Speech delivered by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the Constitutive Session of the X Legislature of the National Assembly of People's Power, at the Convention Center, on 19 April 2023, "Year 65 of the Revolution."
Congratulations to all on Victory Day! On April 19, 1961, on the sands of Playa Girón, Cuba won the right to celebrate this day, by dealing its first major defeat to imperialism in America (Applause and exclamations of: "Long live Fidel!").
It is about the triumph of the just over the unjust, of little David against the giant Goliath, of a socialist Revolution under the nose of an empire, as Fidel defined it on 23 and 12, in the farewell to mourning for the victims of bombardment of the airports of Ciudad Libertad, Santiago de Cuba and San Antonio de los Baños, in the prelude to the invasion.
That victory is so epic that 62 years later the defeated have not been able to forgive us. And it is thanks to that victory that today we are installing, for the tenth time, the People's Assembly (Applause).
The 470 people who were recently sworn in as deputies and deputies did not win the seat for having more money or the support of electoral parties, whose sole purpose is to place a defender of the interests of certain groups of the country in the place where the laws of the country are decided.
Each one of us is sitting here to defend the interests of the majority and we are not going to earn more or receive rewards for serving as a representative, as is the case in so many countries that boast multi-party democratic models.
Cuba defends the single Party, a guarantee of unity since José Martí founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party, because it is at the root of our history and because the forces of a small nation those 200 years ago was officially declared as appendix to annex the powerful neighbor, when a voracious empire was already brewing.
In a few days, April 28, it will be two centuries since the then Secretary of State and later President of the Union, John Quincy Adams, defined his theory of "ripe fruit" for Cuba: "...there are laws of political gravitation as there are of physical gravitation, and just as a fruit separated from its tree by the force of the wind cannot, even if it wanted to, stop falling to the ground, so Cuba once separated from Spain and the artificial connection broken that the league with it, incapable of sustaining itself, must necessarily gravitate towards the North American Union, and towards it exclusively, while the Union itself, by virtue of its own law, will be unable to fail to admit it into its breast".
From that April announcement to the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine, in December 1823, months passed. But from then until today, for 200 years, the policy of the powerful neighbor has been one, even though two parties in power alternate. For Cuba, at least, it is very difficult to distinguish them, while, for example, practically all the measures applied by the Republican Donald Trump to reinforce the blockade are maintained by his political adversary, the Democrat Joe Biden.
“Remember Girón”, our parents warned about each new threat of invasion that arose after 1961. The slogan remains alive in the popular imagination, because the mercenary attitude is too. Without Nicaragua and without Somoza, now the invaders train in the Everglades and threaten from their caves on social networks.
The powerful neighbor continues to be generous with those "borrowed" to destroy the Revolution and each year allocates tens of millions of dollars to those who offer to subvert the internal order in Cuba, either in person or via the Internet.
Just as we remember Girón, we will always remember the cruelty of the reinforced blockade in pandemic conditions; the infamous inclusion of Cuba in a list of alleged sponsors of terrorism to besiege all financial avenues; the oxygen they refused to give us, while stirring up street riots, was somehow already denied us by shutting down every possibility of trade or financing.
The people are coming out victorious from all these battles and I have no doubt that, as in Girón, we will continue to win! Cuba maintains intact its line of principles and its willingness to dialogue, but without pressure or conditioning.
But the pitcher goes to the fountain so often until it breaks. One day, sooner rather than later, the politics of hegemony will have to cease; multilateralism will occupy its space and Cuba will be able to prove how far a nation of noble, creative and talented people united around clear objectives can go, if it is released from pressures and blockades.
Now, let's focus on what we have and can do, even tied hand and foot. To think and work together, going over those conditions that we cannot change, this X Legislature is founded.
All of us will now have less time for our families and careers, fewer hours of rest. Only greater responsibilities and a high duty await us: to serve the people of Cuba, always connected with their demands and needs.
I stop here to point out what I believe should distinguish the new legislature: permanent contact with the neighborhoods, with the communities, with those who elected us, aware that we cannot perform miracles, but we can transform the challenging reality of Cuba. today if we manage to create the essential synergy between individual and collective efforts; between neighborhoods and municipalities; between the municipalities and the province, between the provinces and the nation.
Compatriots:
From the early days of Popular Power, the slogan was to choose the best. But choosing good among good will always be a difficult and incomplete exercise.
That is why we invite a representation of people of extraordinary values, like you, but who were not in the candidacies for an obvious reason: there are many more good Cubans than seats in Parliament (Applause).
Here there are rescuers from the Saratoga Hotel and the Supertanker Base (Applause); creators of vaccines and medicines that saved us from COVID-19 (Applause); innovators and researchers who have participated in the creation of pulmonary ventilators, in the creation of hip prostheses, parts for power plants (Applause); students and teachers who spent their vacations working in the Red Zone and rebuilding schools and houses destroyed by Hurricane Ian (Applause). There is Alexis Leiva Machado, Kcho, with his legendary Martha Machado Brigade, which built a new school and several houses in the most devastated place where the cyclone entered and which continues to work in that community on various projects (Applause); lawyers who brought us closer to understanding the Family Code (Applause); leaders of community projects, grassroots delegates who develop a good role, such as "Paquito de Cuba" (Applause), among many others who could be there and who do not fit in this room (Applause). That is why the people of Cuba are in this Assembly! (Prolonged applause.)
We will hardly forget those uncertain days when we hardly slept and when we woke up our first glance went straight to the COVID-19 figures.
I am quite sure that no Artificial Intelligence simulation could sum up the feat of the Cuban people in recent years. The creative resistance of the people of this country, their resilience, exceeds the limits of any simulation or prediction. There is no algorithm capable of reflecting everything we experience. That can only be felt (Applause).
Cuba is a feeling, and it is a force capable of facing and defeating the worst gales!
The world economy, uncertain and unstable at all latitudes, poses the first and greatest challenge for the new Council of Ministers, which must have the fundamental support of all to face obstacles and resolve inefficiencies.
In the immediate future, the main direction must focus on food production, the use of idle productive capacities, the increase in foreign currency income, the transformations required by the socialist state enterprise, the efficiency of the investment process, the complementarity of the economic actors and the participation of foreign investment. All this based on increasing the supply of goods and services and controlling inflation, which is the main work priority in the economic battle. We must assume this gigantic challenge without discouragement.
With the intensification of the blockade, the world crisis and our disabilities, the economic and social situation of the country has become very complex, and the dreams, plans and projects that we will never give up are slowing down. Sometimes it seems that they will never be possible. Nevertheless, if we review the dynamics of the last five years, we will see that, under the worst circumstances and the most criminal pressures, we became one of the few countries that saved itself from the pandemic with its own efforts and talent.
When they ask me where I get the optimism to face so many problems, I think of those feats. In that and in hundreds of solutions and proposals for solutions that I find every time I see people who invest intelligence and energy in the effort to find solutions to the problems in their environment, instead of filling themselves with regrets and accusations.
I deeply respect the right of everyone to express their complaints, but I cannot stop contrasting attitudes: that of those who criticize in the most effective way, fighting, doing, showing or creating solutions, and that of those who only see the errors and the faults of others.
Deputies:
In the last six months, three popular voting processes have been carried out in the country, all in a context of acute crisis and under attack by a media campaign aimed at imposing the matrices of a failed State due to an incapable government and spreading hatred.
The true enemy of the Cuban nation bets on the explosion to take over the country and return it to the neocolonial era that we already suffered and know, that enemy saw in each of the recent votes: the Family Code Referendum, the elections for delegates and then for deputies, a key moment for the attack on the legitimacy of the Government and pinned their hopes on the possibility of a high abstention rate.
The strongest proof that this was the idea were the headlines the next day. Everyone, practically without exception, spoke of historical abstentionism, although both the level of participation and the valid vote and the united vote were above the average for other models of democracy in the world.
Those who predicted a high abstention rate, aware that Lester Mallory's old design of using economic warfare to the full to generate difficulties that lead to political apathy, returned to their desire.
That 75.8% participation would not have been possible without the confidence of the people in the Revolution. And that confidence is expressed in participation. It was a display of civility, but also of patriotism and, above all, of political awareness. Now we cannot disappoint that trust! It has to commit us all more. It forces us to work throughout the country, representing all of Cuba.
If we work systematically in each of the municipalities or districts, if we accompany the local authorities without impersonating functions, if we continue to listen to the people and take problems that exceed the possibilities of the territories to higher levels, I am sure that we will achieve daily progress in the solution of these matters.
They have also tried to deny the transparency of our electoral process, but they do not have a single piece of evidence that could question its cleanliness.
From the proposals of the pre-candidates in the plenary sessions of the social and student organizations, transparency begins to be expressed, which continues with the analysis and approval of the candidacies in the municipal assemblies.
It has been shown that when constantly interacting with the popular bases, of which we are all part and to which we owe ourselves, we can help solve problems before they become more serious and irritating.
How many difficulties and accumulated deficiencies were not resolved in the days of exchange with the voters? That is why I insist that we must maintain and improve this work system and that it be a priority for the new Legislature.
A response must be given to all the proposals made by the people in the meetings of the weeks prior to March 26 and to those that will originate afterwards.
The progress of the country in the midst of the profound difficulties generated by external obstacles to our economy, but also bureaucratism, indifference or corruption -unacceptable in principle-, depends greatly on each deputy and deputy assuming with dedication and commitment, the historic challenge we have set ourselves: defeat the blockade without waiting for it to be lifted! (Applause.)
Compatriots:
I am very pleased to see how much our Parliament has been rejuvenated, when one of the biggest concerns in recent months and years is the aging of the population and the high level of emigration involving the youngest segments of our society.
I want to thank the young Cubans for the inspiration and encouragement, but also for the consecration and example, which were decisive in making everything we have achieved possible, what we have advanced in the midst of the gale of many crises: the one that they induce when they block us; the one that comes to us just because, because we live in a world in crisis, and the one that we ourselves generate with our insufficiencies.
Young Cubans are among those who make this country, those who support this Revolution and the dream of what we do and will do in the future. Like all the Cuban people, they suffer economic needs and their terrible consequences. But it is also young people who jump over the blockade, over the shortcomings, those who go about their day to day, with ideas for the future, willing to make Cuba a better country, from within or from without.
The idea that it will always be possible to build a better country can never be abandoned, less in difficult times or under the influence of discouraging messages. We Cubans have learned not to give up, because we do not see difficulty as an obstacle, but as a challenge. And we face it. That temple is a characteristic of our idiosyncrasy.
As I expressed a year ago speaking with young people, in my years as leader of the Union of Young Communists, on one occasion Fidel warned us that in a besieged and blocked Revolution like ours, some comrades get tired, become bureaucratic, lose the enthusiasm of the early times and that we had to play the role of spring, stimulators, revolutionizing the Revolution.
It was in the nineties, very hard years, with prices skyrocketing to infinity for the little that could be bought; with much longer blackouts than the current ones, although with few queues at gas stations because there was hardly ever any fuel to serve.
So we prepared ourselves for Option Zero, but we never gave up on building a better country. Like the heroic Vietnamese people who, in the midst of a terrible war, considered building a Vietnam ten times more beautiful.
“It is still dreams, the ones that pull people, / like a magnet that unites them every day”, Gerardo Alfonso sang in those years in a verse that beautifully defines the collective desire to build a better country. That is why I can affirm that we can do it better today and that tomorrow the young people will do it even better, because whoever was born from those dreams will not allow it to be otherwise! (Applause.)
Young people are the best revolutionaries because they recognize the daily difficulties and face them and try to change them, and they succeed many times. Because despite the adversity they continue to smile, love and believe in the possibility of a better country, despite the fact that some invite them not to participate, to destroy, and to hate.
They understand that for a better world to be possible, it is necessary to accept the differences of the other, be inclusive, abolish discrimination of any kind and understand that equity is an achievement value that deserves to be cultivated in any society.
They demonstrated it by defending the Family Code as their own and supporting all fair battles against exclusion and harassment, because they are feminists, environmentalists and anti-racists. And they renewed their passion for national baseball when Team Asere, from the Classic Baseball League, was formed, without stopping following their soccer teams and continuing to dance and enjoy the best Cuban music.
Each one of us, for our part, has to stimulate that youthful spirit to express itself and to show what they can give and what they can contribute, avoiding the manifestations that often affect these potentialities and are related to the lack of attention, vanity, jealousy, prejudice and, what is worse, mental schemes expired by time.
You have to convince, but above all prove to our young people that it will be possible for them to fulfill themselves in their homeland. That they propose ideas and projects and prove their effectiveness in practice in terms of a better country.
The measures that are approved cannot die due to unjustified delays in their application. The life of each person is not eternal and time and the needs of all pierce the spirit of the nation. Every time a solution appears, we must place before it the dynamics of the urgent.
On the other hand, we cannot be part of the politicization of Cuban emigration, with which the enemy traffics. We must defend a relationship with the Cuban émigrés that makes it clear to them that we admire their triumphs and that their homeland respects them, looks at them proudly and awaits their return, simply hoping that they respect and defend the land that saw them born and formed them with love. (Applause).
I am not talking, of course, about those who have sold their souls to the devil, profiting from the pain of the Cuban people in pathetic McCarthyite shows. I am talking about those who, living anywhere in the world, maintain their love for their country of origin and the desire for it to progress, despite the mountains of obstacles that relating to Cuba represents for them for a variety of reasons and non-reasons.
Those of us who are resisting and building here count on those Cubans who are not ashamed of their origins to help sustain the nation.
Socialism is the closest thing to youth, because it is not a finished work, it is being done every day and the energy and natural ambition of young people are fundamental in this work.
But why the Revolution? Why socialism? Sometimes we see it as the end, the goal. The Revolution is the means, it is the way to achieve for all the highest possible degree of social justice and happiness.
This cannot be achieved in other systems, where well-being is associated with opulence, where some have very little or practically nothing because others appropriate most of the wealth created by those who have less.
The country project that we have proposed aims to find a better synergy, different from that of other models, that leads to higher levels of equity and achievement, both individually and collectively, that has the seal of the values that we share as a society and that also incorporates sustainability and prosperity. In a context as adverse as the one in which we have had to live, such an idea may sound very ambitious.
But it is always hard when undertaking something new, especially when it comes to building a different paradigm of society. There are few references to compare, or those that are useful fit in some sense, but in others they lack compatibility due to cultural or axiological reasons. The fact that it is difficult cannot lead us to think that it can be renounced. Our history is full of impossible. It is a tradition to overcome challenges; the more and older they are, the more impetus and anxiety to overcome them. We have to know that we can and that we must achieve it! (Applause.)
It was not a miracle that brought us to this moment in history. It was a Revolution that began in 1868, fighting almost without weapons against the most powerful empire of its time, to obtain independence, sovereignty and the end of slavery.
It was the fight of a small man, sick and poor, but enlightened by universal humanist ideas, to unite all the generations that had not been able to fulfill those dreams.
There were other men and women who suffered the frustration of those desires and gave continuity to the fight, then against the new dependency and another great empire.
And it was a generation heir to all those that preceded it that summarized the legacy in a libertarian desire that finally conquered independence and sovereignty with arms. And in definitive possession of those conquests, he proposed and managed to raise a free nation, respected and admired in the rest of the world for its dignity, its own voice, its solidarity with all just causes and the education and talent of its children.
It is, in short, a heroic people that never tired of fighting and whose heroism gave rise to leaders who, almost two centuries later, continue to inspire it. Heirs to all and a link between all generations, Martí and Fidel emerge as symbols of that extraordinary national wealth.
To Raúl, leader of the Cuban Revolution, continuer of the traditions of struggle and guide of those of us who assume the highest responsibilities in the country, thank you for the support and trust that we will never disappoint! (Applause.)
To Cuba, to the Cuban people, our recognition for their courage, for their dignity, for their fidelity as the main protagonist of another April of victories! (Applause.)
Dear people to which I am proud to belong, receive the respect, admiration and immense affection of those who always feel indebted. Today I ratify that I will serve you with passion, commitment, without reluctance, until the last consequences (Applause).
Comrades and comrades, you have said it: Unity and victory are hope, unity and victory are the present and future of the homeland and socialism!
Country or Death!
Overcome!