Fidel Castro Speech at the UN Page #8

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So we turned to the United Nations. The United Nations had power to deal with these matters. The United Nations is, within the hierarchy of international organizations, the highest authority. The United Nations' authority is even above that of the OAS. And besides, we were interested in bringing the problem to the United Nations, because we know quite well the situation the economy of Latin America finds itself in; because we understand the state of dependence of the economy of Latin America in relation to the United States. The United Nations knew of the affair, it requested the OAS to make an investigation, and the OAS met. Very well. And what was to be expected? That the OAS would protect the country; that the OAS would condemn the political aggression against Cuba, and above all that would condemn the economic aggression against our country. That should have been expected. But after all, we were a small people of the Latin American community of nations. We were just another victim. And we were neither the first or the last, because Mexico had already been attacked more than once militarily. In one way they tore away from Mexico a great part of its territory, and on that occasion the heroic sons of Mexico leaped to their death from the Castle of Chapultepec enwrapped in the Mexican flag rather than surrender. These were the heroic sons of Mexico (APPLAUSE).

And that was not the only aggression. That was not the only time that American infantry forces trod upon Mexican soil. Nicaragua was invaded and for seven long years was heroically defended by Ceasar Augusto Sandino. Cuba suffered intervention more than once, and so did Haiti and Santo Domingo. Guatemala also suffered intervention. Who among you could honestly deny the intervention of the United Fruit Co. and the State Department of the United States when the legitimate government of Guatemala was overthrown? I understand fully well that there may be some who consider it their official duty to be discreet on this matter, and who may even be willing to come here and deny this, but in their consciences they know we are simply stating the truth.

Cuba was not the first victim of aggression; Cuba was not the first country to be in danger of aggression. In this hemisphere everyone knows that the Government of the United States has always imposed its own law -- the law of the strongest, in virtue of which they have destroyed Puerto Rican nationhood and have imposed their domination on that friendly country -- law in accordance with which they seized and held the Panama Canal.

This was nothing new, our country should have been defended, but it was never defended. Why? Let us get to the bottom of this matter, without merely studying the from. If we stick to the dead letter of the law, then we are protected; if we abide by reality, we have no protection whatsoever, because reality imposes itself on the law set forth in international codes, and that reality is, that a small nation attacked by a powerful country did not have any defense and was not defended.

With all due respect to this organization, I must state here that, that is why the people, our people, the people of Cuba, who have learned much and are quite up to the role they are laying, to the heroic struggle they are conducting ... our people who have learned in the school of international events, know that in the last instance, when their rights have been denied and aggressive forces are marshalled against them, they still have the supreme and heroic resource of resisting when their rights are not protected by either the OAS or the UN (OVATION).

That is why we, the small countries, do not yet feel too sure that our rights will be preserved; that is why we, the small countries, whenever we decide to become free, know that we become free at our own risk. In truth, when people are united and are defending a just right, they can trust their own energies. We are not, as we have been pictured, a mere group of men governing the country. We are a whole people governing a country -- a whole people firmly united, with a great revolutionary consciousness, defending its rights. And this should be known by the enemies of the revolution and of Cuba, because if they ignore this fact, they will be making a regretable error.

These are the circumstances in which the revolutionary process has taken place in our country; that is how we found the country, and why difficulties have arisen. And yet the Cuban Revolution is changing what was yesterday a land without hope, a land of poverty and illiteracy, into one of the most advanced and developed countries in this Continent.

The Revolutionary Government, in but twenty months, has created 10,000 new schools. In this brief period it has doubled the number of rural schools that had been created in fifty years. Cuba is today, the first country of America that has met all its school needs, that has a teacher in the farthest corners of the mountains.

In this brief period of time, the Revolutionary Government has built 5,000 houses in the rural and urban areas. Fifty new towns are being built at this moment. The most important military fortresses today house tens of thousands of students, and, in the coming year, our people intend to fight the great battle against illiteracy, with the ambitious goal of teaching every single inhabitant of the country to read and write in one year, and, with that end in mind, organizations of teachers, students and workers, that is, the entire people, are preparing themselves for an intensive campaign, and Cuba will be the first country of America which, after a few months, will be able to say it does not have one single illiterate.

Our people are receiving today the assistance of hundreds of doctors who have been sent to the fields to fight against illnesses and parasitic ailments, and improve the sanitary conditions of the nation.

In another aspect, in the preservation of our natural resources, we can also point with pride to the fact that in only one year, in the most ambitious plan for the conservation of natural resources being carried out on this continent, including the United States of America and Canada, we have planted nearly fifty million timber-yielding trees.

Youths who were unemployed, who did not attend school, have been organized by the Revolutionary Government and are today being gainfully and usefully employed by the country, and at the same time being prepared for productive work.

Agricultural production in our country has been able to perform an almost unique feat, an increase in production from the very beginning. From the very start we were able to increase agricultural production. Why? In the first place, because the Revolutionary Government turned more than 10,000 agricultural workers, who formerly paid rent, to owners of their land, at the same time maintaining large-scale production through co-operatives. In other words production was maintained through co-operatives, thanks to which we have been able to apply the most modern technical methods to our agricultural production, causing a marked increase in that production.

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