Luis Miranda, president of Casa de las Américas, opened the meeting and introduced the first speaker, Hassán Pérez, national president of the Federation of University Students of Cuba (FEU). Casa de las Américas is a Cuban-American organization based in New York that supports the Cuban revolution.
Pérez in turn introduced the nine-member delegation seated on the stage that accompanied the foreign minister.
Three of them were leaders of Cuba's health-care system: Rosa Elena Simeón, director of the General Hospital of Havana; Tania González, director of the Salvador Allende hospital; and Pura Avilés, a surgeon and director of the main hospital in Holguín province.
Another three were leaders of different religious denominations: Raúl Suárez, a Baptist pastor and director of the Martin Luther Center in Havana; Odén Marichal, an Episcopal minister and president of the Council of Churches of Cuba; and Sergio Arce, a theologian and Presbyterian pastor from Matanzas. All six are elected deputies in the country's National Assembly.
The FEU president was accompanied by two other leaders of youth organizations: Roberto Conde, president of the Federation of High School Students (FEEM), and Niurka Duménigo, president of the Pioneers, the children's organization.
Dr. Simeón, director of a 1,000-bed hospital in Havana, described the difficult conditions under which Cuban doctors, nurses, and hospital workers strive to maintain decent health care in face of shortages of medical supplies and other consequences of the U.S. embargo.
"We've seen the enemy's face up close," she said, describing the experience of "valuable equipment sitting idle for more than a year as we waited for spare parts." For example, some companies in nearby countries canceled sales of important equipment such as pacemakers after the Helms-Burton law was passed, "so we have to buy them from other sources at 55 percent higher prices." It's through the resourcefulness and social consciousness of the doctors and workers trained by the revolution, along with initiatives by the country's leadership, that Cuba has been able to overcome obstacles and maintain health standards that are the highest in Latin America, she said.
"We've dared to be different —that's why we are attacked" by Washington, said Rev. Raúl Suárez. He pointed out that the Cuban revolution has survived despite the collapse of the Soviet bloc regimes and the tightening of the embargo.
Dennis Rivera, president of Local 1199, expressed his union's opposition to the U.S. embargo against Cuba, calling it "immoral." He recognized two other guests on the stage — Fernando Remírez, head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C., and Bruno Rodríguez, Cuban ambassador to the United Nations — and introduced foreign minister Pérez Roque.
Pérez Roque, 34, who was appointed three months ago, explained that in coming to address the United Nations, "We're not just interested in the affairs of Cuba, a small country with 11 million people, but in the affairs of the world, which has 6 billion inhabitants. This includes 5 billion people in underdeveloped countries who live in an unequal and unjust world.
"We refuse to accept this situation," he said. "Cuba maintains that, given the available resources in the world, it's possible to secure a dignified life with social justice for all the inhabitants of the planet."
"Today, the three richest people in the world own more wealth than the gross domestic product of the 48 poorest countries, with 600 million inhabitants," the Cuban leader stated. "Almost one billion people are hungry and more than 1.3 billion live in poverty, a testimony to the inhumanity of the prevailing system."
Illustrating the foreign debt trap that is bleeding dry the semicolonial world, Pérez Roque said, "A decade ago, the debt in Latin America stood at $500 billion. During that time Latin America paid $800 billion in interests. Yet today it owes $800 billion."
In the midst of this worldwide crisis, Pérez Roque said, "Cuba's existence is a symbol." Pointing to the internationalism of the Cuban revolution, he said that "half a million Cubans — many of them volunteer soldiers — have carried out missions of solidarity in the world" over the decades.
"Where did Cuban soldiers go? To fight against some democratically elected government? No. They fought apartheid's troops," he said, referring to the volunteer combatants that helped Angola beat back repeated South African invasions during the 1970s and 80s, leading to the defeat of the white minority regime's forces at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in 1988–89.
After this victory, "we didn't stay in Africa as owners of mines or oil wells or land. We returned from southern Africa bringing back only the remains of our fallen comrades," Pérez Roque noted. This is in contrast with Washington and other imperialist powers that have intervened militarily in Africa to seize markets and influence.
"Today there are 2,000 youth from 18 countries in Latin America, mostly from low-income families, studying medicine in Havana," the foreign minister added. And "1,200 Cuban health-care volunteers, the majority of them doctors, are working in Haiti, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua." These volunteers mobilized in response to the devastation caused by hurricanes that swept through the Caribbean and Central America in late 1997. Brigades of volunteer doctors are now being sent to several countries in western Africa.
The example of these internationalist volunteers is what the U.S. government is trying to stamp out in its 40-year-long economic aggression against the revolution, Pérez Roque said.
The foreign minister highlighted the lawsuit filed in Havana by several mass organizations against the U.S. government, demanding $181 billion in compensation for 3,476 Cubans who have died and 2,099 who have physical disabilities as a result of these attacks.
"The people of Cuba can distinguish very well between the people of the United States, who are not at fault," and the promoters of the U.S. embargo, Pérez Roque said, saluting those in the United States who have opposed Washington's hostile policies. "We want to normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. This must be done on the basis of ending the blockade.
"Cubans have a right to build the country they choose to build," he emphasized in his closing remarks. "With the conviction that victory lies in our resistance, Cuba will continue to defend what it believes in and build its future."
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