Addressing the Millennium Summit at the United Nations in September 2000, Fidel Castro playfully put a handkerchief over the little warning light that was illuminated to advise the speaker when their five minutes were up.
This incident highlights the dilemma faced by the editors of this book: How can a selection be made of the words of one of history’s greatest orators, encompassing five decades of speeches? Many of Fidel Castro’s single speeches alone would fill an entire book. And how can a selection be made to truly represent all the ideas and issues he has articulated during half a century on the world political stage?
There are more than 5,000 speeches over a 48-year period, in addition to countless interviews and political statements of one sort or another. The selection published here is quite different from the initial selection made when this editorial project was first conceived. Undoubtedly, the contents of this volume would have been quite different if selected five years before or five years hence, as it would inevitably be shaped by the circumstances of the moment, as this selection is. The editors of this volume acknowledge that the present selection is partly framed by two considerations: firstly, the dramatic changes in the political landscape in Latin America in the first decade of the 21st century, and secondly, the ongoing consequences of the “crisis of socialism” and the debate over the future of the socialist project.
These events over the last decade especially and Fidel’s decision to temporarily hand over power to his brother Raúl in July 2006 have influenced our choice of speeches. Nevertheless, we are confident it is both representative of Fidel’s political thinking and reflective of the process of the Cuban revolution itself.
There are 20 chapters and an epilogue in this volume, encompassing some 28 separate speeches and interventions. Some of these are printed in full, others are excerpted. For this volume, we have included several speeches addressed to audiences outside Cuba.
A comprehensive chronology will also guide readers through the history of the periods reflected in this anthology.
A selection such as this must inevitably exclude some if not many of Fidel’s classic speeches made at key moments of the revolution. It also neglects in part a number of important themes he has returned to over the years, such as Cuba’s involvement in Africa, the Third World debt crisis and the environmental disaster threatening humanity.
Special mention needs to be made of a parallel publishing project to this anthology. Ocean Press’s sister publisher, Ocean Sur—a new Latin American book publisher with several offices in the continent—has embarked on an ambitious project to publish a series of thematic selections of Fidel Castro’s speeches, interviews and writings in order to make these works available in Spanish to readers in Latin America and elsewhere. This will include multi-volume anthologies of Fidel Castro on culture and education, Latin America, Chile during the Allende era, Venezuela and Chávez, political portraits of world and historical figures, socialism, political economy, Africa and solidarity.
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As a witness to the spectacle of Fidel Castro’s mass oratory, his close collaborator Che Guevara observed that Fidel “has his own special way of fusing himself with the people [which] can be appreciated only by seeing him in action. At the great public mass meetings one can observe something like the dialogue of two tuning forks whose vibrations interact, producing new sounds. Fidel and the mass begin to vibrate together in a dialogue of growing intensity until they reach a climax in an abrupt conclusion crowned by our cry of struggle and victory.”
Hopefully, the printed pages of this book convey to the reader some sense of this dynamic relationship between Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution.
His old friend, Gabriel García Márquez, described Fidel as “a man of austere ways and insatiable illusions, with an old-fashioned formal education, of cautious words and simple manners, and incapable of conceiving any idea which is not out of the ordinary.”
Fidel has never ceased to engage in what he has called “the battle of ideas,” arguing:
I believe there is something more powerful than weapons: ideas, reason and the morality of a cause... What can bring about the downfall of a military power with hundreds of bases all over the world? Ideas that are just, at the right moment, and in the appropriate historical circumstances.
Since his withdrawal from daily responsibilities in the Cuban government, Fidel has echoed this earlier statement by expressing his total confidence that his ideas would outlive him. Writing to the Union of Young Communists (UJC) in June 2007, he said:
Are ideas born of human beings? Do they perish with an individual? Ideas have come into being throughout the history of the human species. They will exist as long as our species does.
We leave the reader to witness throughout this volume the extraordinary voice of one of the major political figures of the 20th century, who speaks not only for Latin America and the Third World, but also for a humanity clamoring for an alternative.
The Editors
August 2007