Cuba is freer today, 60 years ago, since the day when more than a million people cheered, applauded and gave their vote of support to the famous document entitled Second Declaration of Havana (February 4, 1962).
The text exposes the main achievements of the triumphant Revolution on January 1, 1959 and the degree of dependence on other Latin American countries.
Key concepts of this document remain valid, among many others, the following:
"Puerto Rico was converted into a colony and is still a colony saturated with military bases." "Cuba broke the chains that tied its fate to the oppressive empire, rescued its wealth, claimed its culture and unfurled its sovereign flag of territory and free people of America."
It was the largest public gathering held here up to that time in support of the Cuban Revolution, in repudiation of the country's exclusion from the Organization of American States in the Eighth Consultation Meeting of the OAS, in Punta del Este, Uruguay, on January 31, 1962.Washington achieved this through pressure and blackmail, but it was useless because the country enjoys the respect of all the peoples of the world and Latin America.
On February 3, 1962, US President John F. Kennedy decreed through Presidential Executive Order 3447 the total blockade of trade between the two countries, later intensified in the 1990s by the Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws.
Significance of the Declaration
The Declaration transcended by denouncing not only the aggressive maneuver against the victim country and the degree of dependence on other Latin American countries, but also the essence of US domination and the exploitation and misery of millions of children of Our America.
It is expelled from the OAS by countries that have not achieved even one of these claims for their peoples. It says so:
Cuba is the Latin American country that has converted more than 100,000 small farmers into landowners; ensured year-round employment on farms and cooperatives for farm workers; transformed the barracks into schools; created classrooms for the entire child population, and the liquidation of illiteracy.
In addition, at that time, it had granted 60 000 scholarships to university, secondary and technological students.
In such a short time, medical services had quadrupled, monopoly companies had been nationalized, the abusive system that turned housing into a means of exploitation for the people had been abolished, and unemployment had been virtually eliminated.
Discrimination based on race or sex has been abolished, gaming, vice and administrative corruption have been swept away, the people have been armed, the enjoyment of human rights has been made a reality by freeing men and women from exploitation, lack of culture and social inequality.
Cuba has freed itself from all foreign tutelage, acquired full sovereignty and established the bases for the development of the economy, in order to no longer be a single-producer country and exporter of raw materials, the Second Declaration of Havana expresses.
Its final phrase replicated in the voice of Commander Ernesto Che Guevara on December 11, 1964, before the XIX UN General Assembly, is still alive: “Because this great humanity has said enough! Moreover, it has started walking. And their march of giants will not stop until they conquer true independence, for which they have already died more than once in vain...».
The United States suffers from rage over the defeat of its mercenary invasion in April 1961 at Playa Girón (Bay of Pigs), and the successive Cuban triumphs since the eradication of the neocolonial republic in 1959.