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FIDEL AT THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
‘We have an adversary powerful in
technology and armaments, but a total orphan in
terms of ideas’
BY MARIA JULIA MAYORAL AND LOURDES PEREZ-Granma
daily staff writers-
“WE have the tranquility of
being prepared on every terrain to confront any
aggression. Enormous trenches of stone can be united
with enormous trenches of idea at the precise and
exact moment at which imperialism is condemned to an
insoluble crisis,” affirmed President Fidel Castro
yesterday, speaking during the Cuban National
Assembly debate, which approved a declaration
against the new measures designed to provoke the
rapid end of the Revolution implemented by the U.S.
government.
“They forget,” he noted,
“that our people defeated the criminals who governed
here with more than 100,000 men under arms. Today
Cuba has millions of weapons and millions of people
who know how to use them, well-prepared officers and
chiefs, hundreds of thousands of university
graduates, close to one million intellectuals and a
people with the highest political culture in the
world.
“We know that we have an
enemy powerful in technology and armaments, but a
total orphan in ideas. I am in no doubt that this
empire is not going to have the duration of the
Roman one; the rate and the velocity at which events
are occurring in these times and the point that the
planet has reached give me total certainty of that,”
stated the president of the Councils of State and
Ministers.
The declaration, unanimously
approved, was presented by Ricardo Alarcón,
president of the National Assembly.
During the session, with the
presence of First Vice President of the Council of
State and General of the Army Raúl Castro, deputies
also advocated the circulation and discussion of the
imperialist plans by all means possible.
Many expressed their
condemnation of the infamous measures approved and
put into practice by the Bush administration.
Dr. Agustín Lage qualified
this new Yankee brainchild as a perverse plan, that
likewise militates against scientific labors being
developed in Cuba, commenting that dozens of U.S.
researchers wishing to attend important
international medical events here have recently been
denied travel permits to do so.
Osvaldo Martínez, president
of the Parliamentary Economics Commission, referred
to the chapters of the report that conceive of our
country as a subsidiary of Florida and a Puerto Rico
on its knees, with a previously appointed colonial
administrator to undertake the so-called transition.
He explained that the intention is to privatize
everything as rapidly as possible. This aggression,
he stated, is an insult to the intelligence and
culture attained by the Cubans.
With its obsessions, the
Washington plan gives prime place to the return of
properties to their former owners, above and beyond
any humane considerations. Moreover, it acknowledges
that the process of such a transition would be slow,
painful and politically sensitive, affirmed the
likewise director of the Center for Research into
the World Economy.
The measures recently passed
in the United States are part of promises by Bush to
the pro-Batista and annexationist mafia who brought
him to power, stated journalist and youth leader
Randy Alonso.
Deputy Nieves Alemañy,
representative of the Cuban Women’s Federation,
expressed that nobody can bring their stories or
lies about a “free Cuba” to that sector of the
population. “Today we are playing leading roles in a
revolutionary project, in which Cuban women
represent 66.1% of the country’s technical and
professional work force, and we enjoy rights that we
are not disposed to losing to satisfy the cravings
of this ultra-right clique,” she confirmed.
Reverend Raúl Suárez pointed
to the wide gulf between the peace and justice-based
pastoral vocation and the petition for “help” the
document presents to the church in order to
manipulate awareness, separate families, destroy the
economy and drive the masses to desperation. “We do
not have the vocation of Judas; the evangelical
churches have cast in our lot with the Cuban people,”
he emphasized.
Another deputy and pastor,
Sergio Arce, appealed to the condition of devout and
Christian believer that Bush claims to espouse, for
a proper understanding of the concept of the family.
He said that the head of the White House dreams in a
delirious way of being the substitute for God, but
that satanic undertaking is an impossible one to
fulfill.
Armando Hart, director of
the José Martí Program Office, warned of the dangers
of this diabolical annexationist plan not only for
Cuba, but for the entire world. “Be careful, Mr.
Bush,” the deputy affirmed, adding: “Cuba is not
alone; don’t go looking for another Viet Nam in the
Caribbean in the 21st century.”
City Historian Eusebio Leal
emphasized the importance of a closer rapprochement
with the U.S. intelligentsia and people, where there
are important human values. These measures by the
current U.S. administration, he affirmed, “are the
most defiant of all the aggressions throughout
history against our people from an arrogant state. |
