Fidel Castro Speech at the UN Page #6

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Then began a new period of harassment of the Revolution. Can anyone who objectively analyzes the facts? Who is willing to think honestly, not as the UP or the AP tell him, to think with his head and to draw conclusions from his own reasoning and the facts without prejudice, sincerely and honestly -- would anyone who does this consider that things which the Revolutionary Government did were such as to demand the destruction of the Cuban Revolution? No. But the interests affected by the Cuban Revolution were not concerned about the Cuban case; they were not being ruined by the measures of the Cuban Revolutionary Government. That was not the problem. The problem lay in the fact that those very interests owned the wealth and the natural resources of the greater part of the peoples of the world.

The attitude of the Cuban Revolution therefore had to be punished. Punitive actions of all sorts -- even the destruction of those insolent people -- had to follow the audacity of the Revolutionary Government.

On our honor, we swear that up to that moment we had not had the opportunity even to exchange letters with the distinguished Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev. That is to say that when, for the North American press and the international news agencies that supply information to the world, Cuba was already a Communist Government, a red peril ninety miles from the United States with a Government dominated by Communists, the Revolutionary Government had not even had the opportunity of establishing diplomatic and commercial relations with the Soviet Union.

But hysteria can go to any length; hysteria is capable of making the most unlikely and absurd claims. Of course, let no one think for a moment that we are going to intone a mea culpa here. There will be no mea culpa. We do not have to ask anyone's pardon. What we have done, we have done consciously, and above all, fully convinced of our right to do it. (PROLONGED APPLAUSE)

Then came the threats against our sugar quota, imperialism's cheap philosophy of showing generosity, egoistical and exploiting generosity; and they began showing kindness towards Cuba, declaring that they were paying us a preferential price for sugar, which amounted to a subsidy to Cuban sugar -- a sugar which was not so sweet for Cubans, since we were not the owners of the best sugar-producing land, nor the owners of the largest sugar mills. Furthermore, in that affirmation lay hidden the true history of Cuban sugar, of the sacrifices which had been imposed upon my country during the periods when it was economically attacked.

However when quotas were established, our participation was reduced to 28 per cent, and the advantages which that law had granted us, the very few advantages which that law had granted us, were gradually taken away in successive laws, and, of course the colony depended on the colonial power. The economy of the colony had been organized by the colonial power.

The colony had to be subjected to the colonial power, and if the colony took measures to free itself from the colonial powers that country would take measures to crush the colony. Conscious of the subordination of our economy to their market, the Government of the United States began to issue a series of warnings that our quota would be reduced further, and at the same time, other activities were taking place in the United States of America: the activities of counterrevolutionaries.

One afternoon an airplane coming from the north flew over one of the sugar refineries and dropped a bomb. This was a strange and unheard-of event, but we knew full well where that plane came from. On another afternoon another plane flew over our sugar cane fields and dropped a few incendiary bombs. These events which began sporadically continued systematically.

One afternoon, when a number of American tourist agents were visiting Cuba in response to an effort made by the Revolutionary Government to promote tourism as one of the sources of national income, a plane manufactured in the United States, of the type used in the Second World War, flew over our capital dropping pamphlets and grenades. Of course, some anti-aircraft guns went into action. The result was more than forty victims, between the grenades dropped by the plane and the anti-aircraft fire, because, as you know, some of the projectiles explode upon contacting any object. As I said, the result was more than forty victims. There were little girls on the street with their entrails torn out, old men and women wantonly killed. Was this the first time it had happened in our country? No. Children, old men and old women, young men and women, had often been killed in the villages of Cuba by American bombs supplied to the tyrant Batista. One one occasion, eighty workers died when a mysterious explosion -- too mysterious -- took place in the harbor of Havana, the explosion of a ship carrying Belgian weapons which had arrived in our country, after many efforts by the United States Government to prevent the Belgian Government from selling arms to us.

Dozens of victims of war; eighty families orphaned by the explosions. Forty victims as a result of an airplane that brazenly flew over our territory. The authorities of the United States Government denied the fact that these planes came from American territory, but the plane was now safely in a hangar in this country. When one of our magazines published a photograph of it, the United States authorities seized the plane. A version of the affair was issued to the effect that this was not very important, and that these victims had not died because of the bombs, but because of the anti-aircraft fire. Those responsible for this crime, those who had caused these deaths were wandering about peacefully in the United States, where they were not even prevented from committing further acts of aggression.

May I take this opportunity of telling His Excellency the Representative of the United States that there are many mothers in Cuba still awaiting his telegrams of condolence for their children murdered by the bombs of the United States (APPLAUSE).

Planes kept coming and going. But as far as they were concerned, there was no evidence. Frankly, we don't know how they define the word evidence. The plane was there, photographed and captured, and yet we were told the plane did not drop any bombs. It is not known how the United States authorities were so well informed.

Planes continued to fly over our territory dropping incendiary bombs. Millions and millions of pesos were lost in the burning fields of sugar cane. Many humble people of Cuba, who saw property destroyed, property that was now truly their own, suffered burns in the struggle against those persistent and tenacious bombings by pirate planes.

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