The Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba (CAFC) was appointed by President Bush in October 2003 to recommend ways to hasten the demise of the Cuban revolution. After the CAFC released its report, a mass rally was held in Havana on May 14, 2004. The rally marched past the US interests section, where Fidel Castro read his “Proclamation by an Adversary of the US Government.” He addressed President Bush again in a letter on June 21. The CAFC, chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, released a second report in July 2006.
Mr. George W. Bush:
The million Cubans who are gathered here today to march past your interests section are just a small part of a valiant and heroic people who would like to be here with us, if it were physically possible.
We have not gathered in a hostile gesture to the US people, whose ethics, rooted in the time when the first pilgrims emigrated to this hemisphere, are well known to us. Nor do we wish to upset the officials, employees and guards of this office, to whom we offer all the safety and guarantees that a civilized and educated people such as ours can give while they serve their terms. This is an outraged protest and a denunciation of the brutal, ruthless and cruel measures against our country that your country has just adopted.
We know beforehand what you believe or want to make others believe about those who are marching here. In your opinion they are oppressed masses who yearn for liberty and who have been forced on to the streets by the Cuban government.
You completely ignore the fact that no force in the world could drag a dignified, proud people, which has withstood 45 years of hostility, blockade and aggression from the most powerful nation on earth, on to the streets like a flock of animals, each one with rope around their neck.
A statesman, or someone who claims to be one, should know that throughout history truly humane ideas of justice have been shown to be much more powerful than force; force leaves in its wake only contemptible ruins, covered in dust; humane ideas leave a luminous trail that no one will ever be able to extinguish. Every era has had its own ideas, both good and bad ones, and they have accumulated over time. But the worst, most sinister and dubious ideas belong to the era in which we live—a barbarous, uncivilized, globalized world.
In the world that you seek to impose on us today there is not the slightest notion of ethics, credibility, standards of justice, humanitarian feelings or the elementary principles of solidarity and generosity.
Everything that is written about human rights in your world, and in the world of your allies who share in plundering the world, is an enormous lie. Billions of human beings live in subhuman conditions, starving, without enough food, medicine, clothes, shoes or shelter and with only a minimal understanding of their tragic situation and the reality of the world in which they live.
Surely no one has told you about the tens of millions of children, adolescents, youths, mothers, middle-aged or elderly people who die every year but who might have been saved in this “idyllic Eden” that is our earth; they cannot have told you how fast the natural conditions for life are being destroyed, and that the hydrocarbons that took the world 300 million years to create have been squandered in a century and a half, with devastating effects.
You have only to ask your advisors for precise data on the tens of thousands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, bombs, smart longrange missiles, battleships and aircraft carriers, and the conventional and non-conventional weapons in your arsenals which are enough to wipe out all life on the planet.
Neither you nor anyone else would ever be able to sleep again. And nor would your allies, who are trying to emulate your military build-up. If your allies’ lack of responsibility and political talent, the inequality between their respective states, and their infinitesimal inclination to reflect in the time they have left between protocol and meetings are taken into account, those who have the destiny of the world in their hands can harbor few hopes when, half puzzled, half indifferent, they gaze upon the real madhouse that world politics has become.
The purpose of these words is not to offend or insult you; but since you have set out to intimidate, to terrorize this country and eventually to destroy its socioeconomic system and independence, and if necessary its very physical existence, I consider it my elementary duty to remind you of a few home truths.
You have neither the morality nor the right—none whatsoever—to speak of freedom, democracy and human rights when you have sufficient power to destroy humanity and are attempting to install a world dictatorship, sidestepping and destroying the United Nations, violating the human rights of any and every country, waging wars of conquest to take over world markets and resources, and installing decadent and anachronistic political and social systems that are leading the human race into the abyss.
There are other reasons why you should not mention the word “democracy”; among these is the fact that everyone knows you became president of the United States through fraud. You cannot speak of freedom because you cannot conceive of a world other than one ruled by fear of the lethal weapons which your inexpert hands might rain down on humanity.
You cannot speak of the environment because you are completely ignorant of the fact that the human race is in danger of disappearing.
You label a dictatorship the economic and political system that has guided the Cuban people to higher levels of literacy, knowledge and culture than those in the most developed countries in the world. The same system has reduced infant mortality to a rate lower than that of the United States and provided the population with health care and educational facilities and other extremely important social and human services free of charge.
Listening to you talk of human rights in Cuba has a hollow, absurd ring. This, Mr. Bush, is one of the few countries in this hemisphere where not once in 45 years has there been a single case of torture, a single death squad, a single extrajudicial execution or a single ruler who has become a millionaire through having held power.
You lack the moral authority to speak of Cuba, a dignified country that has withstood 45 years of a brutal blockade, economic war and terrorist attacks which have cost thousands of lives and ten of billions of dollars in economic losses.
You are attacking Cuba for petty, political reasons, trying to obtain electoral support from a shrinking group of renegades and mercenaries who have no ethical principles whatsoever. You lack the moral right to speak of terrorism because you are surrounded by a bunch of murderers who have caused the death of thousands of Cubans through terrorist methods.
You do not hide your contempt for human life, because you have not hesitated to order the extrajudicial death of a secret, unknown number of people in various parts of the world.
You have no right whatsoever, except for that of brute force, to intervene in Cuba’s affairs and, whenever the fancy takes you, to proclaim the transition from one system to another and to take measures to make this happen.
This people can be exterminated—you should know this—or wiped off the face of the earth, but it cannot be subjugated or be once again put into the humiliating position of a US neocolony.
Cuba fights on the side of life in the world; you fight on the side of death. Whereas you kill countless people with your indiscriminate, preemptive, surprise attacks, Cuba saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of children, mothers, old and sick people all over the world.
The only thing you know about Cuba are the lies that spill forth from the ravenous mouths of the corrupt and insatiable mob of former Batista supporters and their descendants, who are experts in electoral fraud and capable of electing as president of the United States someone who did not obtain enough votes to claim victory.
Human beings are not aware of—and cannot be aware of—freedom in a regime of inequality like the one you represent. No one is born equal in the United States. In the black and Latino ghettos, and on the reservations for the people who once inhabited that land but were exterminated, there is no equality other than that of being poor and excluded.
Our people, educated in solidarity and internationalism, do not hate the US people, nor do they want to see young white, black, Native American, mestizo or Latino soldiers from that country die, young people driven by unemployment to enlist in the military, to be sent to whatever corner of the world in traitorous, preemptive attacks or in wars of conquest.
The unbelievable torture applied to prisoners in Iraq has rendered the world speechless.
I do not seek to offend you with these words, as I have already said. My only hope is that in your leisure time one of your advisors might bring these truths to your notice, even though they may not be completely welcome.
Since you have decided that the die is cast, I have the pleasure of saying farewell like the Roman gladiators who were about to fight in the arena: Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you!
My only regret is that I might not see your face, because in that case you would be thousands of miles away, while I would be in the frontline, ready to die fighting in defense of my homeland.
In the name of the Cuban people,
Fidel Castro Ruz
May 14, 2004
Mr. Bush:
I must be calm but very sincere. I have absolutely no intention of insulting you or launching personal attacks. But it is cynical to include Cuba in a list of countries involved in the illegal trafficking of persons. And what is even more outrageous and abhorrent in this arrogant report that the State Department feels obliged to issue every year is the claim that Cuba promotes sex tourism, even with children.
You are in a position to be informed that Cuba has signed two immigration agreements with the United States in the interests of family reunification. The US administration failed to honor the first of these, signed in 1984. Ten years later, instead of the 20,000 visas promised, only about 1,000, that is, 5 percent, were issued every year. Following the immigration crisis that broke out in 1994, our country signed a new agreement with the US government, which was expanded the following year and is still in force. In spite of this, and although its provisions have been basically met with regard to the number of visas, they have not been met regarding the fundamental, inescapable obligation to avoid any incitement to illegal emigration.
With no justification whatsoever, the murderous Cuban Adjustment Act is still in place, implacable, and indeed, new incentives [for illegal immigrants] have been added to it. This absurd and immoral act has cost an incalculable number of lives, including the lives of many Cuban children. And it was as a result of this same law that the loathsome traffic in immigrants emerged using speedboats that come from Florida to points anywhere on our coastline. Cuba punishes these acts severely, whereas US administrations, for very well-known political reasons connected with the state of Florida, have just folded their arms.
No country in the world has given as much physical and moral protection, as much health and education to its children, as Cuba has. You should know that a higher proportion of children die in their first year of life in the United States than in Cuba. One hundred percent of children and adolescents in our country, including those afflicted by some kind of physical or mental disability, attend the appropriate schools and are able to study.
How can you claim not to know that while in the United States there are, on average, 30 students to a classroom; in Cuba the ratio is less than 20 and our educational results are better than those in any developed country?
Our health care services have raised the life expectancy of each child from about 60 years in 1959, according to estimates, to 76.13 years today.
In spite of the US blockade and the collapse of the socialist bloc, unemployment in Cuba is only 2.3 percent, which is several times lower than in your own country, the richest and most industrialized in the world.
You should be ashamed of trying to economically asphyxiate the Cuban people, who, blockaded and subjected to more than four decades of economic warfare, armed aggressions and terrorist actions, have achieved such feats. You can show us nothing like this in your own country.
You are trying to strangle our economy and are threatening war against a country that has shown itself capable of having 20,000 doctors currently offering their services in 64 countries of the Third World. Your administration, in spite of possessing the resources of the richest power on earth, has not sent a single doctor to the most distant corners of these countries, as Cuba does.
On your conscience, and on those of the leaders of the world’s richest states, lies the genocide which is implicit in the death, every year, of more than 10 million children and tens of millions more people who could be saved. These deaths are the result of the pillaging and robbery practiced against Third World countries through the unjust and unsustainable world economic order that the rich countries have imposed to the detriment of 80 percent of this planet’s population.
Someone should inform you of these problems and these facts, instead of constantly spreading intrigue and lies.
As for Cuba, you allow yourself to be driven by the fanatical belief that your reelection in November [2004] depends on the support of a mob of well-known old terrorist émigrés and their descendants, a large section of whom were Batista’s embezzlers and war criminals who sought refuge in the United States with their booty on their backs and their crimes unpunished. Others have grown rich through many years of service to acts of terrorism and aggressions that have caused our people much bloodshed. These groups are becoming increasingly discredited and their influence is diminishing. Everyone remembers what happened in Florida, where they committed all kinds of electoral fraud—in which they are real experts—still you carried the state by only 518 votes. I do not wish to humiliate you by digging up this sordid and unpleasant matter. I will rather limit myself to telling you, with all sincerity, that the errors into which your commitment to this mob lead you may decisively backfire in the next elections.
The US people are already fed up with the embarrassing influence that these groups exercise over the foreign and domestic policy of such an important country. Your dependence on these groups will end up losing you a lot of votes, and not only in Florida, but all over the country.
When you forbid Americans to travel to Cuba under the threat of brutal repression, you are violating a constitutional principle and a right of which your country’s citizens have always been proud. Moreover, it shows political fear.
While Cuba, with no hesitation or fear (with very few exceptions), has opened its doors to masses of [Cuban] immigrants so they can visit their country of origin, and, recently, has authorized them to do so as many times as they wish through the simple procedure of renewing their passports every two years, you are implementing ruthless and inhumane measures against Cuban families that deeply offend their ancestral culture and traditions. It is indescribably cruel to forbid resident Cubans, naturalized or not, to visit their closest relatives for a period of no less than three years, even if these relatives are at death’s door. Quite a few Cuban Americans are already thinking of campaigning for a protest vote.
For purely electoral reasons, and ignoring resolutions passed by almost all members of the United Nations, you have just adopted new, harsher economic measures against the Cuban people that world public opinion and the immense majority of the US public find appalling.
The worst thing about your ridiculous, clumsy anti-Cuba policy is that you and your closest advisors have brazenly proclaimed your goal of forcibly imposing what you call a “political transition” on Cuba if I die in office, a transition which you do not, of course, hesitate to admit that you will try to hasten. You are very well aware of what that means in the language of the mob.
However, perhaps the most shameful thing you did was to announce that the first hours will be decisive, since the idea is to go to any lengths, under any circumstances, to prevent a new political and administrative leadership from taking charge of our country. You would do this completely ignoring the Cuban constitution, the powers of the National Assembly and of our party’s leadership, and the powers that the constitution and the highest institutions of the people have bestowed—as is the case all over the world—on those whose responsibility it is to assume this task immediately.
Since you can only do this by sending troops to occupy key positions in the country, you are, in fact, announcing your intention to launch a military intervention in our homeland. This is why, on May 14, I “hailed” you in advance for the role of Caesar you are playing, as did the gladiators who were forced to fight to the death in the ancient Roman circus.
Today, I think it is only right to add a few more things.
You should know that your march on Cuba will be anything but easy. Our people will stand up to your economic measures, whatever they may be. Forty-five years of heroic struggle against the blockade and economic war, against threats, aggressions, plots to assassinate its leaders, sabotage and terrorism have not weakened but rather strengthened the revolution.
Forty-three years ago the treacherous invasion at the Bay of Pigs was routed in less than 66 hours of relentless combat, against the predictions of brilliant experts.
Some of us who are leading this revolution went through the singular experience where a handful of combatants, who at first had only seven rifles, managed, using weapons taken from the enemy in battle, to defeat Batista’s armed forces, which were equipped, trained and advised by the United States and which numbered 85,000 troops.
In October 1962, a year and a half after the Bay of Pigs, not a single Cuban fighter batted an eyelid at the thought of the very real threat of a nuclear strike. Not a single inspection of our country was allowed, in spite of the agreement between the two superpowers.
Dozens of years of dirty war, sabotage and terrorism, in which many of your current friends from Miami played such a notable role, could not bring Cuba to her knees.
The collapse of the European socialist bloc and of the Soviet Union itself, which deprived us of markets, fuel, food and raw materials, compounded by a blockade made harsher by the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws and other measures, did not break the Cuban people, and what seemed impossible came to pass: We stood firm! This is something that is now in the blood and tradition of patriotic Cubans, who in the last war against Spanish colonialism, clashed with, wore down and virtually defeated 300,000 Spanish soldiers; this is the spirit of fighting against impossible odds and winning.
It is not my intention, Mr. President of the United States, to torment you or upset you with these memories. It is simply my desire to give you an idea of what Cuba is all about, of what a genuine and deep revolutionary process signifies and of what the people you look down on condescendingly are really like.
Today, Cuba has the most cultured and politically aware population of all the countries in the world. Our people are not fanatics, our people defend ideas. This is not a country of illiterate or semi-illiterate people; it is a country where higher education is being made accessible to the whole population and where courage and patriotism are becoming common traits. Experience and knowledge go hand in hand with dreams of a society where justice and humanism can prevail, something that yourself, with your fundamentalism and messianic ways, will find very hard to understand.
Today, we are not just a handful of men and women determined to win or die. We are millions of women and men with enough weapons and over 200,000 well-trained officers and leaders who know perfectly well how to use them under conditions of modern, sophisticated warfare. We have a huge mass of combatants who are similarly well aware of the strengths and weaknesses of those who are threatening us, despite their enormous military resources and the technological superiority of their weapons.
Under the present circumstances in Cuba, and in case of an invasion of our country if I cease to exist—either from natural or other causes—this will not in any way inflict the least damage on our capacity to fight and stand firm. Every political and military chief at every level, and every individual soldier, is a potential commander-in-chief who knows what they must do, and in a given situation each person can become their own commander-inchief.
You will not have even one day, one hour, one minute or one second to prevent the political and military leadership of the country from taking charge immediately, for the orders on what should be done have already been given. Every man and woman will be at his or her combat station without wasting a second.
On May 14, in front of one million Cubans who marched past your interests section, I told you very clearly what I had to do and would do. That is my job. Today, I reiterate it and I suggest that you and your advisors do not concoct any vicious plan for vengeance against our people. Do not try crazy adventures such as surgical strikes or wars of attrition using sophisticated techniques, because you could lose control of the situation. Undesirable things could happen that are not good for the Cuban people or for the US people. You might shatter the immigration agreement and provoke a mass exodus that we would not be in a position to prevent and you might unleash an all-out war between young US soldiers and the Cuban people. That would be very sad.
Yet, I assure you that you would never win that war. You will not find here a divided people, conflicting ethnic groups or profound religious differences, nor will there be traitorous generals commanding our troops. You will find a people solidly united by culture, feelings of solidarity and social and human achievements that are unprecedented in history. You will not win glory with military action against Cuba.
Our people will never give up their independence, nor will they ever give up their political, social and economic ideals.
Cuba showed full solidarity with the US people after the painful and unjustifiable attack on the Twin Towers. That same day we expressed our point of view, which today is being confirmed with almost mathematical precision. War is not the way to put an end to terrorism and violence in the world. That tragic event has been used as a pretext to impose on the planet a policy of terror and force.
Your measures against the Cuban people are atrocious and inhumane. Cuba can prove that you want to destroy a country whose medical services have saved and continue to save hundreds of thousands of lives in poor countries around the world, a country that could even save as many lives of poor US citizens as the 3,000 who died in the Twin Towers.
You surely know that 44 million people in the United States lack medical insurance and that at some point in a two-year period, 82 million Americans had no insurance and could not afford the astronomical costs of essential health-care services in your country. A very conservative estimate indicates that many tens of thousands of lives are lost every year in the United States because of this, perhaps 30 or 40 times the number that died in the Twin Towers. Someone should calculate this exactly.
In a brief five-year period, Cuba is prepared to save the lives of 3,000 poor Americans. It is perfectly possible today to forecast and prevent a heart attack that could be fatal, and to alleviate illnesses that lead inevitably to death. These 3,000 Americans could come to our country accompanied by a relative and receive medical treatment absolutely free of charge.
I want to ask you a question, Mr. Bush, about ethics and principles: Would you be willing to give those people permission to come to Cuba on a program designed to save a life for every life lost in that horrendous attack on the Twin Towers?
And, if they accepted the offer of those services and decided to come, would they be punished?
Show the world that there is an alternative to arrogance, war, genocide, hatred, egoism, hypocrisy and lies!
On behalf of the Cuban people,
Fidel Castro Ruz
June 21, 2004