Fidel Castro Speech at the UN Page #15

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We, the small and underdeveloped countries, urge the whole Assembly and especially the other small and underdeveloped nations to devote themselves to this task and to have this problem discussed here, because afterwards we will never forgive ourselves if, through our neglect or lack of firmness and energy on this basic issue, the world becomes involved once again in the perils of war.

We have just one more point to discuss, which, according to what we have read in some newspapers, was one of the points the Cuban delegation was going to raise. And this, of course, is the problem of the Peoples Republic of China.

Other delegations have already spoken about this matter. We wish to say that the fact that this problem has never been discussed is in reality a denial of the "raison d'etre" and of the essential of nature of the United Nations. Why has it never been discussed? Because the United Nations Assembly going to renounce its right to discuss this problem?

Many countries have joined the United Nations in recent years. To oppose discussion of the right to representation here of the People's Republic of China, that is, of 99 percent of the inhabitants of a country of more than 600,000,000 is to deny the reality of history, the facts of life itself.

It is simply an absurdity; it is ridiculous that this problem is never even discussed. How long are we going to continue the sad business of never discussing this problem, when we have here representatives of Franco, for instance?

At this point is its appropriate to ask by what right the navy of an extra-continental country -- and it is worth repeating this here, when so much is being said about extra-continental interference -- intervented in a domestic affair of China. It would be interesting to have an explanation. The sole purpose of this interference was to maintain a group of allies in that place and to prevent the total liberation of the territory. That is an absurd and unlawful state of affairs from any point of view, but it constitutes the reason why the United States Government does not want the question of the People's Republic of China to be discussed. And we want to put it on record here that this is our position and that we support discussion of this question, and that the United Nations General Assembly should seat the legitimate representatives of the Chinese people, namely, the representatives of the Government of the People's Republic of China.

I understand perfectly that is somewhat difficult for anybody here to free himself of the stereotyped concepts by which the representatives of nations are usually judged. I must say that we have come here free from the prejudices, to analyze problems objectively, without fear of what people will think and without fear of the consequences of our position.

We have been honest, we have been frank without being Fran coist (APPLAUSE), because we do not want to be a party to the injustice committed against a great number of Spaniards, still imprisoned in Spain after more than twenty years, men who fought together with the Americans of the Lincoln Brigade, as the comrades of those same Americans who were there to do honor to the name of that great American, Lincoln.

In conclusion, we are going to place our trust in reason and in the decency of all. We wish to sum up our ideas regarding some aspects of these world problems about which there should be no doubt. The problem of Cuba, which we have set forth here, is a part of the problems of the world. Those who attack us today are those who are helping to attack others in other parts of the world.

The United States Government cannot be on the side of the Algerian people, it cannot be on the side of the Algerian people because it is allied to metropolitan France. It cannot be on the side of the Congolese people, because it is allied to Belgium. It cannot be on the side of the Spanish people, because it is allied to Franco. It cannot be on the side of the Puerto Rican people, whose nationhood it has been destroying for fifty years. It cannot be on the side of the Panamanians, who claim the Canal. It cannot support the ascendancy of civil power in Latin America, Germany or Japan. It cannot be on the side of the peasants who want land, because it is allied to the big landowners. It cannot be on the side of the workers who are demanding better living conditions in all parts of the world, because it is allied to the monopolies. It cannot be on the side of the colonies which want their freedom, because it is allied to the colonizers.

That is to say, it is for the Franco, for the colonization of Algeria for the colonization of the Congo; it is for the maintenance of its privileges and interests in the Panama Canal, for colonialism through the world. It is for the German militarism and for the resurgence of German militarism. It is for Japanese militarism and for the resurgence of Japanese militarism.

The Government of the United States forgets the millions of Jews murdered in European concentration camps by the Nazis, who are today regaining their influence in the German army. It forgets the Frenchmen who were killed in their heroic struggle against the occupation; it forgets the American soldiers who died on the Seigfried Line, in the Ruhr, on the Rhine, and on the Asian fronts. The United States Government cannot be for the integrity and sovereignty of nations. Why? Because it must curtail the sovereignty of nations in order to keep its military bases, and each base is a dagger thrust into sovereignty; each base is a limitation on sovereignty.

That is why it has to be against the sovereignty of nations, because it must constantly limit sovereignty in order to maintain its policy of encircling the Soviet Union with bases. We believe that these problems are not properly explained to the American people. But the American people need only imagine how uneasy they would feel if the Soviet Union began to establish a ring of atomic bases in Cuba, Mexico, or Canada. The population would not feel secure or calm. World opinion, including American opinion, must be taught to see the other person's point of view. The underdeveloped peoples should not always be represented as aggressors; revolutionaries should not be presented as aggressors, as enemies of the American people, because we have seen American like Carleton Beals, Waldo Frank, and others, famous and distinguished intellectuals, shed tears at the thought of the mistakes that are being made, at the breach of hospitality towards us; there are many Americans, the most humane, the most progressive, and the most esteemed writers, in whom I see the nobility of this country's early leaders, the Washingtons, the Jeffersons, and the Lincolns. I say this is no spirit of demegogy, but with the sincere admiration that we feel for those who once succeeded in freeing their people from colonial status and who did not fight in order that their country might today be the ally of all the reactionaires, the gangsters, the big landowners, the monopolists, the exploiters, the militarists, the facists in the world, that is to say, the ally of the most reactionary forces, but rather in order that their country might always be the champion of noble and just ideals.

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