Aug. 13, 2026, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fidel Castro. Under his leadership the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement led Cuba’s working people to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959 and opened the first socialist revolution in the Americas.
Fidel Castro was the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba and the central political leader of Cuba’s government and of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba. He died Nov. 25, 2016, at the age of 90.
“When we pay tribute to Fidel, we are, above all, paying tribute to the working people of Cuba, to the men and women of José Martí, of Antonio Maceo. Fidel was one with them,” Mary-Alice Waters, a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party and president of Pathfinder Press, told a 2023 conference in Havana.
“His greatest achievement was forging in struggle a revolutionary cadre, a communist cadre, capable of leading the workers and farmers of Cuba to establish the first free territory of the Americas and to successfully defend it for more than six decades,” Waters said.
“If Fidel belongs first to the working people of Cuba, however, he also belongs to the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world over,” she continued. “And under his leadership, from Latin America and the Caribbean, to Africa and Asia, to North America and Europe, working people of Cuba have shown us in action what proletarian internationalism means.”
“In Fidel’s memorable words, ‘Those not willing to fight for the freedom of others will never be able to fight for their own.’”
Starting with this issue, and throughout the year, the Militant will join in paying tribute to Castro by reprinting excerpts from his speeches, writings and interviews.
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Castro: ‘No! to nuclear weapons’
“We have never considered the idea of fabricating nuclear weapons, because we don’t need them,” Castro said in a 2005 interview with journalist Ignacio Ramonet, printed in the book My Life. “What’s the purpose of producing a nuclear weapon when your enemy has thousands of them? It would be entering an arms race all over again.
“No one should have the right to produce nuclear weapons, much less the privileged right demanded by the imperialists.”
He also said, “We are not going to be swept up in the madness or stupidity of starting to manufacture biological weapons. What we’ve taught people is to manufacture vaccines and to fight against illness, disease and death.”
“We have educated those scientists in an ethics; we’re not going to tell them now, ‘Listen, start manufacturing smallpox,’ or whatever. Besides, what on earth for? Against an adversary that has 100 times more of it?
“Nor are we going to start manufacturing a chemical weapon. How are you going to transport it? Who are you going to use it against? Against the American people? No! That would be unfair and absurd!”
“Are you going to make a nuclear weapon? You’ll ruin yourself — a nuclear weapon is a good way to commit suicide at a certain point, all right: ‘Gentlemen, the time has come, we’re going to immolate ourselves, and this atomic bomb is just the thing.’”
“There is one weapon we haven’t renounced, the only weapon we have, which is our people,” Castro said. “We will not renounce the ‘war of the entire country,’ as I call it.”
“No one has ever presented a single shred of evidence that our homeland has conceived a program to develop nuclear, chemical or biological weapons,” Castro had said earlier.
“The doors of our institutions are open. Cuba has absolutely nothing to hide.”