Cuba, 1997

Ernesto Che Guevara, Commander, Minister and

head of the Cuban delegation to the nineteenth session of

the General Assembly, stated 33 years ago, from this very

rostrum:

“We wish to see this Assembly stretch its limbs

and march forward; we want the Committees to begin

their work, which should not stop at the first

confrontation.” [Official Records of the General

Assembly, Nineteenth Session, Plenary Meetings,

1299th meeting, para. 81]

And, as if he could already see the present, he added:

“Imperialism seeks to convert this meeting into a

pointless competition in oratory, to prevent it from

solving the serious problems of the world; that design

we must frustrate.” (Ibid.)

At that time, on our planet some 700 million people

were illiterate; 200 million were unemployed; and over 1

billion were eking out a precarious existence. That reality

contravened the principle that humans are the source of

development, as well as its agents and beneficiaries, and

should be considered, above all, as the justification and

purpose of development.

As the years went by, the situation worsened. Today,

not only are the industrialized nations imposing conditions

on or denying outright a meagre share of their plentiful

resources as official development assistance for the

development of the poorest nations, but some of them, like

ostriches, are burying their head in the sand and

disregarding that obligation.

Although missions to Mars are widely publicized and

assurances are given that the world economy is growing,

the distressing truth remains that today in the world a

billion people are illiterate; as many are unemployed or

underemployed; and more than 2 billion are living under

subhuman conditions.

Among these, we note with dismay, are the 425,000

children worldwide who, since Tuesday, 16 September,

when this session started, have died from preventable

diseases. Those 425,000 children were sacrificed in the

name of efficiency, quality and consumption — a pattern

of consumption that today requires an irrational and

unsustainable development, to which those children never

even had access.

Time is not just slipping by; we are letting it slip

through our fingers. With it, we are losing also our

opportunities to save our planet, which is sick and beset

in a thousand ways because the men and women who

have been gathering here for the last 52 years on behalf

of our peoples have in many cases been unable

consistently to translate words into deeds.

Why, on the threshold of a new century, should we

allow such a crime to take place? Where is that promised

land, that higher society, that paradise craved by millions

of human beings? How can we dream today, when the

overwhelming majority of human beings cannot even

sleep because violence, hunger and disease keep them

awake?

Over five decades ago, the nations of the world

decided to unite against war and to work in peace for

progress and cooperation among peoples. But since then,

no one has enjoyed real and lasting peace. As many

people have become the victims of violence and armed

conflicts in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall as

were killed in the 15-year Viet Nam war.

Our memory has become so short that those same

people who raised their voices against the German

capital’s concrete wall now justify, promote and even

stand up for a 10-times larger and much more heavily

fortified wall that would divide the poor South from the

developed North, along the Rio Grande all the way to

Baja California, and which very few dare to denounce.

Likewise, an absurd hypocrisy allows military

expenditures to be the number one business in the world,

with close to $900 billion in circulation, followed by drug

smuggling, with upwards of $500 billion, while as much

money is invested in a modern bomber as would be

required to relieve the foreign debt of the 20 countries

most heavily burdened by that scourge.

“Divide and conquer”: the Roman maxim for

subduing the ancient world is increasingly and ever more

forcefully becoming the slogan of the era of outer space

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and information superhighways. The only form of concerted

action that seems to be fully consolidated is the one that,

from here, proposes and undertakes humanitarian

interventions and operations aimed at enforcing,

maintaining or consolidating peace and democracy in the

wake of conflicts; preventive and early-warning actions; and

all those various ways of disguising new wars.

If we fail to stop this, the upcoming third millennium

will not find peaceful and generous comity among nations.

Nor will it bring any closer the anticipated miracle of

multiplying loaves and fishes for all through development

and rational exchange. On the contrary, consumerism,

environmental deterioration, illiteracy, xenophobia,

terrorism, drug addiction, famine, AIDS, prostitution and all

those visible symptoms of the human rationality

immunodeficiency syndrome that our planet is suffering

from will devour us. Can it be, as one poet says, that

people are mean and undeserving and we should therefore

accept the idea that the already foreseen end of history will

be followed by the end of the human race?

If we resign ourselves to the fact that 285 people can

possess riches equal to the ill-apportioned wealth of 2.5

billion other human beings, it might be that a doomsday of

similar proportions awaits us should we fail to change the

course of events. Just one detail: were it not for the 2.5

billion people doomed to sacrifice, it would be very

unlikely that the other 285 people could survive, regardless

of how much more wealth they would be able to

accumulate.

All these problems belong to this world, not another.

They are ours, as much as these “Disunited Nations”, which

we are unable to cast into a true gathering of Governments

and peoples designed to change and save our planet.

In the light of these problems, many of us wonder

whether the words of a powerful minority are worth more

than the lives of that overwhelming majority of human

beings who for many reasons are not only deprived of their

right to say a word, but also lack the resolution and the

power to exercise that right when they do have it.

We also wonder how there can be talk of

multilateralism when we see an endlessly increasing

unilateralism and when the so-called de-ideologized world

imposes on us a sole and exclusive ideology. Something is

wrong when speeches on plurality are made while attempts

are made to impose uniformity on the world; things are

even worse if, instead of everyone having the same rights

and duties — as should be the case — in fact, a few have

more and more rights whereas the vast majority only get

more and more duties.

We dedicated the decade which is just concluding to

international law with a view to honouring it with

concrete actions. However, in this very building there

have been talks and negotiations about, and even votes

against, these principles and international law itself. We

should ask ourselves once again when we will actually

conclude the agreements on nuclear disarmament, and

when the use of force or threats will be once and for all

banned in international relations. Why allow certain

Powers to pursue with impunity the arms race, their

military hegemony and the defiant nuclear tests in

laboratories and computers while they try to ban them for

the rest?

How can we stop those who split whole nations

apart, prevent their peaceful reunification and finance and

arm regimes that violate human rights? All the

endeavours to establish a new, just and equitable

economic world order, free of humiliating conditions and

restrictive and onerous practices, are brutally challenged

by a powerful minority that reserves the worst and

cruellest of the infernos for the rest of the planet.

A handful of the rich will never be able to represent

the vast multitudes of human beings, deprived every day

of their right to know that they are human, multitudes on

whom cultural transnationalization imposes an information

order capable of homogenizing even the news of their

very lives. Nor can one accept that the select club should

decree in a totalitarian way the political and juridical

order of the peoples, without even asking who we are,

where we are coming from and what we rely upon to go

where we sovereignly wish. Those belonging to that club,

and they alone, are the ones primarily responsible for the

fact that today cardinal principles of international law,

such as self-determination, national independence, non-

interference in domestic affairs, and particularly respect

for the sovereignty of States are questioned.

That is why Cuba asserts our right to differ, and

why we reiterate the position expressed by our President

more than three decades ago:

“As long as the concept of sovereignty exists as a

prerogative of nations and independent peoples, as a

right of all peoples, we do not accept the exclusion

of our people from that right. As long as the world

is guided by those principles, as long as the world is

guided by those concepts, which have universal

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validity, because they are universally accepted and

enshrined by the peoples, we will not accept being

deprived of any of those rights; we will not relinquish

any of those rights.”

For us there is absolutely no doubt that sovereignty

continues to be a concept and a prerogative of independent

States, and that in today’s unipolar world that principle has

even more force and validity than ever before.

Economies, cultures and peoples are subjugated under

the drum roll of globalization; development becomes as

remote as stars to which we cannot travel, and wealth is

increasingly polarized. Under the impulse of this

globalization, vaunted new technological and scientific

displays are poisoning the environment, crushing

biodiversity and condemning to extinction the most

precarious and wonderful of all species: mankind.

It would be good if that global interdependency could

stop the frantic consumption, balance national development

patterns, make economies sustainable and multiply the

riches of the peoples. Even better, if ideas are to be truly

globalized, let us welcome the clamour for urgent reform of

this United Nations, as remote from its own origins as it is

unable to cope with the era in which we are living. That

could be dreamt of, if at least the reform started with a

comprehensive and inclusive endeavour, democratizing all

its bodies while preserving its universal character, its

political essence and its intergovernmental nature.

It is high time to go beyond the rhetoric in which we

have been immersed for two years, since we celebrated the

fiftieth anniversary of the Organization with talk of reform,

with talk about transformations, without saying what, who,

how and when. If we are to be occupied, and not only

preoccupied, with reform, let us reject, as incompatible with

this Organization, the corporate and transnational approach

promoted by some of the main United Nations contributors,

as if this building were a stock exchange and the just

desires of the peoples were mere merchandise.

The reforms must permit the General Assembly to

really exercise its prerogatives, including those which have

been usurped, while preserving the principle of equality of

all Member States, whose genuine political will is essential

to advance. Intergovernmental participation in considering

and adopting decisions on any reform package should be a

fundamental precondition if we really want to tend to the

needs of the historically forgotten majority in the world.

Likewise, our peoples, especially the poorest ones, will

understand only those decisions that are reflected in their

lives and homes — not those that satisfy only their

Governments.

Cuba also advocates reform that especially

strengthens United Nations structures and activities that

are related to the promotion of economic and social

development. The simplification, rationalization or

reorientation of those structures must be the result of a

process that always guarantees full completion and

implementation of all programmes, mandates and

activities in those areas.

The United Nations should recover its real decision-

making capacity in other critical issues, such as those

related to free trade, development financing and other

monetary topics. Any measure handing that role over to

the main contributors must be blocked.

Further, we should all endorse again the Charter

obligation to contribute to stable and unconditional

financing, making possible the effective and efficient

implementation of all programmes, priorities, mandates

and activities approved by the General Assembly. The

approval of a budget for each programme reflecting the

total resources required for the Organization to carry out

all its activities will be a cornerstone of that endeavour.

Along these lines, we oppose any formula based on

the extortion and pressure that are exerted by some

countries, particularly by the country which is the main

contributor to the United Nations — as well as its deepest

debtor, economically and morally speaking.

But to achieve the more democratic, efficient and

dynamic United Nations we are dreaming of, it is

essential that the reforms reach the heart of one of its

principal organs: the Security Council must stop being a

bunker impenetrable to the General Assembly’s demands

for an equitable and fair expansion. While some of the

richest and most powerful States are already taking long

strides towards any new seats that might appear, there are

attempts to mislead, and even to deny the right of the

third world to its due representation on the Council on an

equal footing with the rest of the permanent members.

Worse yet, the saw of division is once again cutting

through the body of the poor to the benefit of the big

industrialized countries.

Let us reach agreement once and for all. If we want

real security, what we agree upon must not further

increase the appalling imbalances that today insult and

exterminate us. Hence the importance of reforming the

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composition and procedures of the Security Council, and of

rectifying the largest existing imbalance, by enabling

developing countries to become members based on

equitable geographical representation and simultaneity of

accession by new members.

The Council will never be secure until transparency,

democracy and the participation of non-member States

forever take the place of the present dangerous and

concealed manoeuvres. Peace will never be guaranteed until

the obsolete and antidemocratic institution of the veto

disappears, or is at least restricted pending its final

elimination. That is the only way to prevent the abuses of

power that today prevail in this Organization and in the

Security Council. By confronting these abuses together, we

will prevent the coercive policies and unilateral measures

generated by certain States from becoming multilateral.

I know a teenager who is the pride of his parents. He

likes baseball, is a good student and dreams an ocean of

dreams. But it has recently been discovered that he suffers

from leukaemia. The medicines to cure him exist, and the

treatment could cost less than $15,000 if we act in time.

Cuba has been forced to arrange a discrete transaction to

obtain through friendly third parties, and at a total cost of

$60,000, the medicines to save that child’s life.

That is the blockade: for the price of four treatments,

we could afford only one. With the money to save four

lives, only one will be saved. But this is not the only

example. Despite its very limited income, Cuba continues

to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in price differences,

surcharges, freight and other additional charges in its

imports of fuel, food, medicines and other basic products.

Financial credits crucial for the economic recovery and

growth were suspended or postponed or became more

expensive, while all markets labelled us as a “risk” for fear

of the unilateral punishment that could fall on Governments

and banks if they lent us money.

On top of all of that, and because of the protectionism

of pharmaceutical patents, Cubans have been deprived of

free access to medicines that have appeared on the market

since 1979, including third-generation antibiotics and other

drugs to treat AIDS and cancer.

Cuba has no need to exaggerate the facts. It suffers

them first, contemplates them afterwards, and always

exposes them with a calm sense of responsibility. The tale

of a giant Goliath against a small David could have been

taken from the Bible, but the minstrels and chroniclers of

the next millennium will find plenty of inspiration in the

conflict between the United States and Cuba.

Almost 40 years of resistance and of defence of our

bold ideals of independence against our brutal neighbour

who covets and loathes us provide us with the authority

to speak. More than 35 years of struggle against the cruel

and inhumane economic, commercial and financial

blockade by the United States of America support our

arguments. Every new charge made by Cuba is supported

by more than $60 billion in losses — and that is not a

full assessment — by an economy distorted by the war

conditions imposed on us, and by the incalculable human,

physical and psychological damage we have sustained.

Every year sees an increase in the number of

countries that vote by an overwhelming majority to put an

end to that dirty, savage and silent war. Yet the blockade

not only remains in effect, but has been cruelly and

arrogantly strengthened before the very eyes of the world,

which remains hamstrung in the face of the power of the

Empire.

Where are the courage and bravery that turned our

species into a giant? Why should we tolerate the

diplomacy of intimidation and blackmail? For how long

will the world sit on its hands and watch so merciless a

crime?

It was such impunity that gave free rein to those

who expedited the enactment of the criminal Helms-

Burton Act as a new escalation of the blockade and as

additional and convincing proof of a threat that goes

beyond all borders. It is extraterritorial from top to

bottom, because it was conceived and implemented

against another sovereign State, with which they

hypocritically maintain they are not at war; at the same

time, it is extraterritorial against the rest of the world,

upon which they are attempting to impose the narrow

jurisdiction of a clumsy national legal artifice.

This abhorred and oft-condemned imperial recipe has

not met with any actions forceful enough to stop it. Its

adoption gave rise to other aberrations, such as the

D’Amato-Kennedy Act; and state and federal legislation

of the same kind proliferates in that country.

Similar measures already affect more than 35

sovereign States — that is, 2.3 billion people, accounting

for 42 per cent of the world’s population and a potential

market of $790 billion. These data, provided by the

United States President’s Advisory Council on Export

30

Control and the American Institute for International

Economy, prove that such extraterritorial policies also result

in harm to the American people themselves, who in one

year alone lost half a million jobs and more than $1 billion

in salaries because of them.

Insane politicians and legislators end up by restricting

the very values of freedom upon which that great country

was founded and, in its name, prevent millions of American

youth from gaining access to information about a world

festival of youth and students held in Havana last summer.

Those who attempt today to cross that new iron curtain risk

$250,000 dollar fines and up to 10 years in prison. Despite

those threats, about a thousand young men and women

from the United States challenged the veto on their

freedom — no one could prevent them — and attended the

Havana festival anyway.

Such policies and concepts also affect the vast

majority of our countrymen living in the United States, for

years victims of criminal organizations and their hirelings

based in Miami, used in the dirtiest deals and electoral

manoeuvres, and even used as cannon fodder against their

own people and their own motherland. Among them, a

silent majority of immigrants is emerging ever stronger

every day, rejecting the genocide against their motherland.

Despite all this, the raving obsession of the reactionary

circles never seems to stop, as a true tyranny attempts

increasingly to reach out for the goal of world power.

Today, new bills are being debated in the Congress in

Washington, blooming under the shelter of instruments

already approved in the Helms-Burton legal atrocity.

Today, independent nations are being bullied every six

months so that they can obtain a sovereignty certificate

from the White House Oval Office to avoid retaliation for

their relations with Cuba.

Today, attempts to curb free trade with false excuses

of national security are jolting the newly born World Trade

Organization, and their doubtful seriousness begins to worry

the most distinguished United States authorities.

Today, deals are made behind the backs of peoples,

Governments and Parliaments to impose moratoriums on

investments, and secret pseudo-legal arguments, based on

dubious morality, are concocted to disguise the

shamelessness of those who yield to pressure.

Today, there are blacklists of foreign companies and

businessmen who do not submit to the rules, therefore

being denied entry to that country, which regards itself as

super-free. Visas are also denied to their spouses and

children, to force them to yield to the empire’s will.

Today, there are Governments that receive or await

certificates of good democratic behaviour, certificates that

they are defenders of selected and manipulated rights or

are outstanding anti-drug enforcers, in order to gain

access to a fast track to a free trade agreement, a trade

credit or development aid.

Today, European citizens are being blackmailed by

attorneys, indicted and unjustly found guilty by United

States courts, which boast about their impartiality, under

such illegalities as the Helms-Burton Act.

Today, there are imperialist diplomats, clones of

policemen, who share the stage with famous Hollywood

stars and who parade arrogantly among the Governments

and Parliaments of the world, with their siren song and

their well-known threats and offers of charity in exchange

for the most abject complicity.

All of this madness has revived official and covert

operations, mercenaries, spies and assassins, as ready now

as in the worst days of the cold war to plot and unleash

terror against human beings and even employ aggressive

biological agents against our economy.

No one, absolutely no one, has lifted a finger in the

United States Government to stop them. Diehard sectors

have usurped their constitutional rights in order to

exercise that power, and are obstructing them in the

meanest and pettiest way.

The same gang of ultraconservatives and gangsters

is responsible for the acquittal of hijackers and impedes

the use of the term “terrorists”, while with a silent and

mysterious complicity they are bolstered, funded,

organized, armed, trained and assigned to intelligence

missions.

Disguised as tourists, defenders of human rights or

philanthropists, those who today stir up greater and more

painful confrontations between Cuba and the United

States are identical to those who 35 years ago were

involved in the climate of aggression which led to the

missile crisis in October 1962.

Unfortunately, there are people in the world who do

not see, or, even worse, do not want to see, these facts,

31

and from their sanctuaries they worry about our problems,

study us, advise us to surrender, design our future with the

same ingredients as our past, and even urge us to bear

everything with the utmost patience.

Believe me, it is very hard to understand, for example,

the uneasiness caused by the lack of a variety of dishes on

the Cuban table, when there is not the least concern for the

millions of human beings to their south without tables or

dishes, and often without even a slice of bread. We shall

never understand or accept the longed-for renunciation of

what we are and what we have been as the contemptible

price that the people of socialist Cuba, like any other

people in the world, should pay for an uncertain

coexistence with a neighbour as disrespectful and arrogant

as it is powerful.

The moral and legal support of 136 votes in this

Assembly encourages and comforts us in our struggle. But

it has not been enough to overcome the persistent arrogance

of the one who thinks himself the divine judge and lacks

the humility to admit the failure of a mistaken policy.

Although their representatives may, as usual, leave the

Chamber, we know they are listening. Therefore, on behalf

of the people of free Cuba we wish them to know and to

convey to their Government and Congress that we have

absolutely no fear of them.

We also know that only international pressure can

prevent these forms of aggression against Cuba, or any

other sovereign State, from multiplying.

For these reasons, and because of our commitment to

the millions of Cubans whom we represent and on whose

behalf we now speak, we confirm that if our stubborn will

to resist costs us our lives, so be it a thousand times over.

Never shall we submit again to being slaves of a haughty

and arrogant empire that refuses to recognize pluralism or

boundaries, an empire that decides to blockade our

existence and kill all hope.

Our experience confirms to us today, more than ever,

that only the spirit of sacrifice, the loving, valiant, free and

selfless unity of our people and Government, can give us

the strength of character of Quixote to stand up to such

gigantic hardships.

That is how we have been able to resist, along with

the most generous solidarity and understanding of thousands

of millions of people.

Desiring only the noblest satisfaction, our people

volunteer and join in the titanic task of putting an end to

the cataclysms shaking the Earth and fighting for the

advent of a new millennium of emancipation, peace,

security and development for all nations.

We ask for nothing, absolutely nothing, in return.

We can only offer the example of having stoically

endured the harassment of the greatest Power in history,

of maintaining our principles and of continuing to believe,

work and move forward when many thought we had

stopped and were dying.

The father of our independence said,

“We Cubans do not seek and do not want anything

greater than honour, homeland and freedom.

Everything else will come for sure and in bulk after

all that. What we need is to succeed.”

And our existence today is reason enough for us to assert

proudly that we have already succeeded.

Because of that unique experience, we can also say

that this is a solemn and decisive time.

The imperial Power that wants to subjugate the

world is no match for us if we stand together.

We are a great and very powerful majority.

There will be no place in history for those who stay

on their knees. Let us all rise, united!