On visiting Venezuela for the inauguration of President Hugo Chávez, Fidel Castro reminisced about his visit 40 years earlier in the weeks immediately after the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in Cuba in January 1959. In this speech that has become known as “the battle of ideas,” he considered the ideological offensive against socialist ideas that arose in the wake of the collapse of the European socialist bloc.
I was going to say that today, February 3, 1999, it is exactly 40 years and 10 days since I first visited this university and we met in this same place. Of course, you understand that I am moved—without the melodrama you find in certain soap operas—as it would have been unimaginable then that one day, so many years later, I would return to this place…
Several weeks ago, on January 1, 1999, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the triumph of the [Cuban] revolution, I stood on the same balcony in Santiago de Cuba where I had spoken on January 1, 1959. I was reflecting with the audience gathered there that the people of today are not the same people who were there at the time, because of the 11 million Cubans we are today, 7.19 million have been born since. I said that they were two different peoples and yet one and the same eternal Cuban people.
I also reminded them that the immense majority of those who were 50 years old then are no longer alive, and that those who were children at that time are over 40 today.
So many changes, so many differences, and how special it was for us to think that the people had started a profound revolution when they were practically illiterate, when 30 percent of adults could not read or write and perhaps an additional 50 percent had not reached fifth grade. We estimated that out of a population of almost seven million, possibly a little over 150,000 people had gone beyond fifth grade, while today university graduates alone number 600,000, and there are almost 300,000 teachers and professors.
I told my fellow compatriots—in paying tribute to the people who had achieved that first great triumph 40 years before—that in spite of an enormous educational backwardness, they had been able to undertake and defend an extraordinary revolutionary feat. Furthermore, their political culture was probably lower than their educational level.
Those were times of brutal anticommunism, the final years of McCarthyism, when by every possible means our powerful and imperial neighbor had tried to sow in the minds of our noble people all kinds of lies and prejudices. I would often meet an ordinary citizen and ask them a number of questions: whether they believed we should undertake land reform; whether it would be fair for families to own the homes for which at times they paid almost half their salaries. Also, if they believed that the people should own all the banks in order to use those resources to finance the development of the country. Whether those big factories—most of them foreign-owned—should belong to, and produce for, the people… things like that. I would ask 10, 15 similar questions and they would agree absolutely: “Yes, that would be great.”
In essence, if all those big stores and all those profitable businesses that now only enrich their privileged owners belonged to the people, and were used to enrich the people, would you agree? “Yes, yes,” they would answer immediately. So, then I asked them: “Would you agree with socialism?” Answer: “Socialism? No, no, no, not with socialism.” Let alone communism… There was so much prejudice that this was an even more frightening word.
Revolutionary legislation was what contributed the most to creating a socialist consciousness in our people. At that time it was that same people—illiterate or semi-illiterate at the beginning—who had to start by teaching many of its children to read and write. That same people who, out of love for liberty and a yearning for justice, had overthrown the dictatorship and carried out, and heroically defended, the most profound social revolution in this hemisphere.
In 1961, only two years after the triumph of the revolution, with the support of young students working as teachers, about one million people learned how to read and write. They went to the countryside, to the mountains, to the most remote places, and there they taught people who were up to 80 years old how to read and write. Later on, there were follow-up courses and the necessary steps were taken in a continuing effort to attain what we have today. A revolution can only be born from culture and ideas.
No one becomes revolutionary by force. Those who sow ideas never have any need to suppress the people. Weapons in the hands of that same people are now used to fight those abroad who try to take away their achievements.
Forgive me for touching on this issue because I did not come here to preach socialism or communism and I don’t want to be misunderstood. Nor did I come here to propose radical legislation or anything of the sort. I was simply reflecting on our experience that showed us the importance of ideas, the importance of believing in humanity, the importance of trusting in the people. This is extremely important when humankind is facing such complicated and difficult times.
Naturally, on January 1 this year in Santiago de Cuba it was fitting to acknowledge, in a very special way, the fact that the revolution, which had managed to survive 40 years without folding its banners, without surrendering, was mainly the work of the people gathered there, young people and mature men and women. They had received their education under the revolution and were capable of that feat, thus writing pages of noble and well-earned glory for our nation and for our brothers and sisters in the Americas.
We could say that thanks to the efforts of three generations of Cubans, vis-à-vis the mightiest power, the biggest empire in humanity’s history, this sort of miracle came about: that a small country could undergo such an ordeal and achieve victory.
Our even greater recognition went to those compatriots who in the past decade had been willing to withstand the double blockade resulting from the collapse of the socialist camp and the demise of the Soviet Union, which left our neighbor as the sole superpower in a unipolar world, unrivalled in the political, economic, military, technological and cultural fields. I don’t mean the value of their culture, but rather the tremendous power they exercise to impose their culture on the rest of the world.
But they have been unable to defeat a united people, a people armed with just ideas, a people endowed with a great political consciousness, because that is most important for us. We have resisted everything and are ready to continue resisting for as long as necessary, thanks to the seeds planted throughout those decades, thanks to the ideas and the consciousness developed during that time.
This has been our best weapon and it shall remain so, even in nuclear times. Even in times of “smart” weapons, which apparently sometimes make mistakes and strike 100 or 200 kilometers away from their targets, but which have a certain degree of precision. Human intelligence will always be greater than any of these sophisticated weapons.
It is a matter of concepts. The defense doctrine of our nation is based on the conclusion that in the end—the end of our invaders—it would be hand-to-hand combat with the invaders.
We have had to wage, and will have to continue waging, a more difficult battle against that extremely powerful empire—a ceaseless ideological battle. They stepped up this battle after the collapse of the socialist camp when, fully confident in our ideas, we decided to continue forward—moreover, to continue forward alone. And when I say alone I am thinking of state entities, without ever forgetting the immense and invincible solidarity of the peoples that we have always had, which makes us feel under an even greater obligation to struggle.
We have accomplished honorable internationalist missions. Over 500,000 Cubans have taken part in difficult missions abroad. The children of the Cuban people who could not read or write developed such a high consciousness that they have shed their sweat, and even their blood, for other peoples—for any people in other parts of the world.
When the special period began we said: “Now, our first internationalist duty is to defend this bulwark.” By this we meant what [José] Martí had described in the last words he wrote the day before his death, when he said that the main objective of his struggle had to go undeclared in order to be accomplished. Martí, who was not only a true believer in [Simón] Bolívar’s ideas but also a wholehearted follower, set himself an objective. Martí, in his own words, saw it as his duty to prevent “the United States from spreading through the Antilles, as Cuba gains its independence, and from over-powering with that additional strength our lands of America. All I have done so far, and all I will do, is for this purpose.”
It was Martí’s political will and life’s aspiration to prevent the fall of that first trench which the northern neighbors had so many times tried to occupy. That trench is still there, and will continue to be there, with a people willing to fight to the death to prevent the fall of that trench of the Americas. The people there are capable of defending that last trench, and whoever defends the last trench and prevents anyone from taking it begins, at that very moment, to attain victory.
Compañeros—if you allow me to call you that, because that is what we are at this moment—I believe that we are defending a trench here, too. And trenches of ideas—forgive me for quoting Martí again—are worth more than trenches of stone.
We must discuss ideas here, and so I go back to what I was saying. Many things have happened over these 40 years but the most transcendental is that the world has changed. This world of today does not resemble the world of those days.
The revolutionary fever we had come down with from the mountains only a few days before accompanied us when speaking [here 40 years ago] of revolutionary processes in Latin America and focusing on the liberation of the Dominican people from Trujillo’s clutches. I believe that issue took most of the time at that meeting—with a tremendous enthusiasm shared by all.
Today, that would not be an issue. Today, there is not one particular people to liberate. Today, there is not one particular people to save. Today, a whole world, all of humankind needs to be liberated and saved. And it is not our task; it is your task…
Yes, we all hope to live for a long time, all of us! In the ideas that we believe in and in the conviction that those following in our footsteps will carry them forward. However, your task—it must be said—will be more difficult than ours…
I was saying that we are living in a very different world; this is the first thing we need to understand. Furthermore, the world is globalized, truly globalized. It is a world dominated by the ideology, the ethics and the principles of neoliberal globalization.
In our view, globalization is nobody’s whim; it is not even anybody’s invention. Globalization is a law of history. It is a consequence of the development of the productive forces—excuse me, please, for using this phrase which might still scare some people due to its authorship—it is a consequence of scientific and technological development, so much so that even the author of this phrase, Karl Marx, who had great confidence in human abilities, was probably unable to imagine it.
Certain other things remind me of some of the basic ideas of that thinker among great thinkers. It comes to mind that even what he conceived as an ideal human society could never come true—and this is increasingly clear—if it was not a globalized world. Not for a second did he think that in the tiny island of Cuba—just to give you an example—a socialist society, or the building of socialism, would be attempted, least of all so close to such a powerful capitalist neighbor.
Yes, we have tried. Furthermore, we made it and we have defended it. And we have also known 40 years of blockade, threats, aggression and suffering.
Today, since we are the only ones, all the propaganda, all the mass media in the world are used by the United States in the ideological and political warfare against our revolutionary process, in the same way that it uses its immense power in all fields, including its economic power, and its international political influence in the economic warfare against Cuba…
We have withstood that warfare, and like in all battles—whether military, political or ideological—there are casualties. There are those who may be confused, some are weakened by a combination of economic difficulties, material hardships, the parading of luxury in consumer societies and the nicely sweetened but rotten ideas about the fabulous advantages of their economic system, based on the mean notion that humans are animals moved only by a carrot or when beaten with a whip. We might say that their whole ideology is based on this.
There are casualties, but also, like in all battles, other people gain experience, fighters become veterans, they develop their character and help preserve and increase the morale and strength needed to continue fighting.
We are winning the battle of ideas. The battlefield is not limited to our small island, although our small island has to fight. Today, the world is the battlefield—everywhere, on every continent, in every institution, in every forum. This is the good side of the globalized struggle. We must defend the small island while fighting throughout the gigantic world they dominate or try to dominate. In many fields they have almost total domination, but not in all fields, or in the same way, or in absolutely every country.
They have discovered very intelligent weapons but we, the revolutionaries, have discovered an even more powerful weapon: Humans think and feel. We have learned this around the world, in the countless internationalist missions we have discharged in one place or another. Suffice it to mention a single figure: 26,000 Cuban doctors have taken part in these missions…
I was saying that life has taught us many things, and this is what nurtures our faith in the people, our faith in humanity. We didn’t read this in some book, we have lived it; we have had the privilege of living it.
There is no need here for an extensive explanation of what neoliberalism is all about. How can I summarize it? Well, I would say this: Neoliberal globalization wants to turn all countries, especially all our countries, into private property.
What will be left for us of their enormous resources? They have accumulated an immense wealth by not only looting and exploiting the world but also by working the miracle alchemists longed for in the Middle Ages: turning paper into gold. At the same time, they have turned gold into paper and with it they buy everything, everything but souls, or rather, everything but the overwhelming majority of souls. They buy natural resources, factories, whole communication systems, services and so on. They are even buying land all around the world, assuming that if it is cheaper than in their own countries it is a good investment for the future.
I wonder, what are they going to leave us after turning us virtually into second-class citizens—pariahs would be a more precise term—in our own countries? They want to turn the world into a gigantic free-trade zone. It might be more clearly understood this way, because what is a free-trade zone? It is a place with special characteristics where taxes are not paid; where raw materials, spare parts and components are brought in and assembled, or various goods produced, especially in labor-intensive sectors. At times, they pay not more than 5 percent of the salary they must pay in their own countries and these meager salaries are the only thing they leave us with.
Sadder still, I have seen how they have made many of our countries compete with one another by favoring those who offer more advantages and tax exemptions to investors. They have made many Third World countries compete with one another for investments and free-trade zones.
There are countries suffering such poverty and unemployment that they have had to establish dozens of free-trade zones as an option within the established world order. Otherwise they won’t even have the free-trade zone factories and jobs with certain salaries, even if these amount to only 7 percent, 6 percent, 5 percent or less of the salaries the owners of those factories would have to pay in the countries they come from…
That is the future we are offered by neoliberal globalization. But you should not think that this is offered to the workers only. It is also being offered to the national businesses and to the small- and medium-size owners. They will have to compete with the transnational companies’ technology, with their sophisticated equipment, and their worldwide distribution networks; then they will have to look for markets without the substantial trade credits their powerful competitors can use to sell their products…
These past eight years since 1991—in other words, since the collapse of the Soviet Union—have been hard years for us in every sense, especially in terms of ideas and concepts. Now we see that the high and mighty, those who thought they had created a system or an empire that would last a thousand years, are beginning to realize that the foundations of that system, of that empire, are falling apart.
What is the legacy of this global capitalism or this neoliberal capitalist globalization? Not only the capitalism that we know from its very origins, that capitalism from which this one was born, which was progressive yesterday but reactionary and unsustainable today. This is a process many of you, historians, and those who are not, like the students of economics, must know. Capitalism has a history of 250 to 300 years, whose primary theoretician, Adam Smith, published his book in 1776, the same year as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. He was a great talent, undoubtedly, a great intellect. I don’t regard him as a sinner, a culprit or a bandit. He studied the economic system that emerged in Europe while it was in full bloom. He examined and outlined the theoretical bases of capitalism—the capitalism of his day. Adam Smith could have never imagined capitalism as it is today.
In those days of small workshops and factories, Smith felt that personal interest was the primary stimulus to economic activity, and that private and competitive quest constituted the basic source of public welfare. It was not necessary to appeal to an individual’s humanity but one’s love of oneself.
Private property and control were totally compatible with the world of small-scale industry that Adam Smith knew. He did not even live to see the enormous factories and the impressive masses of workers at the end of the 19th century. He could much less imagine the gigantic corporations and modern transnational companies with millions of shares, managed by professional executives who have nothing to do with the ownership of these entities and whose main function is to occasionally report to the shareholders. (Those executives decide, however, which dividends are paid, and how much and where to invest.) These forms of property, management and enjoyment of the wealth produced have nothing to do with the world [Smith] lived in.
Nevertheless, the system continued to develop and gained considerable momentum during the English industrial revolution. The working class emerged and so did Karl Marx, who in my view, with all due respect to those who have a different view, was the greatest economic and political thinker of all time. No one learned more about the laws and principles of the capitalist system than Marx. Right now, more than a few members of the capitalist elite, concerned about the current crisis, are reading Marx, seeking a possible diagnosis and remedy for today’s evils. Socialism, as the antithesis of capitalism, arose with Marx…
Allow me to point out some facts to answer the question I asked: What is the legacy of capitalism and neoliberal globalization? After 300 years of capitalism, the world now has 800 million hungry people. Now, at this very moment, there are one billion illiterates, four billion poor, 250 million children who work regularly and 130 million people who have no access to education. There are 100 million homeless and 11 million children under five years of age dying every year of malnutrition, poverty and preventable or curable diseases.
There is a growing gap between the poor and the rich, within countries and between countries; a callous and almost irreversible destruction of nature; an accelerated squandering and depletion of important nonrenewable resources; pollution of the air and underground waters, rivers and oceans; and climate change with unpredictable but already perceptible consequences. During the past century, more than one billion hectares of virgin forests have been devastated and a similar area has become either desert or wasteland.
Thirty years ago hardly anyone discussed these issues; now it is crucial for our species. I don’t want to give any more figures. All this is very easy to demonstrate and its disastrous results are self-evident. In face of all this, perhaps many are wondering what can be done. Well, the Europeans have invented their own recipe: They are uniting. They have already approved and are in the process of implementing a single currency. The good wishes of the United States, according to their spokespersons, have not been lacking—good wishes which are as great as they are hypocritical, because everyone knows that what they really want is for the euro to fail…
And what will we do? This is a question that we must all ask ourselves within this context, at a time when they are trying to swallow our countries. You can rest assured that this is what they would like to do. We should not expect another miracle like when the prophet was delivered from the gut of a whale, because if that whale swallows us, we’ll be thoroughly digested very rapidly.
Yes, this is our hemisphere and I am here speaking from no other place than Venezuela, Bolívar’s glorious homeland, where he dreamed, where he conceived the idea of the unity of our nations and worked for its attainment at a time when it took three months to travel from Caracas to Lima on horseback, when there were no cellular phones, no planes, no highways, no computers, or anything of the sort. And yet, he foresaw the danger that those few, recently independent colonies far up north could pose. He was prophetic when he said, “The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the Americas with misery in the name of liberty.” He launched the idea of our peoples’ unity and struggled for it until his death. If it was a dream then, today it is a vital necessity.
How can solutions be worked out? They are difficult, very difficult. As I said, the Europeans have set a goal and are immersed in a tough competition with our neighbor to the north; this strong and growing competition is obvious. The United States does not want anyone to interfere with its interests in what it considers to be its hemisphere. It wants everything absolutely for itself. On the other hand, China in the Far East is a huge nation and Japan is a powerful, industrial country.
I believe that globalization is an irreversible process and that the problem is not globalization per se, but rather the type of globalization. This is why it seems to me that for this difficult and tough undertaking, for which the peoples do not have much time, the Latin Americans are the ones who should hurry the most and struggle for unity, through agreements and regional integration, not only within Latin America but also between Latin America and the Caribbean. There we have our English-speaking sister nations of the Caribbean, the CARICOM members, who after barely a few years of independence have acted with impressive dignity…
What is it that suits the neoliberals? What is it they are after? They want to see the day when there will be no tariffs, when their investments will not be affected by the tax authorities in any country. They obtain years of tax exemption as a concession from underdeveloped countries thirsty for investments, where they get the lion’s share and the right to do as they please in our countries with no restrictions whatsoever. They also impose the free circulation of capital and goods throughout the world. Of course, the exception is the commodity that is Third World people—the modern slaves, the cheap labor power so abundant on our planet—who flood the free-trade zones in their own lands or sweep streets, harvest vegetables and do the hardest and worst-paid jobs when legally or illegally admitted into the former metropolis.
This is the type of global capitalism they want to impose. Our countries, full of free-trade zones, would have no other income but the meager salaries of those fortunate enough to get jobs, while a bunch of billionaires accumulates untold wealth…
What second millennium are we going to celebrate, and what kind of a new century will we live in? The world will reach the 21st century with people wrapped in newspapers living under bridges in New York, while others amass enormous fortunes. There are many tycoons in that country but the number of those living under bridges, in the doorways of buildings or in slums is incomparably higher. In the United States, millions live in critical poverty, something in which the fanatical advocates of the economic order imposed upon humanity cannot take pride…
I am discussing this so that you know what Cuba is today, why Cuba is like it is and what the prevailing ethics are in Cuba, a country so miserably slandered in matters of human rights. A country where in 40 years of revolution there has never been a disappeared person, where there has never been a tortured person, where there are no death squads and no political assassinations—nothing like that has ever happened. A country where there are no elderly people abandoned, no children living in the streets or without schools or teachers, no people left to their own devices.
We know very well what has happened in some of the places where our neighbors to the north have been, such as those who organized the 1954 ousting of the [Árbenz] government in one of the most important countries in the Central American region. They brought in their advisors with their handbooks on torture, repression and death. For many years there were no prisoners, this category did not exist, only the dead and disappeared. One hundred thousand disappeared in just one country! And 50,000 killed. We could also mention what happened in many other countries with torture, murders, disappeared, repeated US military interventions under any pretext or no pretext whatsoever.
They don’t remember that, they don’t speak about that; they have lost their memory. In the light of the terrible experiences of the peoples of our America, we challenge them. We will demonstrate with actual facts, with reality, who has a humane approach to life, who has true humanitarian sentiments and who is capable of doing something for humankind that is not lies, slogans, misinformation, hypocrisy, deception and everything they have been doing in our region throughout this century.
I know you don’t need me to explain all this to you but since I raised the subject I feel it is my duty. One frequently meets misinformed persons who believe at least some of the tons of lies and slanders that have been cast against our country in an attempt to batter us, to weaken us, to isolate us, to divide us. They have not been able to divide us and they won’t be able to divide us!
I have said all this to you in the greatest intimacy. I could not come now and speak to you as I did in 1959 about organizing an expedition to solve a problem in a neighboring country. We know very well that today no country can solve its problems by itself. That is the reality in this globalized world. We can say here: Either we are all saved or we all sink.
Martí said: “Humanity is my homeland.” This is one of the most extraordinary things he said. That is how we have to think: Humanity is our homeland!…
It is the Latin American countries’ duty to unite without losing a single minute; the Africans are trying to do it. In Southeast Asia they have ASEAN and they are looking for other forms of economic integration. Europe is doing it at a rapid pace. In other words, there will be subregional and regional alliances in various parts of the world.
Bolívar dreamed of an extensive regional federation from Mexico to Argentina. As you well know, the gentlemen from the north sabotaged the Amphictyonic Congress. They opposed Bolívar’s idea of sending an expedition commanded by [General] Sucre to liberate the island of Cuba and remove all risks of threat or counterattack by the fearful and tenacious Spanish metropolis; so we were not forgotten in Venezuelan history. Now that we are free from the domination of a much stronger power, our most sacred duty is to defend our freedom in the very interests and security of our brothers and sisters in this hemisphere.
Obviously, we must work out various forms of cooperation and integration, step by step, but swiftly if we want to survive as a regional entity with the same culture, the same language and so many things in common. Europe does not have a common language—I don’t know how an Italian understands an Austrian or a Finn, how a German speaks with a Belgian or a Portuguese—but they have been able to create the European Union and they are quickly advancing toward greater economic integration. Why can’t we consider this type of formula? Why don’t we encourage all the unitary and integrationist trends in every country sharing our language, our culture, our beliefs and the mixed blood running through the immense majority of us? And where there is no mixed blood in our veins there should be mixed blood in our souls.
Who were those who fought in the Ayacucho battle? People from the lowlands and from Caracas; Venezuelans from the west and the east, Colombians, Peruvians and Ecuadorans who were side by side; that is how they were able to do what they did. There was also the unforgettable cooperation of the Argentines and the Chileans. Our greatest sin is that we lost this after almost 200 years.
Eleven years from now we will celebrate the 200th anniversary of the proclamation of Venezuelan independence, and later that of other countries. Almost 200 years! What have we done in those 200 years, divided, fragmented, Balkanized, submissive as we have been? It is easier to control the seven dwarfs than to control a boxer, even if he is a lightweight. They have wanted to keep us as divided, neighboring dwarfs so they can control us…
I began by telling you that [Venezuela] is a country I love dearly. This is when I began to tell you about my love for history, for world history, for the history of revolutions and wars, for the history of Cuba, the history of Latin America, and especially for that of Venezuela. That is why I identify so much with Bolívar’s life and ideas.
Fate would have it that Venezuela was the country to fight the most for the independence of this hemisphere. It began here, and you had a legendary precursor like [Francisco] Miranda, who even led a French army in campaign, waging famous battles, which during the French revolution prevented an invasion of French territory. He also fought in the United States for that country’s independence. I have a wide range of books about Miranda’s great life, although I have not been able to read them all. The Venezuelans, therefore, had Miranda, the forefather of Latin America’s independence, and later Bolívar, the Liberator, who was always for me the greatest among the greatest people in history.
[Responding to the audience:] Please, put me in the 40,000th place. One of Martí’s phrases is deeply engraved in my mind: “All the glory in the world can fit into a kernel of corn.” Many great people in history were concerned about glory and that is no reason to criticize them. Perhaps it was the concept of their times, a sense of history, the future, the importance of events in their lives that they took for glory. This is natural and understandable. Bolívar liked to speak about glory; he spoke very strongly about glory. He cannot be criticized; a great aura of glory will be attached to his name forever.
Martí’s concept, which I share entirely, associates glory with personal vanity and self-exaltation. The role of the individual in important historical events has been very much debated. What I like especially about Martí’s phrase is the idea of the insignificance of an individual as compared to the enormous significance and transcendence of humanity and the immeasurable reach of the universe, the reality that we are really like a small speck of dust floating in space. That reality, however, does not diminish human greatness. On the contrary, it is enhanced when, as in Bolívar’s case, he carried in his mind a whole universe of just ideas and noble sentiments. That is why I admire Bolívar so much. That is why I consider his work so immense. He doesn’t belong to the stock of those who conquered territories and nations, or founded empires that brought fame to others; he created nations, freed territories and tore down empires. He was also a brilliant soldier, a distinguished thinker and prophet.
Today, we are trying to do what he wanted to do and what still remains to be done. We are trying to unite our peoples so that tomorrow human beings will be able to know and live in a united, fraternal, just and free world. That is what he wanted to do with the white, black, native and mixed peoples of our America.
I perceive at this moment an exceptional situation in the history of Venezuela. I have witnessed two unique moments here: First, that moment in January 1959 [in my first visit], and 40 years later, I have seen the extraordinary volatility of the people on February 2, 1999. I have seen a people reborn. A people such as I saw in Plaza del Silencio where I was a bit more silent than I have been here… Those were unquestionably revolutionary masses.
It was once again very impressive to see the people in such extraordinary high spirits, although under different circumstances. Back then hope had been abandoned. I don’t want to explain why; I leave that to the historians. This time hope lies ahead. I see in these hopes a true rebirth of Venezuela, or at least an exceptionally great opportunity for Venezuela. I see it coming not only in the interest of Venezuelans; I also see it in the interest of Latin Americans. I see it as something in the interest of other peoples in the world as it advances—because there is no other choice—toward a universal globalization.
There is no way of escaping it, and there is no alternative. So I am not trying to flatter you with my words. Rather, I am reminding you of your duty, the duty of the nation, of the people, of all those who were born after that visit [in 1959], of the youngest, of the more mature, who really have a great responsibility ahead. Opportunities have often been lost, but you could not be forgiven if you lose this one.
The person speaking to you here has had the privilege and the opportunity of accumulating some political experience, of having lived through a revolutionary process in a country where, as I have already said, people did not even want to hear about socialism. And when I say people, I mean the vast majority. That same majority supported the revolution, supported the leaders, and supported the Rebel Army—but there were ghosts that they were afraid of. Like Pavlov did with his famous dogs, the United States created conditioned reflexes in many of us, including who knows how many millions of other Latin Americans.
We have had to fight hard against scarcity and poverty. We have had to learn to do a lot with very little. We had good and bad times, the former especially when we were able to establish trade agreements with the socialist bloc and the Soviet Union and demand fairer prices for our export products. We resorted to diplomacy and the eloquence that revolutionaries in a country that had to overcome so many obstacles must have.
Actually, the Soviets felt great sympathy for Cuba and great admiration for our revolution. It was very surprising for them to see that after so many years a tiny country, right next to the United States, would rebel against that mighty superpower. They had never contemplated such a possibility and they would have never advised it to anyone. Luckily we never asked anyone for advice, although we had already read almost a whole library of the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and other theoreticians. We were convinced Marxists and socialists.
With that fever and that blind passion that characterizes young people, and sometimes old people too, I absorbed the basic principles from those books and they helped me understand the society in which I lived. Until then it was for me an intricate puzzle for which I could not find any convincing explanation. I must say that the famous Communist Manifesto, which Marx and Engels took so long to write—you can tell that its main authors worked conscientiously—impressed me tremendously. For the first time in my life I realized a few truths.
Before that, I was a sort of utopian communist, drawing my own conclusions while taking the first political economy course they taught us in law school from an enormous book with some 900 mimeographed pages. It was a conception of political economy inspired by the ideas of capitalism but which mentioned and analyzed very briefly the different schools of thought. Later, in the second course, I paid much more attention to the subject and after meditating on it all, I became a utopian communist. I call it that because my doctrine had no scientific or historical basis whatsoever but was based on the good intentions of a student recently graduated from a Jesuit school. I am very grateful because [the Spanish Jesuits] taught me some things that have helped me in life—although far removed from any of the ideas I have today—above all, to have strength, a certain sense of honor and definite ethical principles.
I left that school an athlete, an explorer and a mountain climber. I entered the University of Havana ignorant about politics, without a revolutionary mentor, who would have been so useful to me at that stage of my life.
That is how I came to have my own ideas, which I maintain with increased loyalty and fervor. Maybe it is because I now have a little more experience and knowledge, and maybe also because I have had the opportunity of meditating about new problems that did not exist during Marx’s time…
So I am wearing the same jacket I wore when I came to this university 40 years ago, the same one I wore when I attacked the Moncada barracks [in July 1953], and when we disembarked from the Granma [in December 1956]. I would venture to say, despite the many pages of adventure that anyone can find in my revolutionary life, that I always tried to be wise and sensible, although perhaps I have been more wise than sensible.
In our conception and development of the Cuban revolution, we acted as Martí said when, on the eve of his death in combat, he addressed the great anti-imperialist goal of his struggle: “I have had to work quietly and somewhat indirectly, because to achieve certain objectives, they must be kept under cover; to proclaim them for what they are would raise such difficulties that the objectives would not be attained.”
I was discreet, but not as much as I should have been, because I would explain Marx’s ideas about class society to everyone I met. So, they began to take me for a communist in the popular movement whose slogan in the fight against corruption was “Dignity against money.” I had joined that movement as soon as I arrived at the university. Toward the end of my university studies, I was no longer a utopian communist but rather an atypical communist who was acting independently. I based myself on a realistic analysis of our country’s situation.
Those were the times of McCarthyism and Cuba’s Marxist party, the Popular Socialist Party, was almost completely isolated. However, within the movement I had joined, which had now become the Cuban People’s [Orthodox] Party, in my opinion, there was a large mass that had a class instinct but lacked a class consciousness: peasants, workers, professionals, middle-class people—good, honest, potentially revolutionary people. Its founder and leader [Eduardo Chibás], a person of great charisma, had dramatically taken his own life a few months before the 1952 coup d’état. The younger ranks of that party later became an important part of our movement.
I was a member of that political organization which, as usually happens, was already falling into the hands of rich people, and I knew what was going to happen after the inevitable electoral triumph. But I had come up with some ideas on my own—just imagine the things a utopian can dream!—about what had to be done in Cuba and how to do it, despite the United States. Those masses had to be led along a revolutionary path. Maybe that was the merit of the tactic we pursued. Of course, we were reading the books of Marx, Engels and Lenin.
When we attacked the Moncada barracks we left one of Lenin’s books behind, and the first thing the propaganda machine of Batista’s regime said during the trial was that it was a conspiracy of corrupt members of the recently overthrown government, bankrolled with their money, and communist, too. No one knows how both categories could be reconciled!
In the trial, I assumed my own defense. It was not that I considered myself a good lawyer but I thought that I was the person who could best defend myself at that time. I put on a gown and took my place with the other lawyers. It was a political and not a penal trial. I did not intend to be acquitted but to disseminate ideas. I began to cross-examine all those killers who had murdered dozens upon dozens of our compañeros and who were there as witnesses; I turned the trial against them. So the next day they took me out of there, they put me away and declared me unwell.
That was the last thing they did although they really wanted to do away with me once and for all; but I knew very well why they checked themselves. I knew the psychology of all of those people. It was due to the mood and the situation with the people, the rejection and great indignation caused by all the murders they had committed. I also had a bit of luck; but the fact is that at the beginning, while they were questioning me, this book by Lenin shows up. Someone takes it out and says, “You people had a book by Lenin.”
We were explaining who we were: followers of Martí, and that was the truth; and that we had nothing to do with that corrupt government that they had ousted from power. However, we didn’t say a word about Marxism-Leninism, and we did not have to. We said what we had to say, but since the subject of the book came up at the trial, I felt really angry and said, “Yes, that book by Lenin is ours, we read Lenin’s books and other socialist books, and whoever doesn’t read them is ignorant.” That is what I told the judges and the rest of the people there. It was insufferable; we were not going to say, “Listen, that little book was planted there by someone…”
Our program had been presented when I defended myself at the trial. Therefore, if they did not know what we thought it was because they did not want to know. Perhaps they tried to ignore that speech, which became known as History Will Absolve Me. As I explained, I was ejected, they declared me unwell, they tried all the others and sent me to a hospital to try me in a small ward [of the hospital]. They did not exactly hospitalize me, but put me in an isolated prison cell. In the hospital, they turned a small ward into a courtroom with the judges and a few other people crammed into it, most of them from the military. They tried me there, and I had the pleasure of saying there everything that I thought, everything, quite defiantly.
I wonder why they were not able to deduce our political thought, for it was all out there in the open. You might say it contained the foundation of a socialist program, although we were convinced the time was not yet ripe, that the right time and stages would come. At the time we spoke about land reform among many other things of a social and economic nature. We said that all the profits obtained by all those gentlemen with so much money—in other words, the surplus value but without using such terminology—should be used for the development of the country, and I hinted that it was the government’s responsibility to look after the development of the country and that surplus money.
I even spoke about the golden calf; I referred to the Bible again and singled out “those who worshipped the golden calf,” in a clear reference to those who expected everything from capitalism. That was enough for them to figure out what we thought.
Later, I realized that it is likely that many of those who might be affected by a true revolution did not believe what we said, because in the 57 years of Yankee neocolonialism many a progressive or revolutionary program had been proclaimed. The ruling classes never believed our program to be possible or permissible by the United States. They did not pay much attention to it; they heeded it and even found it amusing. At the end of the day, all those other programs had been abandoned and people became corrupt. So they probably thought, “Yes, the illusions of these romantic young people are very pretty, very nice, but why worry about that?”
They did not particularly like Batista; so they admired our frontal attack against his abusive and corrupt regime, and they possibly underestimated our declaration, which was the basis of what we later did and of what we think today. The difference is that many years of experience have further enriched our knowledge and perceptions of all those problems. So, as I have said, that is the way I have thought since then.
We have undergone the tough experience of a long revolutionary period, especially during the last 10 years, confronting extremely powerful forces under very difficult circumstances. Well, I will tell you the truth: We achieved what seemed impossible. I would venture to say that near miracles were performed. Of course, the laws were passed exactly as they had been promised, always with the angry and arrogant opposition of the United States. It had had great influence in our country, so it made itself felt and the process became increasingly radicalized with each blow and each aggression we suffered.
Thus began the long struggle we have waged up to now. The forces in our country became polarized. Fortunately, the vast majority was in favor of the revolution and a minority, around 10 percent or less, was against it. So there has always been a great consensus and a great support for that process up to now. We made a great effort to overcome the prejudices that existed, to convey ideas, to build a consciousness, and it was not an easy task.
I remember the first time I spoke about racial discrimination. I had to go on television about three times. I was surprised at how deep-rooted those prejudices brought to us by our northern neighbors were, prejudices that meant that certain clubs were for white people only and others were not admitted. Almost all the beaches, especially in Havana, were exclusively for whites. There were even segregated parks and promenades, where according to the color of your skin you had to walk in one direction or another. What we did was to open all the beaches for everyone and from the very first days of the revolution we prohibited discrimination in all places of recreation, parks and promenades. Such humiliating injustice was incompatible with the revolution.
One day when I spoke about these issues, there was such a reaction, so many rumors and so many lies! They said we were going to force white men to marry black women and white women to marry black men. Well, just like that other preposterous fabrication that we were going to deprive families of the parental custody of their children. I had to go on television again to discuss the subject of discrimination in order to respond to all those rumors and machinations. That phenomenon of racism, which was nothing but an imposed racist culture, a humiliating, cruel prejudice, was very hard to eradicate.
In other words, during those years, we devoted a great deal of our time to two things: defending ourselves from invasions, threats of foreign aggression, the dirty war, assassination attempts, sabotage, etc., and building consciousness. There was a time when there were armed mercenary bands in every province of our country, promoted and supplied by the United States. But we confronted them immediately, so that they did not have the slightest chance to prosper. Our own experience in irregular [guerrilla] warfare was very recent and we were one of the few revolutionary countries that totally defeated these counterrevolutionary bands despite the logistical support they received from abroad. Nevertheless, we had to devote a lot of our time to this.
One source of concern I have is that many expectations have been raised here in Venezuela by the extraordinary election results, and this is only logical. What do I mean? I mean the natural, logical tendency of the people to dream, to wish that a great number of accumulated problems might be solved in a matter of months. As an honest friend, in my opinion, I think there are problems here that will not be solved in months, or even years…
What do I fear? It is this: You people have lived through periods of abundance—okay, long ago. In 1972 the price of oil was $1.90 a barrel. For example, at the triumph of the revolution, Cuba could buy the four million tons of fuel it consumed with a few hundred thousand tons of sugar, at the normal world sugar price existing then. When the price of fuel suddenly rose we were saved by the already mentioned price [agreement with the Soviet Union]. But when the crisis came—after the Soviet Union was lost and our basic market with it, as well as all our agreed prices—we had to cut by half the 13 million tons of oil that we were consuming at that time. A large part of what we were exporting we had to invest in fuel, and we learned to save…
These are times of abundance for neither Venezuela nor the world. I am fulfilling an honest duty, the duty of a friend, of a brother, by suggesting to you, who are a powerful, intellectual vanguard, to meditate profoundly about these topics. We want to express to you our concern that these logical, natural and human hopes, stemming from a sort of political miracle that has taken place in Venezuela might, in the short term, turn into disappointment and a weakening of such an extraordinary process.
I ask myself, what economic feats or miracles can be expected immediately with the prices of Venezuelan export commodities so low and oil at $9 a barrel? With the lowest price in the last 25 years, a dollar has a lot less purchasing power now, with a larger population, an enormous accumulation of social problems, an international economic crisis and a neoliberally globalized world?
I cannot and should not say a word about what we would do in such circumstances. I cannot. I am here as a guest, not as an advisor, an opinion giver or anything like that. I am simply meditating. Allow me to say that there are some important countries, whose situation is worse than yours, which I hope can overcome their difficulties. Your situation is difficult, but not catastrophic. That would be our view if we were in your place. I will say more with the same frankness. You cannot do what we did in 1959. You will have to be more patient than we were, and I am referring here to the sector that wants radical economic and social changes in the country.
If the Cuban revolution had triumphed in a moment such as this, it would not have been able to sustain itself. By this, I mean that same Cuban revolution which has done everything it has done. It emerged—and not because it was so calculated, but by a rare historical coincidence—14 years after World War II, in a bipolar world. We did not know a single Soviet citizen, and we never received a single bullet from the Soviets to carry out our struggle and our revolution. Nor did we let ourselves be guided by any type of political advice after the triumph, nor did anyone ever attempt it, because we were very reluctant to accept that advice. We Latin Americans in particular, do not like to be told what to do.
At that moment, of course, there was another powerful pole and so we anchored ourselves to that pole, which had come out of a great social revolution. It helped us to face the monster that cut off our oil and other vital supplies and reduced its imports of Cuban sugar, bringing them down to zero as soon as we enforced a land reform law. Therefore, from one minute to the next, we were deprived of a market that had taken more than a century to establish.
The Soviets, on the other hand, sold us oil. At the world price, yes; to be paid in sugar, yes; at the world price of sugar, yes, but we exported our sugar to the Soviet Union and we received oil, raw materials, food and many other things. It gave us time to build a consciousness; it gave us time to sow ideas; it gave us time to create a new political culture. It gave us time! Enough time to build the strength that enabled us later to resist the most incredibly hard times.
All the internationalism that we have practiced, which has already been mentioned, also made us stronger…
Now we can say the same thing a lieutenant said who took me prisoner in a forest near Santiago de Cuba in the early hours of dawn, several days after the attack against the Moncada barracks. We had made a mistake—there is always a mistake. We were tired of sleeping on the ground, on roots and stones, so we fell asleep in a makeshift hut covered with palm fronds. Then we woke up with rifles pointed against our chests. It was a lieutenant, a black man, with a group of obviously bloodthirsty soldiers who did not know who we were. We had not been identified. At first, they did not recognize us. They asked our names. I gave a false name. Prudence, huh? Shrewdness? Perhaps it was intuition or maybe instinct. I can assure you that I was not afraid because there are moments in life when you consider yourself as good as dead, and then it is rather your honor, your pride, your dignity that reacts.
If I had given them my name, that would have been it—tah, tah, tah! They would have done away with that small group immediately. A few minutes later they found some weapons nearby. Some compañeros who were not physically able to continue the struggle had left these behind. Some of them were wounded and we had all agreed they should return to the city to turn themselves in to the judicial authorities. Only three of us stayed, only three armed compañeros! And we were captured.
But that lieutenant… what an incredible thing! I have never publicly told this story in detail. This lieutenant was trying to calm down the soldiers but he could hardly restrain them. When they found the other compañeros’ weapons while searching the surroundings, they were wild. They had us tied up with their loaded rifles pointing at us. But the lieutenant moved around calming them down and repeating in a low voice: “You cannot kill ideas, you cannot kill ideas.” What made this man say that?
He was a middle-aged man. He had taken some university courses and he had that notion in his head, and he felt the urge to express it in a low voice, as if talking to himself: “You cannot kill ideas.” Well, when I saw this man and I saw his attitude, in a critical moment when he was hardly able to keep those angry soldiers from shooting us, I got up and spoke to him alone: “Lieutenant, I am so and so, first in command of the action. Seeing your chivalrous attitude, I cannot deceive you. I want you to know whom you have taken prisoner.” And the man said, “Don’t tell anyone! Don’t tell anyone!” I applaud that man because he saved my life three times within a few hours.
A few minutes later they were taking us with them and the soldiers were still very agitated. They heard some shots not far away, got ready for combat, saying to us, “Drop down to the ground.” I remained standing and I said, “I will not drop to the ground!” I thought it was some kind of trick to eliminate us, so I said, “No.” I also told the lieutenant, who kept insisting that we protect ourselves, “I am not dropping to the ground; if they want to shoot, let them shoot.” Then he says—listen to what he says: “You boys are very brave.” What an incredible reaction!
I don’t mean that he saved my life at that moment, but he made that gesture. After we reached a road, he put us in a truck and there was a major there who was very brutal. He had murdered many of our compañeros and wanted the prisoners handed over to him. The lieutenant refused, saying we were his prisoners and he would not hand us over. He had me sitting in the front seat of the truck. The major wanted him to take us to the Moncada [barracks] but he did not hand us over to the major. So he saved our lives for the second time. He did not take us to the Moncada barracks. He took us to the precinct, in the center of the city, saving my life for the third time. You see, he was an officer of the army we were fighting against. After the revolution, we promoted him to captain and he became aide to the first president of the country.
As that lieutenant said, ideas cannot be killed. Our ideas did not die; no one could kill them. And the ideas we sowed and developed during those 30 odd years until 1991, when the special period began, were what gave us the strength to resist. Without those years we had had to educate, sow ideas, build awareness, instill feelings of solidarity and a generous internationalist spirit, our people would not have had the strength to resist.
I am speaking of things that are somewhat related to matters of political strategy. Very complicated things because they can be interpreted in different ways. I have said that not even a revolution like ours, which triumphed with the support of over 90 percent of the population—with unanimous, enthusiastic support, great national unity, and a tremendous political force—would have been able to resist. We would not have been able to preserve the revolution under the current circumstances of the globalized world.
I do not advise anyone to stop fighting, one way or another. There are many ways, among them the action of the masses, whose role and growing strength are always decisive.
Right now, we ourselves are involved in a great combat of ideas, disseminating our ideas everywhere; that is our job. It would not occur to us today to tell anyone to make a revolution like ours. Under the circumstances that we think we understand quite well, we would never suggest: Do what we did. Maybe if we were in those times we would say: Do what we did. But the world was different then and the experience was different. Now we are more knowledgeable, more aware of the problems, and of course, respect and concern for others should always come first.
At the time of the revolutionary movements in Central America, when the situation had become very difficult because the unipolar world already existed, and not even the Nicaraguan revolution could stay in power, when peace negotiations were initiated, visitors came quite often because of the longstanding friendship with Cuba, and we were asked our views. We would tell them: “Don’t ask for our views about that. If we were in your place, we would know what to do, or we might be able to imagine what we should do. But one cannot tell others what to do if you are not the people who will have to take action on matters as vital as fighting to the death or negotiating. Only the revolutionaries of each country themselves can take that decision. We will support whatever decision you make.”
It was a unique experience, which I am relating in public for the first time. Everyone has their own opinions, but no one has the right to convey to others their own philosophy on matters of life and death. That is why I say that giving opinions is a very delicate matter.
This does not, however, hold true for global issues that affect the entire planet, and questions of tactics and strategies of struggle related to those issues. As citizens of the world and as part of the human race, we have the right to clearly express our thoughts to those who want to hear, whether or not they are revolutionaries.
We learned a long time ago how to approach relations with the progressive and revolutionary forces. Here, I limit myself to conveying ideas, reflections and concepts in keeping with our common condition as Latin American patriots, because I repeat, I see a new hour has arrived in Venezuela, an immovable and inseparable pillar of the history of our America. One has the right to trust one’s own experience or viewpoint, not because one is infallible or because one has not made mistakes, but because of having had the opportunity to take a 40-year-long course in the academy of the revolution.
That is why I have told you that you do not have a catastrophic situation, but you do have a difficult economic situation that entails risks for the opportunity that is looming. There have been very impressive coincidences. This situation in Venezuela has taken place at a critical moment in the integration of Latin America; a special moment when those further to the south, in their endeavor for unity, need help from those in northern South America. In other words, they need your help. This has come at a moment when the Caribbean countries need you. It has come at a moment when you can be the link, the bridge, the hinge, whatever you want to call it: a steel bridge between the Caribbean, Central America and South America.
Nobody like you is in such a position to struggle for unity and integration, something so important and so much of a priority at this difficult moment. It concerns the survival not only of Venezuela but of all the countries sharing our culture, our language and our race.
Today more than ever we must be followers of Bolívar. Now more than ever we must raise the banner that states “Humanity is our homeland,” aware that we can only be saved if humankind is saved. We can only be free—and we are very far from being free—if and when humanity is free, if and when we achieve a truly just world, which is possible and probable, although from much observation, meditation and reading, I have reached the conclusion that humanity has very little time left to achieve this.
This is not only my opinion but the opinion of many other people…
[In Cuba] we have some resources. Tourism, developed mainly with our own resources, has gained momentum in these years and we have made several decisions that have proved effective. I am not going to explain how we have managed to achieve what I have already explained. But I should say that we did it by avoiding shock policies, the famous shock therapy that has been so insensitively applied elsewhere.
We consulted with the people about the austerity measures we applied. We discussed this with the trade unions, the workers and the peasants. We discussed what to do with the price of a given item, what prices to increase and why, what prices not to increase and why. That was also discussed with students in hundreds of thousands of assemblies. Then the measures were submitted to the National Assembly and later they were taken back to the grassroots again. Every decision was discussed so that nothing was implemented unless there was a consensus and consensus is something that cannot be achieved by force.
The wise men in the north believe or pretend to believe that the Cuban revolution is sustained by force. They have not been clever enough to realize that in our country, a country educated in important revolutionary and humane concepts, that would be absolutely impossible. This is only achieved through consensus and nothing else; no one in the world can do this without the people’s massive support and cooperation. But consensus has its own rules. We learned to create it, to maintain it and to defend it. A united people ready to fight and win can be tremendously strong…
So what you need is unity, political culture and the conscious and militant support of the people. We built that through a long process. You, Venezuelans, will not be able to create it in a few days, or in a few months.
If instead of being an old friend, someone to whom you have given the great honor of receiving with affection and trust, if instead of being an old and modest friend—I say it candidly, since I am totally convinced of it—if it were one of the Venezuelan forefathers who was here. I dare say more, if it were that great and talented man who dreamed of Latin American unity who was here, talking to you right now, he would say: “Save this process! Save this opportunity!”
I think you can be happy, and you will be happy, with many of the things you can do. Many are already within reach and depend on subjective factors and on very little resources. Yes, you can find resources, and you can find them in many things to meet priorities, fundamental, essential requirements. But you cannot dream that the Venezuelan society will now have the resources it once had, under very different circumstances. The world is in crisis, prices for raw materials are very low, and the enemy will try to make use of that.
Rest assured that our neighbors to the north are not at all happy with the process that is taking place here in Venezuela, and they do not want it to succeed.
I am not here to sow discord, quite the opposite. I would recommend wisdom and caution, all the necessary caution, but no more than necessary. But you have to be skilled politicians. You will even need to be skilled diplomats. You should avoid frightening many people. Based on my own experience of many years, not on my own intelligence, I suggest that you subtract as few people as possible.
A transformation, a change, a revolution in the sense that word has today—when you look farther than the piece of land where you were born, when you think of the world, when you think of humankind—requires the participation of the people. Better to add than subtract. Look how that lieutenant who commanded the platoon that took me prisoner was added to our cause, not subtracted from it. I took that man the way he was, and I have met some others like him throughout my life. I would probably say I have met many like him.
It is true that the social environment, the social situation, is the main factor in forging the human consciousness. After all, I was the son of a landowner who had quite extensive land in a country the size of Cuba, though perhaps it would not be considered so extensive in Venezuela. My father had about 1,000 hectares of land of his own and 10,000 hectares of leased land that he exploited. He was born in Spain and as a poor, young peasant was enlisted to fight against the Cubans…
He was a conscript. He was brought here as they brought hundreds of thousands of other people. When the war ended, he was repatriated to Spain and he came back to Cuba a little later to work as a farmhand.
Later, he became a landowner. I was born and I lived on a large estate; it did not do me any harm. I had my first friends there, the poor children of the place, the children of waged workers and modest peasants, all victims of the capitalist system. Later I went to schools that were more for the elite, but I came out unscathed, luckily. I really mean luckily. I had the fortune of being the son, and not the grandson, of a landowner. If I had been the grandson of a landowner I would have probably been born and brought up in the city among rich children, in a very high-class neighborhood, and I would have never developed my utopian or Marxist, communist ideas or anything similar.
No one is born a revolutionary or a poet or a warrior. It is the circumstances that make an individual or give them the opportunity of being one thing or the other.
If Columbus had been born a century before, no one would have heard of him. Spain was still under Arab occupation. If he had not been wrong and there had really been a route directly to China by sea without a continent in between, he would have lasted 15 minutes on the coast of China. Remember that the Spaniards conquered Cuba with just 12 horses and in those days the Mongols already had cavalries with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. See how things come to be!
I will not comment on Bolívar, because he was born where he should have been born, the right day and in the way he should—that’s it! I leave aside the scenario of what would have happened if he had been born 100 years before or 100 years later, because that was impossible…
Now I will really finish. Some businesspeople are waiting for me. Will I change my discourse for them? Well, I will tell them the same thing: honesty above all else. I believe that in this country there is a place for every honest person, for every feeling person, for every person who can hear the message of the homeland and of the times. I would say, the message of humanity is the one to be conveyed to your fellow countrymen and women.