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Fidel Castro at the 7th Ibero-American summit

Havana, January 1998

Even the Pope feels secure in Fidel Castro's Land of Dreams. Both abhor the policies of US and supporting western politicians in their chase to own or control the resources of the Third World. There is no 'glory' in that kind of success, nor for the hidden cynical satisfaction such politicians feel when they have "won" by achieving the death of another nation, which has been brought to its knees by their planned starvation of its people. We have to doubt the mental health of such politicians, who have, particularly in the USA, been selected by the new "Gods" - their Corporations, the TNCs. These will never choose a Statesman, a real MAN. They fear true Democracy.

"Cuba was invited to the first Summit by Mexico. The time seems to have come to cease the arbitrary and shameful exclusions of a litle country that has defended with great dignity, in a solitary and heroic battle, its right to exist. But those who have attacked, divided and humiliated our peoples a thousand times over, never wanted to resign themselves to Cuba's presence at these summits. This time, they sent envoys everywhere in an attempt to sabotage our presence and even to snatch the 1999 seat from us. Very few governments lent themselves to that game. The argument that Cuba was not fulfilling the summit agreements was the cynical theory fabricated by those US pro-consuls.

For that reason I am obliged to recall 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.

In this epoch of so many inequalities and injustices, we have battled more than anybody for a genuine democracy, a government of the people, by the people and for the people, NOT of the rich, by the rich and for the rich; and in defense of the most sacred rights of every human being. This is borne out by our children, who have the lowest mortality rate in the entire Third World; our wholly literate population; the millions of mothers that have given birth with fewer deaths than in any other Latin American country; or our elderly, who are living for over 75 years, to quote just a few examples. It is borne out by an exceptional people, which has resisted for almost 40 years the most prolonged and criminal economic blockade in existence.

At every summit we have worked for unity and consensus. We have always expressed our way of thinking with total loyalty, in open or closed meetings. We have subscribed to each concept as we have interpreted it, and our commitment has been solely to those values which we believe in and for which we are prepared to give our lives.

Let other countries yield to lies and deceits, to illusions and the interests of the powerful in this world. We will continue defending the ideas for which we have fought all our lives, alongside the poor, the sick without doctors or medicines, parents without employment, hundreds of millions of boys and girls abandoned to chance or forced to work or prostitute themselves to survive, the hungry, the oppressed and the exploited peoples of the earth who constitute the majority of humanity.

Although few statesmen comprehend this as yet, a total change of direction is the most ethical, democratic and revolutionary course that should occur in the world of today.

If you wish to discuss the issue, discuss it, and let everybody, according to his or her conscience, confront the irrefutable figures and the palpable realities that demonstrate the accelerated development of a universal and unsustainable financial speculation, and the increasing vulnerability of economies; the destruction of Nature; the uncertainty of the future; and the bottomless abyss towards which a blind and uncontrollable neoliberalism and a crushing and brutal globalism are leading us, under the aegis of the most powerful and selfish power in history. One doesn't need to wait for currencies to lose their value and the stock market to crash."

Fidel