Vol. 77/No. 1      January 14, 2013

Below are excerpts from Fidel Castro’s September 1960 address to the U.N. General Assembly, included in To Speak the Truth: Why Washington’s ‘Cold War’ Against Cuba Doesn’t End, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January.

The Militant is reprinting the excerpts on the occasion of the 54th anniversary of the Jan. 1, 1959, Cuban Revolution that overturned the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship and brought the working class to power, opening the socialist revolution in the Americas. Copyright © 1992 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FIDEL CASTRO  
The military group that tyrannized our country was based on the most reactionary sectors of the nation and, above all, on the foreign interests that dominated our country’s economy. …

Fulgencio Batista’s government based on force was the type most suited to the U.S. monopolies in Cuba, but it was obviously not the type most suited to the Cuban people. Therefore, the Cuban people, at a great cost in lives, threw that government out. …

What “marvels” did the revolution find when it came to power in Cuba? First of all, the revolution found that 600,000 Cubans, able and ready to work, were unemployed—as many, proportionally, as were jobless in the United States during the Great Depression that shook this country, and which almost produced a catastrophe here. This is what we confronted in my country—permanent unemployment. Three million out of a population of a little more than six million had no electricity, possessing none of its advantages and comforts. Three and a half million … lived in huts, in shacks, and in slums, without the most minimal sanitary facilities. In the cities, rents took almost one-third of family income. Electricity rates and rents were among the highest in the world. Some 37.5 percent of our population were illiterate; 70 percent of the rural children lacked teachers. …

Public services, the electricity and telephone companies, all belonged to U.S. monopolies. A major portion of banking, importing, and oil refining; the majority of sugar production; the best land; and the most important industries in all fields in Cuba belonged to U.S. companies. …

What alternative was there for the revolutionary government? To betray the people? As far as the president of the United States is concerned, of course, what we have done is a betrayal of our people. And he surely would not have considered it a betrayal if, rather than being true to its people, the revolutionary government had instead been true to the monopolies that were exploiting Cuba.

The revolutionary government began to take its first steps. The first was a 50 percent reduction in rents paid by families. … [T]he people rushed into the streets rejoicing, as they would in any country—even here in New York—if rents were reduced by 50 percent for all families. …

Then another law was passed, a law cancelling the concessions that had been granted by the Batista dictatorship to the telephone company, which was a U.S. monopoly. …

The third measure was the reduction of electricity rates, which had been among the highest in the world. This led to the second conflict with the U.S. monopolies. …

Then came another law, an essential law, an inevitable law—inevitable for the Cuban people and inevitable, sooner or later, for all the peoples of the world, at least those who have not done so. This was the Agrarian Reform Law. …

In our country it was indispensable. More than 200,000 peasant families lived in the countryside without land with which to plant essential foodstuffs. Without agrarian reform our country could not have taken the first step toward development. And we took that step. We instituted an agrarian reform. Was it radical? Yes, it was a radical agrarian reform. Was it very radical? No, it was not a very radical agrarian reform. We carried out an agrarian reform adjusted to the needs of our development, to the possibilities of agricultural development. …

Then the question of payments and indemnities came up. Notes from the U.S. State Department began to rain down on Cuba. They never asked us about our problems, not even to express sympathy or because of their responsibility in creating the problems. … Every conversation we had with the representatives of the U.S. government centered around the telephone company, the electricity company, and the problem of the land owned by U.S. companies. The question they asked was how we were going to pay. …

They demanded three things: “prompt, adequate, and effective compensation.” Do you understand that language? “Prompt, adequate, and effective compensation.” That means, “Pay this instant, in dollars, and whatever we ask.” [Applause]

We were not 150 percent communists at that time, [Laughter] we just appeared slightly pink. We were not confiscating land. We simply proposed to pay for it in twenty years, and in the only way we could—by bonds that would mature in twenty years, at 4.5 percent interest amortized annually. How could we have paid for this land in dollars? How could we have paid on the spot, and how could we have paid whatever they asked? It was ludicrous.

It is obvious that under those circumstances, we had to choose between either carrying through an agrarian reform or not doing so. If we chose not doing so then our country’s dreadful economic situation would continue indefinitely. And if we did carry out the agrarian reform, then we faced incurring the enmity of the government of the powerful neighbor to the north.

We chose to carry out the agrarian reform.  
 
 
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