Cuba, 1998

“To be or not to be.”

Never before has Shakespeare?s famous dilemma

been so valid. Half the world is shuddering with the

collapse of the stock exchanges, from Tokyo to Rio, from

Moscow to Buenos Aires, from London to Johannesburg,

and even right here in New York. We, the other half, are

also shuddering, not because of stock exchanges and

securities that we do not possess, but because the entire

burden of the global financial crash falls mercilessly on

us, and nobody, absolutely nobody, is safe.

The long-predicted Armageddon has arrived, and not

just in a Hollywood movie. The huge global trap that our

increasingly distressed planet has become does not issue

licences for survival to countries or businesses. It does

not provide protection from acid rain or the impacts of El

Niño, nor does it abide by or believe in ideologies and

cultures. It does not offer life jackets to speculators or

mega-owners.

As in the times of slavery, human beings have

become mere commodities, engrossed in buying and

selling each other instead of learning how to enjoy and

defend their rights, while poisonous luxuries, the enemies

of liberty, corrupt individuals and societies and deprive

entire peoples of their national identity.

The inevitable globalization that we should have

reached through fraternity, solidarity and cooperation has

come upon us in such neoliberalized form that the liberal

economic thinking that gave rise to it cannot even be

recognized in this new dogma.

34

The process of globalization and neoliberal

internationalization of the world economy has today

multiplied the advantages for developed countries to the

detriment of the increasingly underdeveloped economies.

This makes them more vulnerable to external factors

beyond their control, such as the excruciating burden of

foreign debt, increasingly unequal rates of exchange, the

widening technological gap and the persistent decline in the

price of commodities, in the context of a ruthless,

speculative and hopelessly inhuman market.

The inequitable trade relationship between rich and

poor, more akin to theft or swindle than trade, is a basic

element that explains this. According to International

Monetary Fund (IMF) data only 0.2 per cent annual growth

rate has been seen in non-fuel commodities between 1989

and 1998, while manufactured products grew at a rate of

0.9 per cent. How could economies whose terms of trade

deteriorated, during that same period, at an annual rate of

0.4 per cent and whose currencies were severely devaluated

be expected to grow?

The excruciating weight of foreign indebtedness — a

phenomenon that has become eternal with the increase of

inequitable trade — rose from $1.118 trillion in 1989 to

$1.875 trillion in 1998, for an annual average increase of 6

per cent. What counts is money and finance, not

development or human well-being.

Neoliberal globalization and some of its basic

components, such as the liberalization of trade and free

competition, do not in themselves mean that there will be

an acceleration of economic growth or development in

underdeveloped countries. At the same time, unrestrained

deregulation and privatization have removed from the

agenda the required protection for goods, services and

workers in the third world.

Unfair equal treatment is being granted to economies

that by their very nature, characteristics and volume are

unequal. Tariff barriers are being replaced with more subtle

and politically optional methods of protectionism, while a

club of selected owners, transnational corporations and

Governments negotiate, behind the backs of the vast

majority, a multilateral investment agreement that gives the

definitive seal of approval to subservience and exclusion.

There is no need for any special telescope to find the

famous black holes that swallow stars in outer space. The

worst black hole of them all can be found right here on

Earth, right before our very eyes, where there was first a

gap and then an abyss, where the wealth of the rich grew

in step with the poverty of the poor.

International cooperation and official aid for

development, funnelled through different organizations of

the United Nations system, are tending to decrease,

considerably affecting the efficiency and effectiveness of

the system?s work in the field of development.

Even worse, we see attempts to further condition

such aid to political demands that injure national States

and undermine the sovereignty of countries and peoples.

Furthermore, such attempts erode the authority of

Governments by determining their development policies,

which directly affects democratic governance. They also

bring about the resurgence of diseases that we thought

had been eradicated, generating high mortality rates and

premature aging of the world population. These are so

illegitimate that no one should support them.

We, the victims, cannot be expected think as our

victimizers do. As Comrade Fidel Castro said only a few

weeks ago at the twelfth Summit of the Non-Aligned

Movement,

“it is not possible to acquiesce in a world order

which embodies to the utmost the highest principles

and purposes of a system that for centuries

colonized, enslaved and plundered us all”.

Because these nations are so disunited, we have not

been able to elude the ravages of neoliberal globalization,

which is so alien in spirit to the groundbreaking

Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen and

contrary to the very letter of the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights, which in a few weeks will be 50 years

old. Against all logic, it is in our meetings, committees

and other forums that the prerogatives to which we are

entitled as human beings are being reduced to mere

caricatures in an insane race to alter the very foundations

of international law.

We are constantly asked why we so stubbornly call

for the genuine democratization of the United Nations and

for far-reaching reform of its institutions. What does it

take to understand that, when we are on the verge of

bidding farewell to the second millennium, the world can

no longer be forced to follow Bretton Woods norms,

patterns and schemes that are consistent with a world

order born out of a war and that are now obsolete.

35

The Dow Jones average sways and plummets just a

few blocks away from this building. Uncertainty and

hopelessness are rampant in the markets. Countries are

going bankrupt — and so are their Governments. Hundreds

of millions die of famine, disease, violence, terror and war.

Some even become living dead, as they are deprived of

their national identity. But we are expected to accept that

here in the General Assembly those who unleashed this

madness are destroying the only truly democratic space

where we can act together.

How much longer are we going to allow them to

continue imposing conditions, unilaterally launching

missiles, improving their nuclear arsenals and testing new

“smart weapons”, while they demand disarmament from the

poor and the illiterate? And further, they are preventing us

from doing away with the dictatorship of a Security Council

which refuses to expand or to give up or modify the power

of veto? There can be no talk of a Security Council that

provides legitimacy, let alone security, so long as that body

fails to abide by the powers conferred upon it in Article

XXIV of the Charter; so long as it ignores the powers of

other United Nations bodies; so long as its composition

remains inequitable; so long as each and every member

does not enjoy identical rights; so long as we in the third

world, the overwhelming majority of the world?s

population, are not duly represented.

For Cuba, the one steadfast and sincere thing to do is

to alert the world to which we belong, and to struggle for

the values of freedom, justice, dignity and humanitarianism

that we believe in and uphold. These are the values that

should prevail for the sake of our endangered human

species. It is for this end that the resources made available

to the United Nations by its Member States should be used.

Enough of politicizing budgets under the pretext of

alleged cost-effectiveness — as if the millions of African

children dying of curable diseases, the millions of illiterate

people in Latin America, or the millions of people

displaced by conflicts in Asia and the Middle East were

bolts of cloth, raw materials or spent fuel.

Enough of the appalling facts cited in the latest

Human Development Report, issued two weeks ago, which

affirms that the barest consumption needs of over a billion

people are not being met at all, and that more than 4 billion

people lack essential health services and 2 billion suffer

from anaemia, including 55 million in industrialized

countries.

Enough of accepting that the indicators of human

consumption in 70 countries have dropped below the

levels of 25 years ago.

Enough of accepting that a child born in a developed

country will consume and pollute in his or her lifetime as

much as 50 children born in an underdeveloped country.

Enough of accepting that three individuals in this

world have amassed fortunes equivalent to the total gross

domestic product of 48 States.

Enough of accepting that the most powerful and

wealthy nation on Earth, with the highest per capita

income, should, according to the report, have the highest

rates of human poverty.

Enough of demagogy. Let us make way for ethics,

generosity and humanitarianism. Let the debts be paid and

the current scale of assessments maintained. Let us put an

end to special United Nations peacekeeping operations

and to the arms market they have generated, and let us

strengthen the actions of the World Health Organization,

the United Nations Children?s Fund, the United Nations

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations,

the United Nations Development Programme, the Office

of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

and the many other agencies that have truly endeavoured

throughout their existence to assert the rights of every

human being. That is the only really fair, responsible and

humane thing to do.

In other words, let us not allow so many children to

die in the next few hours, days, months and years — such

as the 108,217 infants under five years of age, who have

died of preventable causes in the underdeveloped world

since we opened the fifty-third session last Monday,

without the Assembly or the international community of

nations being able to do anything about it.

Let us keep the voice and mandate of the peoples

and Governments that make up the United Nations from

being drowned out by the inhumane interests of the

masters and their partners grouped in the “Washington

consensus”, which is how chaste, scholarly jargon

currently defines the alliance of countries and

international financial institutions that have dragged us all

into disastrous unipolar neoliberalization ruled by a

unique and criminal way of thinking which hypocritically

boasts of being pluralistic.

36

Let us prevent heinous and disgusting phenomena such

as terrorism from being fostered in that way; both the

terrorism that constantly takes innocent lives — which

many seek to compare with the fight of other peoples that

have employed humanitarian and worthy methods in their

resort to weapons in order to win their rights — and the

other much more sophisticated, computerized and

globalized terrorism that turns the economy, politics and

ideas into a lethal weapon to secure the interests of a

restricted circle of selfish people who believe it is their

prerogative to unilaterally impose their laws and their

punishments on others.

We recognize that drafting and implementing

international treaties are instrumental in our struggle against

terrorism. But if we are truly committed to achieving that

goal, then the power to investigate, prevent and punish

these acts must be assumed seriously by States as an

obligation which may not be delegated. There must be

genuine cooperation to apprehend perpetrators, and States

must prevent by all means possible terrorist acts against

other States being organized, encouraged, funded or

tolerated within their territory.

Cuba, which has suffered from terrorism and to which

nothing that is human is alien, cannot but unequivocally

condemn such actions, methods and practices. Above all,

we denounce those responsible for fomenting, supporting,

funding, masterminding, propagating or tolerating these

loathsome actions, which, as recent events have illustrated,

turn their perpetrators into heinous Saturns, capable of

devouring their own children.

For almost 40 years our homeland has had to defend

itself from aggression and harassment of all kinds: dirty

war, mercenary invasions, nuclear threat, veritable hunts

organized in attempts to murder our main leaders, pirate

attacks, constant acts of sabotage against our industry, our

agriculture and our economy, blowing up of airliners in

flight — as occurred in Barbados on 6 October 1976; over

a thousand hours a week of subversive radio and television

transmissions which illegally invade our radio-electronic

space; and biological warfare. Our tourist facilities have

endured terrorist attacks, employing Central American

mercenaries, organized and financed from the United States,

with the full awareness and tolerance of the authorities of

that country. Furthermore, we are also currently facing

further American criminal legislation aimed at intensifying

the dirtiest and longest economic war ever perpetrated

against any country. This is why we can speak about these

issues with absolute morality.

I must say at least a few words about recent

accusations by the United States of alleged Cuban

espionage activities in Florida, which have been widely

disseminated by the mass media as something

extraordinary. I am sure the Assembly understands that

the most ridiculous and laughable thing to occur in recent

days in this nation of scandals is that the world?s biggest

spy, the United States, has accused of espionage the

world?s most spied upon country, Cuba.

The reality we live in is not recognized in the

current Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Nobody

denies that this is a document of universal scope, the

outcome of the most progressive thinking of its time and

the international culmination of certain trends and values

that emerged from the horrors of the Second World War.

However, it should not be forgotten that when we

embraced it in 1948 almost two thirds of humanity still

lived under the colonial and neo-colonial yoke. All those

countries had been reduced to mere objects of

international law. For them, the most traumatic experience

was not the war but underdevelopment, political exclusion

and the new and even more catastrophic economic battles

imposed upon them.

While we uphold the values of our 50-year-old

Declaration, values which cannot be renounced, and reject

attempts to cause confusion over it and give it an

ideological and political nature, we must have the courage

and awareness to recognize its historical and conceptual

limitations, which illustrate that the time has come to

draft a new international charter of human rights capable

of meeting the requirements of the new millennium.

If we do not do this now, what will be the use of all

the efforts made five years ago at the Vienna World

Conference on Human Rights to adopt a Declaration and

a Programme of Action? What will we tell our peoples?

Is it not the duty of democratic Governments to be

accountable to their voters for the discharge of their

international obligations? Will we finally recognize the

right to development as a fundamental, universal and

inalienable human right? Will unrelenting reality persuade

us that the universality, indivisibility and interdependence

of all human rights requires the acknowledgment of

national and regional characteristics and diverse historical,

cultural and religious heritages, as well as the need to

strengthen international cooperation concerning this issue

objectively and without selectivity?

37

The establishment of the Office of the High

Commissioner and other steps taken in this regard are just

fig leaves that fail to conceal all the embarrassing parts.

Many goals have yet to be reached, such as the

demand of the Vienna Conference that all States abstain

from adopting unilateral measures contrary to international

law and the Charter of the United Nations which hinder

trade relations and impede the full realization of the rights

set forth in the Universal Declaration and its international

instruments, particularly the right of all people to living

standards adequate for their health and well-being —

including nourishment, health care, housing and basic social

services.

What will we do to those who violate this mandate?

Do we summon them to an international criminal tribunal?

Under what charges: contempt for democratic decisions;

State terrorism; war Crimes; genocide?

It would seem that the disturbing words of the writer

and humanist John Milton are true:

“They who have put out the people?s eyes, reproach

them of their blindness.”

I say this because the United States Government has

ignored all those complaints in the same way as it has

drafted lists of presumed violators.

In a blatant challenge to the international community,

the advocates of open markets and the end of ideologies

have taken additional and distinctly extraterritorial actions

aimed at reinforcing their blockade. I ask the interpreters to

be accurate: I mean blockade and not embargo. It is an

economic, trade and financial blockade against Cuba that

ignores six consecutive calls by the Assembly to put an end

to what has rightly been fairly described as the grossest,

most serious and systematic violation of the human rights

of a whole people.

On the contrary, those concerned insist on continuing

their failed policy, one of whose instruments was

exemplarily dismantled by the international community at

the fifty-fourth session of the Commission on Human

Rights, when it was decided to put an end to the

extraordinary procedure on the so-called situation of Cuba

and to get rid of the Special Rapporteur. That was a

conscious and considered decision, the ultimate assertion of

the growing rejection of a politicized resolution that should

never have existed in the first place. It was recognition of

the truth and a result of the weariness caused by calumny

and lies. It was also the way out of a discriminatory,

unwarranted and selective exercise targeted on Cuba that

consecrated the imperial will to dictate a kind of

international law where the powerful and wealthy judge

and we, the poor, are doomed to sit on the defendants?

bench.

Nevertheless, we have amassed enough evidence to

indicate that a new vendetta is under way. The failed

attempts last July in the Economic and Social Council to

imposed a so-called joint statement on the presumed

human rights situation in Cuba, and subsequent initiatives

to engage high United Nations authorities or particular

countries in the preposterous and unsuccessful task of the

late Special Rapporteur, foreshadow new and unwarranted

conflicts that will again divert the Organization from its

main concerns.

I am referring to documents and guidelines such as

these, which I could quote and which will be made

available to the press, and which have been forwarded to

almost all participants in this room by senior officials of

a Government that, in keeping with its imperial

philosophy, seems to think that they are entitled to speak

but not required to listen humbly and respectfully. I quote

from the document:

“Multilateral efforts suffered a serious setback last

April when the United Nations Commission on

Human Rights voted against a resolution on Cuba by

a margin of 19 to 16, with 18 abstentions.”

“Maintaining international focus on the human rights

situation in Cuba is a high priority for Secretary of

State Albright. She has asked me to speak with you

our interest in pursuing a joint statement on Cuba at

ECOSOC.”

“We feel that the most effective approach would be

a joint statement of like-minded countries. The

statement could call on the United Nations system to

keep the human rights situation in Cuba under

review. One mechanism for doing so could be the

establishment in Havana of an office of the United

Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights”.

The general thrust is clear.

We take full responsibility in asserting that

reconsidering the issue will only mean opening yet

another, even more unacceptable chapter in the political

manipulation of human rights mechanisms. This would be

38

detrimental to the authority of the body or the relevant

office, because our country would not accept the

reimposition of any new procedure or discriminatory

treatment.

Everything we do in Cuba, whether some like it or

not, whether agreed or not, is done for the sake of the

human being. We are proud of our reality and, as we have

said before, we do not believe it is perfect. We do not want

it to be perfect. We do not want to be bored with

perfection. We do not take it as an endorsement or export

it as a model, and above all we do not impose it on anyone,

so no one will attempt to impose their reality on us.

We do not use our agreements or disagreements with

others, including our differences with the very harsh,

silenced reality of our accusers, to humiliate or condemn

anyone. We prefer to discuss them by means of civilized

dialogue, which we are at all times prepared to engage in,

believing that what really matters is cooperation and not the

imposition of a dubious convergence in positions.

Cuba is among the few Members of this Organization

that has consistently submitted its reports systematically and

in good time to the treaty bodies to which it belongs.

Evidence abounds of the transparency and sincerity of our

actions and of the strength with which we uphold

impartiality and objectivity in the Committees on the

Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the

Committee against Torture, the Committee on the Rights of

the Child and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial

Discrimination.

We have similar credentials in our systematic

cooperation with the various mechanisms of the

Commission on Human Rights and with the Office of the

High Commissioner, since its inception. Let me mention

also our growing bilateral cooperation in this area with

various States in an atmosphere of respect and on an equal

footing, each one of us with our respective virtues and

flaws.

For these reasons, while we denounce these new

intentions and forewarn the Assembly against unwarranted,

diversionist and fruitless exercises, we reiterate Cuba?s

unrestricted willingness and preparedness for dialogue and

for multilateral and bilateral cooperation with all States.

No imposed solution can settle a problem. The

international community should never allow a cause as

noble and compelling as that of human rights to be held

hostage to petty political interests.

Cuba is confident that dialogue will prevail over

confrontation and recalls, as a token of its goodwill, the

invitations it has extended to the thematic rapporteurs on

violence against women, on children, on mercenary

practices and on other matters, so they can become

acquainted with the realities of a socialism that has never

needed to proclaim its intrinsic humanity. Unfortunately,

however, on occasions when it has broadly disseminated

the required information with transparency, that

information has at times been manipulated and used to

serve the interests and objectives of our aggressors.

So long as Cuban children suffering from leukemia

are denied access to Oncaspar and L-Spar to prolong their

lives; so long as Cuban AIDS patients are denied access

to AZT; so long as urgently needed purchases of

respirators for newborn babies in intensive care units are

hampered; so long as it is forbidden to sell to Cuba a

single pound of metrotrexate to test important medicines

against cancer; so long as a 33 per cent drop in the

population?s daily consumption of calories and a 39 per

cent drop in the consumption of proteins is artificially and

intentionally provoked by a ban on food exports, by

excessive freight costs and prices, and by the harassment

of suppliers; so long as attempts are made to starve us to

death and to kill us with diseases, while speculation and

manipulation is under way with feigned official aid

presented as a humanitarian gesture, which we refuse

because we believe it to be insincere; as long as letters

such as the one I am holding — I feel compelled to show

them, and they will be made available to all —

unilaterally justify confusing, contradictory and

threatening understandings aimed at globalizing

extraterritorial laws, it would be absolutely outrageous,

immoral and even shameful to question Cuba?s just and

sovereign limits, legitimized by the 1948 Universal

Declaration itself, that our Government and people are

forced to place on those who, wielding human rights in

the abstract, defame their homeland, disown their people,

foster division and serve the interests of a foreign Power.

I quote from the letter from Mrs. Albright to Senator

Jesse Helms:

“The understanding is an important step

forward in our ongoing efforts to encourage greater

respect for property rights of United States citizens

abroad.

“We expect the full cooperation of the

Europeans in carrying out the understanding.

39

“It is important that we not miss this unique and

historic opportunity to advance the goals of the

Libertad Act and to establish broad new protections

for the property rights of United States citizens in

Cuba and throughout the world.”

Certainly, this is worthy of note. What Mrs. Albright

calls the Libertad Act in her letter is nothing but the

regrettably notorious Act that has often been repudiated by

the international community: the Helms-Burton Act. I am

clarifying this because I know that for most of the members

of this Assembly it would be difficult to equate a juridical

instrument of this type with a lofty but often misused word

such as “freedom”.

A self-respecting nation does not allow its dignity and

intelligence to be offended. A people that has fought and

endured such a barbaric onslaught will never be brought to

its knees. A people that exists today because it has learned

to overcome its difficulties will never be shattered, let alone

convinced of the urgency of any cause besides the revolt of

the united.

We the poor are so many and our poverty so great that

if we unite, the unity of our poverty will become our

greatest asset. This will be our wealth, and we have more

than enough poverty to become immensely rich.

Let us set aside our differences. Let us carry on our

shoulders the salvation of humanity. Let us gather those

who, resourceful and wealthy though they may be, can still

feel in their hearts the urgent call for survival in the global

era.

Let the world recognize our sincere vote as poor

people, and if there is no other choice, let it hear our veto

as well. Let us all unite in the struggle. As President Fidel

Castro has said, Cuba will never tire of calling for this. Let

us unite and globalize our opposition to every boastful act

of hegemony.

Let us globalize respect for our human condition,

which is the first and foremost right to be claimed. Let us

globalize the efforts to save from ecological catastrophe a

planet that has been ruined by neoliberalism and

consumerism.

Let us globalize ethics, culture and the spirituality of

peoples in their immense and wonderful diversity, so that

each of us can drink from his own spring and we can pour

our clearest waters into the great river of human thought.

Let us globalize, without excluding anyone, science,

technology, development and cooperation between

nations. Let the rich share their wealth. Let the poor

grow, the illiterate learn to read and write, the sick heal.

Let the healthy remain healthy and the hungry have food.

Let us globalize generosity and eradicate plundering,

selfishness and greed.

Let us globalize respect for the rights of others as a

guarantee of peace for all races, ethnicities and religions,

so that we may bid farewell to arms.

Let us globalize human freedom as the most sacred

trait of our species. Let this be a responsible freedom,

with peace and independence, dignity and sovereignty,

without humiliation or conditions, without alterations or

renunciations — a freedom emerging from the rebellion

of human beings against a world that no longer meets

their needs and that they are determined to change, as set

out in the preamble and article 28 of the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights. We do not want these

freedoms ever to be politicized; we want them to remain

entirely human.

In a few days it will be 40 years since the dawn of

Cuba's knowledge of that freedom that re-established the

rights of Cubans and enshrined our humanity, because

that freedom was born in our own breasts and nourished

by the blood, sweat, efforts and sacrifices of so many

generations.

That freedom is still alive today, shielded by an all-

enduring unity. It encourages our rebelliousness in the

face of a world that deserves to be and can be changed

for the sake of all mankind. As the book of Ecclesiastes

commands:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to

every purpose under the heaven.” (The Holy Bible,

Ecclesiastes 3:1)

Now is the time and the exact hour that we must act.