Image via the PCC
Powerful excerpt from the end of the rousing 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 Second Ordinary Period of Sessions of the National Assembly of People's Power in its X Legislature on December 22, 2023, "Year 65 of the Revolution". We have translated it from the Spanish:
The presidency of the Group of 77 and China, which Cuba assumed in January, has demanded a great effort from our institutions and the country in general. It reflects our commitment to defending the causes of the countries of the Global South and the willingness to mobilize energies in the effort to ensure the most effective representation of the interests of developing nations in the international arena.
It has demonstrated the authority and leadership of Cuban diplomacy, its adherence to principles, the promotion of dialogue and cooperation, and its ability to build consensus and defend the unity of developing countries in the multiple multilateral events that have occurred during the year.
We will continue to denounce very firmly the massacre committed today by Israel, the occupying power, against the Palestinian people. I reiterate today that Cuba will never be among the indifferent, we will always defend the right to self-determination of that heroic people and to have an independent and sovereign State, with the pre-1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
To do this, the impunity that the U.S. guarantees to Israel must end! The genocide must stop! For a free Palestine, Cuba's voice will always be raised...
Before concluding, I ask for a loud round of applause to congratulate and recognize Cuban educators on their day (prolonged applause). For those who are here, and there are more than a few, and for all those who have exercised or are exercising the beautiful profession of teaching, aware that they have in their hands the most transcendental and important work of society: the formation of future generations.
In the first place, let this congratulations for Educator's Day reach the literacy educators (Applause), and along with them, the grateful applause for those who have resisted, steadfastly, the difficulties, shortcomings and even the insensibilities of those who forget that to be a teacher is to be a creator. Thank you very much to all of you who support with your work and dedication one of the fundamental pillars of the work of the Revolution! (Applause.)
This is the Revolution! When we say that phrase, which sums up 65 years of heroic creation, we think, first of all, of Health and Education. These are two arms of the immense, fundamental, basic work, on which we build, against all odds, the ideal of a nation that has the human being at the center of its concerns. And it will always have it, because there will always be the Revolution, which is what it was made for!
Because the nation admires and recognizes the role and place of health and education workers for its present and future, they will be the first to benefit from additional payments, something that the Prime Minister announced in his speech.
On the threshold of a transcendent commemoration: the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, Cuba will bid farewell to the year with the joy that not even the worst gales of nature or empire have been able to take away from us.
Let's celebrate our willingness to change what must be changed in order to maintain and overcome the social conquests that the Revolution turned into people's rights!
Let's celebrate our independence, our sovereignty and our freedom!
This is the Revolution of Fidel, of Raúl, of Ramiro, of Guillermo, of Machado, of the heroic Generation of the Centennial of the birth of the Apostle, whose ideas continue to inspire us, and it is the Revolution of all of us who are in this room to assert the will of the heroic, dignified and rebellious people that we are honored to represent!
A few days ago, rereading a speech by the Commander in Chief with the university students, on the occasion of the proximity of the anniversary of the FEU, I found some words that could explain the mystery of this Revolution that has survived 65 years of siege and threats of all kinds, without losing its dreams and hopes for a better possible world.
Fidel said on December 20, 1982: "Revolutionaries have always been accused of wanting impossible things, of wanting utopian things. Martí was once accused of being a dreamer, and Martí replied that today's dreams will be the laws of the future. It has generally been argued that such tasks were unachievable, impossible; But in my life as a revolutionary, I can say that what is achieved is often above dreams."
So, together let us make possible the dream of defeating the policy of persecution and encirclement of Cuba, and the ideal of prosperity for the people, which has moved Cuban revolutionaries of all times. Let's make dreams and even impossible things possible!...
This is the Revolution, the invincible idea that all dreams are realizable!
This is the Revolution, that of your dignified Cuban people!
Then the will to work, the eagerness to advance, the willingness to improve and the deep conviction that we are going to win prevail!
Homeland or Death!
We shall overcome! (Shouts of "We will win!" and "Long live the Cuban Revolution!")