(Abstracts – Presidency of the Republic)
Cuba yes, blockade no! Cuba yes, blockade no! Cuba yes, blockade no! (Exclamations: “Cuba yes, blockade no!”)
companions and companions;
friends and friends;
Sisters and brothers:
Cuba and Venezuela are sure that with the heroism of our people and your support we will win! (Applause and exclamations.)
We are very excited and moved to participate in this act of solidarity from you, the worthy voices of the United States, the worthy voices of the North American people who are giving tremendous support to Cuba and Venezuela and our sister revolutions and saying NO to sanctions and the blockades ( applause and exclamations).
Now I want to ask you a question: after everything that has been said here, after all the feelings expressed after hearing a great selection of North American jazz music with the Latin quality of Cuban music, why not? Maestro O’Farrill and his quintet, need I speak? (Exclaims: “Yes!”) They are very kind and generous.
I have many things to express to you, feelings that arise from the commitment to the revolutionary struggle of people like Venezuela, like Cuba, that when we see these manifestations of solidarity, these efforts to support us, it is precisely you with a dignified voice, you also feel an enormous obligation, because then we know that we are not just fighting for Venezuela, we are not just fighting for Cuba, we are not just fighting for the countries and people of the South, but that you and we everyone is fighting for a better world that is possible!! (Applause and exclamations.)
This feeling that we all share here tonight is the lesson, it is the example, it is what Fidel and Chávez asked us to do (applause and exclamations).
Sisters and brothers:
As I attended this event, I reflected on the path that brought us here and I also remembered a similar event five years ago at Riverside Church where, as on this occasion, we attended with the Cuban delegation who would take part in a session of the United Nations General Assembly (applause).
That night we arrived in Riverside very nervous, Fidel’s ghost was there. Fidel visited Riverside and was received by the North American community in Riverside (applause); There he explained the nature of the Cuban Revolution to the North American people. All the history we had known since childhood put a lot of pressure on us, as we found ourselves in the same place where Fidel had spoken for the Americans.
That night President Maduro also arrived in Riverside (applause) and that night Riverside, Cuba and Venezuela received the warmth, support, affection, love and solidarity of the North American people; and the magic and importance of the place became immediately apparent to us because we were treated with enormous kindness and love by Gail Walker, who was present here (applause). That’s where I met her in person and began a friendship and sisterhood that has prevailed and always will prevail, Gail, right? (Applause.)
Then young journalists working in my team introduced me to Manolo (applause), a restless young Dominican-American (applause), a great friend of Cuba (applause and exclamations), and from the first meeting we talked about socialism and the Challenges of socialist construction in such difficult times and the pursuit of socialism by many young people in the United States present here today (applause and exclamations).
Over time, Manolo introduced me to Prashad and with him we also had a conversation with great conviction, about the meeting of ideas, about how to build socialism, how to promote the ideas of socialism among young people, we even talked about boxing, and a friendship began that we shared at various times.
Manolo then took a group of young Americans to Cuba, many of whom are present here (applause and exclamations), our friends, our brothers from the People’s Forum (applause and exclamations); We met several times, talked, they visited Cuba; We appreciate their campaigns of support and the fact that the fairest ideas were present among the new generation of Americans.
We will never forget the actions you took in solidarity with Cuba when you sought to isolate us at the Summit of the Americas (Applause). We will never forget the demonstrations they have held against the blockade in recent years, especially on weekends (applause). And that’s why we’re here today!
This is the last night we will spend in New York during this visit. We visited the headquarters of the People’s Forum these days and had the opportunity to speak with Manolo and others of you. Yesterday you demonstrated in the streets of New York, we could not hold back and had to go to the corner where they supported us to greet you, hug you and thank you (applause and exclamations).
What we could not have imagined, however, was that in the last hours we would spend in New York we would experience these emotions in an act of solidarity with Venezuela and Cuba (applause and exclamations).
You gave us love, you gave us support, you gave us solidarity; You have hugged us and we come here today to give you love, to express our solidarity and to thank you for these hugs (applause and exclamations). Tonight, right now, we embrace you in the name of the Cuban people (applause and exclamations). This meeting fulfills the emotions that we have experienced these days.
On the first day of our stay in New York we visited the Malcolm X Memorial and Educational Center and Dr. Betty Shabazz (applause and exclamations). We went to pay tribute to an American fighter, a defender of human rights, a defender of the African American people and a defender of just causes. And with this visit we paid tribute to him precisely on the eve of the day that commemorated the 63rd anniversary of the meeting between Malcolm X and Fidel Castro here in New York (applause and exclamations).
It was September 1960, the State Department had prevented Fidel from staying, there were no guarantees that the Cuban delegation could stay in New York if they attended a United Nations meeting. And Malcolm It began an indestructible friendship, which is also the basis of what we share today between the North American and Cuban people (applause and exclamations).
In these days we had the opportunity to meet with representatives of various sectors of the North American population, from the scientific, cultural and health sectors, with North American businessmen and Cuban businessmen who live in the United States and promote commercial relations with Cuba ( Applause).
We had an intimate meeting with Cubans living in the United States and from them we received messages of support and solidarity, because all of them and you, like Carlos Lazo, are building bridges of love between the Cuban and North American people (applause and exclamations) .
You will understand this at a time when Cuba is living with a tightened blockade and when we are also feeling the effects of this tightening, because we have been included in a list of countries that allegedly support terrorism and that we are with this support , find yourself with this strength. This encouragement and the energy that you give us compels us to express these feelings to you and to thank you.
As you know, we attended the 78th session of the United Nations General Assembly as part of a Cuban delegation. We have come here not only to raise the voice of the Cuban people; We have also come to raise the voices of the people of the South (applause and exclamations), because Cuba currently leads the Group of 77 and China, a group of more than 133 nations of the South that coordinates actions on behalf of the developing countries; a diverse group consisting primarily of nations from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and in this group we are the South!
We are heirs to a shared past as colonies; We suffer from the exploitation and plunder of our natural and human resources, from which the old European metropolises benefited and enriched. And in modern times, our people have also become victims of expressions of neo-colonialism.
Anchor We are more than 80% of the world’s population and the majority of people most affected by poverty, hunger, misery, deaths from curable diseases, illiteracy, displacement and other consequences of underdevelopment.
We are also the nations that are suffering the most from the consequences of climate change, from the climate crisis that the world is currently experiencing and which is caused by the unsustainable production and consumption patterns of capitalism. In short: we are the first and biggest victims of climate change.
Cuba insisted that in the pro tempore presidency we promote our commitment to defend the cause of these peoples, which is also the cause of the Cuban people (applause) and is the cause of justice that is also being fought in developed countries and countries will defend you here in the United States.
Anchor Today there is an international economic order that creates and sustains underdevelopment, that guarantees lucrative and unsustainable lifestyles only for minorities, at the expense of poor living conditions for the majority in developing and developed countries. There is a lack of decent jobs, quality basic education systems, accessible health services for all and other forms of social justice to which all people should have access, to which all peoples of the world should have access, and which are not available today. They have large majorities, even in rich countries.
That’s why we demand solidarity and not selfishness; cooperation and not rivalries; decent work and non-exploitation; Harmony, respect and tolerance and no racism or discrimination of any kind (applause and exclamations).
People have the right to determine their fate without interference or imposition from outside (applause and exclamations).
Nations have the right to their sources of wealth and natural resources, which cannot continue to be the inviolable legacy of large transnational corporations (applause and exclamations).
Our people also have the right to recognize and reject the alienating cultural patterns that the media tries to impose on us, which also represent new forms of colonization (applause and exclamations). They aim to demobilize, confuse, disorient and weaken our people’s ability to mobilize and respond. promoting selfishness and consumerism; Creating apathy and resentment while celebrating patterns of success and well-being that are not sustainable; they despise social justice and the value of ideas; They want us to ignore our history and try to divide us.
We live in an increasingly polarized world where spending on weapons is enormous, where production and consumption patterns threaten environmental stability and can lead us to pessimism.
But that is not the nature of revolutionaries (applause and exclamations), that is not the option for those of us who trust that a better world is possible and for those of us who are convinced that it is It’s worth fighting for this better world. Then it’s possible! (Applause and exclamations.)
That is why it is a source of great satisfaction for us to meet you as colleagues, friends, sisters and brothers who share these ideas.
It is a privilege to be able, in such a setting, to express our gratitude and appreciation to those who have for so many years supported the cause of Cuba in defending its independence and the right to determine its own destiny, and to those who advocated for it, supported it and fought against the criminal Yankee blockade for a long time. (Applause and exclamations).
It is also a privilege to be able to unite our voices with yours this evening in solidarity with Venezuela (applause), with Nicaragua (applause and exclamations) and with the people of Puerto Rico, who today celebrate their glorious Grito de Lares! (Applause and shouts: “Long live Puerto Rico!”) And also with the people of Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and all those, even in Europe and North America, who are victims of injustice and inequality (Applause) .
It is also a privilege to share with so many friends and hear from their own voices the political and social issues they face every day.
In Cuba, the transformative revolutionary process continues the course of socialism (applause). We are, as you know, going through particularly difficult times in economic management, as a result of the tightening of the blockade, because of the impact resulting from the inclusion on the list of countries allegedly supporting terrorism, and also because of the impact that the inclusion on the list of countries allegedly supporting terrorism raises internal problems and shortcomings that we must overcome; And our friends should know this and we share it with you. They perceive these realities when they visit our country.
The combined effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and the tightening of the economic lockdown pose significant obstacles to ensuring economic growth and meeting many of the population’s needs. But even under these conditions, we have not stopped and will not stop prioritizing social justice (applause and exclamations); We will not fail to ensure the basic needs of the population.
We will continue to defend justice and continue to work to protect the socialist system for which so many generations of Cubans have sacrificed (applause).
We have never given up on the principle of solidarity and will not do so even in times of greatest material limitations, and we will continue to share not what we have left, but what we have (applause and exclamations).
As you know, the United States government has behaved perversely towards Cuba during the COVID-19 crisis and has shown criminal behavior in some of its actions against our people in these difficult circumstances; pressured companies in Latin America and the Caribbean not to sell medical oxygen to Cuba when our facility suffered an outage in the middle of the height of the pandemic; We stopped companies that sell pulmonary ventilators from selling them to Cuba when we needed to expand intensive care units. But our public health system and our scientific level have enabled us to overcome adversity (applause).
Cuban scientists, including young people, developed the vaccines that saved the country! (Applause); Young scientists have designed and built high-performance lung ventilators (applause), and so our disease control is among the best in the world, with vaccines, medicines, devices and protocols manufactured in Cuba (applause).
But it was also very important and very stimulating for us to receive international solidarity assistance in this complex scenario, especially large quantities of syringes that arrived from many parts of the world, that came from the United States, that you sent them! (Applause and exclamations.)
The bet of imperialism in the most difficult hours of recent years has been to bring about the end of the revolution and the collapse of socialism in Cuba, and it is true that they have caused us damage, hardship, shortages and other difficulties, but they have it’s done It won’t succeed in collapsing! The Cuban Revolution will never make it! (Applause and exclamations.)
The creative resistance of the Cuban people has shown that imperialism is incapable of bending our will or breaking our people’s commitment to revolution and socialism (Applause).
We believe in our cause, we are confident in our work for social justice, and we feel the supportive support of brothers and sisters in all parts of the world (Applause).
Receive a fraternal and supportive hug from the Cuban people! (Applause.)
Receive a message of friendship for the American people and also for all the peoples you represent here!
We firmly believe, as Fidel taught us, “that there is no force in the world capable of destroying the power of truth and ideas.”
We will continue to fight with you for Cuba! (Applause), Fight for socialism!, (Applause), Fight for social justice!, (Applause), Fight for the conquest of a better world! (Applause.) And we will do it! And we will win! (Applause.)
Keep going to victory!
(Exclamations: “Cuba yes, blockade no!”)
(Ovation.)