Castro Address to Unions 1

[Jon Flanders <72763.2240@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am posting in 6 parts this recent speech by Fidel Castro, explained below.
Earlier, I posted an article from the SWP-US Militant on a call for a world
conference of trade unionists in 1997 to be held in Cuba. This conference is
exactly the sort of thing that unionists and workers on a world scale need to
do. In addition, perhaps only the Cubans have the contacts and the authority
to bring together workers from many political positions inherited from the
past, and begin the forging of a new international workers movement.

 In order not to try the patience of the list too much, I will post only two
parts of the speech a day.

 Jon Flanders

 /* Written  7:28 PM  May 30, 1996 by plink in igc:militant.news */
 /* ---------- "960610-Castro speaks at CTC congres" ---------- */
 ************************************************************************
 Title: 960610-53--`Cuban Workers Have Taken The Initiative'
 Fidel Castro speaks to congress of Central Organization of Cuban Workers
 ************************************************************************
 from the Militant, vol.60/no.23                          June 10, 1996


   Below are major excerpts of the speech given by Fidel Castro,
 president of Cuba and first secretary of the Central Committee of
 the Communist Party of Cuba, at the closing session of the 17th
 Congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC) on
 April 30. The translation appeared in the May 15 issue of the
 weekly Granma International. Subheadings are by the Militant.

 BY FIDEL CASTRO
   It's not so easy to make a closing speech at a congress such
 as this, at a moment such as this, in the complex situations in
 which we are living; but for any person it is a very great honor
 to be granted such a privilege, because I believe it is one of the
 best congresses that I've seen.
   In the first place, it is a political congress - as was
 noted on the first day - a revolutionary congress, an ideological
 congress. Very accurate and profound things were said here when it
 was expressed that this was not a congress of workers demanding a
 share of the power, or struggling to obtain power, but rather a
 congress of workers in power.
   We have learned many things during these years of intense
 revolutionary struggle, but here we have learned new things,
 because we, or at least I had never gotten that exact impression
 of the nature of a people in power, with such clarity and such
 significance, as we have seen in this congress.
   And it is not only that the workers are in power, but that
 the workers have been in power for 37 years, and are the living
 expression of the work undertaken during those years. And we have
 seen a number of workers' congresses, and the numbers have been
 eloquent: so many university graduates among the delegates, so
 many intermediate level graduates and so many more statistics that
 could be read, minus one: there is not one sole illiterate person,
 not one single person who does not know what he or she is doing,
 and why he or she is doing it. Only in these circumstances could
 something so moving and so stimulating as this congress be
 achieved.
   The experience accumulated over years has also been brought
 to bear here. That was demonstrated from the first day, because -
 as was so well expressed - it's not a four-day congress, it's a
 year-long congress, and in one year the Cuban trade unions worked
 in a really admirable way to guarantee the quality of this event
 from the first day. You certainly haven't been on vacation,
 because throughout this special period you've had to participate
 in supremely important activities and processes, in very hard
 tasks as part of this major battle for the survival of the
 Revolution and of the nation, first in the workers' parliaments
 and then in the assemblies for efficiency.

   Duty of defending many things
   We cannot forget that we were faced with confronting and
 solving practically insoluble problems. How were we to do that?
 How, when the country was left on its own, losing everything
 overnight: markets, raw materials, fertilizers, fuel, credits; and
 also blockaded, and on top of that, morally battered, because it
 was a very hard blow for all of us to see those who had been our
 allies in the struggle collapsing, while the United States was
 emerging stronger, wealthier and more influential than ever.
   In that task we had the sacred duty of defending many sacred
 things: we had to defend the nation, the country's history, the
 Revolution, the country's independence, dignity and even its life,
 because, can any of you conceive of life without the Revolution
 [Exclamations of "No!"] And could the millions and millions of
 patriots who have fought for so long conceive of life without the
 Revolution? [Exclamations of "No!"] So, the very life of a people
 was at stake in a unipolar world, on a little island without big
 rivers, without its own fuel, without large natural resources, and
 living next door to a power that did not easily resign itself to
 this country's existence, to this country's valor, to this
 country's challenge and this country's victories, and a power that
 has never given up the idea of destroying the Revolution and its
 achievements.
   New information is appearing all the time especially when
 some files and documents are published relating to the many
 operations they have carried out against us. This people has had
 to take on the taming of not just one, two or three tigers, but of
 a thousand tigers. Somebody once said that it was a paper tiger,
 and, in the strategic sense it is, because one day it will cease
 to be master of the world; but for a little country that has had
 to fight every day since January 1, 1959, throughout the cold war
 and faced with this monstrous force, that is equivalent to having
 to tame I don't know how many beasts on countless occasions....
   How it must pain them that at this congress we can speak of
 an infant mortality rate of under ten, and even under nine, after
 a minimum of five years of the special period! How painful must be
 the news that life expectancy has increased; that, in spite of the
 shortage of resources and medicines, our doctors are constantly
 making ever greater advances!
   How can this Cuban miracle be compared with what we know is
 occurring in other parts of the world and particularly in Latin
 America? And they've wanted to destroy our country, they have even
 wanted to charge us with human rights violations, when the lives
 of approximately one million children and young people have been
 saved by the work of the Revolution. That reduction in infant
 mortality in the first year of life from 60 to less than ten
 signifies hundreds of thousands of babies' lives saved, to which
 can be added the hundreds of thousands over one year of age who
 have been saved, and the persons and lives saved by the
 Revolution, and the raising of life expectancy by 20 years for our
 compatriots.
   The United States, which supported all the bloody regimes
 responsible for the disappearance of tens of thousands of
 people -some people affirm that it was hundreds of thousands,
 because there are countries where over 100,000 people disappeared
 after U.S. intervention, as was the case in Guatemala, and what
 happened in South America -with their arms, with their advisers,
 champions of torture, and of the application of inconceivable
 methods that they learned in the war in Vietnam and taught to the
 repressive forces in Latin America, in order to prevent another
 Cuban Revolution. It didn't matter to them if 100 infants out of
 every thousand die each year, and more in some countries with an
 extremely high average....
   Recently you all read that a number of persons in England
 fell sick with an illness that attacks the brain. This is a fairly
 well known disease which also affects other species, such as sheep
 and cattle - it's a kind of molecule, they say, so as not to use
 another technical name - but it's a disease that rarely appears
 in humans- in the molecules of the sheep and cattle, there are
 common factors - and when there were ten or 12 cases in young
 people, a terrible panic broke out in Europe, and almost in the
 whole world, and there was talk of slaughtering millions of head
 of cattle, in places like England, just because of a theory.
   During that same period, after the first news of that disease
 in England, between 8,000 and 10,000 persons died of meningitis in
 West Africa, without immunization or medical care. What would
 happen in Europe if 8,000 or 10,000 persons died of a similar
 illness within a few weeks? However, what occurred in Africa went
 practically unmentioned. How could the world achieve such a level
 of selfishness, such a lack of solidarity, that such things can
 happen?
   Thus, diseases such as AIDS and others are on the increase;
 cholera, tuberculosis, this latter also associated with AIDS, and
 terrible problems of that type are appearing. That's of no
 importance to them.
   How they must suffer knowing that in spite of their blockade
 of so many years, the collapse of the socialist bloc and the
 special period, as I said yesterday, we have been able to
 guarantee, in one form or another, one liter of milk per day to
 all children under seven years of age, and a considerable quantity
 of yogurt to children between the ages of seven and 13, at prices
 totally accessible to the population.
   How they would suffer if they were to hear yesterday's story
 by the comrade from Amancio on how he had created a UBPC [Basic
 Unit of Cooperative Production].


  E-mail from: Jonathan E. Flanders, 07-Jun-1996




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