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    Those who arrive in Cuba will find a peaceful, solidary, beautiful and endearing country

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    Quienes arriben a Cuba encontrarán un país en paz, solidario, hermoso y entrañable

    The first secretary of the Party's Central Committee and president of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, appears on national television to speak to the Cuban people about the new normality and other current issues. Cubadebate broadcasts this special intervention live through its social networks.

    With a town like this, there is no possible surrender

    Various criteria are issued in relation to issues related to the reality that the country is entering the new normal. These issues and the interrelationships between them, the consensus that is being built around this situation, were announced by the Cuban president as the center of his appearance on Friday night.

    “We have lived through two years of closures and restrictions in which we have been faced with very difficult situations and moments, and we have also had to mourn painful losses, but we are getting up. We are at a time when we are controlling the pandemic and this is opening up perspectives on how the country can resume its course, its rhythm and its stability, ”Díaz-Canel began his speech.

    He recalled that at the beginning of the confrontation with the pandemic, “we said that this was going to be a long-distance race. At that time, we gave in detail a group of situations that we predicted would be experienced. It was also an endurance race. If we had been a weak people, we would have given up. However, in Cuba there is no room for surrender. With a people like this, there is no possible surrender.

    "It is because of that spirit, effort and shared commitment that today we can talk about results; today we can stop to count, to honor and acknowledge," he said.

    Speaking of the tribute, he pointed out that, first, it must be done “to the more than 8,270 compatriots whose lives the pandemic took from us. I express our condolences to family and friends. We have all lost a loved one in this fight, but also among all of us we got up to work so that no one else died and, above all, that the deaths were minimal.

    “We must also honor those who died investigating and providing medical assistance in what were their trenches. To them we dedicate the triumph of science and health over that unknown enemy that has already claimed more than five million lives around the world.

    “Cuba deserves a celebration adjusted to the new normal, but worthy of the effort, discipline, participation and contribution of the vast majority of our people so that we could reach this moment.

    "Everything we have faced has had, as an additional element of great rigor, the cruel and criminal policy of Yankee imperialism against Cuba, which tried to take advantage of this moment of uncertainty to tighten all the nuts of the blockade, defame and slander," denounced the Cuban president.

    "They have wanted to present us as a failed state, as a government that could not overcome this situation together with its people," he added.

    However - he continued -, as José Martí said, "There is no bow that cuts through a cloud of ideas." 

    "Defending these ideas is that our people have been overcoming and hope, lights and paths are opened to move forward," he stressed.

    He warned “we have to be convinced that there are no prizes for challenging an empire. Quite the opposite. In this constant challenge against the empire that wants to disappear us as a nation and a Revolution, we receive campaigns and threats, prohibitions and punishments, and in these conditions, we have received more: a totally intensified blockade.

    “Regardless of whether the blockade persists, we are obliged to jump over it with our own strength, efforts and with the talent that is in the people. None of us knows more than all of us together. With those own forces we can achieve conquests and greatly attenuate the difficulties caused by the blockade.

    “That is the way to defend the homeland, what our parents left us as an inheritance. It is not a material inheritance or wealth, but, above all, of commitment. An inheritance that forces us, together, to climb mountains. Right now, we are reaching one of the peaks of those mountains. This is a time of harvest based on what we have sown with that effort, those achievements and that determination, "he said before going on to answer questions from the journalists gathered at the Palace of the Revolution.

    We are vaccinated; we are immunized; now we go to the booster.

    Angélica Paredes, Radio Rebelde - Can it be said that there is currently a control of the epidemic in Cuba? What guarantees do Cubans have that we will not have to face other pandemic peaks as harsh as those we have experienced in recent months?

    President Díaz-Canel - The pandemic has not ended. We have to learn, by controlling the pandemic, to live with it.

    “In March 2020 we started with a very low level of incidence, which showed us that as we were learning about the pandemic, we were also able to control it by updating our protocols and introducing very innovative biotechnological drugs.

    “At the end of the year and the beginning of January, with a control of the pandemic, we opened the border. It was the first moment we aspired to enter the new normal. At that time we had an influx, especially of Cubans living abroad and Cubans who were visiting who came from countries where there were high levels of transmission, and, on the other hand, a group of tourists.

    “The magnitude of the entry of people who arrived at that time did not allow us to place them all in isolation centers, as it exceeded our capacities. Therefore, they had to go to the home quarantine, and it must be recognized that the measures that had been established were not always complied with. The home entry was not effective, and a transmission that was very different from the one that existed began to manifest itself, mainly due to at the entry of much more aggressive variants of the virus, such as delta.

    “This behavior was increasing to the point that between July and September 2021 it reached very high levels, we almost approached 10,000 daily cases.

    “At that stage, vaccines were being investigated, we had asked our scientists that we needed sovereignty in vaccines and they were in the stages of research and clinical trials. Later, when we began to apply the intervention studies in groups and communities at risk, we began to have results that later facilitated the mass vaccination of the population.

    “With the results of the massive vaccination and the incidence that we were having with the immunization of the population, in the last four or five weeks there has been a decrease and at the moment we are below 400 daily cases. We are almost returning to the levels that were in January 2021.

    “The figures began to decline in October, and now, almost in the middle of November, we are well below what we had in January, which reflects the control we have been having of the pandemic.

    “In the same way, deaths have been decreasing. In the same relationship with which the cases increased by months, so did the deaths. Between July and September there were peaks of deaths, and they decreased in October, already when the mass vaccination begins to take effect, and in November we go through 31 deaths in the days that have elapsed of the month, also approaching the figure of January of this year .

    “Today, active cases in the world are at 7.47% of all confirmed cases that there have been. In the area of ​​the Americas, it is 10.89%, and in Cuba (2 074 on Thursday) it is only 0.22% of accumulated cases. Therefore, Cuba has better control of the pandemic than the world and the region.

    “Cuba presents 98.92% of cases recovered from the disease, the Americas 86.66% and the world 90.51%. A notable percentage difference shows the efficiency of the results that we are having.

    “In the world, fatality behaves at 2.01%, in the Americas at 2.44%, and in Cuba at 0.86% and it is decreasing these days.

    “This means that, in the same conditions in which the pandemic has been faced, in the case of Cuba with all the problems that we have described and, above all, the influence of the blockade and our shortcomings, if we had not achieved control of the disease with the measures applied and the results of our vaccines and our protocols, today, if we are guided by what is happening in the world and the Americas, we would have a fatality two to three times higher than what we have had.

    “In other words, we have managed to reduce the lethality that corresponded to us due to the behavior of the pandemic in relation to what happens in the world two or three times. I think that this is a result that really proves the work done by the health system, by our scientists, and also the cooperation and participation of all our people.

    “Now, regardless of these results, we are challenged to live with the disease. Covid-19 will not disappear; there is no forecast or scientific evidence to guarantee that it will disappear.

    “For almost two years we have prepared ourselves, we have learnings. A Cuban method based on science and innovation has been consolidated that has allowed us to get here, which took advantage of the potentialities of the Innovation Committee and the science and innovation system of the Ministry of Public Health together with that of BioCubaFarma, and also creating interconnections between this innovation system, the productive sector of goods and services and the rest of the entities that also participate as part of the knowledge sector. Such is the case of the universities that have been linked to all this. With this we have achieved a science and innovation management to face covid-19.

    “You have been aware: week by week, every Tuesday, we have a meeting with scientists and new lights and perspectives always appear in those meetings. Balance sheets and analysis of the results obtained are made and we propose new elements.

    “There has also been an integrality in this work of science in the attention to these problems. During all this time, that management and innovation system was first focused on learning from the disease and establishing the most robust sequences possible in patient care protocols, but we were also working to prevent and cut transmission. We have also had to focus on the different steps that have led to the development of vaccines. Studies were also carried out to improve the quality of life of those who have been convalescing and we had to make a projection based on the attention to this problem in vulnerable people, in vulnerable communities and in our children. It has been a whole sequence of work that has given us strength, but it has also been a learning process.

    “One of the most remarkable things that today undoubtedly constitutes an element of national pride is the sovereignty that our vaccines gave us. We already have a complete vaccination of more than 70% of our population. More than 90% have at least one dose and we continue, we continue.

    “I was looking at some statistics, which I review weekly, offered by a site called The world in data. One of the statistics it presents is vaccination by country and there we have seen how Cuba evolves and is increasing in places with respect to the world in terms of the fully vaccinated population.

    Quienes arriben a Cuba encontrarán un país en paz, solidario, hermoso y entrañable

    “Let us remember that we, due to the limitations we have had, had to start designing our vaccines. Therefore, we entered vaccination perhaps at a slightly later stage than other countries with money to pay for vaccines and that were favored in some international mechanisms. We first had the entire research process and all the phases that it takes to develop our vaccines, to make sure that they had the possibilities of being taken to mass vaccination.

    "What is happening now? Here I compared the place where Cuba was three days ago in percentage of population fully vaccinated, and we were in 33rd place. We are growing at a more or less weekly vaccination rate of 4.4% each week. However, the last countries that we surpassed and those that we are closest to surpassing are only growing in a range between 0.3% to no more than 2%. Therefore, we are taking advantage of all that vaccination efforts at the country level and that in the coming days will have very favorable results, as the vaccination of children is completed and we are beginning to vaccinate the cases that have been affected by the illness.

    “There are other elements that have given us strengths. Molecular studies laboratories have been created in all the country's provinces and in the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud. When the pandemic started, we only had three such labs. In addition, innovative drugs have been developed, drugs that already had results in the treatment of other diseases in the conditions of the pandemic have been applied, and equipment and devices created in the emergency of the pandemic have also been designed, manufactured and used.

    “For example, when we foresee that there would be a crisis in the intensive care rooms due to the number of cases that reached a critical or serious stage and that in the world they had us blocked and no one sold us lung ventilators, Cuban scientists and also the sector productive state in relation to the non-state sector found answers and there were designs of lung ventilators that have already been produced in the order of hundreds of units, which are beginning to give us sovereignty in that sense.

    “These are together the results that allow us to move towards that new normal that we are talking about today, but the only guarantee of keeping a situation under control is our behavior, it is the responsibility that we are able to share from the individual, the familiar , the social, the institutional, the collective and at the level of our entire nation. That we know how to rise to the challenge of moving to the new normal and that this allows us to resume the life of the country from each one of us, from our families, from our children, under current conditions, safely and sustainably.

    “We have Cuban vaccines that have proven their effectiveness, progress has been made in immunization and control of the epidemic is much more than evident. In the midst of this situation, as in the hardest days of the pandemic, we will continue to cooperate with the world, but we have to have a control that starts from all our conscience and responsibility on this issue.

    “A few days ago we recognized the creators of the vaccines, yesterday the University of Havana awarded the honorary degree to Dr. Vicente Vérez, an important leader in the creation team of Soberana, but I think we also owe him an award for heroism and dignity of the Cuban people.

    “We are vaccinated, we are immunized, we are now going to the reinforcement; We have more experience, we have learned, there is a robust work system, there are results and, furthermore, we are talking about a desire to improve ourselves also from the things that did not go well. We have already proposed orienting some of these scientific sessions to enter not only on the issues of the pandemic, but also on the other problems that our health system has to face and improve.

    “We have learned, but we cannot trust or relax. The challenge of opening the borders, of being able to open ourselves to the arrival of family and friends, to tourists, and also to the end of the year festivities, celebrating the triumph of the Revolution that are approaching, we have to do it with all responsibility. We are more prepared than what happened at the end of the year, because we have immunization, we have vaccines and we are going to the reinforcement, but we must support all that result with great responsibility so as not to back down and to do it safely. Those are the two elements to highlight: we are controlling the pandemic, but we have to, responsibly, coexist with the pandemic to avoid a pandemic outbreak ”.

    Worldwide there is a tendency to go to doses of reinforcements

    Thalía González, Information System of Cuban Television - You have spoken on the subject of vaccines, national pride. It is a topic that is talked about a lot today in our homes, schools, communities, and there is a question associated with the topic of reinforcement. This booster vaccination process begins in the country when the entire population is not yet immunized, although we know that the level of immunization is high. Many Cubans wonder if this anticovid-19 vaccination scheme that Cubans have is not enough, why is this reinforcement coming?

    President Díaz-Canel – We have to address several elements and the combination of them is what will not lead to the answer and the conviction of why we should do it and how much is an insufficiency or a capacity for sustainability in what we are doing.

    “First, we cannot forget that the development of vaccination in Cuba was a system that had stages. It began with a stage of scientific research to arrive at the creation of vaccines; later, he went to the necessary clinical trials to verify its safety; then we move on to the intervention study. With the results of this and the approval of Cecmed, we were able to go to interventions in risk groups and territories. And with the results of the latter, we entered mass vaccination.

    “Therefore, we have Cuban men and women vaccinated at different times. Vaccination was not done all at once for the entire population, so there are people who have been vaccinated for more than four, five months, perhaps some will reach six months. Others are in stages closer to this time, they have not completed the schedules, so the distribution of vaccination is not uniform over time.

    “According to world trends in scientific research at this time, several countries, with the appearance of more aggressive strains, have carried out studies that determine important booster doses for their vaccines to maintain high immunization levels. The time varies depending on the effectiveness of the different vaccines - I mean those from other countries, because ours acted and we vaccinated people in the presence of very aggressive strains and demonstrated effectiveness.

    “That is not a situation exclusive to the anticovid vaccines. We know that there are many vaccines, even within Cuban vaccination campaigns, that are reactivated from time to time.

    “What considerations have Cuban scientists made and shared with us last Tuesday? They argue that the effectiveness of Cuban vaccines is proven, it has been proven that there are high levels of antibodies from vaccination, which are prolonged with much higher levels for up to six to eight months after being vaccinated. But they argue that, taking into account international trends, our effectiveness, that we cannot go back and that we have people vaccinated at different moments in time, it is important then to go with booster doses.

    Quienes arriben a Cuba encontrarán un país en paz, solidario, hermoso y entrañable

    “Although there is a part of the population that we have not finished, but we would start with those who have been vaccinated the longest with the full scheme. We can do it because we have our vaccines, because they showed that they are safe and have given us immunity, and now we want to prolong that immunization to avoid reaching pandemic outbreaks. There is a whole group of possibilities, of variants, of booster doses that the scientists explained and demonstrated very well in that scientific session. From the raw vaccination, that is, if you were vaccinated first with Abdala or Soberana, how can you supplement the booster dose using Abdala or Soberana 01, which is one of those that is giving very good results in the studies that are being done over booster doses.

    "Let us also remember that we are still developing the clinical trials and tests of a fifth vaccine candidate, Mambisa, which also has very good prospects and whose previous results, which are not yet complete, give a very good chance of being used. as a booster dose. Mambisa can be applied at the nasal level.

    “With all these potentialities, taking into account international trends, scientific studies and our desire not to go backwards, it is justified to go to the booster doses.

    Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, Roundtable: –President, you were speaking at that magnificent CIGB facility that was inaugurated in Mariel a few days ago that gives a lot of hope regarding the production of vaccines and I think that when they began to talk about Cuban vaccines and their Indeed, many in the world said they would come to visit Cuba to get vaccinated. Is this possibility contemplated that the vaccination can be applied to tourists whenever they demand it? And, furthermore, are there any real possibilities for recovery in this sector that energizes the rest of the Cuban economy?

    President Díaz-Canel –Your question has a focus on the economy and on the role of reviving our economy in this situation of a new normal to which we are advancing. First, I would recognize the enormous effort that the country has had to make in all this time and that, in the midst of such a complex economic situation, Cuba turned to save lives, first and foremost. 

    “At the beginning of covid-19, we honestly exposed the complexity of the situation. From that moment, we anticipated that the country was going to decrease its income levels, so we were going to have a shortage. We announced that tourism was going to be paralyzed, that we were not going to receive the tourism income that we had at other times. We reached more than four and a half million tourists in one year. We were talking about the contraction that there would be in foreign investment, in our exports and imports; the difficulties we were going to have with production processes, which were going to slow down the processes of the economy and services, including tourism.

    “In these exceptional conditions that the economy has gone through, the country stopped receiving more than 3 billion dollars in a year and a half of income. It would be necessary to see what things would be different today if we had counted on that income.

    “But, in addition, the little income that we received we had to dedicate an important part precisely to saving lives, and more than 300 million dollars have been dedicated to cover insurance costs in the fight against covid.

    “In the midst of that, we have expressed all the will to continue proposing actions that complement the economic and social strategy that was designed to face the economic crisis, a crisis that is multidimensional, multifactorial and is global.

    “Now, with this entry into the new normal, undoubtedly our economy will recover, and it will also do so in conditions of new capacities, because, in the midst of all these circumstances, we have approved the new economic actors.

    “The approval of the new forms of management, both state and non-state, and, therefore, that network of state and non-state forms of management is flowing at a good pace, sooner rather than later. It will also give a dynamic in the offers of services and goods to our population.

    “But in this economic recovery, tourism plays a fundamental role, because tourism also pulls the rest of the economy. It is that concept of the locomotive of the economy, which will now have more potential because it will link more forms of management, both state and non-state.

    “And we also have to see what we have already stopped perceiving because tourism has been contracted in these pandemic conditions.

    “I always say in a trivial way that tourism is the economic activity that sounds like a counter every day in the country, and when we have income from tourism, the country has more air, more oxygen to advance the economy. Not for pleasure the Empire has attacked it, as one of the economic activities in which they know that they cause us affectations.

    “In the midst of this situation, we have to recognize that in the economy, having less income, the demand of the population is less covered; By having an illegal foreign exchange market, which is also causing an exchange rate much higher than the official one, it has caused an inflation phenomenon, for which studies are being carried out, and we are also going to overcome that challenge.

    "In these conditions of the new normal, and with all the preparation that has been done, we are expecting that there will be a greater arrival of tourists than we had initially predicted in the midst of this situation.

    “Today, the way tour operators, travel agencies, and airlines are moving, tell us that from the 15th we will have flight sequences that exceed fifty weekly flights, and this is going to be increased during the month of November, and it will have higher levels in December and January.

    “In the remainder of the year, we must receive almost 50% of what we have received in all this year in pandemic conditions. Therefore, there is an immediate increase, we predict that, but not an immediate recovery of tourist activity, because remember, we had figures of almost 4.5 million tourists, but it is a good start, above the expectations we have with the contraction that the world economy is having, and the difficult situation that covid still generates in a group of countries that are the origin of tourism to Cuba.

    “In the middle of that, if a tourist wants to get vaccinated, they can. There are all the designs and, even, the tourist or visitor who arrives in Cuba for a long time and wants to be vaccinated, will have all the follow-up to complete the scheme.

    “To those who cannot complete the scheme due to the time they are in the country, and the intervals from one dose to the other, their first dose is applied, and the rest are carried by them with all the indications, the method and possibilities. of your follow-up.

    “In fact, they have already announced to us that there are groups of tourists who come precisely with the aim of, in addition to staying in Cuba, getting vaccinated and taking advantage of the security offered by Cuban vaccines.

    “Yesterday, the prime minister, Marrero Cruz, made a tour of the airports to see how the campaign is being prepared. Also in those days, the Government has followed the elements of logistics insurance for tourism.

    "During this time tourism was not stopped, there were low levels of tourism, but work was being done on the recovery of the hotel plant and there was a tremendous effort to recover capacities, create better conditions in hotels, and that allows us tourists to Those who arrive in Cuba will find a country in peace, a country of solidarity, a beautiful and endearing island, a friendly people and they will be able to appreciate a Cuba that lives and where it is lived safely.

    "These issues in which we have been relating the economy, tourism, vaccines in covid and new normal conditions, will be treated in a more detailed way next week in another press appearance, in which the Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero will be present. Cross; the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, and another group of ministers and representatives of institutions linked to economic issues.

    Work in the neighborhoods is here to stay and we have to make it sustainable

    Alina Perera, Juventu Rebelde –In recent months we have seen a rebirth of community work, there has been a strong movement, for example, in more than 60 neighborhoods of Havana, which were in need of transformation. The idea has spread to other parts of the country, and only hours ago you were in the provinces of Guantánamo and Granma, and also there we journalists were able to verify how communities are transforming and accumulated problems are solved.

    You said in the East that these transformations must be made sustainable and systematic, and that even this work with the most needy neighborhoods is here to stay. How to achieve that sustainability and that systematicity?

    President Díaz-Canel - I know that there are dissatisfactions at work, that there have been times of rise and less intensity at work in the neighborhoods, but when the problem of the neighborhoods is addressed, we cannot fail to recognize that in the middle Of all times, there have been leaders of community projects that have remained stable, and that have been niches of experience and work in relation to the neighborhoods. 

    “That was what I felt in one of the first meetings we had with representatives of social sectors, which was with the leaders of community projects, in San Isidro, and there we learned a lot for all this work that we have been trying to intensify and promote.

    “The sustainability of this work will be to the extent that we are consolidating ourselves in a whole group of concepts that we are defending with this work. First, we are defending the exercise of popular power as part of our political system in socialist construction, which happens through moments when citizens can debate, raise their concerns, aspirations and propose solutions.

    “That there is a moment in which these proposals can be implemented, and that there is also a third moment through which there is accountability and popular control over what is done.

    “If we see that from how everything is organized at the level of our political system, we must give a fundamental role to the delegates of the People's Power, who are representatives of the people, because then the people would participate directly and also indirectly through the management of the delegate, the management of the commissions and the management of the Municipal Assemblies of People's Power.

    “The neighbors are having the capacity to, within so many problems that exist, that we cannot solve at the same time, define priorities. That which the neighbors propose, is represented by their delegate in the Municipal Assembly, and this, based on the possibilities of resources that it has, approves the priorities that will be worked on, that returns to the neighborhood, the people work and thus they are perfected, doing popular control and we get feedback on the results.

    “If we do it that way, there is sustainability and it goes through that concept of popular power, well supported by elements of democracy and popular participation, which turns the beneficiaries, who are the neighbors, into protagonists of the change and transformation that they are having. in the neighborhood.

    “On the other hand, as we needed a boost, because the pandemic also paralyzed processes such as these of work in the neighborhoods, we have asked that public institutions, state institutions, companies in each territory and, in the case of Havana, organizations of the Central State Administration, participate in this process.

    “That begins to give us an element of construction of social responsibility that the entire institutional system, all economic actors, must have, from the responsibility of a public institution located in a neighborhood - for example, with the issue of sustainable development of that neighborhood. , the protection of the environment, the work in function of the community–, but it is also building a sensitivity in these institutions, groups of workers and leaders, about the problems of the neighborhood.

    “And if we start from the sensitivity, undoubtedly there will also be a more intense and more intentional projection towards the neighborhood. Therefore, it is not about intervening in the neighborhood, it is about respecting what the neighborhood proposes, and supporting and helping the neighborhood. Accompany all this transformation process, and all that, then, we have to support it, for the purpose of making it sustainable, with what we are designing now and that there is a group of academics and experts working on these issues.

    “First, we have to decentralize a group of powers to the municipalities, so that they can exercise the autonomy of government that the Constitution recognizes.

    “We also have to give a new approach to municipal budgets so that in the municipalities, the budget contains resources that facilitate not only working with a sample of neighborhoods, as we are doing now, but also extending actions to all neighborhoods, and that all this be connected with the territorial development strategies that have been approved with local development projects and the strengthening of local productive systems. And there we are also proposing a business resizing, which will encourage more state companies to have municipal subordination, so that the municipality can count on state entities and non-state economic actors that can chain and work according to the development of the municipality.

    "We can also include all this in that the political practice with which we have to work in the neighborhoods is to do politics with the concepts of doing politics in the Revolution, with what Hart defined, based on the experience of Marti's thought and the Commander-in-Chief, which is a combination of ideology, science, ethics in political practice.

    ”Work in the neighborhoods is here to stay and we have to make it sustainable, articulating all these elements and with the conviction that, although there are many problems that we cannot solve all at once, every day we will tear each piece to pieces. one of those problems.

    “It is essential to strengthen the avenues of participation, which is the only thing that will make this Revolution sustainable in the communities, and to extend it to the entire country.

    “In recent days we invited all the first secretaries of the Provincial Committees of the Party and they participated in the experience of La Timba, they shared with the population, and then we had a debate on that experience and on what they had been doing in the province.

    “Now this month we are already leading visits to the provinces, such as the ones we started yesterday in Guantánamo and Granma, where one of the elements that we are appreciating is how work is being done in the neighborhoods.

    “It must be said that in the provinces we also have popular participation in the neighborhoods. We saw him yesterday in Cecilia, in Guantánamo, and in Pedro Pompa, in Bayamo.

    “We also see the spirit that is created among the neighbors, the levels of participation, and popular control is very important. It is the people controlling what is done, so that everything is quality. If we let things go wrong, the responsibility lies with the neighbors themselves. 

    “Therefore, it is to consolidate experiences that are already within the Revolution, it is to turn exceptions into rules, and it is a more direct, intentional attention towards people who are at a disadvantage, towards those who have some type of vulnerability, and that It shows that the strength of the Revolution is in the neighborhoods.

    Permanence and systematic

    Hector Martínez, Cuban Television Information System - I wanted to refer to the exchanges that you have had with various sectors of society in recent months, which have undoubtedly had a great impact on Cubans. Is this practice going to be maintained over time? Has some type of work system been designed that allows the opinions gathered in these meetings not to become a dead letter?

    President Díaz-Canel –These recent exchanges with different sectors of society have been very helpful, but I want to point out that it is not something new. We had also been carrying out an intense system of visits with the participation of the entire Government to the provinces, and in those tours we had exchanges with universities, students and professors, the scientific sector, the artistic sector, the press, and also the times of pandemic caused a break up.

    “But, undoubtedly, in a renewed way as you recognize, we have returned to this practice, and we have done it with a broader perspective, of participation and contribution.

    “In a few months we have had meetings with representatives of economists, jurists, businessmen, journalists, federated women, self-employed workers, artists, young people, community and religious leaders, farmers, scientists, athletes and also with people from the LGBTIQ + community. … They have all been very revealing and very committed.

    “We have everything documented, and both the Party leadership and the Government are constantly updated on what is coming out in each of these meetings, and in the very spaces of the work system we are monitoring how responses are given to the proposals of these encounters, therefore that is already in a working system, which is a part of your question.

    “And I think it is already evident that many of the things that have been raised we have begun to implement. For example, the transformations that we made in some of the planning approaches that were related to agricultural production, and the improvement that we made with the 63 measures to promote and stimulate food production and marketing, have to do with the contributions that we had in two meetings with agricultural producers.

    “The lawyers addressed two fundamental issues: how to improve our regulatory creation process and how to deepen the issue of legal advice. We have already introduced changes in the normative creation process and we have incorporated many of the principles that were raised in the process to arrive at the Family Code. Version 22 of the Family Code, without being yet a preliminary draft or the final document that was going to be presented to the National Assembly before reaching its approval and popular consultation, began to circulate with a long time to collect opinions from the population.

    “Therefore, of that version 22 there are already new versions that incorporate new elements that are part of the normative creation, and it is the document that will be taken to the approval of the National Assembly, and then continue with that process.

    “The encounter with the LGBTIQ + community gave us, based on their life stories, a lot of knowledge and recognition of issues that we have to address from another social point of view, which have to be with social policy content, including some elements that have to be contained for treatment in the Family Code.

    “The meeting with the academics of the Cuban Academy of Sciences, immediately took as an agreement that every month we were going to have a meeting with the Cuban Academy of Sciences, as a consulting body that can contribute much to us on various issues that it has. the country, and in fact next Monday we have a meeting again.

    "That is to say, all this is being followed up and it is not really going to be a dead letter, and we must recognize the contribution that these sectors have had. For example, the meeting with university students who participated in important tasks during the covid gave us elements of deficiencies that we had in the health system, but they proposed projects; for example, one of computerization of the Cujae to improve the management of investments in a health institution. All this, with permanence and systematicity, is being followed.

    In peace, in the present and in the future, Cuba lives and will live

    Wilmer Rodríguez, Cuban Television Information System - My question is focused on the challenges and the future of the nation and of the Cuban Revolution. There are those who think these days that next November 15 will create a difficult situation in the country. Looking at the country towards future challenges, I would like your opinion from your position as first secretary of the Party and president of the Republic, but also as a Cuban, as a man who knows, who has traveled, who knows, who comes from the base, who know the country we live in.

    President Díaz-Canel - One observes that there is a whole media intention and that it transcends the media, it is part of an imperial strategy to try to destroy the Revolution. They have tried to construct events by date: they tried to test July 11, now they propose to make provocations around November 15; They have raised a whole media halo so that the world can wait for what will happen in Cuba on November 15. I think that not even that takes away our sleep, we are calm, safe, but attentive and alert, and we are prepared to defend the Revolution, to confront any interventionist action against our country, especially against everything that threatens peace, the citizen tranquility and our constitutional order.

    “But, more than that, we are going to focus on the future. I think that we have to see the future from the present, from this very present that we are now going to live with the return to normality. There is the fact that the results that we are having in the confrontation with the covid -for vaccines, for everything we have explained- allow us to resume the economic and social life of Cubans and Cubans, that the economy begins to revive, that Let us open the doors to tourism, let the school year begin with all its enthusiasm, joy and color (you have to see how the children in Guantánamo told us yesterday how eager they were to go back to school); that today we are inaugurating the Havana Biennial, an important cultural event that they also wanted to massacre us; the fact that, in the midst of all this situation, we were able to start up a high-tech biotechnology facility such as the CIGB-Mariel center, which we recently inaugurated, in the company of the Army General and the Prime Minister; the efforts being made in the preparation of the sugar harvest, in the implementation of the measures that we have approved for autonomy and business improvement, in the application of measures to improve the production and marketing of food, the application of a system of government management based on science and innovation that, with the experience of confronting covid-19, is being transferred as experience to other areas and in all organizations we are already having expressions of that management system.

    “We have taken this management system to fundamental activities such as the energy issue in the country, food production, in different issues, which opens up potential.

    “Today jurists, experts, academics, scientists are linked to all the development programs that the country is carrying out, to the management of laws and legal norms in its process of creating regulations so that they emerge robust.

    “This Palace is constantly an in and out of academics, scientists, experts, who come here to make their contribution to a group of programs and processes.

    "The way in which we have made the economic and strategic planning of the economic and social development of the country, taking as macroprogram the strategic axes of the National Economic Development Plan, taking these macroprograms to projects, in which scientific institutions, experts and academics.

    “The fact that we are developing a very intense legislative process, faithful to what the National Assembly approved. In the last legislature, the assembly approved four laws that in the matter of defense of the rights of the people are very advanced; Now we go to the debate on the Family Code, which can put before us a very inclusive code that respects rights and multiplies participation.

    “All these are a group of elements that from this present that we are generating allow us to say that the future of the country is a future of hope, a future of prosperity, and it is a future of Revolution.

    “Cuba is a nation of peace. We are rebels, we are dissatisfied, we do not tolerate what is badly done, we make adequate criticism and we will have to do more criticism of everything we do wrong where there is a space of mediocrity; But we are, above all, a nation of peace, a nation of solidarity, of friendship. And that nation defends a project that is a genuine socialist revolution, which is not clandestine in power.

    “On the contrary, it is constantly renewing itself, constantly improving itself, constantly with the will to do what is best for the people, based on the participation of the people. We are a revolution aware that its example makes those who oppose it uncomfortable and therefore we are a revolution that would not survive, and that we have to be clear about, to the error of neglecting its defenses.

    “That is why also in this present of the new normal we are going to the Moncada Exercise, we are going to the Defense Day, but as a genuine element of popular participation, also in the preparation that we have to have and strengthen to maintain our sovereignty and independence.

    “We are a society open to dialogue, debate, to the improvement of our society, we have an enormous desire to continue expanding our democracy, the spaces for debate, the participation of our citizens in terms of the Revolution. But we are a society closed to pressure, closed to blackmail, to foreign interference.

    “From that present that envisages the future to which we are going to arrive, Cuba lives and it is not a miracle. Cuba is living because its children want it and each one of us is responsible for building the future of the Cuba to which we aspire. Cuba also cooperates with those who have the least, Cuba saves lives and not only feels the responsibility and commitment of solidarity, but we also have an enthusiasm for sharing our knowledge to also help those who need it most in the world.

    “Our currency is peace. It is proposed by the Army General two congresses of the Party ago, that peace together with the ideological battle and the economic battle are our priorities. Peace and citizen security are strongholds that distinguish us in the midst of a global environment that is increasingly aggressive and insecure. We, as part of that future, will take care of peace as we take care of our children.

    “In peace we have achieved the first Latin American vaccines, in peace we have immunized almost one hundred percent of our population, including our children; in peace the schools function, and in peace we will begin on the 15th another stage of the school year; in peace our economy will recover; in peace we will continue advancing with the economic and social strategy; calm, attentive and safe. In peace, in the present and in the future, Cuba lives and will live”.