BY SARA LOBMAN
How Revolutionary Gov't Outlawed Racist Discrimination

The speech that begins on this page was given by Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro on March 22, 1959, to a mass rally in Havana less than three months after the overthrow of the U.S.- backed Batista dictatorship. The rally culminated a march of close to a million Cuban working people to demonstrate support for the measures being taken by the revolutionary government.

In his remarks, Castro announced government policy outlawing racist discrimination against blacks in employment, one of the most important acts of the opening months of the revolution. He also announced steps to abolish racist segregation of Cuba's beaches, public facilities, education, and recreational centers.

Africans were brought to Cuba as slaves to work the island's sugar plantations. For nearly four centuries, under the Spanish colonial regime, they suffered the most brutal oppression. The fights to abolish slavery and win Cuba's independence from colonial rule were interwoven from the beginning.

A large portion of the revolutionary forces in the first independence war against Spain, from 1868-78, were former slaves. This war did not win Cuba's independence nor did it put an end to slavery in Cuba, which was finally abolished only in 1886. A second war against the Spanish colonialists was fought from 1895 to 1898. Just as the independence forces were about to win, the U.S. government, waging the first war of the imperialist epoch, entered the conflict and usurped the victory, establishing a protectorate over Cuba. Puerto Rico and the Philippines were also taken from Spain, becoming U.S. colonies.

Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the social and economic conditions of the black population in Cuba resembled those of Blacks under Jim Crow segregation in the southern United States. Most lived on the land as sharecroppers or agricultural laborers on the vast sugar plantations. Those who lived in the cities were concentrated in the most physically grueling, lowest paid, and most dangerous jobs. They lived in the worst slums and had the highest levels of illiteracy and infant and maternal mortality. Their children were excluded from the private schools, even if they had money to pay, and virtually all social facilities - clubs, restaurants, beaches, and parks - were segregated.

These features of racist discrimination intensified the devastating conditions imposed on Cuban toilers by U.S. imperialist domination. In 1957, official unemployment in Cuba averaged 23.4 percent. And during the two-thirds of the year between sugar harvests, known as the "dead time," it was far higher. Tens of thousands more were only able to find part-time work. The few women with jobs overwhelmingly worked as domestic servants, often for little but room and board.

The governments' steps to ban discrimination in hiring and Castro's comments in March 1959 outlining that and other measures to be implemented provoked a sharp reaction among the members of Cuba's former ruling class and those who shared its interests. René Depestre, a Haitian exile living in Cuba, noted that while the speech was well-received by most white workers, "the white bourgeoisie in its entirety, and the white petty bourgeoisie in its majority (including the well-to-do mu lattoes) . . . were seized with panic, as if the Prime Minister of Cuba had announced that an atomic bomb was to fall on the island the following morning.

"The counter-revolution," he added in his book Por la revolución, por la poesía, published in Havana in 1969, "circulated the rumor that Fidel Castro invited Black men to invade the country's aristocratic sanctuaries," and "very respectable white ladies left the country stating that, since Fidel Castro's speech, Blacks had become impossible."

In response to the initial reaction, Castro returned to this subject at a televised news conference three days later. He criticized those who "call themselves revolutionaries, but are racist" and reiterated that the revolution would continue to take steps to combat all forms of discrimination.

In the wake of Castro's remarks, clubs, beaches, and other establishments that refused to admit blacks were closed. In April the government issued law 270 declaring all beaches and coastlines in Cuba open to the public, allowing many Cuban workers and peasants - black and white - to visit them for the first time. Discrimination in employment was made illegal.

In addition many of the early steps the revolutionary government took - slashing all rents by 50 percent, closing private, mostly church-run, schools and pouring resources into the public education system, organizing a massive literacy campaign, implementing a radical agrarian reform, making all medical care free - benefited Cuba's poorest citizens in particular, including the disproportionate numbers of them who were black.

These measures were subsequently codified in Cuba's socialist constitution of 1976, which explicitly states that "Discrimination because of race, color, sex, or national origin is forbidden and is punishable by law."

This speech is published here for the first time in English. The translation is copyright (c) 1999 by Pathfinder Press and reprinted by permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.

The following speech was given at a March 22, 1959, rally in Havana. BY FIDEL CASTRO

Cuban workers, people of Cuba:

We've gotten a little off track. It would be good for us to get our feet back on the ground.

One never knows what the most difficult public appearance will be. Whenever you consider one to be difficult, it's not long before another surpasses it. And for me none has been as difficult as today's, in which my ideas differ from those of our illustrious visitor, José Figueres.(1) [Applause]

How can we present our differences while, at the same time, showing our guest the elementary courtesy we owe him? It is difficult to speak to our people today because every revolution is difficult and complex. This public appearance becomes even more difficult when we add, on top of the country's complex internal problems, complex international problems as well.

Our task is difficult enough without ever leaving the national territory. It is difficult because this is a real revolution, [Applause] not another farce like the many Latin America has witnessed. It is a revolution and not a barracks coup. It is a cure that goes to the root of the problem, not a simple pruning where the old evils reappear. [Applause] It is major surgery-we have to completely cut out all that is diseased, not just put bandages on.

We have big problems. A considerable proportion of those who went to the universities here did so because they were the only ones who had that privilege. They went to the universities because the vested interests of the oligarchy practically had a monopoly of culture. [Applause] Because vested interests had a monopoly of the means for disseminating ideas. [Applause] Because vested interests had the power to monopolize all the resources devised by man for the purpose of influencing other men. Because vested interests were tied to the old reactionary legal system. [Applause] Because vested interests were tied to a mentality unfortunately adapted to the conditions established over decades and centuries by those vested interests. [Applause] Because the powerful vested interests of the national oligarchy and the vested interests of the international oligarchy are one and the same thing. [Applause]

Relentless campaign against revolution
The reactionary national forces are stirring things up against the Cuban revolution. The entire reactionary oligarchy of the continent is stirring things up against the Cuban revolution. The media campaigns that emanate from the trusts and monopolies of the international press agencies have been featured in the reactionary press of Latin America. [Applause] These interests are identical to the ones in this country. They are just like those that sustained and made possible the tyranny here, just like those we are fighting against here. These interests don't want a revolution like this one to be forged elsewhere in Latin America.

The truth is that such a huge campaign has been waged, so vile and relentless, that even men like José Figueres, who we assumed to be free of fears and prejudices, [Applause] have been influenced by it. This is how they have tried to isolate us and turn people against us throughout the entire continent. This is how they have tried to stir up the hatred of the other countries of the continent against the most moral, honest, and just revolution Latin America has known. [Sustained applause]

The newspapers of Latin America and the international wire services have said more about the execution of this or that war criminal here than they have of the entire twenty thousand murders committed by Batista.(2) [Applause]

What is their objective? To isolate us first and then attack us. Their aim is to weaken moral support and solidarity for us in the public opinion of the continent. Later we would be invaded using mercenary cliques; invaded from bases in the Dominican Republic or Florida, with military expeditions organized by the Trujillos or Masferrers or Venturas or Laurents.(3)

I'm told the people are with me, but don't forget that the people are susceptible to deception and confusion. Don't forget about the age-old prejudices they have instilled in the people. Don't forget the vast resources they have to create all sorts of problems for us inside the country. Don't forget the campaigns being carried out more or less openly against the revolution. Don't forget - or perhaps you haven't noticed - how some of those who in the past photographed and made drawings of the murderer Salas Cañizares(4) today do caricatures and take photographs aimed against the revolution.

We have been too generous. There has been talk about being sensible, but I say we have been too reasonable. We have been too magnanimous, because there are people being published here who should never again have the right to be published. [Applause] It's not even three months since the triumph of the revolution, and there are people already speaking out here who should never again have the right to speak in our country. There are even some gentlemen walking the streets who - because of their praises of the dictator, because of the ink they spilled in support of that infamous tyranny, because of the damage they did to the conscience of the nation - should never again have the right to walk freely through the streets of Cuba. [Applause]

We have been too generous, and they are now using our generosity to do all the damage they can. They are beginning to make insinuations. They are trying to instill hateful ideas, vicious slanders, suspicions, and doubt. And since this is a revolution that has to harm interests - if not, it wouldn't be a revolution - it has to disentangle a lot of things and make a clean break. It is like Alexander, who with one stroke of his saber cut the Gordian knot, because there was no other way of undoing it.

The reactionary forces have powerful allies. Campaigns are already being waged, like the campaign to sow discontent by closing all the apartment buildings so that no one can rent; like the campaign to fire all the apartment building employees; like the campaign to dismiss all the girls who work as servants; like the campaigns to foment discontent in every way possible. These are carried out in unison with the international campaigns against the Cuban revolution by the wire services; in unison with the campaigns carried out in the United States against the Cuban revolution, in conjunction with arms purchases - the purchase of planes by Trujillo, and the passage of war criminals back and forth from the Dominican Republic to Florida and from Florida to the Dominican Republic without - what a surprise! - the FBI's having yet found even a little pistol on the gangsters and criminals.

Don't forget that the reactionary forces know the psychology of our people. They know that the people were accustomed to bad governments and have a conditioned reflex against the word "government" and everything that smacks of government, a reflex that is easy to exploit. Our people suffer from an innate nonconformity that is easy to exploit. And the reactionary forces know that the problems we have in the government are enormous because we have inherited fifty years of embezzlement, immorality, graft, political favoritism, crooked politics, and corruption of every kind. They know they have handed over a republic of six million people with the same resources we were barely able to live on when there were only three million. They have handed over a republic with 700,000 unemployed, a republic with 70 million pesos in monetary reserves, whereas there were 500 million when the dictatorship took over.

They are aware of the difficult conditions in which the republic was left to us, and they know that the people are impatient. They know there is despair, misery, and hunger among the people - despair that then shows up in incidents that have no justification, as in the case of the fired bus workers. We had already put 90 percent of them back to work; there were only 60 or 70 left who were going to be reinstated in the shortest possible time. But these men, who had to wait seven years before anybody would listen to them, instead of being filled with hope when they saw that we had put 90 percent of their co-workers back to work, on the day after the most revolutionary session of the Council of Ministers that we've had, I open the newspaper only to find that some self- interested agitator had led them into a hunger strike. Somebody sowed confusion among those compatriots and led them into that action.

You can be sure that those so-called leaders were nowhere to be seen during the seven years of the dictatorship, and that there were no hunger strikes then. Yet they stirred one up against the revolutionary government -people who have only had to ask, in order to receive whatever they wanted - against a revolutionary government that earned the hatred of the oligarchy from the first instant because of its determined stand in defense of the dispossessed and poor classes of the country. [Applause]

Need determined support of entire people
If that is the case, if the reactionary national oligarchy has the means to create economic difficulties for us; if the international oligarchy, the enemy of our country, has the power to create economic difficulties for us - like the plan to cut our sugar quota, which we can glimpse on the horizon(5) - if both the national and international oligarchy have the means to sabotage our industrialization program, then I'm not far off in saying that the revolution will have to confront great difficulties and that we need the most determined support of the entire people.[Applause]

We need the most determined and complete spirit of sacrifice on the part of the entire people because today the enemy has the advantage of all the evil it has sown. The enemy has the advantage of all the destruction it has wrought and all the hunger it has sown. Paradoxically, the enemy has in its favor all the damage it has done to the country, because we are made of flesh and blood, ladies and gentlemen, and we are impelled by certain vital needs with scant means for satisfying them immediately.

They know they can exploit those advantages because they benefit from the desperation that exists in our country. They benefit from the vices that still predominate in the collective mentality. Proof of this is the fact that this afternoon I doubt there is a single citizen who has not written a letter asking me personally - as if I had enough time to resolve the big problems of the country -to attend to them one by one, attend to the big individual problems of our compatriots, like a whole legion of politicians did in the past. Because in the past people got accustomed to going to the politicians for help, and now that all the politicians have disappeared, they all come to me as though I could resolve all the problems they have. [Applause]

What do the vast majority ask me for? They ask me for something honest-work-because they want to earn a living by the sweat of their brow; because they want to earn a living without stealing from anyone; because they want to earn a living by their labor. And I wonder how it's possible for a citizen not to understand that if there were five hundred hours in a day, it wouldn't be enough for me to attend to all the individual problems they bring me. [Applause] I ask myself a little sadly: If they don't understand that with all the difficulties we face we can't immediately resolve all the problems yet to be tackled in the country, if they don't understand the duties of a government leader-then how could these desperate compatriots not be easy prey for people sowing confusion? How could they not be easy prey for the kind of sentiments that the campaigns of the counterrevolutionaries try to instill in them? [Applause]

Problems cannot be solved selfishly
I see how sometimes we try to solve our problems selfishly, how workers in one sector of the economy forget about the problems of other areas. How we forget, for example, that the entire economy is complex. How we forget that we have to go forward very carefully if we don't want to make our problems worse. And I notice that sometimes we don't take the time, we don't even go through the Ministry of Labor, which is a revolutionary Ministry of Labor. Measures are taken that don't give due consideration to a revolutionary Ministry of Labor, a revolutionary CTC,(6) and a revolutionary government. [Applause] In a word, at times we try to rush things without taking into account the extraordinary circumstances we have to overcome and the accumulated problems facing us. If we fail, if we aren't able to carry out our plans, the only ones hurt by this are going to be the workers themselves. [Applause]

If the revolution fails for lack of help, it is the peasants and workers who will be harmed. They won't be the only ones-the entire people would suffer the consequences of the revolution's failure - but the peasants and workers would be hurt the most. That's why, when I have to ask for sacrifices I don't ask the big landowners, I ask the sugar workers. [Applause] When I have to ask for sacrifices, I don't ask the powerful vested interests, I ask the workers. [Applause] Because for the first time a government can speak to the peasants and workers as its friends, as its comrades, as the only ones of whom it has the right to ask sacrifices. When sacrifices from the vested interests are required, we won't ask them; we will impose the sacrifices through revolutionary laws. [Applause]

When it's a matter of asking, we ask our worker compañeros, because the republic we are forging, the country we are redeeming, will not be a paradise for vested interests. It will instead be a home where the dispossessed and poor of our country can find happiness.

That's why I say that we will have to overcome big obstacles. They will be even greater if the people don't adapt as they must to the realities of the revolution. And they will be greater still if the people forget their responsibilities; if the people forget that today's government leader is not the same as yesterday's - that if yesterday's leader was their enemy, today's leaders are their best friends. [Applause]

I meant to raise these considerations here a few days ago because everyone knows that we have meetings of the Council of Ministers on set days. Everyone knows that each meeting of the Council of Ministers produces a revolutionary law. Everyone knows, moreover, that the laws need to be studied and debated. Everyone knows that the laws need to be revised. And yet there is hardly a day the Council of Ministers meets in which there isn't a demonstration, with loudspeakers, by some sector that has a problem. This even included the case of the teachers who were dismissed for running in the last elections.(7) [Applause] They showed up on the last day of the Council of Ministers meeting and stayed for hours, with loudspeakers, going on and on, while the Council of Ministers had to deliberate on the revolutionary laws.

I wonder how a Council of Ministers can sit down to forge something as sensitive as these laws in the midst of constant pandemonium-such racket, turmoil, and disturbances-in the midst of demands and abusive behavior. Because I think that if such a highly respected government has been established as the one that exists today, then those who ran in the elections while we were fighting and dying in the Sierra Maestra, [Applause] those who were insensitive to the people's pain, those who even tagged along on the dictatorship's coattails for a few months as was customary here-those people have no right to be insensitive to our revolutionary tasks and to disrupt the revolution as it seeks to create for the benefit of the people. [Applause]

But sometimes it isn't these "teacher-politicians." Sometimes unfortunately it's the compañeros in some sector of the economy who don't understand the procedure they need to follow to see the minister of labor in the appropriate office, and who don't stop to think that we need to attend to the problems of the country as a whole before addressing their particular problem in one sector of the economy. [Applause]

Unfortunately sometimes rivalries among the ranks, struggles for control of the unions, have also led the compañeros to compete to see who can ask for the most, without stopping to consider whether this is the right time to ask, whether the right time to reap the fruit of the revolution is now or later, [Applause] without stopping to consider that we can't eat the fruit before planting the seeds. [Applause]

Sometimes, unfortunately, personal desires and the zealousness of different tendencies have created complications, have stirred workers up, causing them to go beyond moderation in their demands, a moderation that they must observe in support of the revolutionary government so that we can move forward rapidly. There's a proverb that says, "Haste makes waste." At times they create problems for us instead of helping us. That's why there's a need more than ever for an understanding within the ranks of the unions.

Unity among the ranks of the union movement is more necessary than ever before. [Applause] It is necessary so that the compañeros in positions of responsibility who have the support of the union ranks can meet and study the problems correctly, intelligently, with accurate information. It is necessary so they can make appropriate and timely proposals, worked out collectively, without demagogy and without obstructing the work of the revolution.

This is how we will go farther much more rapidly; we'll get much farther much faster. If the revolution doesn't go forward, you will be the ones who will be hurt; if the revolution fails to go forward, it is you who will lose.

I think that the most important quality a worker should have is generosity, a spirit of solidarity with other workers. I think that the worst vice in a worker, in a man who lives by the sweat of his brow, in a man who knows what hard work is and who has known poverty, the worst defect is selfishness. And sometimes we behave selfishly.

Raising wages of worst-paid first
Before raising the income of workers in the best-paid sectors of the economy, the first thing we have to think about is raising the income of the worst-paid sectors. [Applause] Before thinking of raising the income of workers who make 400 pesos a month, the generous, the noble, the revolutionary thing to do, the act of solidarity, is to fight to raise the income of workers who make 60, 70, and 80 pesos a month. [Applause] Before thinking of raising the income of those who earn the most, what we have to try to do at all costs is raise the level of employment. Instead of fighting for workers earning 300 pesos to earn 350, it's our responsibility to fight for there to be 350 workers employed in those factories instead of 300. [Applause]

Our main problem right now is unemployment. Our second most important problem is that there are many sectors of the economy where incomes are much lower than the highest-paid sectors. We have to fight unemployment before all else while at the same time fighting to increase the incomes of those who earn the least. We must then fight to raise the income of the entire working class. [Applause]

Today, by lowering the cost of living, lowering rents, lowering telephone rates, lowering the cost of medicine and everything else we plan to lower, we will be raising the income of all workers. [Applause] On the one hand, we will focus our efforts on lowering the cost of living so that everyone's income goes up. On the other, we must work so that those who don't have a job today are able to work, and so that those who work but earn very little earn more. [Applause]

This way, while we lower the cost of living on one hand, we also raise the income of those who earn little and make it possible for those earning nothing to make a living. Today there are already sectors of the economy where the benefits of the revolution are making themselves felt. For example, in the textile industry, after contraband goods had completely disappeared and after carrying out a campaign in support of buying goods produced here, factories that had been shut down reopened at full production. [Applause] And other factories that had been operating two or three days a week are now operating every day of the week. Within a few days the plants that produce isopropyl alcohol, where production had been halted, will all be operating, with jobs for a substantial number of workers. [Applause]

Construction stopped not because we passed the law on rents, but much earlier. There are already thousands and thousands of workers employed in public works projects however. The construction projects of the Institute of Savings and Housing are already in motion. Thousands of people are now receiving income from the sale of bonds, and although it's true that there are difficulties, that many people don't have enough money to buy them, this problem will be solved over time.

Laws have already been passed granting tax exemptions to those who build their own homes within the next two years. There is the law on urban reform, whose importance the people are not yet aware of.(8) That profoundly revolutionary law, more revolutionary than the law on rents, has scarcely been mentioned. Enacted by the last Council of Ministers meeting, under this law no land used for industrial construction, the construction of workplaces, or the construction of private housing can cost more than four pesos per square meter, anywhere in the republic.

The National Institute of Housing has the right to set new prices for all those construction lots that were divided up and sold at very high prices, without streets or sewage systems. Those paying in installments will be able to buy them for a third of the old price. And very soon twice as many construction workers will be employed than ever before in Cuba. With the Agrarian Reform, whose principal law will be passed before April 15-that is, the law on the large landed estates, [Applause] encompassing all agrarian legislation in a single law-with that law we will put an end to more than 60-70 percent of unemployment in Cuba.(9) [Applause] The drainage of the Zapata Swamp alone will mean that two hundred thousand workers will be able to make a living by the sweat of their brow and will no longer have to remain in the ranks of the huge legion of the unemployed. [Applause]

It's not that I lack faith; I've never lacked it. It's not that I lack confidence; [Applause] I've never lacked it. But I consider it my duty to tell the people the things I'm concerned about, to tell the people how they must work alongside their revolutionary government. [Applause]

Because I see enthusiasm, boundless enthusiasm. I see solidarity, boundless solidarity with one's fellow man. And people's hearts are completely on the side of the revolution. But not everyone's thinking has developed sufficiently. [Applause] The revolutionary consciousness of the people is less developed compared to the people's sentiments.

All the people's sentiments are revolutionary, but the people's mentality is not yet completely revolutionary. People's thinking is still conditioned by many prejudices and beliefs from the past. [Applause] If the people want to better themselves, they have to begin by recognizing this. If the people want to orient themselves correctly, they have to adopt the goals I talked about here, in terms of which battles we must win and the order we must win them in. These include the battle against unemployment; the battle to raise the wages of the lowest-paid workers; and the battle to lower the cost of living, which is one of the most just battles we have to carry out.

Battle to end racial discrimination
One battle we must emphasize more and more every day, which I will call the fourth battle, is the battle to end racial discrimination in the workplace. [Applause] It is the battle, I repeat, to put an end to racial discrimination in the workplace. [Applause] Of all the forms of racial discrimination the worst is that which limits black Cubans' access to jobs. [Applause] Because the truth is that in our nation, in some areas of the economy, the shameful practice has existed of excluding blacks from jobs. [Applause]

Everyone knows I am not a demagogue; everyone knows I hate demagogy. Everyone knows I never take up a problem if I don't feel it; that I never take up an issue without doing it with complete honesty. [Applause] There are two types of racial discrimination. One is discrimination in recreational centers and cultural centers. The other is racial discrimination in the workplace. This is worse and it's the first one we have to combat. [Applause] If the first type restricts access to certain centers of recreation, the other is a thousand times more cruel because it restricts access to the workplaces where one can make a living. It limits the ability to satisfy one's basic needs. And so we commit the crime of denying work precisely to the poorest sector more than to anyone else. [Applause]

In colonial society blacks were forced to work as slaves, to work more than anyone else, to work without any compensation whatsoever. But in today's society, which some people call democratic, we commit the crime of doing just the opposite - blacks are prevented from working to make a living. [Applause] In colonial society blacks were worked to death and beaten to death, while we starve our black brothers to death.

It should not have to be necessary to pass a law to establish a right that one should have by the mere fact of being a human being and a member of society. [Applause] It should not have to be necessary to pass a law against an absurd prejudice. Instead there should be public condemnation of men who are full of the vices of the past, the prejudices of the past, who have no qualms about discriminating against some Cubans, about mistreating some Cubans because of the darkness of their skin. These things should be anathema because all of us are more or less dark-skinned. Here one is either a little dark-skinned because he's a descendant of Spaniards - and the Moors colonized Spain and the Moors came from Africa - or more or less dark-skinned because he comes to us directly from Africa. But nobody can consider themselves racially pure, much less racially superior. [Applause]

For the same reason, therefore, that it has not been necessary to pass laws or sanctions in order to organize and carry out a campaign to buy products made in this country, in the same way we will put an end to racial discrimination in the workplace. We will carry out a campaign to end that hateful and repugnant system, with a new slogan: job opportunities for all Cubans, without race or sex discrimination. Let us put an end to racial discrimination in the workplace. Let all whites and blacks agree to join together to put an end to the hateful practice of racial discrimination in the workplace. [Applause]

This is how we will forge the new nation, step by step. Blacks are excluded from recreational centers. Why? Because whites and blacks were sent to separate schools. But in the public grade schools whites and blacks aren't separated. In the public grade schools whites and blacks learn to live together as brothers and sisters. And if they attend school together, they can also play together afterward in recreational centers and use other facilities together as well. But when they are sent to separate schools, when the upper classes educate their children separately from blacks, it follows that whites and blacks end up not sharing cultural and recreational centers either.

Turn schools into real learning centers
What can we do? We can give our public schools everything they deserve. We can supply our public schools with all the resources they need - supply them not only with buildings but clothes for the children and breakfast, lunch, and, if necessary, dinner as well. We can build recreational facilities in the public schools where whites and blacks can play together, and we can set up "clubs" - better yet, we'll change the word and call them "recreational centers" - like we're going to do at all the beaches.(10) We will build recreational centers at the beaches for public schoolchildren, centers where they too can amuse themselves, where they can play and enjoy the advantages our natural beauty offers and enjoy the happiness to which every child has a right. White and black children will be together as they are in the schools, [Applause] so that later, also together and as brothers, the white man and black man can work together in the same workplace.

This is one more reason to turn the public grade school from the Cinderella it is today - from a little schoolhouse that is falling apart, with no desks and no school supplies - into a real learning center. Once they are given the necessary resources, our public schools can cease being the stepchild everyone feels sorry for, where the children of the workers, peasants, and the poor are educated, and become centers that are the envy of all and that are the best educational centers in the whole country.

Why shouldn't the children of the people have the right to also enjoy the best, to enjoy what only the children of certain social sectors have enjoyed until now? That will be one of our tasks, just as we will build hospitals to which everyone will have the right to go, that will be as good as the best private hospitals, and where it will not be necessary to ask a politician for a letter of recommendation in order to be able to go to the hospital. The only recommendation required will be the need to receive health care. For the same reason we will also build universities. Within a few weeks there will be three university centers under construction, all at the same time. [Applause]

We will get beaches ready for the people. [In answer to someone in the audience:] The Viriato beach is nothing compared with the ones we are going to give the people. The one at Viriato belongs to the past. It reflects the aspirations of the past. We're talking about much more than the beach at Viriato. We're talking about the beach at Varadero, to which the people will also have the right to go. [Applause] Let's talk about the one at Santa María del Mar and the one at Tarará, where the people will also have the right to go. [Applause] What's this about the beach at Viriato? What epoch are we living in? The beach at Viriato will be just another little beach.

We are going to open all the beaches to the people, Cuba's best beaches. We will set up a national organization of public beaches that will even have luxury hotels for workers. Those who pay for luxury will be charged more, and workers will be charged that much less. [Applause] Public schoolchildren will be charged less. Teachers, who will also have their own recreational centers, will be charged less.

The seventy houses in Varadero built with embezzled funds will be given to the National Administration of Public Beaches, and we will rent them to those who want to pay a high price for them. We will use that money to pay those in charge of operating the National Administration of Public Beaches, which will have hotels and restaurants that will be available to the people at cost. We are not only going to give them beaches, we're going to give them restaurants where you can buy a steak for a third of what they charge you now everywhere. [Applause. Voices are heard: "The buses, transportation."]

We'll see what we can do about the fares, because all the means of transportation are in a state of financial ruin and money is pretty tight right now. If our financial situation were better, it wouldn't be difficult at all to subsidize transportation and simply lower the fares. The problem is that we have inherited a transportation system in a state of financial ruin: rail transport, air transport, city transportation. The truth is that money is a little tight and we can't easily resolve the problem of lowering the fares. But I think with time we will succeed in doing it without sacrificing the job of a single worker and without sacrificing any of the conquests of the workers, who marched here today in support of agrarian reform, alongside thirty-four tractors. [Applause] The workers at COA [Cooperative Bus Alliance] have shown extraordinary generosity and a tremendous revolutionary spirit that has won them the solidarity of the people despite the traditional conflicts between passengers and transportation workers. [Applause] They marched today with such enthusiasm that, with these tractors, they really moved us all.

So these are the things we are going to accomplish here. We are going to build schools, hospitals, recreational centers, and housing. In the future there will not be a single citizen, a single family that doesn't have their own house. [Applause] We are going to do this - in addition to the agrarian reform, which will mean the happiness of our peasants, in addition to industrialization of the country - if the people help us now, if the people understand our situation. If we had 500 million pesos in reserves like there were on March 10,(11) we could immediately undertake a plan to invest 750 million pesos in new industry. But since our reserves are virtually at rock bottom and since we need to strengthen them - the worst thing that could happen to us would be the devaluation of the currency - we have to make a big effort to raise capital for industry. This, along with agrarian reform, will make it possible to completely eradicate unemployment in our country.

Dignity of nation
Imagine the nation of the future, with everything that the revolution will accomplish in all areas. But this fruit will have to be the result of seeds planted today, of today's sacrifices, of sacrifices that are like seeds planted in furrows being opened up by a dignity and patriotic spirit that look toward the future of the nation.

Today I saw that many fathers and mothers carried their children on their shoulders. It wasn't just a march of the people. It was also a demonstration that showed people's feelings and hopes - the hope harbored by a people when it carries its children in a patriotic march. That happens only at important moments in the history of a nation. Only in its greatest hours, in its brightest hours, do the people carry their children on their shoulders. These children are a real symbol because more than ourselves it will be our children who will reap the fruits of the sacrifices that we are all making today. [Applause]

Maybe we were never carried on our parents' shoulders in a demonstration when we were children. We were raised without hope; we grew up without hope. Those who came before us sowed nothing but pain and tears for us, nothing but bitterness and misery, nothing but tragedy and mourning, tyranny and corruption, nothing but despair. We have suffered the consequences of this; we have suffered from all these misfortunes. And I see in every desperate man who approaches me, in every mother who cries because she says it has been three days since she has brought home bread to her children, the fruit of the cursed seed sown in our past.

That's why I am filled with emotion when I see those children on the shoulders of their parents. I think of the generosity of this generation that is sowing a better future for its children. Let it not be our own fault, our lack of consciousness, our age-old prejudices, our lack of maturity, that frustrates the future we are sowing for our children!

They will say that the future is uncertain. They have already told us that the future is uncertain here. It really is sad to think that with atomic bombs they can destroy dreams that embody humanity's greatest aspirations, the very essence of mankind's greatest sentiments - the paradise we want to create for our children. It's really painful and sad to think that in one fatal second with a single hydrogen bomb they can destroy all the houses we might build with such hope. It's really sad to think that all of a people's dreams could unfortunately be destroyed because of a failure to comprehend each other, because of the conflicts in the world, because we might reach the day when our species would commit suicide through atomic war. It really is sad.

But why spread pessimism in the face of this, much less be resigned to it? Why say that faced with this tragedy, we must join one of the camps? Why say that all of Latin America has to support one of the camps? [Applause] Why not proclaim our right to live, even though they might kill us? Why not proclaim our right to live, even if they might destroy us? Why not tell the whole truth here? Why not say that one of those powers has military bases here and is preparing to defend itself in its own country, where it has civil defense plans and atomic bomb shelters. We, on the other hand, who have military bases here, don't have even a miserable little hole to climb into in case of an atomic bomb attack. [Applause] Why not say that while they toy with the dangers of war, we are defenseless, we are in a position to be massacred, without any hope?

U.S. government armed Batista
Why not tell the truth about these things? Why not say moreover that having come to the Cuban people for help in all their wars, when the wars were over, Cuba's sugar quota was cut and they trampled on the Cuban people? Why not say that they came to us for help in hard times, but in peacetime we have suffered nothing but injustices? Why not say that we have already endured the hardships of war? Why not say that in the name of solidarity they dropped six-hundred-pound bombs on us? Why not say that in the name of solidarity they armed the dictator? When Somoza's assassins invaded Costa Rica, the United States sent Costa Rica two or three P-51s dirt cheap, but here the opposite happened. They sent Batista tanks and airplanes dirt cheap to fight against the people.(12)

Why not say that the aggressions that concern us right now do not in fact come from another continent? Why not say that the attacks that concern us could come from mercenaries, from the beaches of Florida and the Dominican Republic? Because every country has its problems and we have our own problems to deal with. Don't dump other countries' problems on us! [Applause]

So we can be destroyed - so what? Should we let them humiliate us? Should we live on our knees? Why? [Applause]

This much is true in any event: sooner or later we are all going to die. The truth of the matter is that every day a lot of people die. Some die of heart disease, others because they are run over by a car, others in an epidemic or of hunger, as many have died here. The biggest danger we have faced - more than danger, the reality we have confronted - is the number of children and women, in the countryside above all, who have died from lack of food, medicine, and medical care. The trouble is that here the poor have never had the chance to speak. The poor had to read what others wrote about them from a great distance. And there were never any statistics on the women and children who died because they lacked doctors or medicines. According to our calculations, the selfishness and exploitation of the big trusts and wealthy interests have killed more Cubans than the Batista dictatorship. [Applause]

So as I was saying, we all have to die of something. Why should we be afraid of death? [Applause] As the saying goes, "If there's a cure for your illness, why worry about it? And if it has no cure, why worry?" [Applause] We must go forward as a nation, as a people, and continue to forge our own future, our own destiny. We must continue to fulfill our dreams, and defend the right to do that with our lives. [Applause]

It has been said here that it's necessary for the people to receive military training to defend their revolution. There was discussion about training the workers and I say more is needed: even the children and women must receive military training here. [Applause] We must train all the people to defend themselves and then we'll see if they dare come here in a little military expedition to ascertain if there's any hope left for the enemies of the revolution. Because the enemies of the revolution will never be able to defeat the revolution in elections.

The polls may show a drop in support for the revolution and they may continue to do so. As I have said before, during the first days of the revolution, everyone applauded us. By the second day, the large landowners had already stopped applauding us. By the third day, the owners of apartment buildings weren't applauding us. And on the fourth day, the real estate owners weren't applauding us. I'm not talking about the owner of a single lot, who now has all the facilities available to him to build. I'm talking about the real estate owners who divide up lots and sell them. So this is what has been happening - not with everyone but with some of these interests.

We have support of majority
Some of the people who protest the revolutionary laws will continue to withdraw their support from us. And there will always be a certain number of people who want things to be resolved immediately and who are inevitably going to be resentful about one thing or another. Support will not be as broad but it will be deeper. We will no longer have the support of 95 percent or 90 or 80 or 75 percent - maybe not even that much. But we will always have a majority, that's for certain. And those who remain with the revolution will be worth more than everything we had before, because earlier there was great breadth but not much depth. Now the support will not be as broad, but it will be deeper. The people who stand on the side of the revolution [Applause] will be the ones who will be willing to die for it, like one of the signs said in the march today.

They won't defeat us in elections because we will have a majority. We will hold elections here whenever they want [Applause. Some in the audience call out that they don't want elections.] I want to tell you that we will win in elections. If we were to put the past to a vote by the people, put to a vote the allies of the past, or those who want a return to the past, [Voices are heard saying, "No."] those who oppose the revolutionary laws would not have the slightest chance of winning.

The various dangers of a democracy have been talked about here and three have been mentioned. One was the danger of speculation, that government officials would begin stealing. I'm telling you there's not the slightest chance that will happen. We will face other dangers; I can conceive of others. But the idea that the revolution will fall because there will be embezzlers, and wherever there are embezzlers there can be no freedom, and then comes tyranny - I say that the danger that people will steal does not exist here. Of that I can assure you.

Who is going to steal here? That's a thing of the past. Stealing always occurred here because the top government officials were also the top thieves, and from the top down everyone stole. [Applause] I want you to tell me how the top public officials could manage to steal here. Tell me who here after all the sacrifices, all the deaths along the way, all the crosses like the ones that fill our graveyards, and after so much honesty, would dare touch a single cent.

So that danger does not exist. There is no danger that we would trample on anybody. No sir. What we are going to do here is expose a lot of people, unmask a lot of shameless people, denounce a lot of fakers. This will not be like the depiction by a cartoonist this morning. I don't know if he did it on his own or was ordered to by his boss. He had put down some lines and alongside the lines he put "pay raise." On the other side of this text he put a little sign saying "counterrevolutionary" - that is, he applied medication before a scratch had even appeared. I don't know what he was referring to - because these days there have been some obscure things that have appeared, things that people don't understand.

I don't know if what he meant to say was that on one hand we want to buy journalists off by talking about pay raises and on the other we want to intimidate them with that little sign saying "counterrevolutionary." If that's indeed what he meant to say, it would be good to point out that we don't want to buy off anybody, that we don't want to intimidate anybody, because we don't need to buy off anybody to get them to defend us. We know how to defend ourselves. [Applause] And we don't need to intimidate anybody from attacking us because we aren't afraid of anybody. [Applause] It's the people that they have to try to convince. And if none of these individuals are in danger of dying of hunger because they don't have a job, let them take care that they don't die of hunger later because no one reads what they write. [Applause]

From this point on I'm declaring that neither flattery nor attacks concern me in the least. The fact is, they will take the same freedom we have won for the people and use it in order to attack us. [Applause]

It's a vile slander to say that we try to influence journalists through bribes, by talking about pay raises, or through the insidious act of intimidation by accusing them of being counterrevolutionaries. We defend their right to a pay raise because it's just. We want journalists to make a decent living just like other intellectual workers. We don't want to stoop to the immoral behavior of bribing journalists. We want to help them honestly. We don't call anyone a counterrevolutionary unless they really are [Applause] like those who join the slander campaigns, those who join the foreign slander campaigns paid for by the international oligarchy, [Applause] those who join the campaigns of the war criminals, those who change their stripes when it's to their advantage, and those who take sides for money, like vulgar mercenaries, opportunists. [Applause] From now on I say that they indeed have the freedom to write whatever they want. But they also have the freedom to hear out everything we have to say to them. [Applause]

I don't want to name names because I am not pointing to anyone in particular. What I do want to make clear is that we will resolutely oppose all the mercenaries, all the traitors, and all the servants of the counterrevolutionary reactionary forces. They're not going to get away with saying that the counterrevolution is nothing more than a slogan on a little sign, that there is no counterrevolution. If we don't alert people about this in time, they can create a bloodbath in our country. But if we warn the people in time, even if they create a bloodbath, it will be the blood of the mercenaries themselves that will be shed because they will last about as long here as sweets left at the door of a school.

I was saying that if they have no hope of regaining power through elections, since they don't have the support of the people, then how can they hope to regain power with weapons when they face an entire people determined to fight? [Applause]

So what hope does the counterrevolution have of regaining power? Regaining it with help from abroad. The counterrevolution's only hope of regaining power, since it knows it doesn't have the slightest chance of gaining it through the people's support, is with the help of foreign powers. So, the counterrevolutionaries are above all traitors to their country. They wheedle money out of foreigners. They are panderers who whisper into the ears of powerful foreigners, to see if they, with all their resources, can replant the counterrevolution in the national soil. [Applause]

Counterrevolution looks to foreign powers
Since they don't have the slightest hope of winning power through elections or with weapons, why all the conspiratorial hustle and bustle abroad? What does it mean? Why the slander campaign against the Cuban revolution? What does it mean? It means that the only way the counterrevolution can hope to regain power is with the help of foreign powers.

We have to tell the counterrevolutionaries that they are traitors to their country. They would do well to understand in time what Maceo said and what Raúl has repeated in two speeches and what one of the signs said today: "Whoever tries to take possession of Cuba will end up with nothing but the dust of a soil drowned in blood."(13) [Sustained applause] Let them lose all hope of bringing back the hateful past. Let the Venturas, Laurents, Masferrers, and all those murderers lose all hope of pitching their tents here, even if they receive all the help they can get. Before they can try to oppress their people again, before they can succeed in doing that, they will have to exterminate this people. [Applause]

They will have to resign themselves to oppressing a blackened land that has turned to desert. Let them lose all hope because they will never be able to do it here, even if they use all the resources, all the propaganda, everything they can to thwart us, to divide us, to weaken us. I believe in this people. I know its shortcomings. I know what its weaknesses are - which aren't of its own making but were inherited. But I'm also familiar with its extraordinary virtues. That's why I say that they will not be able to oppress the Cuban people, this people of ours, the people of Maceo and Martí.(14)

It would be best if they lost hope. I referred here to "our defects" and I've said that we have to become more and more unified and work together more and more every day. We must unify not just working people, but the nation. We must unite the middle class with the workers and peasants, excluding only the small group of people who look to the past, who can't manage to convince themselves once and for all that there is no person alive who can put brakes on the revolution. We must unify not just the revolutionary sectors of society but a broad spectrum of social sectors.

I'm addressing you in the same language with which I spoke to the members of the civic institutions. I spoke to them in patriotic language and they applauded. I spoke to them in revolutionary language and they applauded. I spoke to them in revolutionary language and they applauded. They are with us, they are with you, they support the revolution. [Applause]

It is necessary to keep the nation united in face of the international oligarchy. It is necessary to keep the nation united so they find us determined, so they find us strong. Let the selfish few, those who are incapable of making the slightest sacrifice for the country, desert the ranks of the nation. Let the enemies of the nation, the enemies of the homeland, desert our ranks. Let the people who have always been traitors desert the ranks of the nation. But let them desert in time so that we know them in time. [Applause]

The nation has very important work ahead of it. The nation has very difficult tasks ahead of it and it's a job for men, not babies in diapers. [Applause] It's a task for generous men, not the selfish. [Applause] It's a task for the courageous, not for cowards. [Applause]

If we did not hesitate to march forward when the revolution seemed least likely to triumph, how can we waver now? If we didn't waver when we were a handful of men lost in the mountains, how can we doubt that the revolution will be victorious now? [Applause]

I have felt a lot of emotions in my life, but rarely like today. Few emotions can match seeing the working class and all the people who live in the city of Havana marching with their signs in support of their brothers in the countryside. [Applause]

Few emotions can match seeing that the most deeply felt and profound demand put forward by the working class is not a demand for itself but a demand on behalf of their peasant brothers. Few emotions can match seeing how this idea has found an echo in the hearts of the workers, seeing how they have understood that without a prosperous peasantry, without a peasantry that has purchasing power, there can be no progress in industry, no end to unemployment, no well-being for the working class.

How this idea has taken hold! And how moving it is to see the tractors passing by like armored units that will win the great battle of the future. [Applause]

Even more moving than the tractors marching by is the united march of the Rebel Army, shoulder to shoulder with the working class. [Applause] Military officers marching alongside men who live by the sweat of their brow is an unequivocal symbol of our revolution. Yesterday, the soldiers, the rural police, would never have been able to march alongside the workers and peasants-never. [Applause] Today, how moving it is for us, how proud we are, to see the twelve men of yesterday transformed into an army of soldiers marching in the vanguard of the workers of our nation. [Applause]

Not everyone was yet wearing a cap. They didn't all have the same cap on because the revolution that has allotted millions for schools and universities has not yet gotten loans to buy caps for the soldiers of the Rebel Army. [Applause] Emotions like this are experienced few times in life. They are rewards that more than make up for all the sacrifices and sleepless nights.

I want to end by expressing my regrets and setting a date. With all the respect and consideration that our hospitable people have for visitors, [Applause] I apologize to our guest because I have had to disagree with his point of view. And I take leave of the people until our next meeting-I take leave of the working class until May Day. [Applause].

1. José Figueres had been president of Costa Rica from 1953-58, and was returned to power in 1970-74. He had spoken at the rally immediately prior to Castro, and had criticized Cuban revolutionaries for addressing the U.S. government "practically in the language of enemies at war." He added, "We are democrats, Christians, and part of the Western heritage. . . . Revolutionaries in Latin America should help solve the problems, not simply aggravate them."

2. In the first weeks after the victory of the revolution, several hundred of the most notorious murderers and torturers of the Batista regime were tried by popular tribunals and shot. The executions, which had the support of the overwhelming majority of the Cuban people, were used by Washington to launch an international propaganda campaign against the new revolutionary government.

3. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo was dictator of the Dominican Republic from 1930 until his death in 1961. In August 1959, backed by Washington, he organized a failed military expedition against the Cuban revolution.

Rolando Masferrer was a pro-Batista politician who organized a private army of torturers and assassins. He fled Cuba on Dec. 31, 1958, and was assassinated in Miami by rivals in 1975.

Esteban Ventura was a colonel in Batista's police force and a notorious torturer and murderer. He fled to the United States on Jan. 1, 1959.

Julio Laurent was a major in the Naval Intelligence Service under Batista responsible for the murder of captured members of the Rebel Army and of peasants.

4. Rafael Salas Cañizares was chief of police under Batista and a notorious torturer for the dictatorship. He was killed in 1957 during a government attack on Cuban revolutionaries who had sought refuge in the Haitian Embassy. Ten of the revolutionaries were murdered.

5. The sugar quota, first established in 1934 to benefit U.S. sugar producers in the aftermath of the 1929 Depression, was the amount of Cuban sugar allowed by Washington to be sold in U.S. markets. At the time of the revolution, sugar production constituted about one third of Cuba's total national income and sugar exports represented about 80 percent of her export trade. In July 1960 the U.S. government eliminated the quota and banned all imports of sugar from Cuba.

6. The Confederation of Cuban Workers (CTC) was the main trade union federation. After the revolution it was reorganized, and was known briefly as the CTC-Revolutionary. It changed its name in 1961 to the Central Organization of Cuban Workers, also known as the CTC.

7. In November 1958 the Batista regime organized general elections, in an attempt to give legal cover to the dictatorship. The July 26 Movement called for a boycott and there was massive voter abstention in response to the revolutionaries' campaign.

8. Castro is referring to the law approved by the Council of Ministers on March 6, 1959, lowering rents for all Cubans by up to 50 percent. This measure was an antecedent to the urban reform law of October 1960. That measure gave all Cubans either outright ownership of their dwellings or permanent use of them with a monthly fee not to exceed 10 percent of their income.

9. The first Agrarian Reform Law, which was signed into law on May 17, 1959, will be the subject of the May installment in this series.

10. Before the revolution most beaches in Cuba were either private estates or open only to tourists and wealthy Cubans. One of the early acts of the revolutionary government - within two weeks of this speech - was to open every beach on the island to the public in April 1959.

11. March 10, 1952, was the day of Batista's coup d'état.

12. During the revolutionary war, the U.S. government helped arm the Batista regime, including providing weapons to bomb peasant villages in the Sierra Maestra. In December 1954 the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua attacked Costa Rica.

13. Antonio Maceo, a black Cuban known as the Bronze Titan, was a leader of the 1868-78 and 1895-98 wars of independence. He was killed in battle on Dec. 7, 1896.

14. José Martí, a noted poet, writer, speaker, and journalist, founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892 to fight against Spanish rule and oppose U.S. designs on Cuba. In 1895 the party helped initiate a war of independence against Spain, and Martí was killed in battle the same year. His revolutionary anti-imperialist program is part of the political foundation of the Cuban revolution, and he is considered Cuba's national hero.

 
 
 
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