Cuba, 1995

There is nothing new in the newspapers these

days: “Ethnic tensions growing in various parts of the

world”; “Violence claims a three-year-old victim”;

“Concerns increase over new outbreaks of dengue fever”;

“Fighting continues in the Baltic”; “Young man commits

suicide after killing his parents, his brother and eight

other people”; and “Children of the third world run the

risk of contracting the diseases of the Western world”. Is

this peace? Is this the new world? Is this the new order

to which we committed ourselves 50 years ago? Half a

century after the end of that devastating world war are

nations really united?

Until a short while ago many of us believed that we

had finally distanced ourselves from the danger of world

war and that some long-standing confrontations were

beginning to be resolved through dialogue and

negotiation. However, the threats of a world cataclysm

have grown over decades of regional and local conflicts,

stirred up by a wide range of motives involving

24

geopolitical, economic and trading disputes as well as

ethnic and religious conflicts.

Europe, the veteran of two world wars, which thought

it was protected by a number of post-war agreements, is

now the arena for a number of confrontations in all corners

of that continent. In the Balkans, concentration camps,

which we believed had died with Hitler, have once again

made an appearance.

Terrorism, originally fomented by certain powerful

developed countries, has now turned against those very

countries with a lash like the tail of the serpent and now, in

order to combat that scourge, they are spending the same

millions they had invested earlier in perpetrating it.

Drug trafficking is also terrorizing the major cities, but

what promotes that scourge is not the cultivation of certain

types of vegetation in the underdeveloped world, but

tolerance of drug consumption and covert protection for its

production and trade in order to make a profit in those very

cities.

Extremism, xenophobia, racism and discrimination on

the basis of national origin, creed or gender are

proliferating once again, together with the spectre of

fascism, which seems to have arisen from the tomb.

Globalization, an all-inclusive term conceived in the

interests of the major transnational corporations, is now

devouring national entities, sovereignty and independence

beyond any limit or reason, bringing in its wake a global

invasion of destitution, population growth, mass migration

and environmental degradation, which cannot be avoided by

even the most powerful of this world.

At the same time, ideological differences, the

imposition of measures, isolation and selfish actions of all

kinds continue to torpedo our new efforts to integrate into

associations, such as the Association of South-East Asian

Nations (ASEAN) and the recently established Association

of Caribbean States (ACS).

An exclusive kind of panamericanism in this

hemisphere is sabotaging the aspirations of the community

of Ibero-American and Caribbean nations to strengthen their

forums of regional concerted actions and to seek consensus

to meet their common needs. The country that has arrogated

to itself supreme leadership in this area as a manifest

destiny has, as it did two centuries ago, been conspiring to

abort any regional or international association of peoples

that does not fit in with its narrow national interests.

Asia and Africa, which achieved decolonization, are

now laboratories in which societies with age-old cultures

and a strong tribal heritage are being afflicted with new

liberal and Western models that are totally alien to their

national characteristics.

Fifty years on, despite all its efforts, the United

Nations has not been able to eliminate hunger, poverty,

the millions of children dying of diseases that are curable

and entire peoples who are longing for a simple glass of

drinking water.

The virtual reality in which we are told we live

today cannot conceal the nuclear weapons which, as has

been asserted, may destroy the planet three times over, as

if once were not enough. Nor will the illusion of the

future created in the opulent cities so rich in show-

windows and neon lights save the world from the waste

that is being emptied into the oceans, the contamination

of the atmosphere, and the destruction of ecosystems and

species, including the human race.

Such news is rarely seen on television in the

civilized countries where we are constantly told about

marvellous detergents; but how can one cleanse the world

of the horrors of war and destitution with such

detergents?

Light and shadow, but above all more shadow than

light, seems to be the mood of this General Assembly on

the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations.

In preparing itself, Cuba has noted with concern the often

graceless and vulgar way in which highly developed

countries are trying to take advantage of this opportunity

to define new economic, legal and political bases for the

world. These bases run counter to the true objectives of

peace, development, equality and justice, as well as of the

preservation and needed restoration of the cardinal

principles of the Charter.

In the complex debates of the last few months many

tributes have been paid to the argument of limited

sovereignty, humanitarian intervention and preventive

diplomacy, all set forth in “An Agenda for Peace” in the

implementation of which the United Nations is wasting

two thirds of its budget.

Those discussions have not been free from brushes

with fashionable neo-liberal ideas that equate development

with assistance and set up chains of conditionalities

disguised as the same good intentions with which the road

to hell is paved.

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From the bipolar world of the East-West conflict we

have moved to the unipolarism of the most powerful, and

only the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries and the

Group of 77 have managed to survive, although some have

tried to do away with them, silence them or reeducate them,

as if the problems of the third world were dependent solely

on disputes between the great Powers and their post-war

allies.

To the calls by the vast majority of the world for the

preservation of sovereign equality, territorial integrity and

non-interference in the internal affairs of States, which are

the bases of international law, we have been given answers

that seek to destroy those principles for the benefit of a

few. Whenever reason raises its head, an attempt is made

to trample on the third world’s right to development by

imposing mechanisms in which the factor of domination is

inherent, something this Organization was established

precisely to combat.

All the efforts and time we have spent here to

establish a new, more just and more equitable economic

order have been doomed to failure by the intransigence of

the rich, which has made the gap between rich and poor a

gulf that is ever-more unspannable.

A great wave of privatization has done away with

national structures and is jeopardizing the important but

fragile social achievements of mankind in its development.

Streets, parks, cities and even prisons are being

privatized, and under this influence it would appear that we

are now approaching the privatization of law and of world

power, and the United Nations itself is unable to escape

from this, for some believe that the bulk of Member States

have little or nothing to say in deciding their own destinies.

Let us agree on this: the world has changed. We can

repeat it. It is true. But how has it changed?

Notwithstanding the impressive achievements of the

human race we are forced to live at the same time with

unspeakable suffering that mocks all material and spiritual

progress in which we might feel some pride as we approach

the new century.

The “civilizatory” crisis began in the richest and most

powerful part of the planet and is now spreading to

international agencies and into this lofty arena.

The countries of the South cannot desire or continue

to support the notion that the North should constantly

impose conditions upon it. The countries of the North

must listen to our views as well as alter their own

patterns of development.

Although it is fashionable to include the issue of

human development in the agendas of international

discussions, it has been relegated to second place by post-

modern technocracies. There are those who celebrate the

fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakdown of the

European socialist world without realizing that no new

world has yet been constructed to replace them and that,

on the contrary, many other new walls are growing up

around us.

From the centres of world power refined and subtle

forms of a new colonization are being imposed as part of

national policies and national-security strategies — in

other words, of extraterritorial domination.

Cuba knows this by heart. The ridiculous charitable

gestures, the crumbs fallen from the table, the alms, all go

hand in hand with the cultural and ideological invasion

that corrodes peoples from within and neutralizes them as

actors on history’s stage.

The new ark of the post-modern saviours is

predestined to divide humanity into the auto-elect and the

excluded. Solidarity, the symbol of love among human

beings and the essential attribute of mankind’s salvation

in every age, is now an endangered species.

Like the model the leadership is seeking to erect on

the basis of brutal selfishness, the third world seems

condemned to become bogged down in debates on

confrontation and cooperation and to abandon the best of

the human spirit, which is precisely this solidarity.

And this very Organization which combated

colonialism and apartheid with such solidarity has also

been changed into a kind of supranational mechanism far

removed from its intergovernmental design.

Is there solidarity in the secret contacts and covert

understandings that precede the decisions taken by the

Organization, which is manipulated in the interests of

certain Powers?

Can we regard as solidarity the further invasions to

eradicate famine, safeguard peace, restore democracy and

support so-called good governments?

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Can there be solidarity in a Security Council without

transparency and anti-democratic in its workings, which no

longer fulfils the principles of the Charter or exceeds them

and refuses to abolish the veto power and renounce

permanent membership?

What kind of solidarity do we mean when that body,

the Security Council, resists even the alternative of sharing

its obsolete power fairly with other nations that better

represent this world?

In international law we must in no way accept as valid

the life-style of those who proclaim as a national

philosophy that they have no friends or interests — unless

we wish to bring on mass suicide for the planet.

And if we are to avoid suicide, we must definitively

support the conclusion of treaties that will completely ban

atomic weapons, their technological monopoly and peaceful

and simulated explosions and declare a total moratorium on

testing until the practice is completely banned. Such treaties

must be acceded to by all nuclear Powers without any

exception.

For the third consecutive year I have come here

mandated by Cuba to address this Assembly and to

denounce what has already been denounced, to condemn

what has already been condemned, and to reiterate the call

of the overwhelming majority of the community of nations.

On the very threshold of the twenty-first century the

criminal economic, trade and financial blockade which the

United States has imposed against my country for 36 years

continues. We have survived the attempt to eliminate us,

which has been mocked by the tenacious resistance of my

people.

After years of crisis, the Cuban economy experienced

a 7 per cent growth in the past year while the budget deficit

was reduced by almost half. Inflation, measured by the

informal exchange market, was reduced by more than 80

per cent, and at the end of the first half of 1995 the

economy had grown by 2 per cent.

Significant economic measures made those results

possible, and yet the traditional attention our Government

gives to education, health, employment and social security

has never diminished.

All this has been possible because since 1959 we have

zealously and resolutely defended the commitment made to

the fathers of our nation to keep it free and sovereign, 90

miles distant from that great Power that has always

regarded us as part of its backyard, as some sort of annex

to its own territory.

It has been possible because in this world obsessed

to its very soul with buying and selling — while of

course deriving profit from the process — we have

maintained and demonstrated that one can live with an

ethics based on principles, on national unity, on justice,

on respect for human dignity, equity, morality and loyalty,

and no one — absolutely no one — has the right to

question this.

It has also been possible because we have kept faith

with the Charter that we signed 50 years ago, with its

commitment to respect and require respect for our

sovereignty, our national independence and our self-

determination, while not allowing interference of any kind

in our internal affairs.

There is more. These results have been possible

because, free from the commitments of the past, and with

the experience of having depended economically on other

countries, we have with great sacrifice undertaken the

task of building our economic independence.

It would be ungrateful of me if, in speaking of the

incredible achievements of the Cuban people, I made no

reference to the millions who have stood by us during

these difficult years: the dozens of countries and

Governments that did not break off relations with Cuba,

those that strengthened their relations and those that found

the courage to enter into such relations for the first time

in the face of unspeakable pressure and threats.

It is precisely now, when trade and foreign

investment are beginning to energize the Cuban economy,

that a campaign has been launched in the United States

Congress to approve a bill that would mock and run

counter to the wishes of the majority of nations and harm

free trade and all civilized forms of relations between

peoples and Governments.

Certain extremist sectors in this country are trying to

delay a lasting solution to the conflict between these two

countries for many years and to abort the migration

agreements signed by both Governments last year.

Only two days ago the House of Representatives

took the first step towards this crime in approving that

bill which, among other absurdities, proposes an

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international blockade against Cuba, which is really directed

against the whole of humanity.

This is no surprise to us because, apart from gestures

from the many friends that we have in this great nation,

those who have directed its destiny over the last 36 years

have brought us nothing good. However, we trust that there

are still honest people who, even without being friends of

the Cuban Government, may have the basic common sense

to know which side is in the right.

There is also time to stay the hands of those in the

Senate and the Executive Branch who wish to stab in the

back the future of any attempt at a rapprochement between

Cuba and the United States and add new tensions to

international relations that are already difficult.

Faced with a world that accepts diversity and

differences, that does not turn to us with aggression or

isolate or discriminate against us, this North American

position is automatically blocked in time and in existence,

and is isolated in its attitude towards Cuba in this

Assembly.

My country does not question anybody’s right to the

type of government they desire. We urge no one to imitate

our model. But neither can we accept that anyone should

impose a different one on us. We affirm this in the strong

belief that the democratic, economic and social justice

process initiated in Cuba in 1959 has followed an honest

path; it has demonstrated its viability, its strength and its

capacity to face the challenges of these times and respond

to them.

We firmly believe in the authenticity and the popular

support underpinning our revolution and our socialism —

a socialism as Cuban as our palm trees. We defend our

right to life and to our own voice, because in the world of

pluralism that we aspire to, plurality and diversity among

nations must be respected.

In this Assembly there are documents circulating that

prove what I say, as well as vulgar threats and attempts at

blackmail against those who are exercising such freedoms,

not only because they are ethical in taking the right side in

a matter of international interest, but because they have

links with Havana.

Diplomacy and politics these days cannot be practised

by threatening families that wish to be reunited, or

businessmen, members of Congress or politicians who have

to resort to bodyguards for their own protection.

What can we expect the next century to offer us if

this trial imposed on Cuba by a world Power succeeds?

We need something more than the reiteration of the

condemnation of the blockade in this Assembly. Cuba is

fully entitled to call for action that would put an end to

this madness, because any Member State may be the next

victim in the future.

It is high time now to put an end to a conflict which

had its origins more than two centuries ago — before

socialism emerged, and long before the East-West conflict

and the triumph of the Cuban revolution.

Cuba has managed to succeed thanks to solidarity.

In its name, we hope that the issue of human rights may

cease to be used as political manoeuvring in a way that

stains the honour of many decent countries. Alongside the

lying and pathetic chronicles of human rights violations

in Cuba, the world must recognize that there has been no

lack of love, no lack of sacrifice in the salvation of

millions of women and children who, because our trade

was blockaded, did not have enough food to eat.

The often heroic and painful efforts to secure

medicine for the sick, insulin for diabetics, aminofilin for

asthmatics and pacemakers for those with heart conditions

must be recognized and acknowledged, because the

providers of those medicines and the experts concerned

were warned off, boycotted or proscribed by the Treasury

Department of the United States.

The world must know that the right to life is deeply

jeopardized in Cuba, and that my country is living,

working, loving and every day renewing its hopes of a

better world in spite of that.

If truth were better valued on the market, the world

would correctly identify the most striking victims of the

human rights violations in Cuba: the vulgar servants of a

foreign Power from which they receive encouragement

and resources to conspire against the very land in which

they were born to promote the annexationist aspirations of

our powerful neighbour.

Moreover, honest people throughout the world can

discern among the members of the Cuban community in

this country a growing majority who have begun to

defend the sovereignty of Cuba, to claim the rights that

have also been denied them and works with all our

support and all our respect to normalize relations with

their homeland.

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The world cannot be deceived all the time, least of all

the noble and hard-working people of the United States,

who daily call out for solidarity with Cuba. Without the

blockade, Cuba would more clearly demonstrate its

unsuspected reserves of talent and energy and the material

and spiritual quality of our lives would be improved. That

would enable us to give our modest support much more

freely to the cultural and scientific advancement of all

mankind and of the United States as well.

It is incredible that in the so-called land of the free,

tourists and businessmen are able to travel and invest freely

all around the world except to one destination and in one

market, which is increasingly attractive and is located only

90 miles from its own shores.

The people of the United States, whose economy,

politics, dignity, laws and human rights have also been

profoundly damaged, must prevent this seed sown for more

than 30 years from becoming a genuine source of national

shame, as was its war against Viet Nam.

Let it be clearly understood: Cuba desires normal

relations with the United States, provided that a natural

feeling of good-neighbourliness, respect and equality

prevails between the two countries. But Cuba will never

give way to threats and will survive at all costs whatever

happens, because it is capable of escaping from crises, but

cannot shake off the dishonour of living on its knees. It

will not do that. Cuba will continue with its forward

movement to change and develop. Our economy, although

subject to the blockade, will grow and will provide for

and meet the most pressing needs of our people. The

powerful infrastructure that we have built up over three

decades with what some have called the subsidy that

Cuba has wasted well befits a people whose high level of

education and culture and a stable land of peace and

order. All of this is sustained by the broadest popular

consultation and consent and a democratic consensus

enjoyed by few Governments.

The changes which Cuba has made and will continue

to make in its own way apply not only to our economy,

but to our political system, civil society and institutions,

in order to make our democracy increasingly genuine and

participative. These changes fall squarely within our

sovereign prerogative. They have not been made to please

anyone outside, especially those who have so altered

themselves as to be unrecognizable.

Day by day, minute by minute, Cuba is striving to

improve itself, to adapt and survive in this global jungle,

where more than ever before survival of the fittest is the

rule. The lion may be able to devour the deer, but he has

a hard time swallowing the hedgehog.

For this reason, the United Nations must also change

and become more democratic, to become the genuine

vehicle for development and peace which humanity needs

if it is to survive. It must become a forum for dialogue

and concord where the principle of the sovereign equality

of States is the keystone and foundation.

Many have spoken, and will continue to speak this

year, of celebrating the merits and work of the United

Nations, which no one can deny. On behalf of my

country, I prefer today to commemorate rather than

celebrate and to call on this Assembly, 50 years after its

founding, to veto irrationality and vote unanimously for

the future of mankind.