20 times! I have met those dedicated, modest doctors, with their salaries of 5,000 or 6,000 pesos a year; while other people are making 100,000 or more through shady deals.
You all know how critical I was of the free farmers’ market, where some people could sell a head of garlic at a peso and pocket the profit themselves without any benefit for the people.
It wasn’t the honest hardworking peasant who receives all the benefits of the revolution such as education for their children and medical care, all the benefits without exception. They were people who, rather than making money honestly by working the land, got rich through trading, theft and selling at very high prices.
This coupled with other goings-on, such as goods that were pledged to the state because of credits, seed, and other benefits and guarantees granted which wound up on the other market, was a practical experience.
We ourselves have brought on some of these problems, and we must set them right in time, because unfortunately, there are people who confuse money earned through work with that earned through speculation and shady deals that border on theft, or are theft.
Some of our heads of enterprises have also become capitalist-like entrepreneurs. The first thing a socialist, a revolutionary, a communist cadre must ask themselves is not if their particular firm is making more money, but how the country makes more. Whenever we have so-called entrepreneurs who worry more about the enterprise than the interests of the country, we have a capitalist in every sense of the word.
The economic management and planning system was not set up so that we can play at capitalism; and some people are shamefully playing at capitalism; we know this, we see it, and this must be set right.
Then there are those who want their enterprises to be profitable by increasing prices and distributing bonuses by charging the earth for anything; that way any enterprise can be profitable, right?
Not long ago I visited Almeijeiras Hospital and I noticed they had well-maintained elevators reinforced with stainless steel. I’d gone to see a new piece of equipment that we had purchased, very sophisticated, useful and humane that is already functioning. One is really amazed at the efforts made by doctors, specialists, all the workers at that hospital.
I was told, “You know how much they wanted to charge us for installing the sheets of stainless steel? Ten thousand pesos!” Finally they settled for 5,000. I asked them how many people did the work. Two, was the answer. And how many days did it take? Fifteen. Well, in wages the outlay must have been about 300 pesos. The hospital provided the stainless steel, and this was a state enterprise charging those prices!
One must really have gall—I don’t mean the workers but those who organize such ventures—to charge 30 times more for a job that took two weeks. That way any outfit can be profitable, and we have seen this sinister attitude.
The hospital was charged 40,000 pesos for work on a floor, some sort of polishing job.
We already mentioned this at the congress among the problems that had to be combated. We also know about diverting resources; we’ve seen examples.
Not long ago I was touring an area to look at some problems concerning the economy, and I came across a crane. A person was putting a cement roof on his house with a 16-ton Japanese Kato crane, a Japanese-made cement mixer, a truck to carry the cement and a water truck, all belonging to the state.
He had purchased a pig for his helpers, beer and other things; the three trucks came from three different places, the crane was from the brigade building the thermoelectric power plant in Santa Cruz—I saw this with my own eyes, it’s not something someone told me. The other truck with the cement mixer came from the oil enterprise across the way from the José Martí children’s city, and the water truck came from a quarry along the highway.
Thanks to his friends and connections, this single individual had a crane, a cement mixer, a truck to carry it, and a water truck all together. Who knows where the materials came from! He was building a house; we’re glad, of course, that people build houses, but they should do it honestly.
The house was 150 square meters, although this person makes 199 pesos a month working as the head of a storeroom at a restaurant. Were he to sell it, he could get 40,000 pesos. He would find a buyer for sure, because those who steal one way or another and make large sums from sources other than their work would just as soon buy a house as the Capitol building if it were for sale.
So there is this kind of problem. Where do those thousands of pesos come from? Not from work.
The state provides resources and credit to repair or build homes, it provides many facilities and has just approved a generous law that allows people to own their existing homes or those they are about to receive, at a reasonable price, with no profit. What need is there to divert resources, what need is there to resort to shady deals, even though the need is great in this field?
When I was telling the head of the Planning Board about my experience he said, “On Sunday I saw a crane doing the same thing, but this was a 40-ton crane.”
Can you imagine? What we do here on large building sites to cast concrete, we haul it up in buckets with cranes, the most sophisticated equipment we have in construction technique; and there are people here with such initiative and such connections, and there are so many people who aren’t subject to controls that they use this state technology to build a roof for their house.
It would be worthwhile asking the brigade and the enterprise building the Oriente power plant how was it possible that a 16-ton crane truck purchased with hard currency was off the work site for three days? They took it Friday and it was returned on . Somebody gave the papers to justify its use to cover up for others and all sorts of things like that which we know exist because we know there are people who seek privileges at all cost and who divert resources.
This is, of course, a struggle. When we talk about the party program and the congress and the measures to take, it doesn’t mean a transitory campaign which will be soon forgotten. We aren’t advocating a cultural revolution here, we don’t want to use extremist measures to solve problems or throw the people against those responsible for such infuriating acts.
I am convinced, however, that in an organized and disciplined manner, the masses can help win this battle. Between the masses, the members of the party, and the Union of Young Communists (UJC) this can be done. It also requires greater alertness on the part of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs), because they know what’s going on when suddenly somebody starts building a big house and then sells it for an enormous sum.
We can’t accept misconduct. We can’t fall prey to confusion. Can anyone here engage in shady deals without the people, the masses, finding out? We don’t want to unleash the masses, I repeat, against the guilty parties for them to stop such activity on their own, because we have the party and the UJC, we have the mass organizations. What we must do is engage in a systematic, serious and tenacious struggle, applying pressure from the top down, and from the bottom up, with great force!
Our party must be very alert! There are 500,000 members in the party, including full members and candidates—if only we’d had an organization of 500,000 members when we started the struggle against the dictatorship—plus another 500,000 Young Communists, what an incredible force; the mass organizations, millions of men and women organized into unions, the CDRs, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Pioneers, it’s a tremendous, incredible force! If well used, we can put an end to all these things without extremism.
We don’t have to resort to extremism or campaigns lasting a few months, no! This must be a sustained struggle. As I told the Pioneers, we must continue the struggle against the vestiges of the old system, against the vestiges of capitalism, the capitalist ideology, parasitical attitudes, privileges, and the tendency to try to get something out of proportion to what one contributes to society. We have mentioned the socialist formula: from each according to their ability, to each according to their work! This is a clear formula which is obviously not egalitarian.
I’d like to know by virtue of what miracle or what diabolical mechanism someone can make 10 times the salary of a distinguished doctor who saves lives? Things that are not functioning well and consciences that are not in good shape. We must say it: consciences that are not in good shape! And functionaries that aren’t doing their jobs properly, since they don’t keep a record of the money and resources they administer.
There are those who think socialism can be built without political work. Well, there are even some people who think it can be built without physical work. Yes, these people exist!
We are involved in a project with all the hospitals in the capital because of problems that existed. We met with all the hospital directors, party and Young Communist leaders, head nurses and union leaders; this is being done with the help of the party. The party in Havana province has worked hard on this score, and the results are evident in the new enthusiasm and spirit at the hospitals.
It won’t happen overnight, and the party in Havana has monthly meetings with the secretaries of hospital party committees. That’s political work, and with political work we can solve many problems. We thought about some economic measures that were fair, such as taking into account abnormal working conditions for auxiliary personnel.
We are also considering ways of having staff do several things and better pay for auxiliary personnel as was done with doctors and nurses. All this, of course, is within the socialist formula, seeking more rational and better use of labor; the country will never develop if we try to solve disorganization, inefficiency or low productivity by putting more people to work. This is basically political work.
In regard to hospitals and schools we should not talk about profitability because they cannot be economic enterprises with bonuses. If there is too much talk of bonuses, we will be corrupting workers and saying that the only way to get things done is through bonuses.
Although we recognize that there is room for bonuses under socialism, they must be the result of good work, and real work, not because of fabricated profits, inflated prices, and charging 40,000 pesos for a floor and 10,000 pesos for what actually costs 500. That way any outfit can be profitable, and it’s easy to conceal disorganization and inefficiency by raising prices.
Some important construction brigades like that in Cienfuegos at the nuclear power plant have to achieve maximum productivity. We sent a compañero out there because we began to hear talk that 16,000 workers were needed in that construction project. So we sent them a message, saying no, they would have to make do with the 12,000 agreed to earlier. Another form of concealing disorganization and inefficiency is the lack of control over what each worker accomplishes, asking constantly for more workers instead of controlling and rigorously assessing their work.
Believe me, that is a good brigade [in Cienfuegos], with very good leaders. There the workers have been given benefits—special uniforms, special work boots and special food. When I heard about the request for 16,000, I said, “No, they’ll have to make do with 12,000—with 12,000!” Yes, and furthermore, construction workers are putting in more than eight hours a day. It is wrong to conceal inefficiency and disorganization with more and more workers so that later there are 20,000 and then 25,000 at peak times.
I’m mentioning some of the kinds of problems, and I’m talking about a good brigade and magnificent workers, to whom I have made certain commitments—and who have made commitments to me—through the efforts we have made to improve their standard of living in general.
There is often a tendency, instead of going to tell the worker, “make a greater effort, meet your obligations”—in other words, to do political and organizational work—to go about fabricating things, asking for more people. This is easier to do, but much more costly for the country. Our resources might run out, and then we would not be able to give them special uniforms and special shoes if that was to occur.
These are the kinds of things I meditate on. Not long ago I read in the newspaper about the problems in a textile mill in Santiago de Cuba, problems that I spoke about during the congress, a large textile mill with a capacity of 80 million square meters.
Recently there was a meeting at that mill, where different groups were brought together from the party and from the state. What I read in the paper rather surprised me because they were saying that such and such problems had to be solved in order to bring the mill to full capacity because there wasn’t enough stability in the work force, that they had to guarantee more recreation, and who knows what else, cultural things, construct more housing, guarantee the possibility of higher education. I don’t know how much they were supposed to guarantee. Finally, a compañero said that it would be very difficult to achieve this goal by 1990, but that they would try.
Imagine if this textile mill were in Brazil, what would happen? In a country with so much unemployment, so much hunger, so many social problems, would so many promises be necessary to get the mill to produce to its full capacity?
Is this how socialism is built? Do we believe that socialism can be built in this way? With no appeal to the workers’ sense of obligation? Without an appeal to young people’s sense of duty, reminding them that ours is an underdeveloped country that needs to develop, and that this cannot be on the basis of offering pie in the sky promises—just so that the factory can function? We have to know how to remind these young people and the workers of their duty, by simply saying, “Produce!”
We must know how to tell the workers “Stabilize yourselves. Reach the limits of production. Work, because production must come first, and then the rewards!” We must tell them that the revolution has made great efforts to guarantee work to all young people, but that we are an underdeveloped country, confronted by imperialism and blockaded by imperialism. It cannot only be on the basis of promises, everyone must be asked to fulfill their duty, everyone!
I believe that on a day like today, we must talk about these things. In order to have the many things that today are within our reach, we have struggled, we have shed blood and made many sacrifices. But it seems that many people don’t know this, or pretend not to know, and they don’t seem to know what world they’re living in.
We haven’t come together just to exalt our past glories, to pay tribute to the dead; to pay them tribute, we would need more than one or two hours, more than a minute, or a second, or one day every 25 years or every year. To the dead, to those who sacrificed themselves for the revolution, generation after generation, one must pay tribute every day, every hour, every minute, and every second!
What can we say to the mothers who have lost their sons? What can we say to the women who have lost their husbands? What can we say to the children who have lost their fathers or their grandfathers in the revolutionary struggle? I see children here of six, eight and 10 years old, relatives of the dead. Are we going to tell them that if a person doesn’t have a house next door to the factory where they work they won’t work in the factory?
If houses can’t be built—even though it might be quite right to build houses next door to the factory—we still need cloth, and we have, for example, the spinning mill in Havana that can produce up to 15,000 tons of thread for our textile factories. But, hold on! There is not enough stability in the work force; we must build houses, we will wait until we have all the houses ready. But houses alone won’t solve the labor problem because later on the workers living there might take jobs elsewhere.
I believe that we must also solve the problems with morale, honor and principles, that it is necessary to appeal—and it would be demagogic not to appeal—to our compatriots’ and our workers’ sense of duty.
It is clear that it was poor planning to build the textile mill without also building a number of housing units close to the factory. We should be aware of these problems. But the revolution doesn’t have the resources to solve everything at once.
I believe that these are weaknesses and these weaknesses are our enemy now. All those who look for privileges and cushy jobs, who divert resources, who seek to pocket money that they haven’t earned by the sweat of their brow, engaging in rackets and schemes, they are doing the mercenaries’ work. All this can be found in the vineyards of the Lord.
They are not the majority—to the contrary—but we have a duty to combat them, because these minorities can only do those things when the majority is passive, lazy, and does not exercise a critical spirit. And I know the critical spirit of our people, I know the qualities of our people.
This struggle will be long, much longer than just a five-year period. We will have to fight against this tendency for our entire lives, because there are always two factions, as Martí said: those who build up and those who tear down. There is a large faction that builds up. But there are those of the other faction, where the irresponsible and lazy can be found. And these don’t have to be counterrevolutionaries; there are those who don’t realize that this is one way to act like a mercenary!
We must appeal to the honor and dignity of our fellow citizens, which has been so evident throughout our history.
I believe this to be an appropriate theme for a day like today. Everything we have said, everything we have recalled, reflects the world in which we live. Everything I said about Mr. Reagan’s Hitlerian methods is showing us that all our efforts at national defense are not in vain.
We know that even though our schools have many needs—there are old schools, some in bad condition, especially primary schools—that there is a shortage of housing, that we lack sports and cultural centers, that we lack many things; for all those things that we desire, we must invest hundreds of millions every year in fortification, in defense; we have to dedicate scores of millions of labor-hours to train the people in defense.
All of this takes energy and effort away from productive work that must be redirected into military training. We have to devote hundreds of thousands of tons of cement, steel, all kinds of materials and the efforts of a countless number of workers every year just to defend ourselves. This is another price imperialism forces us to pay!
Today, on this anniversary and in light of these meditations, we see how right we are in preparing the people for this struggle. Because we were strong, we liberated ourselves from a terrible war 25 years ago. This is another lesson of the Bay of Pigs: We must be strong to liberate ourselves, perhaps, from another terrible war!
To the extent that we are strong, efficient and hardworking, and that we meet all our obligations, we will help to avoid imperialist aggression! The imperialists are opportunists, and they know to attack where there is weakness; but where there is strength they hold back. A population is not just made strong by its patriotism, by the arms that it has, but also by its general behavior.
The imperialists would love to see all these problems and vices to which I have referred multiply, because they know that this would weaken us and our resistance.
So then, patriotism obliges us not just to train ourselves, to join a combat unit and to arm ourselves but also to fulfill all our obligations every day of our lives.
The revolution has moved forward, has made great advances, has achieved great successes, but those who think that the new generations don’t have equal or greater tasks ahead of them than those of the generation of the Bay of Pigs, or their predecessors, are mistaken. They are truly mistaken!
The struggle will be long and hard; these last 25 years have taught us this. Imperialism’s crimes continue to demonstrate it to us, as we face an imperialism that is ever more aggressive, arrogant and overbearing.
This is a goal for the whole world, for all the revolutionary forces, for all the socialist countries, for all the democratic and progressive forces of the world. It is a tremendous challenge, a tremendous struggle. No one should believe that a single generation did it all. One generation did a single part, and if you will, a small part. The new generations have to do a great deal, and those that follow will also have much to do. This is the reality.
These are the realities of which I wish to make our compatriots aware, on a day like today, upon which we meditate and on which we can say to our heroes, to our martyrs, to those who had to make more sacrifices than others, that we will never permit the fruits of their labor to become sullied or the fruits of their sacrifice to be misappropriated or squandered; that we will fight with the same courage, with the same steadfastness as at the Bay of Pigs; that we will fight with tenacity and without rest against everything that continues to weaken the revolution.
And in the face of foreign enemies and the danger that lies in wait for us beyond our shores, we can also tell our heroes and martyrs, those who gave everything for the revolution and those who by their sacrifice brought pain to their loved ones: The revolution will not only be able to defend itself from weaknesses, its own weaknesses, but also from its foreign enemies; this country will never return to capitalism, and this country will never again be the property of imperialism.
Finally, we will tell them, as was expressed in Antonio Maceo’s immortal words: “Whoever tries to conquer Cuba will gain nothing but the dust of her blood-soaked soil—if they do not perish in the struggle first!”
Patria o muerte! [Homeland or death!]
Venceremos! [We will win!]