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Hysteria versus history

• Hassan Pérez’ counter-reply at the 5th UN General Assembly

Mr. President,

Your Excellencies:

Hassan Pérez I am a student of history who, like the other comrades present at this morning session, has the privilege of representing the people of Cuba in this 54th session. Moreover, I have the honor of being one of the 601 deputies who, in open and entirely free elections, were elected with the participation of the people; and the honor of presiding over the Federation of University Students, an organization founded in 1922 and which has 70,000 members in 47 centers of higher education.

You will therefore understand that in my speech, I will not be playing word games or hiding behind diplomatic phrases in order to transmit my ideas. I am going to state the truth, in a bare and direct manner. As I see it.

I have listened, with shock and indignation, to how the history of a people can be crudely distorted and manipulated. If you would allow me a word of advice from the viewpoint of a young person who, like his people, possesses an infinite vocation for the truth, I would like to suggest to the gentlemen who defend the blockade that they re-register in one of the U.S. universities in order to obtain credits in contemporary history. After listening to what has been stated, I am convinced that they need it.

Once again, the unbridled and fleeting hysteria repeated throughout nine administrations has been brought into this hall. We have not heard one single word here that could refute the conclusive arguments, backed up by concrete truths and quotes from declassified U.S. documents, presented by the foreign minister of my country here today.

This world in which we live, full of inconceivable paradoxes, has witnessed how the United States, while failing to pay its dues to the United Nations, manipulates it daily. In the global tragedy humanity is enduring, those accusing Cuba have applied unilateral sanctions against 75 countries, and bombard and launch missiles against sovereign nations whenever they feel like it.

In the case of Cuba, the illegitimacy of the blockade—and I would like to emphasize that it is not an embargo but a blockade and, additionally, to ask the U.S. representative to explain in what legislation the sale of and commercial operations related to food and medicines is authorized—has been recognized by the UN General Assembly on seven consecutive occasions as a totally illegal act, as was recalled this morning. That vote has become the international community’s unquestionable testament of rejection of that policy, a rejection which is similarly reflected in the growing demand by large sectors of U.S. society to lift the blockade, as well as for a radical change in the U.S. government’s attitude to Cuba.

Academics, religious groups, trade unions and the business sector, as well as the press and all those who perceive the blockade as absurd, have been joined by important members of the U.S. Congress who, in many cases, have presented solid initiatives in order to radically modify that policy.

The fact that the country—my country—is moving ahead, indicated by the 6% growth rate during the first six months of this year; that the infant mortality rate in Cuba stands at six per 1000 live births; that Cuba has health and educational levels comparable with the most developed countries; that even in the hardest moments not a single child, woman, elderly or disabled person has been abandoned, is even more revealing of our truth. These realities give the most absolute lie to the U.S. government’s allegations. Could the U.S. government say the same in relation to its dirty war against Cuba with its thousands of victims, in relation to the hundreds of planned attacks on our political leaders, in relation to a blockade which not only violates international law and attempts to impose extraterritorial laws approved in Washington on the rest of the world, but which is a proven act of genocide against the Cuban people? Could it be that in its attempts at self-justification this afternoon, aimed at justifying the unjustifiable, the U.S. delegation has revealed to us its government’s intentions in relation to any country that refuses to bow down to its designs within the new and utterly unprincipled order it is trying to design?

The United States talks of promoting people-to-people contact. In the case of human rights, it is outrageous that the most formidable violators that the world has ever seen should speak in those terms. The United States has the largest prison population on the planet and a differentiated racial standard in the application of the death penalty and other penal sentences. This is the country of police brutality, of the commercialization of politics, of the repression of immigrants. In this city and in the rest of the country, institutionalized corruption is referred to as "soft money," and those who govern it want us to believe that multimillionaires and the homeless have equal rights. That is totally laughable. Here the infant mortality rate in the black population is double that of the white.

Those who present themselves as the universal champions of democracy are forgetting that they have gained their political positions on minority percentages of the population, by converting electoral campaigns into one of the most prosperous and juicy businesses there is these days, with hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for each term. How many medicines, computers, foodstuffs for our schools, hospitals for the Cuban population and the rest of the Third World could be acquired with that money?

The Cuban people can speak in this plenary session with a dignity higher than that of the Twin Towers, because it has understood how to build a society where the exercise of an everyday and genuine democracy has become our principal emblem. Democracy is understood as the government of the people, and for us means exercising the mandate of 11 million Cubans.

I believe that the honorable U.S. representative would be unable to comprehend that the Cuban Parliament is made up of students, artists, campesinos, athletes, academics, scientists and doctors, who make a daily effort to represent our people without receiving one single cent. Such a panorama is inconceivable for the many persons who annually fatten their private accounts, billions of dollars dispersed in banks throughout the world.

How can one attempt to accuse of human rights violations and of being undemocratic a country that has trained thousands of professionals from underdeveloped countries in its classrooms; which has sent tens of thousands of its young people to Africa and Latin America to contribute to eradicating illiteracy, or to save countless human lives; a country that has welcomed like its own sons and daughters more than 2000 young Latin Americans, to prepare them, free of charge, to work as doctors in their indigenous communities? We think that as long as there exists one iota of common sense—and we are certain that the human species could never lose that sense—the country which should be judged is the one where one million individuals live in the subway tunnels, where 43 million citizens lack medical insurance, where 17 million women have suffered sexual assault and where there are thousands of mentally ill people in prison, the country responsible for arms sales costing millions of lives every year.

Finally, we would like to reiterate that when our people proclaim that the U.S. blockade constitutes an act of genocide—a charge supported by international law, whose conventions attesting to that I have in my power—we are not only charging those who have assaulted us throughout these years, but on behalf of the many people in this world who have the courage of free and independent peoples we are also accusing the country that has intervened in the Americas with its Marines on over 40 occasions and that has backed military dictatorships that killed thousands of human beings; the country responsible for the death of four million human beings in Viet Nam; the country which, since its establishment as a nation, exterminated populations that had been living in those regions for hundreds of years; the country that stole over two million square kilometers from Mexico; and the country which, during World War II, interned 100,000 Japanese living in the United States who had not committed any crime, only because they were potentially suspicious.

If humanity was capable of condemning the fascist criminals responsible for the loss of more than 50 million human beings’ lives at Nuremberg, it is likewise capable of condemning the authors of these aberrations.

Thank you very much.

SPEECH GIVEN BY THE CUBAN MINISTER OF FOREIGN RELATIONS AT THE 54TH SESSION OF THE
UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

Reply by Peter Burleigh, U.S. permanent alternate representative to the UN