46. Mr. President, the Cuban delegation is extremely delighted to congratulate you on your election as President of the twenty-second session of the United Nations General Assembly and to assure you of our fullest co-operation in the work that you are to carry out.
47. In compliance with an express decision of my Government, I appear in this Assembly with the basic intention of dealing with the case of Cuba. My delegation cares not at all whether that case will he raised or not by those instructed to do so under a recent agreement of the Organization of American States. In due course we shall make known our views on the various items that have been allocated to Committees.
48. In all justice it must be recognized that the Government of the United States has outdone the Nazis in presenting spectacles which show its undisguised contempt for international law. Its latest theatrical presentation is well known to all the delegations here: the grotesque farce staged by the OAS, with the praiseworthy exception of Mexico, against Cuba, and the transfer of the question to the United Nations. Did the Yankee puppeteer and his Latin-American puppets believe that they were going to worry Cuba with that contrived transfer, aimed at playing down the ridiculous failure of its repugnant machinations? Did they imagine for one second that they could put Cuba in the dock, for nine years the victim of their policy of harassment, intervention, aggression, provocation, subversion, terrorism, sabotage and economic blockade? The puppeteer must be crazy, and his puppets very simple.
49. We do not know whether they will ultimately decide to present, jointly or severally, the case of Cuba to the United Nations for consideration. Cuba, however, is here again to reverse the roles and to place its would-be accusers in the dock, as it has done — on indisputable moral, ethical and legal grounds and with the militant support of the Latin-American peoples — at San José (Costa Rica), at Punta del Este (Uruguay) and, whenever it has seen fit, in the Security Council and the General Assembly.
50. Furthermore, Cuba is here, not to refute imputations which recoil on those who launch them, but to denounce once again with clearly irrefutable evidence the misdeeds of all kinds perpetrated against our people by Yankee imperialism and its Latin-American puppets.
51. The contrast could not be more striking. A few months after the military occupation of the Dominican Republic, and in the middle of its invasion by the Green Berets, the representatives of the fascist gorillas, the oligarchies and the feudal systems met in Washington with the absolute monarch of world- intervention and subversion to accuse Cuba of intervention and subversion in Venezuela on the ground of its policy of solidarity with the revolutionary movement; but our people devoted themselves wholeheartedly to their work, singing their cheerful refrain: "Despite the OAS, we shall win the battle".
52. How else could they react to the spectacle of a demoralized group of scared lapdogs pretending to be wolves on the strength of the Yankee teeth — already pretty well gapped by the victorious resistance of the people of Viet-Nam? I will not insult anyone by implying that the OAS should be taken seriously. It would be difficult to think of a more thoroughly discredited institution. The OAS calls itself a regional body of the United Nations; but ever since it started it has been a tool of the United States Government's foreign policy in Latin America, and today it is that country's "Ministry for the Colonies". Just because revolutionary, anti-imperialist and socialist Cuba was a small planet following its historical orbit without asking anyone's leave, it was expelled from the OAS; but not before that organization had made a mockery of the hollow principles of its charter. The incompatibility of Cuba with that "Ministry for the Colonies" is obviously hopeless.
53. The agreements arrived at by the supreme monarch of Intervention and subversion and his lackeys — that picturesque court of strong men with obtuse minds, insatiable appetites, weak backs and fragile knees — bear the trademark "Made in USA". They all add up to a stupid restatement of the criminal Imperialist policy of the economic blockade of Cuba and to a redoubled effort to famish its people, this time threatening with frenzied reprisals not only European governments and enterprises but also, in a display of unheard-of stupidity, the socialist community, if they continued to trade with our country. As the Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government, Commander Fidel Castro, has stated: "A policy of this kind is one of the most criminal of acts, one of the things most apt to wound the universal conscience. When all the people of this world who possess a modicum of culture become aware of the tremendous problem of the under-developed countries, of the enormous gap separating the industrialized from the under-developed countries; when all men who in any way bear the burden of world affairs meet to analyze and seek ways to solve the extremely difficult problem of the under-developed countries, the world sees imperialism, with its band of starving lackeys, kicked around and under-developed, proclaiming a declared policy of economic blockade against a country whose only crime is to attempt to rid itself of imperialist tutelage, to emerge from under-development, to free itself from exploitation and hunger — proclaiming this even in the United Nations itself."
54. It is clear that the absolute monarch of intervention and subversion and his lackeys, no longer able to undertake military adventures in Cuba without encountering a Bay of Pigs at every corner, entangled in the web of their own contradictions, perfidy, clumsiness, lies and failures, do not know how to get out of the mire in which their own insensibility, arrogance and stubbornness have landed them. The few who have any decency left have revealed by their abstentions their ashamed rejection of the cynicism and servility shown by the rest.
55. The Cuban people, as our Prime Minister has said, remained serene and imperturbable in face of the new manoeuvres of the imperialists. The task of speaking the truth to the imperialists and their lackeys was to be left to the Cuban delegation at the United Nations; and that is what we are now doing.
56. The history of the United States is largely a record of territorial expansion at the expense of Spain and Mexico, and of economic absorption, political domination and ideological penetration in Latin America accompanied by distortion, obstruction and stifling of its development and the con sequent misery, impoverishment, illiteracy, discrimination, exploitation and oppression. This record, although whitewashed by the scribes and puppets of imperialism, is well known to all the peoples who have suffered from it and in this century has been shown up in all its crudity by the imposition of the Platt Amendment on Cuba, the occupation of Puerto Rico, the amputation of the Isthmus of Panama, the attacks on Mexico, the military interventions in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba and Guatemala, the support given to the bloodiest dictators of the continent, the recent military occupation of the Dominican Republic and the policy of undeclared war against Cuba ever since the triumph of our Revolution.
57. In Cuba Yankee imperialism, in addition to imposing on it the Platt Amendment, set up against the will of the people a naval base at Guantanamo. This base is a nest of spies, saboteurs and mercenaries in the service of the counter-revolution and the Pentagon, and a centre for constant acts of provocation which go even as far as the murder of Cuban sentries guarding the frontier line.
58. For four centuries Cuba was a Spanish colony, and for more than half a century a semi-colony of the United States. When Jose Martí, the apostle of our independence, was about to unleash the "necessary and just war" that would emancipate the Cuban people from Spanish domination, he proclaimed: "Cuba must be independent of Spain and of the United States". On the eve of his death on the battlefield he wrote in a letter to his Mexican friend Manuel Mercado:
"... my duty — inasmuch as I realize it and have the spirit to fulfil it — is to prevent, by the independence of Cuba, the United States from extending itself through the Antilles and with that added momentum taking over our American lands... [have lived inside the monster and know its insides — and my weapon is only the slingshot of David."
59. Spanish colonial domination came to an end in 1898, In the same year the political, economic, military and diplomatic dependence of Cuba on the United States began, when the fruits of tremendous sacrifice and heroism by many generations of Cubans were shamelessly appropriated; it ended on 1 January 1959, the date which, with the overthrow of the cruel and rapacious pro-imperialist dictatorship of Batista by the popular insurrection under Fidel Castro's leadership, signalled the true achievement of independence, self-determination and sovereignty by the Cuban people. José Marti's mandate had been carried out in full. The Cuban Revolution is, in a word, the crystallization — in the age of the death-throes of imperialism and the advent of socialism — of the secular dream of thousands of Cubans immolated in the pursuit of that ideal.
60. I cannot make even a rapid summary of United States domination in Cuba, especially of the desperate efforts of the Eisenhower Government to prevent the triumph of the popular Insurrection by supplying weapons, aircraft, tanks and military advisers to the dictator Batista. It is obvious that his defeat was also the defeat of the Eisenhower Government and of Yankee imperialism. Although I have sufficient material for a speech a hundred hours long about the acts of Intervention, aggression, provocation and subversion done during the past nine years by the Yankee Government and Its Latin-American puppets against Cuba, I shall for the moment limit myself to recalling the salient facts and features of that catalogue of blunders.
61. The acts of harassment, subversion, intervention and blockade by the United States against Cuba started at the very outset of the revolution. Before the OAS had been duly informed of the singular and historic events which had befallen in Cuba, it can be said that the State Department, the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency were already tearing up the principles, agreements and commitments of the so-called Inter-American system; and then, as always, the OAS followed in the wake of the imperialists, rubber-stamping their acts of aggression against my country's independence and abetting their crimes.
62. From the outset of the revolution the United States sheltered and supported the murderers, plunderers and torturers of the dictatorship overthrown by the popular insurrection. Only fifteen days after the liberation a group of Congressmen led by Representative Wayne Hays requested the State Department to send troops to Cuba in addition to applying economic sanctions such as the cutting of the sugar quota and a trade embargo.
63. It was not long before their requests were granted. The records of the Security Council and the General Assembly bear proof of United States imperialist aggression against Cuba. On more than one occasion the delegation of our Government has had to denounce before this Organization the flagrant violation by the United States of the principles of international law in its vain attempt to thrust the Cuban people back to their former state of exploitation, oppression and servitude.
64. The shamelessness with which imperialism has acted is well known, as well known as the discredit of the OAS. In almost nine years three United States Governments have intervened in Cuba without the international organizations having dared to make even a timid attempt to caution the aggressor; the OAS has not only maintained a cowardly silence but has even tried to lay the blame on the victim. No example of such effrontery has ever before been seen in the history of international relations.
65. From 2 February 1959, when the United States citizen Allen Robert Mayer was detained in a light aircraft in which he had illegally entered Cuba in order to assassinate our Prime Minister, until 9 August 1967, when a number of agents of the Central Intelligence Agency, sent to assassinate Commander Fidel Castro with bullets containing cyanide poison, were present at the first Conference of the Organization for Latin-American Solidarity, inaugurated at Havana in July 1967, the imperialists never ceased for one minute to devise the most diabolical plans imaginable.
66. I feel that there is no need to detail at this time the long list of aggressive acts of all types committed against the Cuban people, or to specify the imperialists' violations of the legal rules of the United Nations and the OAS. I do not, of course, renounce my right to do so and to take the necessary time, whenever I see fit, to denounce one by one the acts of aggression committed during the past nine years. I know full well that the United States imperialists do not let the Charters of San Francisco or Bogota stop them from committing their outrages.
67. Although a detailed list is not required, it would be as well, however, to single out certain facts in order to refresh the memory of the General Assembly and alert world public opinion. These facts clearly show once again the hypocrisy and danger of imperialist policy and the menial, ridiculous and subordinate part the OAS plays in the Yankee Government's aggressive, interventionist and subversive strategy.
68. Imperialism in Cuba, as in other countries subject to its aggression, applies the principle of escalation. In Cuba it began with threats and very shortly moved to deeds. The early months saw a combination of defamatory propaganda and diplomatic notes which were a tissue of lies. As the revolution consolidated and began to affect the United States monopoly interests, imperialism tried minor provocations and aggressions, thinking that they would be sufficient to halt or deflect the revolutionary process.
69. So the doors of the Federal Congress were opened to admit in audience deserters from the Cuban armed forces and revolutionary Government and war criminals of the overthrown dictatorship who had been denounced as such by the Cuban authorities — an unusual case of authorities of one country officially discussing the internal affairs of another. So also light aircraft were sent from the coast of Florida to sabotage our sugar production.
70. From dropping incendiary bombs on sugar refineries, imperialism progressed to the dispatch of a twin-engined aircraft which machine-gunned the city of Havana on 21 October 1959, killing several people and wounding dozens. During the period of these attacks by light aircraft, which lasted several months, the United States pilot Robert Ellis Frost, who had flown from the airport of Tamiami, Florida, to bomb the España refinery, was captured.
71. Has anyone forgotten the criminal sabotage of the French ship Le Coubre in March 1960 by agents of the Yankee Government? That explosion, which took place in the port of Havana, killed more than a hundred persons and wounded more than two hundred.
72. The aggressive plans grew day by day. Two months after this ghastly attack the United States light aircraft numbered N4365 was shot down to the east of the Cuban capital. The aircraft was piloted by Edward Duke, a United States citizen, whose body was handed over to the United States embassy. One month after that event the refineries owned by United States monopolies refused to process crude oil imported from the Soviet Union. The sinister plan to cut off the fuel supply and so paralyse the Cuban economy was under way.
73. The economic aggression which today is a total blockade first became discernible in 1960. On 6 July of that year President Eisenhower, by presidential proclamation, reduced by 700,000 tons the United States import of sugar from Cuba, an arbitrary measure constituting the international offence of economic aggression, which is conditionally prohibited by article 15 of the Charter of the OAS. It is right, Mr. President, that you and the representatives present should wonder what the OAS did on that occasion. What did the OAS do? It maintained the most impenetrable silence. It is also as well to remind the representatives here that, on the eighteenth of that month, I appeared on behalf of my Government before the Security Council to request it to consider "... the grave situation which now exists, with manifest danger to international peace and security, as a consequence of the repeated threats, harassments, intrigues, reprisals and aggressive acts…” to which Cuba was being subjected by the United States Government, and that the Security Council, acting on a proposal by the United States representative and despite my protest, referred consideration of the matter to the Organization of American States — that is, did the exact opposite of what is happening today. Hitherto the Yankee Government's consistent policy has been to refuse to discuss the "case of Cuba" in the United Nations. It has managed every time to get the item withdrawn from the United Nations and referred to the OAS, where it could count on all the recourses and resources it required. What has happened? Has the OAS lost so much face that it cannot carry on any longer? Why is the forum that was so obstinately avoided before being so anxiously propitiated now?
74. I must make clear that the Cuban Government is not interested in revealing the imperialists' motives in now using the United Nations platform instead of their Ministry for the Colonies. The acts of aggression against Cuba have been committed on the fringe of both international organizations, with their knowledge and acquiescence and with their active or tacit complicity. Be that as it may, the revolutionary Cuban people will continue their irreversible march. However, Mr. President, you and the representatives should, insofar as you are concerned, ponder on the reasons why it is now desired to debate here a matter which the United Nations has hitherto been precluded from considering. At any rate, the Government which I represent has always been and will remain prepared to deal with this matter at length. Cuba has denounced, denounces today and will continue to denounce the criminal policy of United States imperialism. It has now had the imperialists in the dock for nine years.
75. During those nine years there has been not a moment of truce. Since 1959 Yankee imperialism has eight times called together the American foreign Ministries in special meetings to strengthen its diplomatic, political, economic and military ring round our indomitable island. Eight times it has failed, just as all the other measures taken in all parts of the world against the Cuban people have failed.
76. Yankee imperialism is the convicted felon, pleading guilty of its crimes against the Cuban people. When it supplied arms to groups of counter-revolutionary bandits in the Escambray Mountains in Central Cuba, it shamelessly denied the evidence. When saboteurs infiltrated our coast, it denied that. When the Cuban delegation in this forum, denounced the preparations for the invasion launched in 1961, the imperialists denied those. They have denied everything; but everything has come to light.
77. In this aggressive policy of escalation, the mercenary invasion of Playa Girón was the high-water mark of the military aggression. That criminal attack, which not only cost many Cuban lives but also represented the first defeat for imperialism in Latin America, took place before the astonished eyes of the world and the closed eyes of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The responsibility for that attack lies with the Government of the United States, by the formal declaration of its highest officer. And what did the OAS do? What did the United Nations do except laugh at the United States delegate's lies and turn a deaf ear to my own statements backed by ample evidence? And are this guilty Government and its puppet accomplices those who now have the impudence to accuse Cuba of intervention and subversion? I will leave the guilty to speak for themselves.
78. Theodore C. Sorensen, Special Assistant at the White House, in his book Kennedy, writes eloquently and dispassionately of the preparations for the crime and of the crime itself. On page 295 he states:
"The Eisenhower administration authorized early In 1960 the training and arming of a Cuban exile army of liberation under the direction of the CIA. Shortly before the Presidential election of 1960, it was decided... that this should be a conventional war force, not a guerrilla band, and its numbers were sharply increased."
He goes on to say:
"On January 20, 1961, John Kennedy inherited the plan, the planners and, most troubling of all, the Cuban exile brigade — an armed force, flying another flag, highly trained in secret Guatemalan bases, eager for one mission only".
Two pages further on, the indiscreet Sorensen says:
"....President Kennedy, having obtained the written endorsement of General Lemnitzer and Admiral Burke representing the Joint Chiefs and the verbal assent of Secretaries Rusk and McNamara, gave the final go-ahead signal, ... Cancellation of the plan at that stage, he feared, would be interpreted as an admission that Castro ruled with popular support and would be around to harass Latin America for many years to come."
And again on page 301:
"The world was aroused by this country's deliberate deception. No one would have believed that the second strike, scheduled for dawn Monday after the landing party was ashore, was anything other than an overt, unprovoked attack by the United States on a tiny neighbor."
And on page 302:
"The CIA even dictated battle communiqués to a Madison Avenue public relations firm representing the exiles' political front. After all the military limitations accepted in order to keep this nation's role covert, that role was not only obvious but exaggerated."
And on page 307:
"On Wednesday ... (Kennedy) gave orders for American Navy and Air Force to rescue as many as possible" of the Cuban anti-Castro forces.
79. The duplicity of the imperialist policy is without equal. On 17 April 1961 the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, referring to the invasion, said that the fight in Cuba was a fight by Cubans for their own freedom, and that there was not and would not be any intervention by United States forces in that country. One week later, on 24 April, the White House issued the following note:
"President Kennedy has stated from the beginning that as President he bears full responsibility for the events of past days. He has stated this on all occasions and he restates it now so that it will be understood by all. The President is strongly opposed to anyone within or without the Administration attempting to shift the responsibility."
80. Another of the assassinated President's close collaborators, Arthur M. Schlesinger, in his book entitled A Thousand Days, John F. Kennedy in the White House, states on page 240:
"On March 11, about a week after my return from Latin America, I was summoned to a meeting with the President in the Cabinet Room. An intimidating group sat around the table—the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, three Joint Chiefs resplendent in uniforms and decorations, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, the chairman of the Latin American Task Force and appropriate assistants and bottle-washers. I shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence,"
He goes on to say:
"I had first heard of the Cuban operation in early February; indeed, the day before leaving for Buenos Aires I had sent the President a memorandum about it. The idea sounded plausible enough, the memo- random suggested, if one excluded everything but Cuba itself; but, as soon as the focus was enlarged to include the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world, arguments against the decision gained strength. Above all, 'this would he your first dramatic foreign policy initiative. At one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary goodwill which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world. It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions'.
"It was apparent now a month later that matters were still very much in flux. No final decision had yet been taken on whether the invasion should go forward at all and, if so, whether Trinidad should be the landing point. It fell to Allen Dulles and Richard M. Bissell, Jr., as the originators of the project to make the main arguments for action."
81. Schlesinger, incidentally, was the draftsman of the so-called White Book on Cuba which was published on 3 April 1961 by the State Department to condition world public opinion to the forthcoming invasion. On page 243 of his book on Kennedy he says that Thomas Mann, at that time Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, was not in favour of any highly spectacular move, "stressing the probability of anti-American reactions in Latin America and the United Nations if the American hand were not well concealed". He was especially worried about air strikes "unless they could seem plausibly to come from bases on Cuban soil; and the Trinidad air strip could not take B-26s".
82. Clearly the preparations for the invasion and the invasion itself were examples not only of artful crime but also of unparalleled cynicism. The direct responsibility of the United States has been set out in abundant detail. Can anyone still entertain any doubts? On page 267 of Schlesinger's book we read:
"Events were rushing toward climax. D-day had originally been proposed for April 5; at the end of March the President postponed it to April 10; now it was set for April 17. In Guatemala the Cuban brigade, now grown to almost 1,400 men, waited with growing impatience. A veteran Marine colonel arrived to make a final inspection as the force prepared to leave its base."
83. There is no need for me to go on producing irrefutable evidence of the imperialist guilt of the invasion at Playa Girón. The invasion was deeply rooted in the struggle for power in the United States itself. In the Book The Invisible Government, by the journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, we read on page 338:
"Unknown to the American people, the Bay of Pigs invasion plan played a crucial role in the 1960 campaign.
"Despite the fact that millions of persons watched the four televised debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the voters went to the polls without knowing the secret reasons for the public positions the candidates took on Cuba. Behind the scenes, on both sides, there was deep concern over the pending CIA invasion."
84. The puppets of Guatemala and Nicaragua would later hasten to declare their pleasure in their infamous support of the ill-fated operation.
85. I formally challenge the United States delegation to deny the testimony of President Kennedy's assistant Theodore C. Sorensen and of his adviser Arthur Schlesinger in the books I have quoted, and the comments of the journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross on the part played by the CIA in the Cuban invasion, and to tell the General Assembly whether or not those acts amount to intervention, aggression and subversion. I also challenge the Latin-American delegations to explain their conspiratorial silence in the OAS when those events took place, although Cuba was still a member of that organization; and 1 call on them to show on what moral, reasonable or legal grounds their Governments can accuse Cuba of intervention and subversion. Lastly, I challenge specifically the delegations of Guatemala and Nicaragua to deny their Government's participation in that typical act of international piracy. They stand challenged, and I await their reply.
86. The acts of aggression against Cuba have been countless. The Guantanamo naval base is the constant setting for provocation and attacks which have already cost the lives of courageous Cuban fighters. There have been hundreds of acts of provocation. Denunciations of them are inscribed in the records of the Security Council's and the General Assembly's debates. However, now that we are yet again accusing the imperialist Government of the United States of its acts of aggression, provocation and subversion against Cuba, it is fitting to recall some of these crimes.
87. In 1964, at 23.18 hours on 9 June, a soldier by the name of José Ramírez Reyes was shot in the left leg by personnel of the United States post six kilometres from the south coast on the eastern perimeter. At 19.15 hours on 25 June a soldier called Andrés Noel Larduet was shot in the left side of the chest by personnel of the United States post five kilometres from the main gate on the eastern perimeter. At 19.07 hours on 19 July shots were fired on our posts from the United States post three and a half kilometres along the north-eastern perimeter, killing a soldier by the name of Ramón López Pena. A few minutes later two United States officers arrived at the scene and took notes.
88. In 1965, at 12.25 hours on 23 February, a military photographer named Bernardo Belén Ramírez was shot in the right hand. The shot was fired by personnel of the United States post five kilometres west of the main entrance to the base.
89. In 1966, at 19.00 hours on 21 May, provocation from the naval base of Guantánamo took the form of a rifle shot which killed Luis Ramirez López. He was a soldier from our post approximately 500 metres from the eastern perimeter of the base and three kilometres from the main entrance.
90. So far this year the Yankee Government has committed in all ninety-five acts of provocation. These include the landing of helicopters on our territory, violations of our territorial waters and air space by their planes and warships, and rifle fire against our soldiers.
91. It should be made quite clear that imperialist activity against Cuba not only includes provocation from the Guantanamo naval base, infiltration of espionage groups and violation of our air space by U-2 aircraft, which have made twenty-eight incursions this year, but more recently has included the use of a more modern technique. RC-130 and EC-121 aircraft have up to now carried out 230 missions to obtain information on our air force and anti-aircraft defence, and have on many occasions landed quite openly on the Guantanamo naval base on completion of their espionage activities.
92. Do international laws exempt the Government of the United States from complying with them? Do the Charters signed at San Francisco, or at Bogotá setting up the OAS, grant the imperialist Government of Washington a pirate's licence legalizing what for other governments is intervention, aggression, provocation and subversion? It is quite unnecessary to ask such questions. By their deeds you shall know them; here are the deeds.
93. Hardly ten years ago the Yankee Government looked on Latin America as its pleasant, peaceful and sunny back garden just across the Rio Bravo. The only worries which upset the digestion of the Government in office were whether or not to decorate this officer or overthrow that president; whether to dump the tin' now or to wait and see first how things went. Today the Pentagon strategists have had to add the Latin-American peoples' struggle for liberation to their list of insoluble problems, along with the Viet-Namese war and the uprising of the black people of the United States.
94. There is no need to be very clairvoyant to realize that for some time now a profound revolution has been taking place within Latin America. The impoverished downtrodden masses of the continent, who for centuries had been pitilessly exploited, have decided that under the leadership of their revolutionary vanguards they will take up arms until they have wiped out oppression, servitude, hunger, illiteracy, sickness and unemployment — or, in other words, underdevelopment and colonialism. That is to say, the Latin-American revolution is rooted deeply in a specific historical situation imposed by imperialist domination. This we are going to prove beyond appeal by the figures.
95. Seven per cent of the world's population (250 million people) live in Latin America. Of these, 140 million work almost as slaves, 70 million live on the fringe of the money economy, about 100 million are illiterate, 100 million suffer from endemic disease, and over 130 million are undernourished. Yet, paradoxically, the continent is rich. It contains 12 per cent of the world's known petroleum reserves, 33 per cent of the iron, copper and nickel, 20 per cent of the manganese, 50 per cent of the aluminium and 16 per cent of the tin. It has also 13 per cent of the world's farmland. Latin-American peasants, starving and over-worked by foreign monopolies and creole oligarchies, harvest 60 per cent of the world's coffee, 45 per cent of its sugar-cane and 27 per cent of its sugar, 20 per cent of its cocoa, 15 per cent of its cotton, 67 per cent of its bananas, 11 per cent of its meat and 10 per cent of its oil seeds. In all, this is about 20 per cent of the world's agricultural exports.
96. In reality, however, the Latin-American economy is far from prosperous and its prospects are by no means hopeful. Apart from a brief interlude in the period 1964-65 when economic trends were favourable to exports, the economic growth-rate of Latin America has dropped back to the stagnation level of 1960-1962. In the last six years the annual growth-rate of the gross national product was 4.4 per cent, which, in conjunction with the population's growth-rate, represents an annual increase per caput of 1.3 per cent. Nothing, then, could be further from the United Nations Development Decade's objective of counteracting economic backwardness by achieving an annual growth rate of 5 per cent. In fact, in many countries the growth-rate has been negligible: Argentina 1.1 per cent, Brazil 0.7 per cent, Paraguay 0.52 per cent, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Chile below 2 per cent per year; and in others the economy has regressed: Haiti -2.9 per cent, the Dominican Republic -1.3 per cent, Uruguay -0.1 per cent.
97. Really this is just the tip of the iceberg formed by the imperialist exploitation and the sell-out by the Latin-American ruling classes, which have accepted the backward, distorted and dependent economic structure on which the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys in the Organization of American States pride themselves so much. A brief review of the economic situation of Latin America reveals the essence of its underdevelopment and the true and legitimate cause of the Latin-American revolution.
98. Despite the continual appeals for the industrialization of Latin America, it is still atypical producer of primary or basic commodities, from which it obtains about 90 per cent of its export earnings. Half of that revenue comes from its agriculture and stockraising sector, which according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) was static from 1950 to 1964, and at present the livestock production is lower than it was in 1950. Agriculture, which provides 46 per cent of the employment is not making any headway. According to one ECLA report, in ten out of the twenty Latin-American republics the agricultural production has increased less during the last decade than the population, and in five its growth- rate has been over 1 per cent higher. Thus there has been a widespread agricultural crisis in the Latin-American region with its peak, as I have said, in the livestock sector.
99. The agricultural crisis has been due not only to the low yield of the non-intensive farming and the low technical standard of the exports, matching the niggardly consumption of fertilizers. It has been due mainly to the out-moded system of land tenure, to the prevalence of the large estate and the uneconomic small-holding. (Around 1 per cent of the landowners hold approximately 67 per cent of the land, while 76 per cent only hold 4 per cent of the arable).
100. Mining, which produces 35 per cent of the export earnings of Latin America, has expanded much more slowly than in other regions of the world. Except for petroleum, its share of the total world production has fallen since 1960. Five thousand million dollars' worth of minerals are exported yearly; but that sum, which could be one of the main pivots of the region's development, does not belong to the producers. According to the Survey of Current Business, 44 per cent of United States investments in Latin America are in mining (12 per cent) and petroleum (32 per cent). The annual profits of the United States companies amount to 700 million dollars. In Venezuela 60 per cent of the petroleum is in United States hands: in 1964 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, through the Creole Petroleum Company, controlled 38.5 per cent of the total production, the Mene Grande Oil Company 11.9 per cent, Mobil Oil 4.1 per cent and likewise the Sinclair Venezuela Oil Company and the Atlantic Refining Company.
101. These investments are supposed to contribute to the development of Venezuela; but, according to its Central Bank, the invested capital was amortized as early as 1954, Moreover, these companies cover five times as much land as is cultivated; and at the present rate of extraction the reserves will be exhausted in fourteen years. Lastly, between 1952 and 1963 profits worth $6,226,000 were transferred from Venezuela to the United States (ECLA, "Economic Survey of Latin America", 1964).
102. There can be no doubt that the effect of the Yankee monopolist capital invested in Latin America is to decapitalize it. Venezuela's situation is not, of course, unique. In Chile 90 per cent of the copper belongs to such "national" firms as Braden Copper or the Anaconda, which extract $50 million worth of profit; in the Dominican Republic the total bauxite production belongs to the Alcoa; in Brazil the Hanna Mining Company of Cleveland and the Antunez Mines (a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company) have gained control of one of the world's largest reserves of iron (9,000 km2 in Minas Gerães) with no less than 24,000 million metric tons of ore and the largest reserves in the world of bauxite, thorium, uranium and niobium.
103. In the manufacturing sector there is evidence of similar stagnation. From 1955 to 1960 that sector grew at an annual rate of 6.4 per cent, from 1960 to 1965 of 5.3 per cent, and in 1966 of only 5 per cent. While the prime objective of the development policy has been import substitution, care has been taken not to include branches of industry which might compete with United States monopolies. Thus there are consumer goods and raw materials, but none of the means of production necessary for development or even for earning through exports the income needed to finance it. According to ECLA figures, 50 per cent of Latin- American industrial production is for consumption, 33 per cent is for raw materials and the remaining fraction — one tenth — is for investment and export. Since 50 per cent of Latin-American imports are in fact raw materials and consumer goods, this industry is obviously inefficient.
104. This sector too has benefited from "United States aid". The Survey of Current Business states that 29 per cent of all Yankee investment (2,741 million dollars) went into the manufacturing industry. Of course only 5.5 per cent of that sum was for productive machinery.
105. In Argentina the International Packers control 60 per cent of the meat exports. Between 1956 and 1965 the United States derived 586 million dollars' profit from its direct investments. Between 1960 and 1965 its firms gained more than 5,000 million dollars from Latin America. For the ten-year period 1956 to 1965 the figure was above 7,000 million dollars.
106. I could easily go on listing ways in which United States monopolistic capital contributes to the permanent underdevelopment of Latin America; but these figures from the Survey of Current Business speak for themselves. For each dollar the United States invests in Latin America it receives three. The United States monopolistic capital contributes to the permanent underdevelopment of Latin America; but these profits gained abroad. Only Asia, where the United States receives six dollars for every dollar it invests, is more basely exploited.
107. Imperialist plunder is also a factor in what is euphemistically called deterioration in the terms of trade: falling export prices combined with rising import prices. Despite its evangelic declamations in UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), the United States maintains its policy of restricting imports of the main commodities exported from Latin America; it continues to subsidize its own agricultural produce and encourages the manufacture of substitutes for Latin-American exports. The result is that for 1965 and the first half of 1966 Latin America has a deficit of 370 million dollars in its trade with its principal supplier. It is estimated that between 1955 and 1966 the fall-off in the terms of trade cost Latin America no less than 21,390 million dollars at 1950 prices, twice the value of its exports in that last year. If the outflow of profit and the fall-off in the terms of trade (at 1950 prices) are added together, its loss between 1956 and 1967 amounts to 31,431 million dollars.
108. It is therefore not at all surprising that Latin America tends to run into debt in order to survive. In 1966 its debts amounted to 12,000 million dollars. In addition, the Latin-American countries have to pay 5,000 million dollars a year to service capital and interest. Thus the net flow of finance tends to decrease, leaving a net deficit which adds to its indebtedness. Already in 1965 Latin America had the dubious honour of being the principal debtor among ninety-seven developing countries, with an external debt of 11,900 million dollars.
109. Imperialist exploitation has had other direct effects: malnutrition (Bolivia 45 deaths, Peru 24 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants); lack of adequate housing (affecting 14 per cent of the inhabitants of Chile, 38 per cent of the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro and 2,500,000 persons in Venezuela); infant mortality (171 per thousand in Brazil, 114 per thousand in Chile, 95 per thousand in Guatemala); inadequacy or almost total lack of social security; endemic illiteracy and outbursts of primitive tyranny.
110. It is against these insufferable conditions that the Latin-American peoples are rebelling. These are the reason why new contingents of workers, peasants, students and intellectuals daily embrace the cause of national liberation. The origin and motive of the revolutionary movement in Latin America are not specifically the Cuban revolution; they are the exploitation, oppression and poverty imposed on the continent by the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys. Nor can anyone stop this gigantic march towards independent development, well-being, culture and dignity. Not the vaunted Alliance for Progress, which since its creation in 1961 has not been able, nor will it ever be able, to avoid the inexorable deterioration of the Latin-American economy. Not the high-level meetings at Punta del Este to organize alleged common markets or integration — though these now have the support of the Yankee Government since its minor partners have given it more explicit guarantees for its investments, properties and privileges.
111. But the tragic picture still lacks a few pieces. Yankee imperialism, the champion of the "free world" and the paladin of "representative democracy", has strewn the Caribbean region with military, naval and air force bases and have established some more beyond the Panama Canal. I am sure that quite a few simple people believe that this threatening barricade, is appointed by Providence to protect from subversive contacts the spirit of Western Christian civilization, which the ruling class of the United States embodies and defends. It does not enter their heads that the loftiest expressions of that spirit are the foul negro ghettos of the northern states and the refined notices "For Whites Only" on the public conveniences of the southern.
112. The political organ of this strong-arm system for maintaining the political and economic hegemony of the United States in Latin America is the OAS, and its military instrument is the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, cast in the Same mould as NATO, CENTO and SEATO. To give an idea of how far Yankee imperialism has besieged Latin America, I will list the distribution of its military, naval and air force bases. Cuba: the Guantánamo naval base. Puerto Rico: Ensenada Honda (headquarters of the naval command of the Caribbean and Antilles), with facilities for atomic submarines equipped with Polaris missiles; Vieques Island, off the coast of Puerto Rico (training camp for Marines and counter-revolutionary invasion groups), with strategic facilities in Aguadilla, Salinas, Isla Grande and Fort Brooke. Jamaica: the Portland Village, Old Harbour, May Pen and Santa Cruz naval bases. Trinidad: the Chaguaramas naval base and the military facilities at Punta Icacos, Chaguanas and Saint Andrews; Guyana: one naval and one air force base, Panama: the Fort Randolph, Fort Davies, Fort Gullick, Fort Clayton, Fort Kowwe and Fort Sherman naval bases and the Francia, Albrook and Howard air force bases. Ecuador: military bases at Puerto de Salinas and on Galápagos Island; naval air base in Esmeralda province on the Pacific coast close to the Colombian frontier. Chile: several tracing stations which cloak other military activities. Brazil and Venezuela: military training centres.
113. The operations of this network of military, naval and air force bases are closely co-ordinated with those of the Yankee military missions, the Central Intelligence Agency and the anti-guerrilla schools situated at Fort Bragg and Fort Lee (United States), at Fort Gullick (Panama Canal Zone) and at the advanced war school in Argentina. That is not all. At Fort Davies in the Panama Canal Zone, with edifying zeal, an academy for repressive police trains cops and thugs to bludgeon, torture and murder the workers, peasants and students of Latin America. These crime schools produce and train thousands of officers from the "representative democratic" fascist régimes of the continent to fight national Liberation movements and patriotic guerrilla forces.
114. It is hardly necessary to add that most of the Latin-American armies, as a result of their complete subordination to the military interests of Yankee imperialism, have become colonial garrisons of the Pentagon, directly under the orders of the "Green. Berets", whose specialized methods far outstrip those of Hitler's assault troops. The courageous people of Viet-Nam could give hair-raising accounts of their studied savagery.
115. The Yankee imperialists, grown grey in their dishonourable profession, cannot underestimate the importance of ideological penetration as a means of strengthening their political, economic and military domination of Latin America. Although the influence of American ideology on our continent dates back to the period following the struggle for emancipation, it has definitely reached its peak in the last few years, above all since the Cuban Revolution, which has an ever-increasing impact on Yankee imperialist strategy and tactics. The precise nature and specific purpose of this policy of ideological penetration is first the spiritual deformation and next the brainwashing of the Latin-American peoples. In Latin America there is a vast mass of books, magazines, newspapers, films, teachers, fellowship holders, emissaries and Jehovah's Witnesses preaching the "glories" and "virtues" of the empire and denigrating our historic, artistic and cultural heritage with the fatuous superiority of decadent Rome.
116. But even on that front Yankee imperialism is suffering defeats which foreshadow its decline. The highest-ranking Latin-American writers, artists, teachers and journalists are standing out against this ideological penetration campaign with exemplary firmness and dignity. Their ideological counter-offensive has been launched, and the revolutionary vanguards of our peoples are unshakably determined to lead the second war of independence to victory. This is making the "ideologists" of great America swallow aspirins by the dozen. Not for nothing has its underdeveloped back garden resolutely stood up and said "that is enough."
117. In spite of the Yankee imperialists' illegal blockade and the harassment, aggression, provocation and threats of all kinds committed against my country in the time — almost nine years — since the triumph of the Revolution, the situation in Cuba today is quite the reverse of the desperate situation in which the vast majority of the 250 million Latin Americans eke out a living. The strategy behind our economic policy is based on turning agriculture and stockraising into a springboard for full development.
118. Cuba does not suffer from the involuntary unemployment or underemployment which plague the economies of the rest of Latin America. No one has to go to bed hungry for lack of money. More than 140,000 families stopped paying their town rent at the end of 1965, and in 1970 housing will be completely free. For the first time in the history of Latin America, medical assistance reaches the remotest parts of the country. In the last two years the number of urban hospitals has increased from 144 to 162, and of rural hospitals from 34 to 46. Before the Revolution there was not a single rural hospital in Cuba.
119. The medical assistance and mass vaccination plans have considerably decreased the infant mortality rate, which today is one of the lowest in America; and the national death-rate has dropped to 6.3 per thousand. Poliomyelitis has been completely wiped out and half a million children are vaccinated against various Illnesses each year. (This picture is, of course, quite different from that in the rest of Latin America. In Brazil the infant mortality rate is 170 per thousand births; in Haiti 171,6 per thousand; in Chile 111 per thousand; in Guatemala 92.8 per thousand; in Peru 94.8 per thousand; in Bolivia 86 per thousand; in Colombia 83 per thousand, and according to a recent statement by the Minister of Public Health, 100 children die of hunger daily in that country). The extension of health services can easily be seen from their budget allocations, which rose from 23 million dollars in 1959 to almost 158 million dollars in 1967.
120. Out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants, Cuba has a student population of more than two and a half million, composed of children, young people and adults. The number of teachers has risen from 17,355 in 1959 to 41,922 in 1967. In 1965-1966,4,209 students graduated from institutes for technical vocational training; at the end of 1966, 425 students graduated in the technology of soil, fertilizers and stock-raising, and it is hoped that 3,000 will do so in 1970, In 1966 the number of fellowship-holders rose to 103,386. Since 1961 illiteracy has been practically wiped out; its incidence is now only 3 per cent.
121. When it is so easy to point out the causes of the Latin-American revolution, as has been done in many ECLA and UNESCO reports, how can they be overlooked? Can Latin America rest content that over half Its population of fourteen years of age is illiterate? In Haiti the proportion is 85 per cent of the population, In Ecuador 69.4 per cent, in Guatemala 68.5 per cent, in Bolivia 61,2 per cent, in El Salvador 53.7 per cent, and in Nicaragua 50.4 per cent. Surely only those who benefit from it can be proud of the "representative democracy" which keeps the average cultural level of the continent barely at the second stage of elementary education. Who would dare, without lying, to attribute this situation to "Castro-Communist subversion"? Or is the Cuban Revolution also responsible for the uprising of the black population of the United States against its exasperating living conditions and the crime, oppression, outrage, injustice and discrimination which it has suffered for so many centuries?
122. In contrast to the miserable existence of the Latin-American masses, the Cuban people have enjoyed free social services — health, education — on a scale never equalled throughout the continent.
123. The agricultural sector, far from stagnating, has made impressively rapid progress. In 1965-1966 there was a 13 per cent increase in agricultural production other than of sugar-cane, and the levels of the early years of the Revolution, which were the highest of all time, are now being reached again. The plans for the production of citrus fruits and coffee are opening unsuspected horizons.
124. In 1965 more than 6 million tons of sugar were produced. The 1966 harvest, however, suffered from the severest drought of the century. The 1967 harvest was over 6 million tons, and the 1968 figure will be larger. Substantial investments in industry and agriculture are providing the industrial capacity for producing 10 million tons.
125. The use of the most up-to-date techniques in agriculture and stockraising, such as large-scale fertilization (1,150,000 metric tons of fertilizer were used in 1967 as against 160,000 metric tons in 1957), and the spread of irrigation and mechanization are at the base of Cuba's agrarian revolution. In addition, the attention of the whole population is being focussed on the countryside.
126. In the fishing industry more than 53 million dollars has been invested in the purchase of 41 ships, the building of four more for fishing in distant waters, and the fleet of middle-sized ships fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result the catch increased from 23,000 tons in 1959 to 43,000 in 1966, and this year will reach 60,000.
127. Our people's immense efforts to overcome the economic backwardness inflicted on them by imperialist domination have included an extensive plan for training technical and specialized personnel. In 1966, 16,358 university students were taking soil, fertilizer and stock-raising courses. The estimate for 1970 is that Cuba will in this way have 15,000 technicians at pre-university level and some 5,000 elementary-level Instructors. By 1975 the plan should have provided no less than 100,000 middle-level technicians. These technicians come from the ranks of the agricultural and industrial workers, many of whom were illiterate in 1959 and indeed most of whom had scarcely passed the first three school stages.
128. In the meantime the industrial sector has not been at a standstill. Between 1963 and 1966 considerable progress has been noted. There was a marked increase in the production of nickel, including, significantly, that from the Moaplant, and the development plans are extremely promising. Cement production will double in 1968. The national programme for energy development increased the output of electricity in 1965-1966 by 13 per cent. The hydraulic development plans are going forward. Preliminary work has started on what will be from 1970 onward the centre of industrial development: integrated mining of the laterites in the north-east. This will lay the foundation of the future steel industry, which will specialize in nickel steel and other alloys, and in the production of aluminium, chrome and ammonium sulphate.
129. Freed from Yankee imperialism, Cuba is not only overcoming its backwardness but is also heading strongly towards full development, and at the same time is pledged to create better forms of co-existence among mankind. The sole reason is that its people have chosen the only possible way to that goal: by building a socialist and communist society 90 miles away from their sworn enemy with one of its naval bases enclosed in their national territory. Cuba is a source of inspiration and an example to the peoples who are still prisoners of underdevelopment and colonialism in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
130. While speaking of Yankee imperialism and its policy of intervention and aggression, it is very appropriate to stress that there were people in this Assembly who hypocritically rent their garments and again made empty promises of peace in Viet-Nam while the bombs, the splinters, the napalm and the poison gases wrought havoc and the incursions into Laos and the provocation in Cambodia continued. They added insult to injury. Imperialism is still Imperialism, however hallowed its garb.
131. Fancy thinking that nazism exhausted the whole range of human bestiality] Viet-Nam proves up to the hilt that Yankee imperialism has far surpassed it. One day history books will narrate the crimes of imperialism as the most abominable evidence of the pre-history of human society. But future generations will also remember that Viet-Nam did not suffer and struggle in vain. Future generations will remember that Viet-Nam had the honour of defeating Its Implacable enemy and digging the grave of the odious system of plunder and extermination which its enemy represented.
132. This has to be said now, even if it does surprise many people. Yankee imperialist escalation in Viet- Nam was intensified; so therefore was Viet-Namese counter-escalation. It is undeniable that the Yankee Imperialist giant has broken up on the determined resistance and the fighting morale of the Viet-Namese people. It is also undeniable that this determined resistance and fighting morale have reached the point where they are beginning to take the offensive.
133. The Pentagon's strategists, with their proverbial arrogance, thought that a few thousand military advisers and technicians would suffice to overthrow the people's army of the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet-Nam. At present their forces number 466,000 men, 1,000 fighter aircraft and the Seventh Fleet, composed of four aircraft carriers and 77 warships. Add to these forces the 690,000 soldiers of the Saigon puppet army and the 55,000 from other satellite countries, and the total is over a million. The invading armies' losses equal the destruction or disorganization of 120 combat battalions, and they have had more than 115,000 casualties. So far this year the people's army of the National Front for the Liberation of South Viet-Nam has destroyed 1,310 military vehicles, sunk twenty-seven warships, put five trains out of operation, blown up 162 bridges and attacked 43 military posts and 70 observation towers.
134. The Pentagon's strategists also believed that a few devastating air raids would force the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam to surrender unconditionally. The Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam is still standing on its smoking debris, and its anti-aircraft defences have brought down a total of 2,356 aircraft and sunk several Yankee warships. Last year the cost of this subhuman war was over 20,000 million dollars, and it is expected to reach 30,000 million dollars this year.
135. It Is not a duty of the United Nations to find a solution for the war of aggression in Viet-Nam. The duty to find that solution is laid only on the heroic Viet-Namese people, and they are already on the road to it: the overwhelming defeat of the invaders and their puppets and the free re-unification of the territory which the imperialists have artificially divided.
136. The people of the United States should realize that the Pentagon has irrevocably lost the war in Viet-Nam. The imperialists will never triumph in Viet-Nam. These people of exceptional mettle, whose men, women and children have faced forces a thousand times stronger, have defied torture, hunger, bombing, napalm and poison gas without giving an inch. They continue to struggle like no other people for human dignity and the peoples' freedom; they are the most advanced and war-seasoned trench of the world's anti-imperialist front; they have managed to awaken and move the torpid conscience of the people of the United States, and are teaching a lasting lesson to the oppressed and exploited peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. The determination to perish, or conquer for the homeland and for humanity is all-powerful and so has achieved and will achieve more than all the strategic and tactical weapons of Yankee imperialism.
137. The Cuban people quickly took heed of that lesson and the revolutionary peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America are now learning it. The imperialists, in their turn, began to learn it in Korea, which they also divided artificially and attacked with pirate armies under the flag of the United Nations. This Organization still refuses to condemn their action, to order the withdrawal of the foreign troops which trample over Korean territory, or to dissolve the so-called United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea. But it is In Viet-Nam that they have learnt their lesson once and for all.
138. The serious crisis in the Near East is another result of the policy of intervention, aggression, subversion and plundering of Yankee imperialism throughout the world. Cuba has stated its position on that crisis very clearly and reaffirms its complete support for the Arab people in their struggle to regain the territories occupied by the State of Israel and to safeguard their seriously-threatened self-determination, independence and sovereignty.
139. As Commander Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba, has said, all those who have set out to rob the peoples of their wealth, stop their development, profit from their work, cut down their independence, attack their sovereignty, overrun them and exploit them with blood and fire, and all who support imperialists in their new plans for intervention, aggression, subversion and blockade against Cuba, should in every corner of the whole world be known by their true name — bandits! Fatherland or death! We shall win!