SPECIAL REPORT FROM RADIO HAVANA CUBA
                              Nov 9, 1997

                        E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org
                        http://www.radiohc.org

 
     Speech delivered by Cuban President Fidel Castro at the
      7th Iberoamerican Summit, Margarita Island, Venezuela.
                     Saturday, November 8th, 1997
 
 
Mr. President of Venezuela, Rafael Caldera,
 
Majesty,
 
Excellencies:
 
Leading up to the first summit, Mexico invited Cuba. It
seemed then that time had come to put an end to the
arbitrary and shameless exclusions against a small country
that with great dignity and heroism --and all alone -- has
defended its right to exist.  Nevertheless, those who a
thousand times have assaulted, divided and  humiliated our
peoples have never come to accept Cuba's presence in these
summits.  
 
This time, they sent message carriers throughout the 
Iberoamerican community to sabotage the summit and to even
snatch away Cuba's right to host the 1999 Iberoamerican
gathering.  Very few governments joined this campaign. 
The argument that Cuba wasn't complying with the
agreements reached by the Iberoamerican summits was the
cynical theory of Washington's message carriers.
 
For that reason, I feel obliged to reiterate here that in
Cuba there was, there is and there will be a Revolution
whose principles are not sold or betrayed --that we have
never renounced our political, economic and social system.
 
We have struggled more than any one else for a true
democracy, for a government of the people, for the people,
and by the people, and not for a government of the rich,
by the rich a rich and for the rich. We have defended 
more than any one else the most sacred rights of each 
human being, in this epoch of so many inequalities and so
much injustice.
 
Our children can testify to this truth -- children with
the lowest  infant mortality rate in the Third World.  Our
entire population can say the same -- a population that is
totally literate, the millions of women who have given
birth with less risk to their lives than  anywhere else in
Latin America -- the elderly, who live more than 75
years...Just to cite some examples.  
 
Listen to that extraordinary Cuban people, who for 40
years have  stood up to the longest and most criminal
blockade in history.

In all the summits Cuba has attempted to promote unity and
consensus. We have always, and faithfully expressed our
manner of thinking both in open and closed-door sessions. 
We have signed each agreement, each concept, in the manner
in which we interpret them.  And we have  made commitments
only with those values in which we believe and for which
we are willing to give our lives.
 
Others may give way to lies and deceits, to illusions and
the interests of the powerful in this world.  We, on the
other hand, will continue defending the ideas for which we
have struggled all our lives, together with the poor and
downtrodden, with the sick who  have no medicine, with the
fathers who have no jobs, with the  hundreds of millions
of little girls and boys abandoned in the  streets, forced
to work or prostitute themselves, with the hungry of this
planet, the oppressed, the exploited...With, in essence,
the  immense majority of humanity.
 
Though understood by few world leaders, the most ethical,
democratic and revolutionary event that could take place
today is a radical change in the path upon which mankind
finds itself.
 
If a discussion on the subject is to be held? , then let
it be held , and  let each and everyone of us examine his
or her own conscience in doing so. Let's add up the
irrefutable sums of a reality that demonstrates a 
universal and unsustainable financial speculation, the
growing  vulnerability of economies, the destruction of
our environment, the uncertain future, the bottomless
abyss into which we are being dragged by the blind and
out-of-control neo-liberalism and crushing globalization -
- under the  leadership of the strongest and most
egotistical superpower in history.  You don't have to wait
until currencies loose their value and stock markets
crash.
 
 
Thank you very much.


           [c] 1997. Radio Habana Cuba
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