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 closing of the XII Congress of the Union of Young Communists, April 5, 2024 in Havana. Translated from the Spanish.
Comrades of the Historic Generation;
Commanders of the Revolution Ramiro and Guillermo;
Commander of the Rebel Army Machado;
Comrades of the Presidency;
Dear young people:
How right Fidel was to believe in young people!
Let me begin by thanking you for the depth and joy of this Congress. I believe that the quality of the debates and the documents that motivated them make a long speech unnecessary, but at the same time they inspire us to add some very specific evaluations, with the deep feeling of being part of you, something that happens to all of us who were militants and carried out leadership tasks in the Young Communist League in other times.
You create happiness, as you have set out to do. Even in these difficult and challenging times, when the population segment that is growing the least in our society is those under 30 years of age; when Cuban children and youth live and develop under the harsh conditions of a country surrounded, persecuted, punished, mainly in the economy, but also in their dreams and hopes.
Against the imperial logic that tries to absorb you, to empty you, to surrender you and make you deny your fate and your history, you advance in revolutionary logic: you analyze, discuss, criticize and recognize, propose and transform the most complex reality, but you do not stop singing, dancing, laughing. You, those who won the right to be in this 12th Congress, are the vanguard of a joyful and profound youth defined by Che Guevara in a memorable phrase.
That vanguard, still imperfect, like the society we are building, but also like it, passionate and fighting, is the one that has the responsibility to unite and motivate the new generations.
And they have done so. Today we can say with healthy and legitimate pride that young Cubans have found their Moncada and attack it every day (Applause).
This is confirmed by the summary of the Central Report to the Congress, read by Aylín. I am not going to list all the tasks, I will just name some of the feats of these recent years, full of challenges, but also of exploits, almost all of them carried out by young people, even if they were led by Cubans of other generations.
You have said it and it is already a memory of this Congress: that young people are the majority, as are women, in the universe of researchers and creators of Cuban vaccines and COVID-19 treatment protocols.
There are very young students and other volunteers who chose the red zone to support the fight against the pandemic; who risked or lost their lives as rescuers and firefighters in the terrible accidents at Saratoga and the Supertanker Depot in Matanzas; who went to heal the wounds of the cyclones in the most remote areas; who courageously confronted the violence induced by the opponents of the Revolution in the streets.
There are hundreds of thousands of young people who daily participate in the defense of the homeland; they are involved in production processes in factories, industries and service activities; those who contribute with their work to the production of food, exports of tobacco, honey and coffee, among others; demobilized members of active military service who join in working the land; those who build; those who exalt the pedagogical work in the classrooms; those who attend to the population in the Health institutions; the young jurists who assume responsibilities in the prosecutor's offices and courts at different levels; those who participate in the design of economic strategies; those who lead the battle of ideas on social media; those who fight diplomatic battles; those who serve as delegates in the districts of People's Power; those who with their artistic talent enrich the culture of the nation; those who add medals to the national sport; those who as doctors of the soul devote themselves to social work in the neighborhoods; those who develop important projects of digital transformation, local development and productive enterprises. That is the Cuban youth!
Here we have discussed, without euphemisms, the painful reality of a mostly young emigration that, amid economic difficulties, material shortages and the mirage of a "good capitalism" -- non-existent, as we already know -- believes or feels that the high level of education acquired in Cuban socialism will not be able to lead to personal success in their homeland.
We are not going to discuss the relativity of those aspirations or to deny those sons and daughters of Cuba who chose another destiny for the rest of their lives, because today is the time to talk about those who are here and now, those who sustain the country, the Revolution and the dream of what we do and will do in the future, facing, like all the Cuban people, the economic needs imposed on us, in the first place, by the genocidal blockade that a U.S. president decreed 62 years ago and a dozen successors have steadily tightened, with the sole purpose of overthrowing the Revolution that tore off the chains of the infamous neo-colony.
The U.S. blockade is directed against all the people, but especially against the youth who are at the age of dreaming and projecting the future, with its terrible consequences for the country, including the encouragement of emigration, which has taken with it so many friends and relatives and, with them, dear pieces of the nation that we are.
The great merit of the Cuban youth who live, study and work here, in the midst of transportation problems, blackouts, inflation and other ills associated with problems of our own inadequacies, is that they rise above all that and go out every day to fight to make Cuba a better country.
And you will do it! We know that it will be better because you will not allow it to be otherwise, and because, from the times of Céspedes until today, young Cubans have proven themselves to be the best revolutionaries. Not only because they defend the Cuban State or defend the legacy of Martí, Fidel, Raúl and all those who have shed their blood for Cuba, they are also revolutionaries because they are good citizens, good people, good friends, good children.
They are revolutionaries because they recognize the daily difficulties and they face them and try to change them, and they achieve this many times by working, fighting and participating.
They are revolutionaries because they strive to do their duty.
They are revolutionaries because in spite of everything they continue dancing, smiling and loving, because they accept each other as they are, without discrimination and without the old prejudices already defeated by the Revolution; because they defended the Family Code as their own and are committed to all just causes, the struggles of the peoples for their sovereignty, as well as feminist, anti-racist or anti-homophobic struggles, as well as the fight against corruption and addictions.
They are revolutionaries because they enjoy to the fullest the games and victories of Cuban baseball teams and other sports without denying themselves the pleasure of following international soccer with the passion of fans. They continue to enjoy Cuban music in the midst of the wave of consumption of products imposed by cultural globalization.
They are revolutionaries because they welcome with open arms those who respect and love Cuba, but they clench their fists and wield their rifles against those who try to harm us.
They are revolutionaries because they are good human beings and they want what is best for their people, for Cuba, for the homeland and for the socialist Revolution; they want what is best for everyone in Cuba! (Applause).
And they are revolutionaries, in the broadest sense of the word, because they are neither broad nor alien to today's world, plagued by uncertainty and in need of changes in favor of peace, cooperation and solidarity; because they share José Martí's ideal that homeland is humanity.
They are revolutionaries, in short, because they know that capitalism has no answer to the pressing problems of humanity and they are capable of understanding and facing with intelligence and knowledge the cultural battle that this era imposes on us.
They do not ignore or underestimate the programs of imperial colonization that, with their powerful mechanisms of symbolic production and reproduction, worship lies, banality and vulgarity, hiding our truths, kidnapping consciences, imposing tastes, denying identities, annihilating, little by little, the rich diversity of peoples and annulling authentic leaderships through the assassination of reputations.
When hate speech, discrimination and exclusion overflow from these platforms; when neo-McCarthyism is reborn with force in some countries and neo-fascist manifestations bring together growing social segments; when war is once again the pretext of the imperialist elites to favor the Military Industrial Complex, it is necessary to be alert and mobilize.
That moment is now, when the Palestinian people, victims of a war of extermination that has lasted 75 years, summons us, with their heroic resistance, to stop the barbarism that the Israeli government is carrying out in the Gaza Strip with the complicity of other powerful states. I therefore welcome and share the declaration of this Congress against the criminal Zionist escalation, cynically supported by the U.S. Government every time it vetoes the majority will of the peoples of the world to put an end to genocide.
It is unavoidable for Cuba to reiterate, as widely as possible, the strongest condemnation of the extermination perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
As we have said before, to remain silent in the face of the massacre of more than 30,000 civilians in the Gaza Strip in the last six months, mostly women and children, is not only unacceptable, it is incompatible with human dignity!
Dear young Cubans:
Raúl, one of the youngest members of the Centennial Generation, has reminded us many times that young people are more like their time than their parents. The Revolution has the enormous challenge of sustaining and defending the work that our parents won for us on our feet, in the manner and style of each generation determined to continue it.
And why the Revolution, ask some who continue to see the revolutionary process as a goal already defeated. The Revolution is an immense work and at the same time it is the path, it is the means, it is the way to sustain the ideal of a Cuba with all and for the good of all and to consolidate the socialist alternative, which does not bet on money over human beings, nor condemns people to live under the rule of the market. Even in the worst circumstances, under siege and threats, it bets on the full development of the enormous potential of human beings and on the path that leads to the highest possible degree of social justice.
The last years and months have been a powerful school on that road. Cuba has had to face the colossal challenges of the pandemic and post-pandemic world with an intensified 62-year blockade, 243 additional measures and its inclusion in a list of countries sponsoring terrorism, as a brake and a wall to all efforts.
Incidentally, while this meeting was being prepared, the congressmen who receive Washington's hefty salaries for legislating against Cuba were approving new measures to damage the country's potential income from the export of services. And a few days before, another European bank was sanctioned for providing loans to Cuba.
We call it economic warfare and I don't think it takes much evidence to qualify the set of actions with which they intend to suffocate the people in order to generate a social explosion in a perverse and increasingly less covert way. But if an academic criterion were needed to sustain our denunciation, I would refer to a talented young Cuban researcher, Elier Ramírez Cañedo, already recognized for his studies on the United States-Cuba conflict.
In an enlightening article published in 2017, on the cultural war against Cuba, which advances in parallel with the economic aggression, Elier revealed: "Recently a document of extraordinary importance was released to understand the current strategies of the United States Government in the field of cultural warfare. It is the White Paper of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command of March 2015 under the title: Special Operations Forces Support to Political Warfare.
"The essence of this White Paper is that the United States should take up the idea of George F. Kennan -former U.S. expert on the Soviet issue and architect of the policy of 'containment of communism' in the State Department- about the need to overcome the limitation of the concept that establishes a basic difference between war and peace, in an international scenario where there is a 'perpetual rhythm of struggle in and out of war'. In other words, war is permanent, although it adopts multiple facets and cannot be limited to the use of traditional military resources. In fact, the document states that there are much more effective ways of waging war. That it is possible to wage war without having declared it, and even to wage war while declaring peace.
"'Political war is an appropriate strategy for achieving U.S. national objectives by reducing visibility in the international geopolitical environment and without committing large numbers of military forces,' the document emphasizes this from its opening pages. 'The ultimate objective of political warfare,' it continues later, 'is to win the war of ideas, which is not associated with hostilities.' Political warfare requires the cooperation of the armed services, aggressive diplomacy, economic warfare and subversive agencies on the ground in the promotion of such policies, measures or actions necessary to disrupt or fabricate morale."
Economic warfare, cultural warfare, political warfare. I do not think there is a better way to synthesize and define the complex and criminal web of hostile actions against a small country that only aspires to overcome the burdens of underdevelopment, maintaining its independence, sovereignty and relations of mutual respect with its powerful neighbor.
Young people like Elier and so many others that we continually meet during visits to provinces and academic institutions have in their hands the most formidable weapons in this battle for the truth about Cuba, and I believe that they are the ones who can best explain to their contemporaries why the Revolution, why socialism, and also why the blockade.
Fundamentally, the cadres of the Young Communist League who today took office here and earlier in the provinces and municipalities, and the representatives of the youth and student organizations are summoned to study and multiply their knowledge on these crucial issues for the defense of the Cuban nation from the perspective of the youth.
Along with the Active Military Service, which has grown again with the Women's Voluntary Military Service, cultural and political preparation is key. The revolutionary processes that forgot the importance of the integral formation of their youth, the solidity of knowledge and the permanent debate on the current affairs of the country and the world, did not survive oblivion.
No one will be able to tell the reality of their country or illustrate the transcendence of the feats inscribed in its history as the young people who reach them through study, research and the memories of people from other times. And they tell them with the languages, the aesthetics, the means and the ways they know best because they are those of their time, increasingly dynamic in its development.
Someone asked me, on the eve of the Congress, how I think the Young Communist League should be today. The answer is in everything that has been discussed and agreed upon in this Congress, in the magnificent Report that describes without paternalism or formalities the complexity of society, of the times and of the youth itself, and it is, above all, in the youthful energies that the vanguards unleash by making their own Revolution every day.
To be vanguard is to be the first in everything: the first to do and the first to demand that it be done!
A vanguard youth organization, in Cuba, has to carry with it the symbols and the history that brought them here; but it also has the unavoidable duty to add new chapters to that history and new symbols to the communication with its bases.
Those who saved the homeland with their vaccines, those who entered the red zone during COVID-19, the heroes of the Saratoga rescue or the Matanzas fire, the young health professionals who went to other countries to save lives during the pandemic, have earned a place in the history of the country in these years of creative resistance, which has allowed us to survive under the most brutal version of the blockade. They are also our heroes and our new symbols! (Applause).
In two years it will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fidel, the most illustrious and victorious disciple of José Martí and of the great Cuban, Latin American and universal heroes.
Cuba and the world will wonder what the new generations did with the extraordinary legacy of heroism and dedication of those who assaulted the Moncada with more dreams of justice than rifles. Representing the vanguard of Cuban youth in the answer to that question is a great challenge and entails a high responsibility.
But I see no more inspiring and challenging task than to propose to be worthy heirs of the thought and action of Fidel, eternally young and eternally rebellious, forever leader of the generation that changed the history of Cuba and who still accompanies us with his powerful message of unity.
With particular emotion the Army General recalled on January 1st of this year that from Fidel he learned: "the decisive importance of unity; not to lose one's serenity and confidence in triumph, no matter how insurmountable the powerful obstacles of one's enemies or great the dangers may seem; to learn and draw strength from each setback until it becomes victory."
Never forget these lessons. In them is enclosed the victorious history of 65 years of Socialist Revolution 90 miles from the empire.
Congratulations to the newly elected Bureau of the Young Communist League!
The challenges remain enormous, but the Revolution believes in the youth!
Always onward to victory!
Socialism or Death!
Homeland or Death!
We will win! (Exclamations of: "We shall overcome!")
This work was translated and shared via a License CC-BY-NC.