Vol. 76/No. 17      April 30, 2012

Below is an excerpt from The First and Second Declarations of Havana, adopted by million-strong assemblies of the Cuban people. The selection is from the Second Declaration, delivered by Fidel Castro in February 1962, less than a year after the defeat of the U.S.-led invasion at Playa Girón. Copyright © 2007 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

At Punta del Este* a great ideological battle unfolded between the Cuban Revolution and Yankee imperialism. Who did each side represent, for whom did each one speak? Cuba represented the people; the United States represented the monopolies. Cuba spoke for the exploited masses of Latin America; the United States for the exploiting, oligarchic, and imperialist interests. Cuba for sovereignty; the United States for intervention. Cuba for the nationalization of foreign enterprises; the United States for even greater investments by foreign capital. Cuba for culture; the United States for ignorance. Cuba for agrarian reform; the United States for great landed estates. Cuba for the industrialization of the Americas; the United States for underdevelopment. Cuba for creative work; the United States for sabotage and counterrevolutionary terror practiced by its agents—destruction of sugarcane fields and factories, bombing by their pirate planes of the work of a peaceful people. Cuba for the murdered literacy workers; the United States for the murderers. Cuba for bread; the United States for hunger. Cuba for equality; the United States for privilege and discrimination. Cuba for the truth; the United States for lies. Cuba for liberation; the United States for oppression. Cuba for the bright future of humanity; the United States for the past without hope. Cuba for the heroes who fell at Girón to save the country from foreign domination; the United States for the mercenaries and traitors who serve the foreigner against their own country. Cuba for peace among peoples; the United States for aggression and war. Cuba for socialism; the United States for capitalism. …

And the Blacks? What “alliance” can the system of lynching and brutal exclusion of Blacks in the United States offer to the 15 million Blacks and 14 million mulattos of Latin America, who know with horror and rage that their brothers to the north cannot ride in the same vehicles as their white compatriots, nor attend the same schools, nor even die in the same hospitals? …

This toiling humanity, these inhumanly exploited men and women, these paupers, controlled by the system of whip and overseer, have not counted or have counted little. From the dawn of independence their fate has been the same: Indians, gauchos, mestizos, zambos, quadroons, whites without property or income, all this human mass that formed the ranks of the “nation” that was never theirs, who fell by the millions, who were cut to bits, who won independence from the mother country for the bourgeoisie, who were shut out from their share of the rewards, who continued to occupy the lowest rung on the ladder of social benefits, continued to die of hunger, curable diseases, and neglect for lack of things that never reached them: ordinary bread, a hospital bed, medicine that cures, a helping hand.

But now, from one end of the continent to the other, they are signaling clearly that the hour has come: the hour of their redemption. Now this anonymous mass, this America of color, somber, taciturn America, which all over the continent sings with the same sadness and disillusionment, now this mass is beginning to enter definitively into its own history, is beginning to write it with its own blood, is beginning to suffer and die for it.

Because now in the fields and mountains of the Americas, on its hillsides, on its flatlands and in its jungles, in isolated fields and in the crush of its cities, on the banks of its great oceans and rivers, this world is beginning to tremble. Ardent fists are raised, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights that for five hundred years have been laughed at by one and all. Yes, now history will have to take the poor of America into account, the exploited and spurned of America, who have decided to begin writing their history for themselves for all time. Already they can be seen on the roads, on foot, day after day, in an endless march of hundreds of miles up to the “Olympian” heights of government to demand their rights.

Already they can be seen armed with stones, sticks, machetes, from one end to the other, each day, occupying lands, sinking stakes into the land that belongs to them and defending it with their lives. They can be seen carrying signs, slogans, banners; unfurling them in the mountain and prairie winds. And the wave of trembling anger, of demands for justice, of claims for rights trampled underfoot, which is beginning to sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell with each passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labor amasses the wealth and creates all value, those who turn the wheels of history. Now they are awakening from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been subjected.

For this great mass of humanity has said, “Enough!” and has begun to march. And their march of giants will not be halted until they conquer true independence—for which they have died in vain more than once. Today, however, those who die will die as in Cuba, as at Playa Girón: they will die for their one, true, never-to-be-surrendered independence.

Patria o muerte! Venceremos!