The USSR is experiencing very serious problems; it is impossible to predict how things will evolve. We hope they evolve in the most positive form possible.
All these events have led to an enormous triumphalism on the part of imperialism, and to skepticism among many progressive forces and a large part of the world’s left-wing forces. There are people who would rather die of opportunism before remembering that they were once members of a communist party, who are afraid of having belonged to a communist party, who are afraid of the immense honour of having belonged to a communist party. Because being a member of a communist party – regardless of the errors that party may have committed – will always be the greatest honour. Belonging to a party of the poor is not the same as joining the parties and clubs of the millionaires and the plunderers. [Applause]
Whatever error Communists can be accused of, they cannot be accused of the exploitation of man by man, or of having supported the exploitation of man by man.
All the things that have occurred have created confusion and a wave of neoliberalism. Other factors have been added to this: the foreign debt and the demands of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the international financial institutions, which state: “If you don’t do this, we won’t give you a cent”, and they are forced to agree.
There are some who believe in neoliberalism, and there are others who have no other choice than to believe in it, because if they don’t they will not get one cent. So there is a wave of privatisation. What is in fashion is privatisation, private enterprise, and market economies. This is a strange new way of terming things; it cannot be easily understood, and you don’t know if those who mention them and repeat them understand what they mean. But market economy, private enterprise, and private property actually have only one name: capitalism, and nothing else. The ideas of socialism are being cast aside as something prehistoric – as if capitalism, colonialism, and neocolonialism were not the truly prehistoric systems, and socialism the genuinely new one.
Some people have said in relation to Cuba: “We want changes”. As if we had not made more changes than anyone else in the last thirty years, as if in thirty years we have not made changes that others have not made in three thousand years. And I have told them: What you want is not for us to change, but for us to change back; and that we will never do! This is the reality. [Applause]
Of course, what many Latin American leaders have had on their minds more than anything is capitalism and neoliberalism, some more than others, in a situation without alternatives.
There is a new language, a lot of talk about social justice and the redistribution of wealth. At a certain moment I asked for the floor to say that when I heard this stated and repeated, I began to have hallucinations: for a few moments I felt like I was at a meeting of leaders of radical left-wing political parties. I added that this was surely the influence of Orozco’s paintings that were on the ceiling of the room where we were meeting, some very revolutionary paintings that were there, but with the imagination of a great painter like Orozco. I said that at any rate I was happy that there was talk of social justice and redistribution of wealth, which perhaps meant that they were gaining awareness. Those were my words, more or less.
There is no doubt that all the political leaders are talking about social justice and the redistribution of wealth; that is not lacking. But I asked myself: Where did injustice come from? Where did inequality come from? Where did poverty come from? Where did underdevelopment come from? Where did all these calamities come from, if not from capitalism? Where did colonialism come from, if not from capitalism? Where did neocolonialism and imperialism come from, if not from capitalism? It would seem that the creators of heaven and earth are to be blamed for the existence of poor people and that the social system has nothing to do with it, that capitalism has nothing to do with it. It’s incredible! This is the language, this is the mentality, this is the doctrine.
To want to resolve these problems through capitalism, in a world that has been divided between extremely rich capitalist countries and the majority of extremely poor countries – precisely as a consequence of capitalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, and imperialism – is an incredible illusion. To think that neoliberal formulas are going to promote the miracle of economic development in our countries is an incredible illusion. It’s like trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
It’s as if we did not know the statistics. There are countries in Latin America where 5 per cent of the population receives up to 50 per cent of the income, and where 30 per cent or 40 per cent of the population receives 10 per cent – an incredible level of inequality and injustice.
All this poverty from which the Latin American countries suffer is the direct result of capitalism. But more and more theories are coming out about how private enterprise generates wealth and how in order to have social justice you have to have capitalism, private enterprise, the market economy, and the pure capitalist system, as pure as in the last century. And they try to conceal all the consequences of this under the phrase “redistribution of wealth”.
They are redistributing a little bit of wealth over there in Europe and in the countries that looted the world. Although these countries have tens of millions of unemployed, they have something to give to the unemployed for a time. But there are many Latin American countries in which the difference in income between one part of the population and the other is forty to one. Capitalism lacks the capacity, the morals, the ethics, and the will to resolve the problems of poverty.
Well now, how many poor people are there in Latin America? According to a conference held just a few months ago in Quito, Ecuador – a conference on poverty – there are 270 million poor in Latin America. Of these, 84 million are destitute. That is the situation in Latin America as a whole. When I speak of Latin America, I speak of it as a whole, although there are important differences between one country and another. There are countries in Latin America that have extraordinary earnings; because their exports are highly valued on the world market they are very rich, while other countries are much poorer. Those with high earnings have a better situation than those with low earnings. Those with large export earnings are less dependent on international financial institutions and have a bit more room to manoeuvre.
But the social calamity is everywhere. There are no less than 20 million homeless children in Latin America; some estimate that there are 30 million homeless children in Latin America’s streets. There are millions of school-age children who work more than eight hours a day.
The number of children throughout Latin America that finish elementary school is 44 for every 100 who enroll. This reminds me of Birán; what is happening now in Latin America used to happen there. There was a little public school, one teacher, no resources, nothing. The parents used to take their children to work in the fields or to do some other thing, or else they did not have clothing or shoes or food to go to school. That is, according to the information that I’ve read, 56 out of every 100 do not make it to sixth grade. You can calculate the percentage that make it to high school. Despite this, millions make it to high school, and then they saturate the universities and afterwards find themselves unemployed. A small fraction of children get to elementary and secondary schools, and despite this there are millions in the universities. This is an explosive force, all these university-educated intellectuals who find themselves unemployed.
The infant mortality rate in Latin America is about 60 per 1,000 live births in the first year of life. The mortality rate for children in the first five years of life – which of course includes those under the age of one – is between 70 and 80 per 1,000. There are countries that have substantially less and there are some that have quite a bit more.
From 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the work force is unemployed or underemployed in Latin America. Malnutrition affects 80 to 100 million people. Life expectancy is less than 70 years on the average, much lower than in the developed
countries.
Our programme of having special schools available to the entire population is something they cannot even dream of. Our family doctor programme would seem like a story told by a traveller from a far-off star. The number of teachers or doctors that we have per capita – they cannot even dream about such things. Instead they have doctors sometimes doing other work that has nothing to do with their profession, such as manual labour.
Matanzas itself is an example of what used to happen. In the past there were about 230 doctors here – I believe it was 236 – and today there are 1,900; there were 116 nurses and today there are 4,000, including nurses and nurses’ aides. Added to this are thousands of technicians, which the health care system did not have in the past.
All these calamities are found in Latin America. All the Latin American capitals are surrounded by slums full of destitute people, and often the number of people who live in shanty towns and favelas in the capital cities is greater than the number who live in normal conditions. All the Latin American capitals are surrounded by slums, without a single exception.
Who is responsible for this? Is capitalism removed from this problem? Are colonialism and neocolonialism removed from it? Is US imperialism removed from this problem? How can they come along now with the formula that what is needed is more capitalism to develop these countries?
We are a country that has depended primarily on sugarcane, we do not have a lot of resources that can be sold throughout the world at any price; we do not have seas of petroleum in our subsoil that give us billions of dollars in income every year. Moreover, our population has nearly as many inhabitants per square kilometre as China does, almost 100 inhabitants per square kilometre. We have to make our living the hard way in our country. Despite this, we export calories for 40 million people in the world. We are now entering into other fields, we are entering into the fields of science, biotechnology, and many other things. We are entering into the field of developing the fabulous natural resources that we have, the beauty of our country and its beaches, which for us has become our petroleum, and we have to make use of them.
There are other fields that we are developing considerably, with the aid of science and technology. We will have to win our place in the world and our economic independence through intelligence and tenacity; in difficult conditions we have no other choice. With the catastrophe in Eastern Europe, with the USSR going through enormous difficulties, with imperialism more triumphalist than ever, with neoliberalism in fashion, with the imperialists imposing an ever more rigid blockade on us – under these conditions we have to make our own way. This is our most sacred and most basic duty if we want to have a nation, if we want to protect not just the conquests of our revolution but also the sovereignty and independence of this country, which we have worked so hard to achieve.
We are a country with scant resources, yet none of these phenomena that I mentioned exist in Cuba. In Cuba the infant mortality rate last year was 10.7 per 1,000 live births, which is better than the rate in many developed countries; last year’s mortality rate for children under five was 14. These are impressive statistics. Our life expectancy is about 76 years of age and rising.
Illiteracy disappeared some time ago. Nearly 100 per cent of the children who enter elementary school finish; more than 90 per cent of those of age are in secondary school. Workers in some provinces, like Matanzas, average a tenth-grade education.
We do not have slums, as a rule, except for very isolated cases that arise despite our efforts. The phenomenon of malnutrition is insignificant here; undernourished children show up in hospitals due to some illness, or because of family neglect.
It cannot be said that there are no jobs for those who want to work in this country, even during the special period, because there are always a lot of things to be done, even when we lack raw materials in the factories.
Even during the special period, more than twenty thousand university graduates have been given jobs: engineers, economists, agronomists, and others. Just in the area of engineering and economics there are about eight thousand graduates, and we already know where every one of them will go to work. It is very possible that they are not needed now in our factories, but we are not leaving them out in the street; we are putting them alongside another engineer so they keep learning, acquiring experience, so that we have a reserve of engineers and technicians. Our society, which is based on human solidarity, will not put anyone out on the street, it will not leave a single graduate unemployed. We distribute what we have and that is socialism, that is social justice, distributing what we have. [Applause] If we have a lot we can distribute a lot, and if we have little we distribute a little, but we distribute what we have, we do not abandon anyone.
There is not a single abandoned mother in this country, either because she is a single mother or has had one or two children – and some have even had up to seven children, which shows a great lack of responsibility. But the state does not let those seven children go hungry; they are all given social security and are cared for.
All workers are protected by social security. The whole population has the right to free health care – even if they need a heart transplant – and the right to education. That is socialism.
Of course, we have declared ourselves enemies of the big monopolies and enemies of the empire, and they will not forgive us for that. How can they forgive the fact that a small country that throughout history they thought they had in their hands, like a ripe apple that falls from the tree, has made a social revolution? They will do everything possible to erase from history this revolutionary process, this example. They will not resign themselves to it.
But that makes two of us who are not going to resign ourselves. They are not going to resign themselves to the revolution and we are never going to resign ourselves to returning to the past. We will never resign ourselves to becoming a neocolony again or a US possession, never! [Applause] We will see which of these two is the most tenacious and which of the two is stronger. [Shouts of “We are!”]
Latin America is in a dilemma. The problem of Latin America and the Caribbean is not an easy one. There are 446 million inhabitants and within twenty-five years this figure will be 800 million – equal to the current population of India – with all those problems that I spoke about. And there are outstanding political leaders in these countries’ governments and other public figures I have met who understand these problems.
Latin America has no alternative but to integrate, to unite. That is what the founders of these republics always dreamed of, that was Bolivar’s essential dream,22 and almost a hundred years later, that of Marti.
That was logical, and for this reason I did not mince words at the meeting. Thinking of the history of this hemisphere since the struggles for independence, I stated: “We could have been everything, yet we are nothing”. I was referring to the comparison between the divided, Balkanised Latin America of today in the face of a very powerful and increasingly protectionist European Economic Community; in the face of a power like Japan, which is also very powerful economically and increasingly protectionist; and the United States, the third great economic power among the rich developed countries that control all the world’s gold and foreign exchange and run the international credit institutions.
In the face of this new international situation, the number one concern of the United States more and more is its competition with Europe, Japan, and its other partners. It therefore wants to ensure that Latin America remains its backyard, and this is why it launched the so-called Initiative for the Americas. This initiative clashes with the vital and indispensable integration of Latin America because it is based on a series of bilateral accords with the purpose of developing neocolonial trade relations characterised, fundamentally, by unequal terms of trade. They are looking for cheap labour and raw materials for their capital.
The development of this kind of policy clashes with the idea of trade among the Latin A
merican nations and Latin America’s economic integration, which is its only possible salvation. Trade among the Latin American countries is insignificant: in 1970 it accounted for 12 per cent of exports; now it is 13 per cent. In contrast, trade among the great economic powers and the great economic blocs is growing constantly.
This initiative threatens Latin America’s integration and threatens to integrate Latin America into the economy of the United States, which is the worst off of the three blocs. No one should imagine that the United States is a bed of roses from the economic point of view. It has become a country incapable of competing; it cannot compete with Europe and it cannot compete with Japan. Within Europe, one of the powers defeated in World War II – Germany – is the most powerful country. Japan, another defeated country, is very powerful.
A US television journalist who interviewed me – he said he wanted to ask me about sports but he spoke very little about sports and the rest was about politics – was telling me that the USSR had been ruined by the arms race with the United States. I told him, it’s not just the USSR. The USSR may be the first to be ruined, but you will be the second, because you are also in ruins. Don’t sing victory songs, I told him. [Applause]
Now, what is happening in the United States? Allow me to continue a bit with this idea so as to make it clear. The United States used to be the centre of capitalism, the richest, the most competitive of all countries. Following World War II it enjoyed complete begemony. And now it has lost these positions. In many important industries such as automobiles, chemicals, electronics, steel, and others it has lost the position it once had, which has been taken up by competitors.
In the years following the war, the rate of return on invested capital was as high as 24 per cent. For capitalism, the rate of return on investment is very important, because this is the money available to continue investing and developing. In the 1950s the rate of return was 24 per cent, and now it is about a third of that, about 8 per cent.
How Far We Slaves Have Come Page 5