Havana, Cuba
Free Territory of America
2 September 1960
The people of Cuba, free territory of America, acting with the inalienable powers that flow from an effective exercise of their sovereignty through direct, public and universal suffrage, have formed themselves in National General Assembly close to the monument and memory of José Martí.2
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba, as its own act and as an expression of the sense of the people of Our America:3
1. Condemns in its entirety the so-called ‘Declaration of San José, Costa Rica’, a document that offends, under dictation from the imperialism of North America, the sovereignty and dignity of other peoples of the Continent and the right of each nation to self-determination.4
2. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba strongly condemns the imperialism of North America for its gross and criminal domination, lasting for more than a century, of all the peoples of Latin America, who more than once have seen the soil of Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Cuba invaded; who have lost to a greedy imperialism such wide and rich lands as Texas, such vital strategic zones as the Panama Canal, and even, as in the case of Puerto Rico, entire countries converted into territories of occupation;5 who have suffered the insults of the Marines towards our wives and daughters and towards the most cherished memorials of the history of our lands, among them the figure of José Martí.6
That domination, built upon superior military power, upon unfair treaties and upon the shameful collaboration of traitorous governments, has for more than a hundred years made of Our America — the Americathat Bolívar, Hidalgo, Juarez, San Martin, O’Higgins, Tiradentes, Sucre and Martí wished to see free — a zone of exploitation, a backyard in the financial and political empire of the United States, a reserve supply of votes in international organizations where we of the Latin American countries have always been regarded as beasts of burden to a ‘rough and brutal North that despises us’.7
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba declares that Latin American governments betray the ideals of independence, destroy the sovereignty of their peoples and obstruct a true solidarity among our countries by accepting this demonstrated and continued domination. For such reasons this Assembly in the name of the Cuban people, with the same spirit of liberation that moved the immortal fathers of our countries, rejects it, thereby fufilling the hope and the will of the Latin American peoples.
3. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba rejects as well the attempt to perpetuate the Monroe Doctrine, until now utilized ‘to extend the domination in America’ of greedy imperialists, as José Martí foresaw, and to inject more easily ‘the poison of loans, of canals and railroads,’ also denounced by José Martí long ago.8 Therefore, in defiance of that false Pan-Americanism which is merely prostration of spineless governments before Washington and rule over the interest of our peoples by the monopolies of the United States, the Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims the liberating Latin Americanism of Martí and Benito Juárez. Furthermore, while extending the hand of friendship to the people of the United States of America — a people that includes persecuted intellectuals, Negroes threatened with lynching, and workers subjected to the control of gangsters — the Assembly reaffirms its will to march ‘with the whole world and not just a part of it’.
4. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba declares that the spontaneous offer of the Soviet Union to help Cuba if our country is attacked by imperialist military forces cannot be considered an act of intervention, but rather an open act of solidarity. Such support, offered to Cuba in the face of an imminent attack by the Pentagon, honours the government of the Soviet Union as much as cowardly and criminal aggressions against Cuba dishonour the government of the United States. Therefore, the General Assembly of the People declares before America and the world that it accepts with gratitude the help of rockets from the Soviet Union should our territory be invaded by military forces of the United States.9
5. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba denies absolutely that there has existed on the part of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China any aim ‘to make use of the economic, political and social situation in Cuba … in order to break continental unity and to endanger hemispheric unity’.10 From the first to the last volley, from the first to the last of the twenty thousand martyrs who fell in the struggle to overthrow tyranny and win power for the Revolution, from the first to the last revolutionary law, from the first to the last act of the Revolution, the people of Cuba have moved of their own free will. Therefore, no grounds exist for blaming either the Soviet Union or the People’s Republic of Chinafor the existence of a Revolution which is the just response of Cuba to crimes and injuries perpetrated by imperialism in America.
On the contrary, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba believes that the peace and security of the hemisphere and of the world are endangered by the policy of the government of the United States, which forces the governments of Latin America to imitate it, of hostilely isolating the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, of engaging in aggressive and provocative acts, and of systematically excluding the People’s Republic of China from the United Nations, despite the fact that it represents nearly all the 600,000,000 inhabitants of China.
Therefore, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba confirms its policy of friendship with all the peoples of the world and reaffirms its intention of establishing diplomatic relations with, among others, the socialist countries of the world. From this moment the Assembly expresses its free and sovereign will to establish relations with the People’s Republic of China, therefore rescinding relations with the puppet regime maintained in Formosaby the Seventh Fleet of the United States.
6. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba — confident that it is expressing the general opinion of the people of Latin America — affirms that democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy; with discrimination against the Negro; with disturbances by a Ku Klux Klan; nor with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvellous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenbergs to their death against the protests of a shocked world including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII.11
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba expresses the Cuban conviction that democracy does not consist solely of elections that are nearly always managed by rich land-owners and professional politicians in order to produce fictitious results, but rather of the right of citizens to determine as this Assembly of the people is now doing, their own destiny. Furthermore, democracy will come to exist in Latin America only when people are really free to make choices, when the poor are not reduced — by hunger, social inequality, illiteracy and the judicial system — to the most awful powerlessness.12
Therefore, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba:
Condemns the backward and inhuman latifundium system of large, poorly cultivated holdings of land, source of misery for the rural population; condemns the starvation wage and the heartless exploitation of human labour by illegitimate and privileged interests; condemns the illiteracy, the absence of teachers, schools, doctors and hospitals, the lack of care for the aged that prevail in the countries of America; condemns discrimination against the Negro and the Indian; condemns the inequality and exploitation of women; condemns military and political oligarchies that keep our peoples wretched, and hinders both their progress towards democracy and also the full exercise of their sovereignty; condemns the concession of the natural resources of our countries to foreign monopolies as a give-away that disregards the interest of the people; condemns governments that render homage to Washington while they ignore the sentiments of their own people; condemns the systematic deception of the people by the press and other media serving the interests of political oligarchies and the imperialist oppressor; condemns the monopoly of news by agencies that are the instruments of Washington and of trusts of the United States; condemns repressive laws that deter workers, peasants, students and intellectuals, who together form a majority in every country, from joining together to seek patriotic and social goals; condemns the monopolies and imperialist enterprises that plunder our resources, exploit our workers and peasants, bleed our economies and keep them backward while subjecting politics in Latin America to their own designs and interests.
Finally, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba condemns the exploitation of man by man and the exploitation of underdeveloped countries by imperialist finance capital.
In consequence, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims before America the right of peasants to the land; the right of the workers to the fruits of their labour; the right of children to receive education; the right of the sick to receive medical and hospital care; the right of the young to work, the right of students to receive free instruction, practical and scientific; the right of Negroes and Indians to ‘a full measure of human dignity’, the right of women to civic, social and political equality; the right of the aged to a secure old age; the right of intellectuals, artists and scientists to fight through their work for a better world; the rights of states to nationalize imperialist monopolies as a means of recovering national wealth and resources; the right of countries to engage freely in trade with all other countries of the world; the right of nations to full sovereignty; the right of the people to convert their fortresses into schools and to arm their workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Negroes, Indians, women, the young and the old, all the oppressed and exploited, that they may better defend with their own hands their rights and their future.
7. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba affirms the duty of workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Negroes, Indians, youth, women, and the aged to fight for their economic, political and social rights; the duty of oppressed and exploited nations to fight for their liberation; the duty of every people to make common cause with all other oppressed, exploited, colonized and afflicted peoples wherever they are located regardless of distance or geographical separation.13 All peoples of the world are brothers!
8. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba affirms its faith that Latin America, united and victorious, will soon be free of the bonds that now make its economies rich spoils for the imperialism of North America; that keep its true voice from being heard at conferences where cowed ministers form a sordid chorus to the despotic masters. The Assembly confirms, therefore, its decision to work for this common Latin American destiny, which will allow our countries to build a true solidarity, founded in the free decision of each and the common goals of all. In this fight for a liberated Latin America there now arises with invincible power against the obedient voice of those who hold office as usurpers the genuine voice of the people, a voice that breaks forth from the depths of coal and tin mines, from factories, and sugar mills, from feudal lands where rotos, cholos, gauchos, jíbaros, the heirs of Zapata and Sandino, take up the arms of liberty;14 a voice heard in poets and novelists, in students, in women and in children, in the old and helpless.
To this voice of our brothers the Assembly of the People of Cuba responds:
We are ready! Cuba will not fail. Cuba is here today to proclaim before Latin America and the world its historic and unchangeable resolution: Our country or death!
9. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba resolves that this declaration shall be known as the ‘Declaration of Havana’.