Fidel Castro Speech at the UN Page #4

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Was there any concern for the industrial development of our country? No. That is why we are astonished and amazed when we hear of the extraordinary concern shown by the United States Government for the Fate of the countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia. We cannot overcome our amazement, because after fifty years we have the result of their concern before our eyes.

What has the Revolutionary Government done? What crime has the Revolutionary Government committed to deserve the treatment we have received here, and the powerful enemies that events have shown us we have?

Did problems with the United States Government arise from the first moments? No. It is perhaps that when we reached power we were imbued with the purpose of getting into international trouble? No. No Revolutionary government wants international trouble when it comes to power. What a revolutionary government wants to do is concentrate its efforts on solving its own problems; what it wants to do is carry out a program for the people, as is the desire of all governments that are interested in the progress of their country.

The first unfriendly act perpetrated by the Government of the United States was to throw open its doors to a gang of murders who had left our country covered with blood. Men who had murdered hundreds of defenseless peasants, who for many years never tired of torturing prisoners, who killed right and left -- were received in this country with open arms. To us, this was amazing. Why this unfriendly act on the part of the Government of the United States towards Cuba? Why this act of hostility? At that time we could not quite understand; now we see the reason clearly. Was that the proper policy as regards relations between the United States and Cuba? Certainly not, because we were the injured party, inasmuch as the Batista regime remained in power with the help of tanks, planes and arms furnished by the Government of the United States; the Batista regime remained in power thanks to the use of an army whose officers were trained by a military mission sent by the United States Government; and we trust that no official of the United States will dare to deny that truth.

Even when the Rebel Army arrived in Havana, the American military mission was in the most important military camp of the city. That was a broken army, an army that had been defeated and had surrendered. We could very well have considered those foreign officers as prisoners of war, since they had been there helping and training the enemies of the people. However, we did not do so. We merely asked the members of that military mission to return to their country, because after all, we did not need their lessons; their pupils had been defeated.

I have with me a document. Do not be surprised as its appearance, for it is a torn document. It is an old military pact, by virtue of which the Batista tyranny received generous assistance from the Government of the United States. And it is quite important to know the contents of Article 2 of this Agreement:

"The Government of the Republic of Cuba commits itself to make efficient use of the assistance it receives from the United States, pursuant to the present agreement, in order to carry out the plans of defense accepted by both Governments, pursuant to which the two Governments will take part in missions which are important for the defense of the Western Hemisphere, and, unless permission is previously obtained from the Government of the United States of America ..."

-- I repeat:

"and unless permission is previously obtained from the Government of the United States, such assistance will not be dedicated to other ends than those for which such assistance has been granted."

That assistance was used to combat the Cuban revolutionaries; it was therefore approved by the Government of the United States. And even when, some months before the war was over, an embargo on arms for Batista was put into effect, after more than six years of military help, once the arms embargo had been solemnly declared, the Rebel Army had proof, documentary proof, that the forces of the tyranny had been supplied with 300 rockets to be fired from planes.

When our comrades living in this country laid these documents before the public opinion of the United States, the Government of the United States found no other explanation than to say that we were wrong, that they had not sent new supplies to the army of the tyranny, but had just changed some rockets that could not be used in their planes for another type of rocket that could -- and, by the way, they were fired at us while we were in the mountains. I must say that this is a unique way of explaining a contradiction when it can be neither justified nor explained. According to the United States, then, this was not military assistance; it was probably some sort of '"technical assistance."

Why, then, if all this existed and was a cause of resentment for our people ... because everybody knows, even the most innocent and guileless, that with the revolution that has taken place in military equipment, those weapons from the last war have became throughly obsolete for a modern war.

Fifty tanks of armoured cars and a few outmoded aircraft cannot defend a continent, much less a hemisphere. But on the other hand they are good enough to oppress unarmed peoples. They are good for what they are used for: to intimidate people and to defend monopolies. That is why these hemisphere defense pacts might better be described as "defense pacts for the protection of United States monopolies."

And so the Revolutionary Government began to take the first steps. The first thing it did was to lower the rents paid by families by fifty per cent, a just measure, since, as I said earlier, there were families paying up to one third of their income. The people had been the victim of housing speculation, and city lots had also been the subject of speculation at the expense of the entire Cuban people. But when the Revolutionary Government reduced the rents by fifty per cent, there were, of course, a few individuals who became upset, the few who owned those apartment buildings, but the people rushed into the streets rejoicing, as they would in any country, even here in New York, if rents were reduced by fifty per cent. But this was no problem to the monopolies. Some American monopolies owned large buildings, but they were relatively few in number.

Then another law was passed, a law cancelling the concessions which had been granted by the tyranny of Batista to the Telephone Company, an American monopoly. Taking advantage of the fact our people were defenseless, they had obtained valuable concessions. The Revolutionary Government then cancelled these concessions and re-established normal prices for telephone services. Thus began the first conflict with the American monopolies.

The third measure was the reduction of electricity rates, which were the highest in the world. Then followed the second conflict with the American monopolies. We were beginning to appear communist; they were beginning to daub us in red because we had clashed head on with the interests of the United States monopolies.

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