Castro was referring to the current epidemic of dengue fever. As of July 24, the virus had afflicted nearly 275,000 Cubans and killed 113, including eighty-one children.

The outbreak began in late May in Havana and quickly spread across the island. The epidemic is a new type of dengue which had never appeared before in Cuba.

A large part of the Cuban leader’s speech was devoted to the history of U.S. biological and chemical warfare efforts, as documented in reports from the U.S. Senate, and other sources not noted for their identification with the Cuban revolution.  
 
August 27, 1956
NEW YORK, Aug. 20—The presidential slate of the Socialist Workers Party was formally nominated last night at a convention in this city. Chosen by acclamation as the SWP banner bearers in the 1956 elections were Farrell Dobbs for President and Myra Tanner Weiss for Vice-President. They had been recommended as candidates by the SWP National Committee last fall.

Reporting on the draft platform was Farrell Dobbs, SWP National Secretary.

He contrasted this platform’s forthright, unequivocal planks for labor, civil rights and peace with the evasive and reactionary platform of the recently held Democratic convention. He excoriated labor bureaucrats, social democrats and Stalinists who are trying to dupe the working class into voting for Stevenson-Kefauver and the Democratic platform.  
 
August 29, 1931
Before the echoes of the big strikes in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky have died out, and while the rumblings of new anti-starvation rebellions are being heard again in the coal fields, miners by the dozens are being dragged into coal operators’ courts to be railroaded to the electric chair or to long terms of imprisonment.

In Harlan, Kentucky, the grand jury is still in session and continues to turn out one indictment for murder after another. The thirty-four miners, who are up for trial in connection with killings that occurred last May at Evarts with four fatalities, now have more than a hundred indictments issued against them. A new legal assassination is being planned by the Kentucky barons of coal and their judicial serfs. This time it is to be executed with dispatch and on a mass scale so that there may be less opportunity to arouse a powerful workers protest movement in time.  
 
 
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