Fidel Castro Speech at the UN Page #5

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Then followed the next law, an essential and inevitable law for our country, and a law which sooner or later will have to be adopted by all countries of the world, at least by those which have not yet adopted it: the Agrarian Reform Law. Of course, in theory everybody agrees with the Agrarian Reform Law. Nobody will deny the need for it unless he is a fool. No one can deny that agrarian reform is one of the essential conditions for the economic development of the country. In Cuba, even the big landowners agreed about the agrarian reform -- only they wanted their own kind of reform, such as the one defended by many theoreticians; a reform which would not harm their interests, and above all, one which would not be put into effect as long as it could be avoided. This is something that is well known to the economic bodies of the United Nations, something nobody even cares to discuss any more. In my country it was absolutely necessary: more than 200,000 peasant families lived in the countryside without land on which to grow essential food crops.

Without an agrarian reform, our country would have been unable to take that step; we made an agrarian reform. Was it a radical agrarian reform? We think not. It was a reform adjusted to the needs of our development, and in keeping with our own possibilities of agricultural development. In other words, was an agrarian reform which was to solve the problems of the landless peasants, the problem of supplying basic foodstuffs, the problem of rural unemployment, and which was to end, once and for all, the ghastly poverty which existed in the countryside of our native land.

And that is where the first major difficulty arose. In the neighboring Republic of Guatemala a similar case had occurred. And I honestly warn my colleagues of Latin America, Africa and Asia; whenever you set out to make a just agrarian reform, you must be ready to face s similar situation, especially if the best and largest tracts of land are owned by American monopolies, as was the case in Cuba. (OVATION)

It is quite possible that we may later be accused of giving bad advice in this Assembly. It is not our intention to disturb anybody's sleep. We are simply stating the facts, although the facts are sufficient to disturb everybody's sleep.

Then the problem of payment arose. Notes from the State Department rained on our Government. They never asked about our problems, not even out of sheer pity, or because of the great responsibility they had in creating such problems. They never asked us how many died of starvation in our country, or how many were suffering from tuberculosis, or how many were unemployed. No, they never asked about that. A sympathetic attitude towards our needs? Certainly not. All talks by the representatives of the Government of the United States centered upon the Telephone Co., the Electric Co., and the land owned by American Companies.

How could we solve the problem of payment? Of course, the first question that should have been asked was what we were going to pay with, rather than how. Can you gentlemen conceive of a poor underdeveloped country, with 600,000 unemployed and such a large number of illiterates and sick people, a country whose reserves have been exhausted, and which has contributed to the economy of a powerful country with one thousand million dollars in ten years -- can you conceive of this country having the means to pay for the land affected by the Agrarian Reform Law, or the means to pay for it in the terms demanded?

What were the State Department aspirations regarding their affected interests? They wanted prompt, efficient and just payment. Do you understand that language? "Prompt, efficient, and just payment." That means, "pay now, in dollars, and whatever we ask for our land." (APPLAUSE)

We were not 100 per cent communist yet (LAUGHS) We were just becoming slightly pink. We did not confiscate land; we simply proposed to pay for it in twenty years, and in the only way in which we could pay for it: in bonds, which would mature in twenty years at 4 1/2 per cent, or amortized yearly.

How could we pay for the land in dollars, and the amount they asked for it? It was absurd. Anyone can readily understand that, under those circumstances, we had to choose between making the agrarian reform, and not making it. If we choose not to make it, the dreadful economic situation of our country would last indefinitely. If we decided to make it, we exposed ourselves to the hatred of the Government of the powerful neighbor of the north.

We decided to go on with the agrarian reform. Of course, the limits set to latifundia in Cuba would amaze a representative of the Netherlands, for example, or of any country of Europe, because of their extent. The maximum amount of land set forth in the Agrarian Reform Law is 400 hectares (988 acres). In Europe, 40 hectares is practically a lati-fundium; in Cuba, where there were American monopolies that had up to 200,000 hectares -- I repeat, in case someone thinks he has heard wrong, 200,000 hectares -- an agrarian reform law reducing the maximum limit to 400 hectares was inadmissible.

But the truth is that in our country it was not only the land that was the property of the agrarian monopolies. The largest and most important mines were also owned by those monopolies. Cuba produces, for example, a great deal of nickel. All of the nickel was exploited by American interests, and under the tyranny of Batista, an American company, the Moa Bay, had obtained such a juicy concession that in a mere five years -- mark my words, in a mere five years -- it intended amortizing an investment of $120,000,000. A $120,000,000 investment amortized in five years!

And who had given the Moa Bay company this concession through the intervention of the Government of the United States? Quite simply, the tyrannical government of Fulgencio Batista, which was there to defend the interests of the monopolies. And this is an absolutely true fact. Exempt from all taxes what were those companies going to leave for the Cubans? The empty, worked out mines, the impoverished land, and not the slightest contribution to the economic development of our country.

And so the Revolutionary Government passed a mining law which forced those monopolies to pay a 25 per cent tax on the exportation of minerals. The attitude of the Revolutionary Government already had been too bold. It had clashed with the interests of the international electric trusts; it had clashed with the interests of the international telephone trusts; it had clashed with the interests of the mining trusts; it had clashed with the interests of the United Fruit Co; and it had in effect, clashed with the most powerful interests of the United States, which, as you know, are very closely linked with each other. And that was more than the Government of the United States -- or rather, the representatives of the United States monopolies -- could possibly tolerate.

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