Vol. 80/No.48 December 26, 2016
(front page)
First Declaration of Havana: ‘No to exploitation, no
to imperialism!’
Below are excerpts from the First Declaration of Havana, issued by Cuba’s revolutionary leadership in 1960. Millions of Cuban workers and youth mobilized to reaffirm their commitment to defend and advance their socialist revolution after the recent death of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. At a mass rally in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution Nov. 29, Raúl Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, recalled that at that site the First and Second Declarations were presented by Fidel Castro and adopted by millions-strong General Assemblies of the Cuban People on Sept. 2, 1960, and Feb. 4, 1962. Both are available in The First and Second Declarations of Havana: Manifestos of Revolutionary Struggle in the Americas Adopted by the Cuban People. Copyright © 2007 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
[T]he National General Assembly of the Cuban People:
Condemns the backward, inhuman landed-estate system of agricultural production, a source of misery and poverty for the rural population. It condemns starvation wages and the grossly unjust exploitation of human labor by illegitimate and privileged interests. It condemns illiteracy, the lack of teachers, schools, doctors, hospitals, and care for the elderly that prevails in Latin America. It condemns the discrimination against Blacks and Indians. It condemns the inequality and exploitation of women. It condemns the military and political oligarchies that keep our peoples in utter misery and hinder the development toward democracy and the full exercise of their sovereignty. It condemns the handing over of our countries’ natural resources to the foreign monopolies as a policy of concessions that surrenders and betrays the interests of the peoples. It condemns the governments that ignore the sentiments of their people in order to obey Washington’s dictates. It condemns the systematic deception of the people by the news media in the interests of the oligarchies and the imperialist oppressor. It condemns the monopoly of the news media by Yankee agencies, instruments of the U.S. trusts and agents of Washington. It condemns repressive laws that prevent workers, peasants, students, and intellectuals — the great majority of each country — from organizing to fight for their social demands and patriotic aspirations. It condemns the imperialist monopolies and companies that constantly plunder our wealth, exploit our workers and peasants, bleed our economies and keep them in backwardness, and force Latin America, in matters of policy, to submit to their designs and interests.
In short, the National General Assembly of the Cuban People condemns the exploitation of man by man, and the exploitation of the underdeveloped countries by imperialist finance capital.
Therefore, the National General Assembly of the Cuban People proclaims before the Americas: The right of peasants to the land; the right of workers to the fruit of their labor; the right of children to education; the right of the sick to medical and hospital care; the right of the young to a job; the right of students to free education that is both practical and scientific; the right of Blacks and Indians to “full human dignity”; the right of women to civil, social, and political equality; the right of the elderly to a secure old age; the right of intellectuals, artists, and scientists to use their work to fight for a better world; the right of states to nationalize the imperialist monopolies, thereby recovering their national wealth and resources; the right of countries to engage freely in trade with all the peoples of the world; the right of nations to their full sovereignty; the right of the peoples to turn garrisons into schools, and to arm their workers, peasants, students, intellectuals, Blacks, Indians, women, young people, old people, and all the oppressed and exploited, so they themselves may defend their rights and their destiny.
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