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ARCHIVING MOMENTARY SET-BACKS FOR
FUTURE PROMOTIONAL MATERIAL - FIDEL
CASTRO 1953
History Will Absolve Me
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Fidel Castro's History Will Absolve Me
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Spanish version of this speech.
It follows the English
translation of the full text transcript of Fidel Castro's
History Will Absolve Me speech, delivered at Santiago de
Cuba - October 16, 1953.
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Honorable Judges, |
Never has a lawyer
had to practice his profession under such
difficult conditions; never has such a number of
overwhelming irregularities been committed
against an accused man. In this case, counsel
and defendant are one and the same. As attorney
he has not even been able to take a look at the
indictment. As accused, for the past seventy-six
days he has been locked away in solitary
confinement, held totally and absolutely
incommunicado, in violation of every human and
legal right.
He who speaks to you hates vanity with all his
being, nor are his temperament or frame of mind
inclined towards courtroom poses or
sensationalism of any kind. If I have had to
assume my own defense before this Court it is
for two reasons. First, because I have been
denied legal aid almost entirely. And second,
only one who has been so deeply wounded, who has
seen his country so forsaken and its justice
trampled so, can speak at a moment like this
with words that spring from the blood of his
heart and the truth of his very gut.
There was no lack of generous comrades who
wished to defend me, and the Havana Bar
Association appointed a courageous and competent
jurist, Dr. Jorge Pagliery, Dean of the Bar in
this city, to represent me in this case.
However, he was not permitted to carry out his
task. As often as he tried to see me, the prison
gates were closed before him. Only after a month
and a half, and through the intervention of the
Court, was he finally granted a ten minute
interview with me in the presence of a sergeant
from the Military Intelligence Agency (SIM). One
supposes that a lawyer has a right to speak with
his defendant in private, and this right is
respected throughout the world, except in the
case of a Cuban prisoner of war in the hands of
an implacable tyranny that abides by no code of
law, be it legal or humane. Neither Dr. Pagliery
nor I were willing to tolerate such dirty spying
upon our means of defense for the oral trial.
Did they want to know, perhaps, beforehand, the
methods we would use in order to reduce to dust
the incredible fabric of lies they had woven
around the Moncada Barracks events? How were we
going to expose the terrible truth they would go
to such great lengths to conceal? It was then
that we decided that, taking advantage of my
professional rights as a lawyer, I would assume
my own defense.
This decision, overheard by the sergeant and
reported by him to his superior, provoked a real
panic. It looked like some mocking little imp
was telling them that I was going to ruin all
their plans. You know very well, Honorable
Judges, how much pressure has been brought to
bear on me in order to strip me as well of this
right that is ratified by long Cuban tradition.
The Court could not give in to such machination
for that would have left the accused in a state
of total indefensiveness. The accused, who is
now exercising this right to plead his own case,
will under no circumstances refrain from saying
what he must say. I consider it essential that I
explain, at the onset, the reason for the
terrible isolation in which I have been kept;
what was the purpose of keeping me silent; what
was behind the plots to kill me, plots which the
Court is familiar with; what grave events are
being hidden from the people; and the truth
behind all the strange things which have taken
place during this trial. I propose to do all
this with utmost clarity.
You have publicly called this case the most
significant in the history of the Republic. If
you sincerely believed this, you should not have
allowed your authority to be stained and
degraded. The first court session was September
21st. Among one hundred machine guns and
bayonets, scandalously invading the hall of
justice, more than a hundred people were seated
in the prisoner's dock. The great majority had
nothing to do with what had happened. They had
been under preventive arrest for many days,
suffering all kinds of insults and abuses in the
chambers of the repressive units. But the rest
of the accused, the minority, were brave and
determined, ready to proudly confirm their part
in the battle for freedom, ready to offer an
example of unprecedented self-sacrifice and to
wrench from the jail's claws those who in
deliberate bad faith had been included in the
trial. Those who had met in combat confronted
one another again. Once again, with the cause of
justice on our side, we would wage the terrible
battle of truth against infamy! Surely the
regime was not prepared for the moral
catastrophe in store for it!
How to maintain all its false accusations? How
to keep secret what had really happened, when so
many young men were willing to risk everything -
prison, torture and death, if necessary - in
order that the truth be told before this Court?
I was called as a witness at that first session.
For two hours I was questioned by the Prosecutor
as well as by twenty defense attorneys. I was
able to prove with exact facts and figures the
sums of money that had been spent, the way this
money was collected and the arms we had been
able to round up. I had nothing to hide, for the
truth was: all this was accomplished through
sacrifices without precedent in the history of
our Republic. I spoke of the goals that inspired
us in our struggle and of the humane and
generous treatment that we had at all times
accorded our adversaries. If I accomplished my
purpose of demonstrating that those who were
falsely implicated in this trial were neither
directly nor indirectly involved, I owe it to
the complete support and backing of my heroic
comrades. For, as I said, the consequences they
might be forced to suffer at no time caused them
to repent of their condition as revolutionaries
and patriots, I was never once allowed to speak
with these comrades of mine during the time we
were in prison, and yet we planned to do exactly
the same. The fact is, when men carry the same
ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them
- neither prison walls nor the sod of
cemeteries. For a single memory, a single
spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a
single dignity will sustain them all.
From that moment on, the structure of lies the
regime had erected about the events at Moncada
Barracks began to collapse like a house of
cards. As a result, the Prosecutor realized that
keeping all those persons named as instigators
in prison was completely absurd, and he
requested their provisional release.
At the close of my testimony in that first
session, I asked the Court to allow me to leave
the dock and sit among the counsel for the
defense. This permission was granted. At that
point what I consider my most important mission
in this trial began: to totally discredit the
cowardly, miserable and treacherous lies which
the regime had hurled against our fighters; to
reveal with irrefutable evidence the horrible,
repulsive crimes they had practiced on the
prisoners; and to show the nation and the world
the infinite misfortune of the Cuban people who
are suffering the cruelest, the most inhuman
oppression of their history.
The second session convened on Tuesday,
September 22nd. By that time only ten witnesses
had testified, and they had already cleared up
the murders in the Manzanillo area, specifically
establishing and placing on record the direct
responsibility of the captain commanding that
post. There were three hundred more witnesses to
testify. What would happen if, with a staggering
mass of facts and evidence, I should proceed to
cross-examine the very Army men who were
directly responsible for those crimes? Could the
regime permit me to go ahead before the large
audience attending the trial? Before journalists
and jurists from all over the island? And before
the party leaders of the opposition, who they
had stupidly seated right in the prisoner's dock
where they could hear so well all that might be
brought out here? They would rather have blown
up the court house, with all its judges, than
allow that!
And so they devised a plan by which they could
eliminate me from the trial and they proceeded
to do just that, manu militari. On Friday night,
September 25th, on the eve of the third session
of the trial, two prison doctors visited me in
my cell. They were visibly embarrassed. 'We have
come to examine you,' they said. I asked them,
'Who is so worried about my health?' Actually,
from the moment I saw them I realized what they
had come for. They could not have treated me
with greater respect, and they explained their
predicament to me. That afternoon Colonel
Chaviano had appeared at the prison and told
them I 'was doing the Government terrible damage
with this trial.' He had told them they must
sign a certificate declaring that I was ill and
was, therefore, unable to appear in court. The
doctors told me that for their part they were
prepared to resign from their posts and risk
persecution. They put the matter in my hands,
for me to decide. I found it hard to ask those
men to unhesitatingly destroy themselves. But
neither could I, under any circumstances,
consent that those orders be carried out.
Leaving the matter to their own consciences, I
told them only: 'You must know your duty; I
certainly know mine.'
After leaving the cell they signed the
certificate. I know they did so believing in
good faith that this was the only way they could
save my life, which they considered to be in
grave danger. I was not obliged to keep our
conversation secret, for I am bound only by the
truth. Telling the truth in this instance may
jeopardize those good doctors in their material
interests, but I am removing all doubt about
their honor, which is worth much more. That same
night, I wrote the Court a letter denouncing the
plot; requesting that two Court physicians be
sent to certify my excellent state of health,
and to inform you that if to save my life I must
take part in such deception, I would a thousand
times prefer to lose it. To show my
determination to fight alone against this whole
degenerate frame-up, I added to my own words one
of the Master's lines: 'A just cause even from
the depths of a cave can do more than an army.'
As the Court knows, this was the letter Dr.
Melba Hernández submitted at the third session
of the trial on September 26th. I managed to get
it to her in spite of the heavy guard I was
under. That letter, of course, provoked
immediate reprisals. Dr. Hernández was subjected
to solitary confinement, and I - since I was
already incommunicado - was sent to the most
inaccessible reaches of the prison. From that
moment on, all the accused were thoroughly
searched from head to foot before they were
brought into the courtroom.
Two Court physicians certified on September 27th
that I was, in fact, in perfect health. Yet, in
spite of the repeated orders from the Court, I
was never again brought to the hearings. What's
more, anonymous persons daily circulated
hundreds of apocryphal pamphlets which announced
my rescue from jail. This stupid alibi was
invented so they could physically eliminate me
and pretend I had tried to escape. Since the
scheme failed as a result of timely exposure by
ever alert friends, and after the first
affidavit was shown to be false, the regime
could only keep me away from the trial by open
and shameless contempt of Court.
This was an incredible situation, Honorable
Judges: Here was a regime literally afraid to
bring an accused man to Court; a regime of blood
and terror that shrank in fear of the moral
conviction of a defenseless man - unarmed,
slandered and isolated. And so, after depriving
me of everything else, they finally deprived me
even of the trial in which I was the main
accused. Remember that this was during a period
in which individual rights were suspended and
the Public Order Act as well as censorship of
radio and press were in full force. What
unbelievable crimes this regime must have
committed to so fear the voice of one accused
man!
I must dwell upon the insolence and disrespect
which the Army leaders have at all times shown
towards you. As often as this Court has ordered
an end to the inhuman isolation in which I was
held; as often as it has ordered my most
elementary rights to be respected; as often as
it has demanded that I be brought before it,
this Court has never been obeyed! Worse yet: in
the very presence of the Court, during the first
and second hearings, a praetorian guard was
stationed beside me to totally prevent me from
speaking to anyone, even among the brief
recesses. In other words, not only in prison,
but also in the courtroom and in your presence,
they ignored your decrees. I had intended to
mention this matter in the following session, as
a question of elementary respect for the Court,
but - I was never brought back. And if, in
exchange for so much disrespect, they bring us
before you to be jailed in the name of a
legality which they and they alone have been
violating since March 10th, sad indeed is the
role they would force on you. The Latin maxim
Cedant arma togae has certainly not been
fulfilled on a single occasion during this
trial. I beg you to keep that circumstance well
in mind.
What is more, these devices were in any case
quite useless; my brave comrades, with
unprecedented patriotism, did their duty to the
utmost.
'Yes, we set out to fight for Cuba's freedom and
we are not ashamed of having done so,' they
declared, one by one, on the witness stand.
Then, addressing the Court with impressive
courage, they denounced the hideous crimes
committed upon the bodies of our brothers.
Although absent from Court, I was able, in my
prison cell, to follow the trial in all its
details. And I have the convicts at Boniato
Prison to thank for this. In spite of all
threats, these men found ingenious means of
getting newspaper clippings and all kinds of
information to me. In this way they avenged the
abuses and immoralities perpetrated against them
both by Taboada, the warden, and the supervisor,
Lieutenant Rozabal, who drove them from sun up
to sun down building private mansions and
starved them by embezzling the prison food
budget.
As the trial went on, the roles were reversed:
those who came to accuse found themselves
accused, and the accused became the accusers! It
was not the revolutionaries who were judged
there; judged once and forever was a man named
Batista - monstruum horrendum! - and it matters
little that these valiant and worthy young men
have been condemned, if tomorrow the people will
condemn the Dictator and his henchmen! Our men
were consigned to the Isle of Pines Prison, in
whose circular galleries Castells' ghost still
lingers and where the cries of countless victims
still echo; there our young men have been sent
to expiate their love of liberty, in bitter
confinement, banished from society, torn from
their homes and exiled from their country. Is it
not clear to you, as I have said before, that in
such circumstances it is difficult and
disagreeable for this lawyer to fulfill his
duty?
As a result of so many turbid and illegal
machinations, due to the will of those who
govern and the weakness of those who judge, I
find myself here in this little room at the
Civilian Hospital, where I have been brought to
be tried in secret, so that I may not be heard
and my voice may be stifled, and so that no one
may learn of the things I am going to say. Why,
then, do we need that imposing Palace of Justice
which the Honorable Judges would without doubt
find much more comfortable? I must warn you: it
is unwise to administer justice from a hospital
room, surrounded by sentinels with fixed
bayonets; the citizens might suppose that our
justice is sick - and that it is captive.
Let me remind you, your laws of procedure
provide that trials shall be 'public hearings;'
however, the people have been barred altogether
from this session of Court. The only civilians
admitted here have been two attorneys and six
reporters, in whose newspapers the censorship of
the press will prevent printing a word I say. I
see, as my sole audience in this chamber and in
the corridors, nearly a hundred soldiers and
officers. I am grateful for the polite and
serious attention they give me. I only wish I
could have the whole Army before me! I know, one
day, this Army will seethe with rage to wash
away the terrible, the shameful bloodstains
splattered across the military uniform by the
present ruthless clique in its lust for power.
On that day, oh what a fall awaits those mounted
in arrogance on their noble steeds! - provided
that the people have not dismounted them long
before that!
Finally, I should like to add that no treatise
on penal law was allowed me in my cell. I have
at my disposal only this tiny code of law lent
to me by my learned counsel, Dr. Baudillo
Castellanos, the courageous defender of my
comrades. In the same way they prevented me from
receiving the books of Martí; it seems the
prison censorship considered them too
subversive. Or is it because I said Martí was
the inspirer of the 26th of July? Reference
books on any other subject were also denied me
during this trial. But it makes no difference! I
carry the teachings of the Master in my heart,
and in my mind the noble ideas of all men who
have defended people's freedom everywhere!
I am going to make only one request of this
court; I trust it will be granted as a
compensation for the many abuses and outrages
the accused has had to tolerate without
protection of the law. I ask that my right to
express myself be respected without restraint.
Otherwise, even the merest semblance of justice
cannot be maintained, and the final episode of
this trial would be, more than all the others,
one of ignominy and cowardice.
I must admit that I am somewhat disappointed. I
had expected that the Honorable Prosecutor would
come forward with a grave accusation. I thought
he would be ready to justify to the limit his
contention, and his reasons why I should be
condemned in the name of Law and Justice - what
law and what justice? - to 26 years in prison.
But no. He has limited himself to reading
Article 148 of the Social Defense Code. On the
basis of this, plus aggravating circumstances,
he requests that I be imprisoned for the lengthy
term of 26 years! Two minutes seems a very short
time in which to demand and justify that a man
be put behind bars for more than a quarter of a
century. Can it be that the Honorable Prosecutor
is, perhaps, annoyed with the Court? Because as
I see it, his laconic attitude in this case
clashes with the solemnity with which the
Honorable Judges declared, rather proudly, that
this was a trial of the greatest importance! I
have heard prosecutors speak ten times longer in
a simple narcotics case asking for a sentence of
just six months. The Honorable Prosecutor has
supplied not a word in support of his petition.
I am a just man. I realize that for a
prosecuting attorney under oath of loyalty to
the Constitution of the Republic, it is
difficult to come here in the name of an
unconstitutional, statutory, de facto
government, lacking any legal much less moral
basis, to ask that a young Cuban, a lawyer like
himself - perhaps as honorable as he, be sent to
jail for 26 years. But the Honorable Prosecutor
is a gifted man and I have seen much less
talented persons write lengthy diatribes in
defense of this regime. How then can I suppose
that he lacks reason with which to defend it, at
least for fifteen minutes, however contemptible
that might be to any decent person? It is clear
that there is a great conspiracy behind all
this.
Honorable Judges: Why such interest in silencing
me? Why is every type of argument foregone in
order to avoid presenting any target whatsoever
against which I might direct my own brief? Is it
that they lack any legal, moral or political
basis on which to put forth a serious
formulation of the question? Are they that
afraid of the truth? Do they hope that I, too,
will speak for only two minutes and that I will
not touch upon the points which have caused
certain people sleepless nights since July 26th?
Since the prosecutor's petition was restricted
to the mere reading of five lines of an article
of the Social Defense Code, might they suppose
that I too would limit myself to those same
lines and circle round them like some slave
turning a millstone? I shall by no means accept
such a gag, for in this trial there is much more
than the freedom of a single individual at
stake. Fundamental matters of principle are
being debated here, the right of men to be free
is on trial, the very foundations of our
existence as a civilized and democratic nation
are in the balance. When this trial is over, I
do not want to have to reproach myself for any
principle left undefended, for any truth left
unsaid, for any crime not denounced.
The Honorable Prosecutor's famous little article
hardly deserves a minute of my time. I shall
limit myself for the moment to a brief legal
skirmish against it, because I want to clear the
field for an assault against all the endless
lies and deceits, the hypocrisy, conventionalism
and moral cowardice that have set the stage for
the crude comedy which since the 10th of March -
and even before then - has been called Justice
in Cuba.
It is a fundamental principle of criminal law
that an imputed offense must correspond exactly
to the type of crime described by law. If no law
applies exactly to the point in question, then
there is no offense.
The article in question reads textually: 'A
penalty of imprisonment of from three to ten
years shall be imposed upon the perpetrator of
any act aimed at bringing about an armed
uprising against the Constitutional Powers of
the State. The penalty shall be imprisonment for
from five to twenty years, in the event that
insurrection actually be carried into effect.'
In what country is the Honorable Prosecutor
living? Who has told him that we have sought to
bring about an uprising against the
Constitutional Powers of the State? Two things
are self-evident. First of all, the dictatorship
that oppresses the nation is not a
constitutional power, but an unconstitutional
one: it was established against the
Constitution, over the head of the Constitution,
violating the legitimate Constitution of the
Republic. The legitimate Constitution is that
which emanates directly from a sovereign people.
I shall demonstrate this point fully later on,
notwithstanding all the subterfuges contrived by
cowards and traitors to justify the
unjustifiable. Secondly, the article refers to
Powers, in the plural, as in the case of a
republic governed by a Legislative Power, an
Executive Power, and a Judicial Power which
balance and counterbalance one another. We have
fomented a rebellion against one single power,
an illegal one, which has usurped and merged
into a single whole both the Legislative and
Executive Powers of the nation, and so has
destroyed the entire system that was
specifically safeguarded by the Code now under
our analysis. As to the independence of the
Judiciary after the 10th of March, I shall not
allude to that for I am in no mood for joking
... No matter how Article 148 may be stretched,
shrunk or amended, not a single comma applies to
the events of July 26th. Let us leave this
statute alone and await the opportunity to apply
it to those who really did foment an uprising
against the Constitutional Powers of the State.
Later I shall come back to the Code to refresh
the Honorable Prosecutor's memory about certain
circumstances he has unfortunately overlooked.
I warn you, I am just beginning! If there is in
your hearts a vestige of love for your country,
love for humanity, love for justice, listen
carefully. I know that I will be silenced for
many years; I know that the regime will try to
suppress the truth by all possible means; I know
that there will be a conspiracy to bury me in
oblivion. But my voice will not be stifled - it
will rise from my breast even when I feel most
alone, and my heart will give it all the fire
that callous cowards deny it.
From a shack in the mountains on Monday, July
27th, I listened to the dictator's voice on the
air while there were still 18 of our men in arms
against the government. Those who have never
experienced similar moments will never know that
kind of bitterness and indignation. While the
long-cherished hopes of freeing our people lay
in ruins about us we heard those crushed hopes
gloated over by a tyrant more vicious, more
arrogant than ever. The endless stream of lies
and slanders, poured forth in his crude, odious,
repulsive language, may only be compared to the
endless stream of clean young blood which had
flowed since the previous night - with his
knowledge, consent, complicity and approval -
being spilled by the most inhuman gang of
assassins it is possible to imagine. To have
believed him for a single moment would have
sufficed to fill a man of conscience with
remorse and shame for the rest of his life. At
that time I could not even hope to brand his
miserable forehead with the mark of truth which
condemns him for the rest of his days and for
all time to come. Already a circle of more than
a thousand men, armed with weapons more powerful
than ours and with peremptory orders to bring in
our bodies, was closing in around us. Now that
the truth is coming out, now that speaking
before you I am carrying out the mission I set
for myself, I may die peacefully and content. So
I shall not mince my words about those savage
murderers.
I must pause to consider the facts for a moment.
The government itself said the attack showed
such precision and perfection that it must have
been planned by military strategists. Nothing
could have been farther from the truth! The plan
was drawn up by a group of young men, none of
whom had any military experience at all. I will
reveal their names, omitting two who are neither
dead nor in prison: Abel Santamaría, José Luis
Tasende, Renato Guitart Rosell, Pedro Miret,
Jesús Montané and myself. Half of them are dead,
and in tribute to their memory I can say that
although they were not military experts they had
enough patriotism to have given, had we not been
at such a great disadvantage, a good beating to
that entire lot of generals together, those
generals of the 10th of March who are neither
soldiers nor patriots. Much more difficult than
the planning of the attack was our organizing,
training, mobilizing and arming men under this
repressive regime with its millions of dollars
spent on espionage, bribery and information
services. Nevertheless, all this was carried out
by those men and many others like them with
incredible seriousness, discretion and
discipline. Still more praiseworthy is the fact
that they gave this task everything they had;
ultimately, their very lives.
The final mobilization of men who came to this
province from the most remote towns of the
entire island was accomplished with admirable
precision and in absolute secrecy. It is equally
true that the attack was carried out with
magnificent coordination. It began
simultaneously at 5:15 a.m. in both Bayamo and
Santiago de Cuba; and one by one, with an
exactitude of minutes and seconds prepared in
advance, the buildings surrounding the barracks
fell to our forces. Nevertheless, in the
interest of truth and even though it may detract
from our merit, I am also going to reveal for
the first time a fact that was fatal: due to a
most unfortunate error, half of our forces, and
the better armed half at that, went astray at
the entrance to the city and were not on hand to
help us at the decisive moment. Abel Santamaría,
with 21 men, had occupied the Civilian Hospital;
with him went a doctor and two of our women
comrades to attend to the wounded. Raúl Castro,
with ten men, occupied the Palace of Justice,
and it was my responsibility to attack the
barracks with the rest, 95 men. Preceded by an
advance group of eight who had forced Gate
Three, I arrived with the first group of 45 men.
It was precisely here that the battle began,
when my car ran into an outside patrol armed
with machine guns. The reserve group which had
almost all the heavy weapons (the light arms
were with the advance group), turned up the
wrong street and lost its way in an unfamiliar
city. I must clarify the fact that I do not for
a moment doubt the courage of those men; they
experienced great anguish and desperation when
they realized they were lost. Because of the
type of action it was and because the contending
forces were wearing identically colored
uniforms, it was not easy for these men to
re-establish contact with us. Many of them,
captured later on, met death with true heroism.
Everyone had instructions, first of all, to be
humane in the struggle. Never was a group of
armed men more generous to the adversary. From
the beginning we took numerous prisoners -
nearly twenty - and there was one moment when
three of our men - Ramiro Valdés, José Suárez
and Jesús Montané - managed to enter a barrack
and hold nearly fifty soldiers prisoners for a
short time. Those soldiers testified before the
Court, and without exception they all
acknowledged that we treated them with absolute
respect, that we didn't even subject them to one
scoffing remark. In line with this, I want to
give my heartfelt thanks to the Prosecutor for
one thing in the trial of my comrades: when he
made his report he was fair enough to
acknowledge as an incontestable fact that we
maintained a high spirit of chivalry throughout
the struggle.
Discipline among the soldiers was very poor.
They finally defeated us because of their
superior numbers - fifteen to one - and because
of the protection afforded them by the defenses
of the fortress. Our men were much better
marksmen, as our enemies themselves conceded.
There was a high degree of courage on both
sides.
In analyzing the reasons for our tactical
failure, apart from the regrettable error
already mentioned, I believe we made a mistake
by dividing the commando unit we had so
carefully trained. Of our best trained men and
boldest leaders, there were 27 in Bayamo, 21 at
the Civilian Hospital and 10 at the Palace of
Justice. If our forces had been distributed
differently the outcome of the battle might have
been different. The clash with the patrol
(purely accidental, since the unit might have
been at that point twenty seconds earlier or
twenty seconds later) alerted the camp, and gave
it time to mobilize. Otherwise it would have
fallen into our hands without a shot fired,
since we already controlled the guard post. On
the other hand, except for the .22 caliber
rifles, for which there were plenty of bullets,
our side was very short of ammunition. Had we
had hand grenades, the Army would not have been
able to resist us for fifteen minutes.
When I became convinced that all efforts to take
the barracks were now useless, I began to
withdraw our men in groups of eight and ten. Our
retreat was covered by six expert marksmen under
the command of Pedro Miret and Fidel Labrador;
heroically they held off the Army's advance. Our
losses in the battle had been insignificant; 95%
of our casualties came from the Army's
inhumanity after the struggle. The group at the
Civilian Hospital only had one casualty; the
rest of that group was trapped when the troops
blocked the only exit; but our youths did not
lay down their arms until their very last bullet
was gone. With them was Abel Santamaría, the
most generous, beloved and intrepid of our young
men, whose glorious resistance immortalizes him
in Cuban history. We shall see the fate they met
and how Batista sought to punish the heroism of
our youth.
We planned to continue the struggle in the
mountains in case the attack on the regiment
failed. In Siboney I was able to gather a third
of our forces; but many of these men were now
discouraged. About twenty of them decided to
surrender; later we shall see what became of
them. The rest, 18 men, with what arms and
ammunition were left, followed me into the
mountains. The terrain was completely unknown to
us. For a week we held the heights of the Gran
Piedra range and the Army occupied the
foothills. We could not come down; they didn't
risk coming up. It was not force of arms, but
hunger and thirst that ultimately overcame our
resistance. I had to divide the men into smaller
groups. Some of them managed to slip through the
Army lines; others were surrendered by Monsignor
Pérez Serantes. Finally only two comrades
remained with me - José Suárez and Oscar Alcalde.
While the three of us were totally exhausted, a
force led by Lieutenant Sarría surprised us in
our sleep at dawn. This was Saturday, August
1st. By that time the slaughter of prisoners had
ceased as a result of the people's protest. This
officer, a man of honor, saved us from being
murdered on the spot with our hands tied behind
us.
I need not deny here the stupid statements by
Ugalde Carrillo and company, who tried to stain
my name in an effort to mask their own
cowardice, incompetence, and criminality. The
facts are clear enough.
My purpose is not to bore the court with epic
narratives. All that I have said is essential
for a more precise understanding of what is yet
to come.
Let me mention two important facts that
facilitate an objective judgement of our
attitude. First: we could have taken over the
regiment simply by seizing all the high ranking
officers in their homes. This possibility was
rejected for the very humane reason that we
wished to avoid scenes of tragedy and struggle
in the presence of their families. Second: we
decided not to take any radio station over until
the Army camp was in our power. This attitude,
unusually magnanimous and considerate, spared
the citizens a great deal of bloodshed. With
only ten men I could have seized a radio station
and called the people to revolt. There is no
questioning the people's will to fight. I had a
recording of Eduardo Chibás' last message over
the CMQ radio network, and patriotic poems and
battle hymns capable of moving the least
sensitive, especially with the sounds of live
battle in their ears. But I did not want to use
them although our situation was desperate.
The regime has emphatically repeated that our
Movement did not have popular support. I have
never heard an assertion so naive, and at the
same time so full of bad faith. The regime seeks
to show submission and cowardice on the part of
the people. They all but claim that the people
support the dictatorship; they do not know how
offensive this is to the brave Orientales.
Santiago thought our attack was only a local
disturbance between two factions of soldiers;
not until many hours later did they realize what
had really happened. Who can doubt the valor,
civic pride and limitless courage of the rebel
and patriotic people of Santiago de Cuba? If
Moncada had fallen into our hands, even the
women of Santiago de Cuba would have risen in
arms. Many were the rifles loaded for our
fighters by the nurses at the Civilian Hospital.
They fought alongside us. That is something we
will never forget.
It was never our intention to engage the
soldiers of the regiment in combat. We wanted to
seize control of them and their weapons in a
surprise attack, arouse the people and call the
soldiers to abandon the odious flag of the
tyranny and to embrace the banner of freedom; to
defend the supreme interests of the nation and
not the petty interests of a small clique; to
turn their guns around and fire on the people's
enemies and not on the people, among whom are
their own sons and fathers; to unite with the
people as the brothers that they are instead of
opposing the people as the enemies the
government tries to make of them; to march
behind the only beautiful ideal worthy of
sacrificing one's life - the greatness and
happiness of one's country. To those who doubt
that many soldiers would have followed us, I
ask: What Cuban does not cherish glory? What
heart is not set aflame by the promise of
freedom?
The Navy did not fight against us, and it would
undoubtedly have come over to our side later on.
It is well known that that branch of the Armed
Forces is the least dominated by the
Dictatorship and that there is a very intense
civic conscience among its members. But, as to
the rest of the national armed forces, would
they have fought against a people in revolt? I
declare that they would not! A soldier is made
of flesh and blood; he thinks, observes, feels.
He is susceptible to the opinions, beliefs,
sympathies and antipathies of the people. If you
ask his opinion, he may tell you he cannot
express it; but that does not mean he has no
opinion. He is affected by exactly the same
problems that affect other citizens -
subsistence, rent, the education of his
children, their future, etc. Everything of this
kind is an inevitable point of contact between
him and the people and everything of this kind
relates him to the present and future situation
of the society in which he lives. It is foolish
to imagine that the salary a soldier receives
from the State - a modest enough salary at that
- should resolve the vital problems imposed on
him by his needs, duties and feelings as a
member of his community.
This brief explanation has been necessary
because it is basic to a consideration to which
few people, until now, have paid any attention -
soldiers have a deep respect for the feelings of
the majority of the people! During the Machado
regime, in the same proportion as popular
antipathy increased, the loyalty of the Army
visibly decreased. This was so true that a group
of women almost succeeded in subverting Camp
Columbia. But this is proven even more clearly
by a recent development. While Grau San Martín's
regime was able to preserve its maximum
popularity among the people, unscrupulous
ex-officers and power-hungry civilians attempted
innumerable conspiracies in the Army, although
none of them found a following in the rank and
file.
The March 10th coup took place at the moment
when the civil government's prestige had
dwindled to its lowest ebb, a circumstance of
which Batista and his clique took advantage. Why
did they not strike their blow after the first
of June? Simply because, had they waited for the
majority of the nation to express its will at
the polls, the troops would not have responded
to the conspiracy!
Consequently, a second assertion can be made:
the Army has never revolted against a regime
with a popular majority behind it. These are
historic truths, and if Batista insists on
remaining in power at all costs against the will
of the majority of Cubans, his end will be more
tragic than that of Gerardo Machado.
I have a right to express an opinion about the
Armed Forces because I defended them when
everyone else was silent. And I did this neither
as a conspirator, nor from any kind of personal
interest - for we then enjoyed full
constitutional prerogatives. I was prompted only
by humane instincts and civic duty. In those
days, the newspaper Alerta was one of the most
widely read because of its position on national
political matters. In its pages I campaigned
against the forced labor to which the soldiers
were subjected on the private estates of high
civil personages and military officers. On March
3rd, 1952 I supplied the Courts with data,
photographs, films and other proof denouncing
this state of affairs. I also pointed out in
those articles that it was elementary decency to
increase army salaries. I should like to know
who else raised his voice on that occasion to
protest against all this injustice done to the
soldiers. Certainly not Batista and company,
living well-protected on their luxurious
estates, surrounded by all kinds of security
measures, while I ran a thousand risks with
neither bodyguards nor arms.
Just as I defended the soldiers then, now - when
all others are once more silent - I tell them
that they allowed themselves to be miserably
deceived; and to the deception and shame of
March 10th they have added the disgrace, the
thousand times greater disgrace, of the fearful
and unjustifiable crimes of Santiago de Cuba.
From that time since, the uniform of the Army is
splattered with blood. And as last year I told
the people and cried out before the Courts that
soldiers were working as slaves on private
estates, today I make the bitter charge that
there are soldiers stained from head to toe with
the blood of the Cuban youths they have tortured
and slain. And I say as well that if the Army
serves the Republic, defends the nation,
respects the people and protects the citizenry
then it is only fair that the soldier should
earn at least a hundred pesos a month. But if
the soldiers slay and oppress the people, betray
the nation and defend only the interests of one
small group, then the Army deserves not a cent
of the Republic's money and Camp Columbia should
be converted into a school with ten thousand
orphans living there instead of soldiers.
I want to be just above all else, so I can't
blame all the soldiers for the shameful crimes
that stain a few evil and treacherous Army men.
But every honorable and upstanding soldier who
loves his career and his uniform is dutybound to
demand and to fight for the cleansing of this
guilt, to avenge this betrayal and to see the
guilty punished. Otherwise the soldier's uniform
will forever be a mark of infamy instead of a
source of pride.
Of course the March 10th regime had no choice
but to remove the soldiers from the private
estates. But it did so only to put them to work
as doormen, chauffeurs, servants and bodyguards
for the whole rabble of petty politicians who
make up the party of the Dictatorship. Every
fourth or fifth rank official considers himself
entitled to the services of a soldier to drive
his car and to watch over him as if he were
constantly afraid of receiving the kick in the
pants he so justly deserves.
If they had been at all interested in promoting
real reforms, why did the regime not confiscate
the estates and the millions of men like
Genovevo Pérez Dámera, who acquired their
fortunes by exploiting soldiers, driving them
like slaves and misappropriating the funds of
the Armed Forces? But no: Genovevo Pérez and
others like him no doubt still have soldiers
protecting them on their estates because the
March 10th generals, deep in their hearts,
aspire to the same future and can't allow that
kind of precedent to be set.
The 10th of March was a miserable deception, yes
... After Batista and his band of corrupt and
disreputable politicians had failed in their
electoral plan, they took advantage of the
Army's discontent and used it to climb to power
on the backs of the soldiers. And I know there
are many Army men who are disgusted because they
have been disappointed. At first their pay was
raised, but later, through deductions and
reductions of every kind, it was lowered again.
Many of the old elements, who had drifted away
from the Armed Forces, returned to the ranks and
blocked the way of young, capable and valuable
men who might otherwise have advanced. Good
soldiers have been neglected while the most
scandalous nepotism prevails. Many decent
military men are now asking themselves what need
that Armed Forces had to assume the tremendous
historical responsibility of destroying our
Constitution merely to put a group of immoral
men in power, men of bad reputation, corrupt,
politically degenerate beyond redemption, who
could never again have occupied a political post
had it not been at bayonet-point; and they
weren't even the ones with the bayonets in their
hands ...
On the other hand, the soldiers endure a worse
tyranny than the civilians. They are under
constant surveillance and not one of them enjoys
the slightest security in his job. Any
unjustified suspicion, any gossip, any intrigue,
or denunciation, is sufficient to bring
transfer, dishonorable discharge or
imprisonment. Did not Tabernilla, in a
memorandum, forbid them to talk with anyone
opposed to the government, that is to say, with
ninety-nine percent of the people? ... What a
lack of confidence! ... Not even the vestal
virgins of Rome had to abide by such a rule! As
for the much publicized little houses for
enlisted men, there aren't 300 on the whole
Island; yet with what has been spent on tanks,
guns and other weaponry every soldier might have
a place to live. Batista isn't concerned with
taking care of the Army, but that the Army take
care of him! He increases the Army's power of
oppression and killing but does not improve
living conditions for the soldiers. Triple guard
duty, constant confinement to barracks,
continuous anxiety, the enmity of the people,
uncertainty about the future - this is what has
been given to the soldier. In other words: 'Die
for the regime, soldier, give it your sweat and
blood. We shall dedicate a speech to you and
award you a posthumous promotion (when it no
longer matters) and afterwards ... we shall go
on living luxuriously, making ourselves rich.
Kill, abuse, oppress the people. When the people
get tired and all this comes to an end, you can
pay for our crimes while we go abroad and live
like kings. And if one day we return, don't you
or your children knock on the doors of our
mansions, for we shall be millionaires and
millionaires do not mingle with the poor. Kill,
soldier, oppress the people, die for the regime,
give your sweat and blood ...'
But if blind to this sad truth, a minority of
soldiers had decided to fight the people, the
people who were going to liberate them from
tyranny, victory still would have gone to the
people. The Honorable Prosecutor was very
interested in knowing our chances for success.
These chances were based on considerations of
technical, military and social order. They have
tried to establish the myth that modern arms
render the people helpless in overthrowing
tyrants. Military parades and the pompous
display of machines of war are used to
perpetuate this myth and to create a complex of
absolute impotence in the people. But no
weaponry, no violence can vanquish the people
once they are determined to win back their
rights. Both past and present are full of
examples. The most recent is the revolt in
Bolivia, where miners with dynamite sticks
smashed and defeated regular army regiments.
Fortunately, we Cubans need not look for
examples abroad. No example is as inspiring as
that of our own land. During the war of 1895
there were nearly half a million armed Spanish
soldiers in Cuba, many more than the Dictator
counts upon today to hold back a population five
times greater. The arms of the Spaniards were,
incomparably, both more up to date and more
powerful than those of our mambises. Often the
Spaniards were equipped with field artillery and
the infantry used breechloaders similar to those
still in use by the infantry of today. The
Cubans were usually armed with no more than
their machetes, for their cartridge belts were
almost always empty. There is an unforgettable
passage in the history of our War of
Independence, narrated by General Miró Argenter,
Chief of Antonio Maceo's General Staff. I
managed to bring it copied on this scrap of
paper so I wouldn't have to depend upon my
memory:
'Untrained men under the command of Pedro
Delgado, most of them equipped only with
machetes, were virtually annihilated as they
threw themselves on the solid rank of Spaniards.
It is not an exaggeration to assert that of
every fifty men, 25 were killed. Some even
attacked the Spaniards with their bare fists,
without machetes, without even knives. Searching
through the reeds by the Hondo River, we found
fifteen more dead from the Cuban party, and it
was not immediately clear what group they
belonged to, They did not appear to have
shouldered arms, their clothes were intact and
only tin drinking cups hung from their waists; a
few steps further on lay the dead horse, all its
equipment in order. We reconstructed the climax
of the tragedy. These men, following their
daring chief, Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Delgado,
had earned heroes' laurels: they had thrown
themselves against bayonets with bare hands, the
clash of metal which was heard around them was
the sound of their drinking cups banging against
the saddlehorn. Maceo was deeply moved. This man
so used to seeing death in all its forms
murmured this praise: "I had never seen anything
like this, untrained and unarmed men attacking
the Spaniards with only drinking cups for
weapons. And I called it impedimenta!"'
This is how peoples fight when they want to win
their freedom; they throw stones at airplanes
and overturn tanks!
As soon as Santiago de Cuba was in our hands we
would immediately have readied the people of
Oriente for war. Bayamo was attacked precisely
to locate our advance forces along the Cauto
River. Never forget that this province, which
has a million and a half inhabitants today, is
the most rebellious and patriotic in Cuba. It
was this province that sparked the fight for
independence for thirty years and paid the
highest price in blood, sacrifice and heroism.
In Oriente you can still breathe the air of that
glorious epic. At dawn, when the cocks crow as
if they were bugles calling soldiers to
reveille, and when the sun rises radiant over
the rugged mountains, it seems that once again
we will live the days of Yara or Baire!
I stated that the second consideration on which
we based our chances for success was one of
social order. Why were we sure of the people's
support? When we speak of the people we are not
talking about those who live in comfort, the
conservative elements of the nation, who welcome
any repressive regime, any dictatorship, any
despotism, prostrating themselves before the
masters of the moment until they grind their
foreheads into the ground. When we speak of
struggle and we mention the people we mean the
vast unredeemed masses, those to whom everyone
makes promises and who are deceived by all; we
mean the people who yearn for a better, more
dignified and more just nation; who are moved by
ancestral aspirations to justice, for they have
suffered injustice and mockery generation after
generation; those who long for great and wise
changes in all aspects of their life; people
who, to attain those changes, are ready to give
even the very last breath they have when they
believe in something or in someone, especially
when they believe in themselves. The first
condition of sincerity and good faith in any
endeavor is to do precisely what nobody else
ever does, that is, to speak with absolute
clarity, without fear. The demagogues and
professional politicians who manage to perform
the miracle of being right about everything and
of pleasing everyone are, necessarily, deceiving
everyone about everything. The revolutionaries
must proclaim their ideas courageously, define
their principles and express their intentions so
that no one is deceived, neither friend nor foe.
In terms of struggle, when we talk about people
we're talking about the six hundred thousand
Cubans without work, who want to earn their
daily bread honestly without having to emigrate
from their homeland in search of a livelihood;
the five hundred thousand farm laborers who live
in miserable shacks, who work four months of the
year and starve the rest, sharing their misery
with their children, who don't have an inch of
land to till and whose existence would move any
heart not made of stone; the four hundred
thousand industrial workers and laborers whose
retirement funds have been embezzled, whose
benefits are being taken away, whose homes are
wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the
hands of the boss to those of the moneylender,
whose future is a pay reduction and dismissal,
whose life is endless work and whose only rest
is the tomb; the one hundred thousand small
farmers who live and die working land that is
not theirs, looking at it with the sadness of
Moses gazing at the promised land, to die
without ever owning it, who like feudal serfs
have to pay for the use of their parcel of land
by giving up a portion of its produce, who
cannot love it, improve it, beautify it nor
plant a cedar or an orange tree on it because
they never know when a sheriff will come with
the rural guard to evict them from it; the
thirty thousand teachers and professors who are
so devoted, dedicated and so necessary to the
better destiny of future generations and who are
so badly treated and paid; the twenty thousand
small business men weighed down by debts, ruined
by the crisis and harangued by a plague of
grafting and venal officials; the ten thousand
young professional people: doctors, engineers,
lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers,
dentists, pharmacists, newspapermen, painters,
sculptors, etc., who finish school with their
degrees anxious to work and full of hope, only
to find themselves at a dead end, all doors
closed to them, and where no ears hear their
clamor or supplication. These are the people,
the ones who know misfortune and, therefore, are
capable of fighting with limitless courage! To
these people whose desperate roads through life
have been paved with the bricks of betrayal and
false promises, we were not going to say: 'We
will give you ...' but rather: 'Here it is, now
fight for it with everything you have, so that
liberty and happiness may be yours!'
The five revolutionary laws that would have been
proclaimed immediately after the capture of the
Moncada Barracks and would have been broadcast
to the nation by radio must be included in the
indictment. It is possible that Colonel Chaviano
may deliberately have destroyed these documents,
but even if he has I remember them.
The first revolutionary law would have returned
power to the people and proclaimed the 1940
Constitution the Supreme Law of the State until
such time as the people should decide to modify
or change it. And in order to effect its
implementation and punish those who violated it
- there being no electoral organization to carry
this out - the revolutionary movement, as the
circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty,
the only source of legitimate power, would have
assumed all the faculties inherent therein,
except that of modifying the Constitution
itself: in other words, it would have assumed
the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
This attitude could not be clearer nor more free
of vacillation and sterile charlatanry. A
government acclaimed by the mass of rebel people
would be vested with every power, everything
necessary in order to proceed with the effective
implementation of popular will and real justice.
From that moment, the Judicial Power - which
since March 10th had placed itself against and
outside the Constitution - would cease to exist
and we would proceed to its immediate and total
reform before it would once again assume the
power granted it by the Supreme Law of the
Republic. Without these previous measures, a
return to legality by putting its custody back
into the hands that have crippled the system so
dishonorably would constitute a fraud, a deceit,
one more betrayal.
The second revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable
and non-transferable ownership of the land to
all tenant and subtenant farmers, lessees, share
croppers and squatters who hold parcels of five
caballerías of land or less, and the State would
indemnify the former owners on the basis of the
rental which they would have received for these
parcels over a period of ten years.
The third revolutionary law would have granted
workers and employees the right to share 30% of
the profits of all the large industrial,
mercantile and mining enterprises, including the
sugar mills. The strictly agricultural
enterprises would be exempt in consideration of
other agrarian laws which would be put into
effect.
The fourth revolutionary law would have granted
all sugar planters the right to share 55% of
sugar production and a minimum quota of forty
thousand arrobas for all small tenant farmers
who have been established for three years or
more.
The fifth revolutionary law would have ordered
the confiscation of all holdings and ill-gotten
gains of those who had committed frauds during
previous regimes, as well as the holdings and
ill-gotten gains of all their legates and heirs.
To implement this, special courts with full
powers would gain access to all records of all
corporations registered or operating in this
country, in order to investigate concealed funds
of illegal origin, and to request that foreign
governments extradite persons and attach
holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban
people. Half of the property recovered would be
used to subsidize retirement funds for workers
and the other half would be used for hospitals,
asylums and charitable organizations.
Furthermore, it was declared that the Cuban
policy in the Americas would be one of close
solidarity with the democratic peoples of this
continent, and that all those politically
persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our
sister nations would find generous asylum,
brotherhood and bread in the land of Martí; not
the persecution, hunger and treason they find
today. Cuba should be the bulwark of liberty and
not a shameful link in the chain of despotism.
These laws would have been proclaimed
immediately. As soon as the upheaval ended and
prior to a detailed and far reaching study, they
would have been followed by another series of
laws and fundamental measures, such as the
Agrarian Reform, the Integral Educational
Reform, nationalization of the electric power
trust and the telephone trust, refund to the
people of the illegal and repressive rates these
companies have charged, and payment to the
treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the
past.
All these laws and others would be based on the
exact compliance of two essential articles of
our Constitution: one of them orders the
outlawing of large estates, indicating the
maximum area of land any one person or entity
may own for each type of agricultural
enterprise, by adopting measures which would
tend to revert the land to the Cubans. The other
categorically orders the State to use all means
at its disposal to provide employment to all
those who lack it and to ensure a decent
livelihood to each manual or intellectual
laborer. None of these laws can be called
unconstitutional. The first popularly elected
government would have to respect them, not only
because of moral obligations to the nation, but
because when people achieve something they have
yearned for throughout generations, no force in
the world is capable of taking it away again.
The problem of the land, the problem of
industrialization, the problem of housing, the
problem of unemployment, the problem of
education and the problem of the people's
health: these are the six problems we would take
immediate steps to solve, along with restoration
of civil liberties and political democracy.
This exposition may seem cold and theoretical if
one does not know the shocking and tragic
conditions of the country with regard to these
six problems, along with the most humiliating
political oppression.
Eighty-five per cent of the small farmers in
Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of
being evicted from the land they till. More than
half of our most productive land is in the hands
of foreigners. In Oriente, the largest province,
the lands of the United Fruit Company and the
West Indian Company link the northern and
southern coasts. There are two hundred thousand
peasant families who do not have a single acre
of land to till to provide food for their
starving children. On the other hand, nearly
three hundred thousand caballerías of cultivable
land owned by powerful interests remain
uncultivated. If Cuba is above all an
agricultural State, if its population is largely
rural, if the city depends on these rural areas,
if the people from our countryside won our war
of independence, if our nation's greatness and
prosperity depend on a healthy and vigorous
rural population that loves the land and knows
how to work it, if this population depends on a
State that protects and guides it, then how can
the present state of affairs be allowed to
continue?
Except for a few food, lumber and textile
industries, Cuba continues to be primarily a
producer of raw materials. We export sugar to
import candy, we export hides to import shoes,
we export iron to import plows ... Everyone
agrees with the urgent need to industrialize the
nation, that we need steel industries, paper and
chemical industries, that we must improve our
cattle and grain production, the technology and
processing in our food industry in order to
defend ourselves against the ruinous competition
from Europe in cheese products, condensed milk,
liquors and edible oils, and the United States
in canned goods; that we need cargo ships; that
tourism should be an enormous source of revenue.
But the capitalists insist that the workers
remain under the yoke. The State sits back with
its arms crossed and industrialization can wait
forever.
Just as serious or even worse is the housing
problem. There are two hundred thousand huts and
hovels in Cuba; four hundred thousand families
in the countryside and in the cities live
cramped in huts and tenements without even the
minimum sanitary requirements; two million two
hundred thousand of our urban population pay
rents which absorb between one fifth and one
third of their incomes; and two million eight
hundred thousand of our rural and suburban
population lack electricity. We have the same
situation here: if the State proposes the
lowering of rents, landlords threaten to freeze
all construction; if the State does not
interfere, construction goes on so long as
landlords get high rents; otherwise they would
not lay a single brick even though the rest of
the population had to live totally exposed to
the elements. The utilities monopoly is no
better; they extend lines as far as it is
profitable and beyond that point they don't care
if people have to live in darkness for the rest
of their lives. The State sits back with its
arms crossed and the people have neither homes
nor electricity.
Our educational system is perfectly compatible
with everything I've just mentioned. Where the
peasant doesn't own the land, what need is there
for agricultural schools? Where there is no
industry, what need is there for technical or
vocational schools? Everything follows the same
absurd logic; if we don't have one thing we
can't have the other. In any small European
country there are more than 200 technological
and vocational schools; in Cuba only six such
schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs
for their skills. The little rural schoolhouses
are attended by a mere half of the school age
children - barefooted, half-naked and
undernourished - and frequently the teacher must
buy necessary school materials from his own
salary. Is this the way to make a nation great?
Only death can liberate one from so much misery.
In this respect, however, the State is most
helpful - in providing early death for the
people. Ninety per cent of the children in the
countryside are consumed by parasites which
filter through their bare feet from the ground
they walk on. Society is moved to compassion
when it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one
child, but it is indifferent to the mass murder
of so many thousands of children who die every
year from lack of facilities, agonizing with
pain. Their innocent eyes, death already shining
in them, seem to look into some vague infinity
as if entreating forgiveness for human
selfishness, as if asking God to stay His wrath.
And when the head of a family works only four
months a year, with what can he purchase
clothing and medicine for his children? They
will grow up with rickets, with not a single
good tooth in their mouths by the time they
reach thirty; they will have heard ten million
speeches and will finally die of misery and
deception. Public hospitals, which are always
full, accept only patients recommended by some
powerful politician who, in return, demands the
votes of the unfortunate one and his family so
that Cuba may continue forever in the same or
worse condition.
With this background, is it not understandable
that from May to December over a million persons
are jobless and that Cuba, with a population of
five and a half million, has a greater number of
unemployed than France or Italy with a
population of forty million each?
When you try a defendant for robbery, Honorable
Judges, do you ask him how long he has been
unemployed? Do you ask him how many children he
has, which days of the week he ate and which he
didn't, do you investigate his social context at
all? You just send him to jail without further
thought. But those who burn warehouses and
stores to collect insurance do not go to jail,
even though a few human beings may have gone up
in flames. The insured have money to hire
lawyers and bribe judges. You imprison the poor
wretch who steals because he is hungry; but none
of the hundreds who steal millions from the
Government has ever spent a night in jail. You
dine with them at the end of the year in some
elegant club and they enjoy your respect. In
Cuba, when a government official becomes a
millionaire overnight and enters the fraternity
of the rich, he could very well be greeted with
the words of that opulent character out of
Balzac - Taillefer - who in his toast to the
young heir to an enormous fortune, said:
'Gentlemen, let us drink to the power of gold!
Mr. Valentine, a millionaire six times over, has
just ascended the throne. He is king, can do
everything, is above everyone, as all the rich
are. Henceforth, equality before the law,
established by the Constitution, will be a myth
for him; for he will not be subject to laws: the
laws will be subject to him. There are no courts
nor are there sentences for millionaires.'
The nation's future, the solutions to its
problems, cannot continue to depend on the
selfish interests of a dozen big businessmen nor
on the cold calculations of profits that ten or
twelve magnates draw up in their air-conditioned
offices. The country cannot continue begging on
its knees for miracles from a few golden calves,
like the Biblical one destroyed by the prophet's
fury. Golden calves cannot perform miracles of
any kind. The problems of the Republic can be
solved only if we dedicate ourselves to fight
for it with the same energy, honesty and
patriotism our liberators had when they founded
it. Statesmen like Carlos Saladrigas, whose
statesmanship consists of preserving the statu
quo and mouthing phrases like 'absolute freedom
of enterprise,' 'guarantees to investment
capital' and 'law of supply and demand,' will
not solve these problems. Those ministers can
chat away in a Fifth Avenue mansion until not
even the dust of the bones of those whose
problems require immediate solution remains. In
this present-day world, social problems are not
solved by spontaneous generation.
A revolutionary government backed by the people
and with the respect of the nation, after
cleansing the different institutions of all
venal and corrupt officials, would proceed
immediately to the country's industrialization,
mobilizing all inactive capital, currently
estimated at about 1.5 billion pesos, through
the National Bank and the Agricultural and
Industrial Development Bank, and submitting this
mammoth task to experts and men of absolute
competence totally removed from all political
machines for study, direction, planning and
realization.
After settling the one hundred thousand small
farmers as owners on the land which they
previously rented, a revolutionary government
would immediately proceed to settle the land
problem. First, as set forth in the
Constitution, it would establish the maximum
amount of land to be held by each type of
agricultural enterprise and would acquire the
excess acreage by expropriation, recovery of
swampland, planting of large nurseries, and
reserving of zones for reforestation. Secondly,
it would distribute the remaining land among
peasant families with priority given to the
larger ones, and would promote agricultural
cooperatives for communal use of expensive
equipment, freezing plants and unified
professional technical management of farming and
cattle raising. Finally, it would provide
resources, equipment, protection and useful
guidance to the peasants.
A revolutionary government would solve the
housing problem by cutting all rents in half, by
providing tax exemptions on homes inhabited by
the owners; by tripling taxes on rented homes;
by tearing down hovels and replacing them with
modern apartment buildings; and by financing
housing all over the island on a scale
heretofore unheard of, with the criterion that,
just as each rural family should possess its own
tract of land, each city family should own its
own house or apartment. There is plenty of
building material and more than enough manpower
to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we
continue to wait for the golden calf, a thousand
years will have gone by and the problem will
remain the same. On the other hand, today
possibilities of taking electricity to the most
isolated areas on the island are greater than
ever. The use of nuclear energy in this field is
now a reality and will greatly reduce the cost
of producing electricity.
With these three projects and reforms, the
problem of unemployment would automatically
disappear and the task of improving public
health and fighting against disease would become
much less difficult.
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