On
February 4, 1962, just a little over three years since his victory in
the Cuban Revolution, and less than a year after the failed
American-supported Bay of Pigs invasion by his opponents, Fidel
Castro issued his Second Declaration of Havana. This document is
significant in that it unambiguously declared Castro's intent to
continue revolutionary activities in Latin America with a goal of
defeating American and "imperialist" power over what he saw as the
oppressed people of the Americas. Below is
the English-language version of Fidel Castro's Second Declaration of
Havana -------------------- "The people
most vitally concerned with preventing the imperialist
annexation of Cuba, which would make Cuba the starting point of
that course which must be blocked and which we are blocking with our
blood-of annexation of our American nations to the violent and brutal
North which despises them, are being hindered by lesser and
public commitments from the open and avowed espousal of this
sacrifice, which is being made for our and their benefit. "I have
lived inside the monster and know its guts; and my sling is the sling
of David." In 1895,
Marti already pointed out the danger hovering over America and called
imperialism by its name: imperialism. He pointed out to the
people of Latin America that more than anyone, they had a stake
in seeing that Cuba did not succumb to the greed of the Yankee,
scornful of the peoples of Latin America. And with his own blood,
shed for Cuba and America, he wrote the words which posthumously, in
homage to his memory, the people of Cuba place at the head of this
declaration. Humiliation Sixty-seven
years have passed. Puerto Rico was converted into a colony and is
still a colony saturated with military bases. Cuba also fell into the
Clutches of imperialism. Their troops occupied our territory. The
Platt Amendment was imposed on our first constitution, as a
humiliating clause which sanctioned the odious right of foreign
intervention. Our riches passed into their hands, our history was
falsified, our government and our politics were entirely molded in
the interests of the overseers; the nation was subjected to
sixty years of political, economic, and cultural
suffocation. But Cuba
rose, Cuba was able to redeem itself from the bastard
guardianship. Cuba broke the chains which tied its fortunes to
those of the imperialist oppressor, redeemed its riches,
reclaimed its culture, and unfurled its banner as the Free Territory
of America. Now the
United States will never again be able to use Cuba's strength against
America, but conversely, dominating the majority of the other Latin
American states, the United States is attempting to use the strength
of America against Cuba. What is the
history of Cuba but the history of Latin America? And what is the
history of Latin America but the history of Asia, Africa, and
Oceania? And what is the history of all these peoples but the history
of the most pitiless and cruel exploitation by imperialism throughout
the world? At the end
of the last and the beginning of the present century, a handful of
economically developed nations had finished partitioning the world
among themselves, subjecting to its economic and political domination
two-thirds of humanity, which was thus forced to work for the ruling
classes of the economically advanced capitalist
countries. The
historical circumstances which permitted certain European countries
and the United States of America to attain a high level of industrial
development placed them in a position to subject the rest of
the world to their domination and exploitation. What
motives compelled the expansion of the industrial powers? Were they
moral motives? Was it a matter of "civilizing," as they claimed? No:
They were economic reasons. Since the
discovery of America, which hurled the European conquerors across the
seas to occupy and exploit the lands and inhabitants of other
continents, the fundamental motive for their conduct was the
desire for riches. The discovery of America itself was carried out in
search of shorter routes to the Orient whose goods were highly paid
for in Europe. A new
social class, the merchants and the producers of manufactured
articles for commerce, arose from the womb of the feudal society of
lords and serfs in the decline of the Middle Ages. The thirst
for gold was the motive which spurred the efforts of that new class.
The desire for gain was the incentive for its conduct throughout
history. With the growth of manufacturing and commerce, its social
influence also grew. The productive forces which were developing in
the womb of feudal society clashed more and more with the
relationships of servitude characteris tic of feudalism, with its laws, its
institutions, its philosophy, its morality, its art, and its
political ideology. New
philosophical and political ideas, new concepts of right and of the
state were proclaimed by the intellectual representatives of the
bourgeoisie, which-because they responded to the new necessities of
social life-gradually entered into the consciousness of the
exploited masses. They were then revolutionary ideas opposed to those
outworn ideas of feudal society. The peasants, the artisans, the
workers, led by the bourgeoisie, overthrew the feudal order, its
philosophy, its ideas, its institutions, its laws, and the
privileges of the ruling class, that is, the hereditary
nobility. At that
time, the bourgeoisie considered revolution necessary and just. It
did not think that the feudal order could and should be eternal-as it
now thinks of its capitalist social order. It encouraged the peasants
to free themselves from feudal servitude, it turned the
artisans against the medieval guilds, and demanded the right to
political power. The absolute monarchs, the nobility, and the high
clergy stubbornly defended their class privileges, proclaiming the
divine right of kings and the immutability of the social order. To be
liberal then, to proclaim the ideas of Voltaire, Diderot, or Jean
Jacques Rousseau, spokesmen for bourgeois philosophy, constituted in
the eyes of the ruling classes as serious a crime as it does today in
the eyes of the bourgeoisie to be a socialist and to proclaim the
ideas of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. When the
bourgeoisie took political power and established its capitalist mode
of production on the ruins of feudal society, it was on this mode of
production it erected its state, its laws, its ideas, and
institutions. Those institutions sanctified, in the first
instance, the essence of class rule: private property. The new
society based on the private ownership of the means of
production and free competition was thus divided into two basic
classes: one, the owner of the means of production, ever more modern
and efficient; the other, deprived of all wealth, possessing only its
labor power, of necessity sold this labor power in the market as
another piece of merchandise, simply in order to live. Productive
Forces With the
feudal bonds broken, the productive forces developed
extraordinarily. Great factories arose in which greater and
greater numbers of workers were utilized. The most
modern and technically efficient factories continually drove from the
market the less efficient competitors. The cost of industrial
equipment continually rose. It became necessary to accumulate
more and more capital. A greater portion of production passed into a
smaller number of hands. Thus arose the great capitalist enterprises
and later, according to the degree and character of the association,
the great industrial combines-the cartels, syndicates, trusts, and
corporations, controlled by the owners of the major portion of the
stock, that is to say, by the most powerful heads of industry.
Free competition, characteristic of capitalism in its first phase,
gave way to monopolies which entered into agreements among themselves
and controlled the markets. Exploitation Where did
the colossal quantity of resources come from which permitted a
handful of monopolists to accumulate billions of dollars? Simply from
the exploitation of human labor. Millions of men, forced to work for
subsistence wages, produced with their strength the gigantic capital
of the monopolies. From the workers came the fortunes of the
privileged classes, ever richer, ever more powerful. Through the
banking institutions, these classes were able to make use, not only
of their own money, but that of all society. Thus was brought about
the fusion of the banks with giant industry, and finance capital was
born. What should they do with the great surplus of capital which was
accumulating in ever greater quantities? Invade the world with it.
Always in pursuit of profit, they began to seize the natural
resources of all the economically weak countries and to exploit the
human labor of the inhabitants, paying even more wretched wages than
they were forced to pay to the workers of their own developed
countries. Thus, began the territorial and economic division of
the world. By 1914, eight or ten imperialist countries had subjugated
territories beyond their own borders, covering more than 83,700,000
square kilometers, with a population of 970,000,000
inhabitants. They had simply divided up the world. But as the
world was limited in size and already divided down to the last corner
of the earth, a clash ensued among the different monopolistic nations
and struggles grew for new divisions, struggles originating in the
disproportionate distribution of industrial and economic power
which the various monopolistic nations had attained in their
uneven development. Imperialist wars broke out which would cost
humanity fifty million dead, tens of millions wounded and the
destruction of incalculable material and cultural wealth. Even before
this had happened, Karl Marx wrote that "capital comes into the world
dripping from head to foot through every pore with blood and
mire." The
capitalist system of production, once it had given all of which it
was capable, became an abysmal obstacle to the progress of humanity.
But from its origins, the bourgeoisie carried within itself its
contradiction. In its womb gigantic productive instrumentalities were
developed, but with time a new and vigorous social force developed:
the proletariat. The proletariat which was destined to change the old
and worn-out social system of capitalism into a superior
socio-economic form in accordance with the historic possibilities of
human society, by converting into social property those gigantic
means of production which the people, and none but the people, had
created and amassed by their work. At such a state of development,
the productive forces made completely anachronistic and outmoded the
regime which stood for private ownership and the economic
subordination of millions and millions of human beings to the
dictates of a small, social minority. Rapacious Wars The
interests of humanity cried out for a halt to the anarchy of
capitalist production; for a halt pto
the waste, the economic crises, and the rapacious wars which
are part of the capitalist system. The growing necessities of the
human race and the possibility of satisfying them demanded the
planned development of the economy and the rational utilization of
means of production and natural resources. It was
inevitable that imperialism and colonialism would fall into a
profound and insoluble crisis. The general crisis began with
the outbreak of World War I, with the revolution of the workers and
peasants which overthrew the Czarist empire of Russia and
founded, amidst the most difficult conditions of capitalist
encirclement and aggression, the world's first socialist state,
opening a new era in the history of humanity. From that time on., the
crisis and decomposition of the imperialist system has incessantly
worsened. Imperialist Powers World War
II, unleashed by the imperialist powers-and into which were dragged
the Soviet Union and other criminally invaded peoples of Asia and
Europe who were invaded in a criminal manner and engaged in a bloody
struggle of liberation-culminated in the defeat of fascism, formation
of the worldwide socialist camp and the struggle of the colonial and
dependent peoples for their sovereignty. Between 1945 and 1957,
more than 1.2 billion human beings gained their independence in Asia
and Africa. The blood shed by the people
was not in vain. The
movement of the dependent and colonial peoples is a phenomenon of
universal character which agitates the world and marks the final
crisis of imperialism. Cuba and
Latin America are part of the world. Our problems form part of the
problems engendered by the general crisis of imperialism and the
struggle of the subjugated peoples-the clash between the world that
is being born and the world that is dying. The odious and brutal
campaign unleashed against our nation expresses the desperate, as
well as futile, effort which the imperialists are making to prevent
the liberation of the people. Cuba hurts the imperialists in a
special way. What is it
that is hidden behind the Yankee's hatred of the Cuban
Revolution? What is it that rationally explains the conspiracy which
unites, for the same aggressive purpose, the most powerful and
richest imperialist power in the modern world and the oligarchies of
an entire continent, which together are supposed to represent a
population of 350 million human beings, against a small country of
only seven million inhabitants, economically underdeveloped,
without financial or military means to threaten the security or
economy of any other country? What unites them and stirs them up in
fear? What explains it is fear. Not fear of the Cuban Revolution but
fear of the Latin American revolution. Not fear of the workers,
peasants, intellectuals, students, and progressive sectors of the
middle strata which, by revolutionary means, have taken power in
Cuba; but fear that the workers, peasants, students, intellectuals,
and progressive sectors of the middle strata will, by revolutionary
means, take power in the oppressed and hungry countries exploited by
the Yankee monopolies and reactionary oligarchies of America; fear
that the plundered people of the continent will seize the arms from
the oppressors and, like Cuba, declare themselves free people of
America. By crushing
the Cuban Revolution, they hope to dispel the fear that torments
them, the specter of the revolution that threatens them. By
liquidating the Cuban Revolution, they hope to liquidate the
revolutionary spirit of the people. They imagine in their delirium
that Cuba is an exporter of revolutions. In their sleepless
merchants' and usurers' minds there is the idea that revolutions can
be bought, sold, rented, loaned, exported, and imported like some
piece of merchandise. Ignorant of the objective laws that govern the
development of human societies, they believe that their monopolistic,
capitalistic, and semi-feudal regimes are eternal. Educated in their
own reactionary ideology, a mixture of superstition, ignorance,
subjectivism, pragmatism, and other mental aberrations, they
have an image of the world and of the march of history conforming to
their interests as exploiting classes. They imagine that revolutions
are born or die in the brains of individuals or are caused by
divine laws, and, moreover, that the gods are on their side. They
have always thought that way-from the devout patrician pagans of
Roman slave society who hurled the early Christians to the lions at
the circus, and the inquisitors of the Middle Ages who, as
guardians of feudalism and absolute monarchy, burned at the stake the
first representatives of the liberal thought of the nascent
bourgeoisie, up to today's bishops who anathematize proletarian
revolutions in defense of the bourgeois and monopolist
regime. All
reactionary classes in all historical epochs, when the antagonism
between exploiters and exploited reaches its highest peak, presaging
the arrival of a new social regime, have turned to the worst
weapons of repression and calumny against their adversaries. The
primitive Christians were taken to their martyrdom accused of burning
Rome and of sacrificing children on their altars. Philosophers like
Giordano Bruno, reformers like Hus, and thousands of others who did
not conform with the feudal order, were accused of heresy and taken
by the inquisitors to be burned at the stake. Persecution Today,
persecution rages over the proletarian fighters, and this crime
brings out the worst calumnies in the monopolistic and bourgeois
press. Always, in each historical period, the ruling classes
have committed murderinvoking the defense of society,
order, the country; "their" society of privileged minorities
and exploited majorities, "their" class rule, maintained by blood and
fire against the dispossessed; "the country," whose fruits only they
enjoy, depriving the rest of the people of those fruits, in order to
suppress the revolutionaries who aspire to a new society, a just
order, a country truly for all. The March of Humanity But the
evolution of history, the upward march of humanity is not held back,
nor can it be held back. The forces which impel the people, who are
the real makers of history, forces determined by the material
conditions of existence and aspirations to higher goals of well-being
and liberty, forces which surge forth when man's progress in the
fields of science, technology, and culture make it possible, are
superior to the will and the terror unleashed by the ruling
oligarchies. The
subjective conditions of each country-that is, the consciousness,
organization, leadership-can accelerate or retard the revolution,
according to their greater or lesser degree of development, but
sooner or later, in each historical period, when the objective
conditions mature, consciousness is acquired, the organization
is formed, the leadership emerges, and the revolution takes
place. Whether
this takes place peacefully or in painful birth does not depend on
the revolutionaries, it depends on the reactionary forces of the old
society who resist the birth of the new society engendered by the
contradictions carried in the womb of the old society. The
revolution is in history like the doctor who assists at the birth of
a new life. It does not use the tools of force needlessly, but
will use them without hesitation whenever necessary to help the
birth, a birth which brings to the enslaved and exploited masses the
hope of a new and better life. Today in
many countries of Latin America revolution is inevitable. That fact
is not determined by anyone's will. It is determined by the
horrifying conditions of exploitation in which American man lives, by
the development of the revolutionary consciousness of the masses, by
the world crisis of imperialism and the universal movement of
struggle among subjugated peoples. The anxiety
felt today is an unmistakable symptom of rebellion. The very depths
of a continent are profoundly moved, a continent which has witnessed
four centuries of slave, semi-slave and feudal exploitation,
beginning with its aboriginal inhabitants and the slaves brought from
Africa, up to the national nuclei which emerged later: white, black,
mulatto, mestizo, and Indian. Today
they are made brothers by scorn, humiliation, and the Yankee yoke,
and are brothers in their hope for a better tomorrow. Exploitation
Remained The peoples
of America liberated themselves from Spanish colonialism at the
beginning of the last century, but they did not free themselves from
exploitation. The feudal landowners assumed the authority of the
Spanish rulers, the Indians continued in painful servitude, the Latin
American man in one form or another, continued to be a slave, and the
minimum hopes of the people gave way under the power of the
oligarchies and the yoke of foreign capital. This has been the truth
of America-in one coloration or another, in one variation or another.
Today Latin America lies beneath an imperialism, much more fierce,
much more powerful, and more cruel than the Spanish colonial
empire. What is the
attitude of Yankee imperialism to the objective reality of the
historically inexorable Latin American revolution? To prepare to wage
a colonial war against the peoples of Latin America; to create an
apparatus of force, the political pretexts and the pseudo-legal
instruments subscribed to by the reactionary oligarchies, to repress
with blood and fire the struggle of the Latin American peoples. . .
. The
intervention of the government of the United States in the internal
politics of Latin American countries has become more open and
unbridled each time. The
Inter-American Defense Council, for example, has been and is the nest
where the most reactionary and pro-Yankee officers of the Latin
American armies are trained to serve later as shock troops in the
service of the monopolies. The North
American military missions in Latin America constitute a permanent
apparatus of espionage in each nation, directly tied to the Central
Intelligence Agency, inculcating in those officers the most
reactionary sentiments and trying to convert the armies into
instruments of its own political and economic interests. Presently,
in the Panama Canal Zone, the North America high command has
organized special courses to train Latin American officers to fight
revolutionary guerrillas, with the aim of repressing the armed action
of the peasant masses against the feudal exploitation to which they
are subjected. In the
United States itself the Central Intelligence Agency has
organized special schools to train Latin American agents in the
most subtle forms of assassination; and in the Yankee military
services the physical liquidation of the anti-imperialist leaders is
an accepted policy. It is
notorious that the Yankee embassies in the different Latin American
countries are organizing, instructing, and equipping fascist bands to
spread terror and to attack labor, student, and intellectual
organizations. These bands, into which they recruit the sons of the
oligarchies, lumpen, and people of the
lowest moral character, have already perpetrated a series of
aggressive acts against the mass movements. Santo
Domingo Nothing is
more evident and unequivocal about the intentions of imperialism than
its recent conducting the events in Santo Domingo. Without any kind
of justification, without even making use of diplomatic relations
with that republic, the United States, after stationing its warships
before the Dominican capital, declared with its usual arrogance that
if Balaguer's government sought military aid, it
would land troops in Santo Domingo to quell the insurgence of the
Dominican people. That Balaguer's power was absolutely spurious, that
each sovereign country of Latin America should hav
the right to resolve its internal problems without foreign
intervention, that there exist international norms and world
opinions, that there even exists an OAS,' did not count at all in the
considerations of the United States. What did
count were its designs for holding back the Dominican
revolution, for its reinstating its odious policy of landing
Marines, with no more basis or prerequisite for establishing this new
piratical concept of law than a tyrannical, illegitimate,
crisis-ridden ruler's simple request. The significance of this should
not escape the peoples of Latin America. In Latin America there are
more than enough rulers who are ready to use Yankee troops against
their own people when they find themselves in crisis. U.S.
Policy North
American imperialism's declared policy of sending soldiers to fight
against the revolutionary movement of any country in Latin America,
that is, to kill workers, students, peasants, Latin American men and
women, has no other objective than the continued maintenance of its
monopolistic interests and the privileges of the traitorous
oligarchies which support it. It can now
be clearly seen that the military pacts signed by the
government of the United States with Latin American
governments-often secret pacts and always behind the backs of the
people-invoking hypothetical foreign dangers which did not
exist, had the sole and exclusive object of preventing the
struggle of the people; they were pacts against the people, against
the only danger-the internal danger of the liberation movements that
would imperil Yankee interests. It was not without reason that the
people asked themselves: Why so many military agreements? Why the
shipments of arms which, even though technically outmoded for modern
war, are nevertheless efficient for smashing strikes, repressing
popular demonstrations, staining the land with blood? Why the
military missions, the pact of Rio de Janeiro and the thousand and
one international conferences? Since the
end of World War II, the nations of Latin America have been
impoverished more and more, their exports have less and less value,
their imports cost more, the per capita income falls, the awful rate
of infant mortality does not decrease, the number of
illiterates is higher, the people lack obs,
land, adequate housing, schools, hospitals, means of communication,
and means of life. On the other hand, North American investments
exceed ten billion dollars. Latin America, moreover, provides cheap
raw materials, and is the buyer of expensive finished articles. The
United States trades with Latin America like the first Spanish
conquerors, who bartered mirrors and trinkets for gold and silver. To
guard that torrent of riches, to gain over more control of Latin
America's resources and to exploit its suffering peoples -that is
what is hidden behind the military pacts, the military missions, and
Washington's diplomatic lobbying. . . . This policy
of gradual strangulation of the sovereignty of the Latin American
nations, and of a free hand to intervene in their internal affairs,
culminated in the recent meeting of foreign ministers at Punta del
Este. Yankee imperialism gathered the ministers together to
wrest from them-through political pressure and unprecedented economic
blackmail in collusion with a group of the most discredited rulers of
this continent-the renunciation of the national sovereignty of our
peoples and the consecration of the odious Yankee right to
intervention in the internal affairs of Latin America; the
submission of the peoples completely to the will of the United
States of North America, against which all our great men, from
Bolivar to Sandino, fought. Neither the government of the United
States, nor the representatives of the exploiting oligarchies, nor
the big reactionary press, in the pay of the monopolies and
feudal lords, concealed this, but openly demanded agreements which
constituted formal suppression of the right of self-determination of
our peoples; abolishing it with a stroke of the pen at the most
infamous conspiracy in the memory of this continent. Behind
closed doors, in repugnant and unlawful meetings, the Yankee minister
of colonies dedicated entire days to beating down the resistance and
scruples of some ministers, bringing into play the millions of the
Yankee treasury in an undisguised buying and selling of votes. A
handful of representatives of the oligarchies (of countries
which together barely add up to a third of the continent's
population) imposed agreements that served up to the Yankee master on
a silver platter, the head of a principle which cost the blood of all
our countries since the wars of independence. The Pyrrhic
character of such sad and fraudulent deeds of imperialism,
their moral failure, the broken unanimity, and the universal scandal
do not diminish the grave danger which agreements imposed at such a
price have brought so close to the peoples of Latin America. At that
evil conclave Cuba's thundering voice was raised without weakness or
fear, to indict, before all the peoples of America and the world, the
monstrous attempt, and to defend with a virility and dignity which
will be clear in the annals of history, not only Cuba's rights but
the deserted rights of all our sister nations of the American
Continent. The word of Cuba could find no echo in that house-broken majorit}',
but neither could it find a refutation; only impotent silence greeted
its demolishing arguments and the clearness and courage of its
words. But Cuba did not speak for the ministers, Cuba spoke for the
people and for history, where its words will be echoed and
answered. At Punta
del Este a great ideological battle unfolded between the Cuban
Revolution and Yankee imperialism. Who did they represent there, for
whom did each speak? Cuba represented the people; the United States
represented the monopolies. Cuba spoke for America's exploited
masses; the United States for the exploiting, oligarchical,
and imperialist interests; Cuba for sovereignty; the United States
for intervention; Cuba for the nationalization of foreign
enterprises; the United States for new investments of foreign
capital. Cuba for culture; the United States for ignorance. Cuba for
agrarian reform; the United States for great landed estates. Cuba for
the industrialization of America; the United States for
underdevelopment. Cuba for creative work; the United States for
sabotage and counter-revolutionary terror practiced by its agents-the
destruction of sugar-cane fields and factories, the bombing by their
pirate planes of the labor of a peaceful people. Cuba for the
murdered teachers; the United States for the assassins. Cuba for
bread; the United States for hunger. Cuba for equality; the United
States for privilege and discrimination. Cuba for the truth; the
United States for lies. Cuba for liberation; the United States
for oppression. Cuba for the bright future of humanity; the United
States for the past without hope. Cuba for the heroes who fell at Giron
to save the country from foreign domination; the United States for
mercenaries and traitors who serve the foreigner against their
country. Cuba for peace among peoples; the United States for
aggression and war. Cuba for socialism; the United States for
capitalism. The
agreements obtained by the United States through methods so shameful
that the entire world criticizes them, do not diminish but increase
the morality and justice of Cuba's stand, which exposes the sell-out
and treason of the oligarchies to the national interests and
shows the people the road to liberation. It reveals the corruption of
the exploiting classes for whom their representatives spoke at Punta
del Este. The OAS was revealed for what it really is-a Yankee
Ministry of Colonies, a military alliance, an apparatus of repression
against the liberation movements of the Latin American
peoples. Cuba has
lived three years of the Revolution under the incessant
harassment of Yankee intervention in our internal affairs.
Pirate airplanes coming from the United States, dropping
incendiaries, have burned millions of arrobas 2 of sugar cane; acts
of international sabotage perpetrated by Yankee agents, like the
explosion of the ship La Coubre, have cost
dozens of Cuban lives; thousands of North American weapons have been
dropped by parachute by the U.S. military services onto our
territory to promote subversion; hundreds of tons of explosive
materials and bombs have been secretly landed on our coast from North
American launches to promote sabotage and terrorism; a Cuban
worker was tortured on the naval base of Guantanamo and deprived of
his life with no due process before or any explanation later; our
sugar quota was abruptly cut and an embargo proclaimed on parts and
raw materials for factories and North American construction machinery
in order to ruin our economy. Cuban ports and installations have been
surpriseattacked by armed ships and
bombers from bases prepared by the United States. Mercenary troops,
organized and trained in countries of Central America by the same
government, have in a warlike manner invaded our territories,
escorted by ships of the Yankee fleet and with aerial support from
foreign bases, causing much loss of life as well as material wealth;
counter-revolutionary Cubans are being trained in the U.S. army and
new plans of aggression against Cuba are being made. All this has
been going on incessantly for three years, before the eyes of the
whole continent-and the OAS was not aware of it. The ministers meet
in Punta del Este and do not even admonish the U.S. government nor
the governments who are material accomplices to these aggressions.
They expel Cuba, the Latin American victim, the aggrieved
nation. The United
States has military pacts with nations of all the continents;
military blocs with whatever fascist, militarist, and reactionary
government there is in the world: NATO, SEATO and CENTO, to which we
now have to add the OAS; it intervenes in Laos, in Viet Nam, in
Korea, in Formosa, in Berlin. It openly sends ships to Santo Domingo
in order to impose its law, its will, and announces its proposal to use its
NATO allies to block commerce with Cuba. And the OAS is not aware!
The ministers meet and expel Cuba, which has no military pacts with
any country. Thus the government that organizes subversion
throughout the world and forges military alliances on four
continents, forces the expulsion of Cuba, accusing her of no less
than subversion and having ties beyond the continent Cuba's
Record Cuba, the
Latin American nation which has made landowners of more than 100,000
small farmers, provided year-round employment on state farms and
co-operatives to all agricultural workers, transformed forts into
schools, given 70,000 scholarships to university, secondary, and
technological students, created lecture halls for the entire child
population, totally liquidated illiteracy, quadrupled medical
services, nationalized foreign interests, suppressed the abusive
system which turned housing into a means of exploiting people,
virtually eliminated unemployment, suppressed discrimination due to
race or sex, ridded itself of gambling, vice, and administrative
corruption, armed the people, made the enjoyment of human rights a
living reality by freeing man and woman from exploitation, lack of
culture, and social inequality, which has liberated itself from all
foreign tutelage, acquired full sovereignty, and established the
foundations for the development of its economy in order to no longer
be a country producing only one crop and exporting only raw
materials, is expelled from the Organization of American States by
governments which have not achieved for their people one of
these objectives. How will they be able to justify their conduct
before the peoples of the America and the world? How will they be
able to deny that in their concept the policy of land, of bread, of
work, of health, of liberty, of equality, of culture, of
accelerated development of the economy, of national dignity, of
full self-determination and sovereignty, is incompatible with
the hemisphere? The people
think very differently, the people think that the only thing
incompatible with the destiny of Latin America is misery, feudal
exploitation, illiteracy, starvation wages, unemployment, the policy
of repression against the masses of workers, peasants, and students,
discrimination against women, Negroes, Indians, mestizos,
oppression by the oligarchies, the plundering of their wealth by the
Yankee monopolists, the moral stagnation of their intellectuals
and artists, the ruin of the small producers of foreign competition,
economic underdevelopment, peoples without roads, without hospitals,
without housing, without schools, without industries, the
submission to imperialism, the renunciation of national
sovereignty, and the betrayal of the country. How can the
imperialists make understood their conduct and condemnatory
attitude toward Cuba? With what words and what arguments are they
going to speak to those whom, all the while exploiting, they ignored
for so long? The Imperialist Record Those who
study the problems of America are accustomed to ask: what country has
concentrated upon-for the purpose of remedying-the situation of the
idle, the poor, the Indians, the Blacks, and the helpless infants,
this immense number of infants-thirty million in 1950 (which will be
fifty million in eight more years). Yes, what country? Thirty-two
million Indians-like the Andes mountains-form the backbone of
the entire American continent. It is clear that for those who
considered the Indian more as a thing than a person, this mass
of humanity does not count, did not count and, they thought, never
would count. Of course, since they were considered a brute labor
force, they had to be used like a yoke of oxen or a
tractor. How under
what oath-could anyone believe in any benefit, in any "Alliance for
Progress" with imperialism, when under its saintly protection, its
killings, its persecutions, the natives of the South of the
continent, like those of Patagonia, still live under strips of canvas
as did their ancestors at the time the discoverers came almost 500
years ago? Where are those great races which populated northern
Argentina, Paraguay, and Bolivia, such as the Guarani who were
savagely decimated, hunted like animals, and buried in the depths of
the jungle? Where is that reservoir of indigenous stock-whose
extinction is continually hastened-which could have served as a base
for a great American civilization? Across the Paraguayan swamps and
desolate Bolivian highlands, deeper into itself, America has driven
these primitive, melancholy races, brutalized by alcohol and
narcotics to which they became addicted in order at least to survive
in the subhuman cc.ditions-not only of nutrition-in which they
live. Where does a chain of hands stretch out almost in vain, yet
still stretching out across centuries, over the Andean peaks and
slopes, along great rivers and in the shadowy forests, uniting their
miseries with those of others who are slowly perishing. Where
do hands stretch out to Brazilian tribes and those of the North of
the continent and the coasts, until in the most incredible and wild
confines of the Amazon jungle or mountain ranges of Perija,
Venezuela's hundred thousand indigent are reached, then to the
isolated Vapicharnas, who await their end, now almost
definitively lost to the human race, in the hot regions of the Guianas?
Yes, all these thirtytwo million
Indians, who extend from the United States border to the limits of
the Southern hemisphere, and the forty-five million mestizos,
who for the most part differ little from the Indians; all these
natives, this formidable reservoir of labor, whose rights have been
trampled on, yes, what can imperialism offer them? How can these
people, ignored so long, be made to believe in any benefit to come
from such bloodstained hands? Entire
tribes which live unclothed; others which are supposed to be
cannibalistic; others whose members die like flies upon their
first contact with the conquering civilization; others which are
banished, that is, thrown off their lands, pushed to the point of
squatting in the jungles, mountains, or most distant reaches of the
prairies where not even the smallest particle of culture, light,
bread, nor anything penetrates. In what
"alliance"-other than one for their own more rapid
extermination-are these native races going to believe, these
races who have been flogged for centuries, shot so their lands could
be taken, beaten to death by the thousands for not working faster in
their exploited labor for imperialism? "Alliance" for
Blacks? And to the
Black? What "alliance" can the system of lynching and brutal
exclusion of the Black offer to the fifteen million Negroes and
fourteen million mulattoes of Latin America, who know with horror and
rage that their brothers in the North cannot ride in the same
vehicles as their white compatriots, nor attend the same schools, nor
even die in the same hospitals? How are
these disinherited racial groups going to believe in this
imperialism, in its benefits or in any "alliance" with it which
is not for lynching and exploiting them as slaves? Those masses who
have not been permitted even modestly to enjoy any cultural, social,
or professional benefits, who-even when they are in the majority or
number millions-are persecuted by the imperialists in Ku Klux Klan
costumes, are ghettoed in the most
unsanitary neighborhoods, in the least comfortable tenements built
expressly for them, are shoved into the most menial occupations, the
hardest labor and the least lucrative professions. They cannot
presume to reach the universities, advanced academies and private
schools. What
"Alliance for Progress" can serve as encouragement to those 107
million men and women of our America, the backbone of labor in the
cities and fields, whose dark skin-black, mestizo,
mulatto, Indian-inspires scorn in the new colonialists? How are
they-who with bitter impotence have seen how in Panama there is one
wage scale for Yankees and another for Panamanians, who are
regarded as an inferior race-going to put any trust in the supposed
Alliance? What can
the workers hope for, with their starvation wages, the hardest jobs,
the most miserable conditions, lack of nutrition, illness, and all
the evils which foster misery? What words
can be said, what benefits can the imperialists offer to the copper,
tin, iron, coal miners who cough up their lungs for the profits of
merciless foreign masters, and to the fathers and sons of the
lumberjacks and rubber-plantation workers, to the harvesters of the
fruit plantations, to the workers in the coffee and sugar mills, to
the peons on the pampas and plains who forfeit their health and lives
to amass the fortunes of the exploiters? What can
those vast masses-who produce the wealth, who create the values, who
aid in bringing forth a new world in all places-expect? What can they
expect from imperialism, that greedy mouth, that greedy. hand, with
no other face than misery, but the most absolute destitution and
death, cold and unrecorded in the end? What can
this class, which has changed the course of history, which in other
places has revolutionized the world, which is the vanguard of all the
humble and exploited, what can it expect from imperialism, its most
irreconcilable enemy? And to
teachers, professors, professionals, intellectuals, poets and
artists, what can imperialism offer? What kind of benefits, what
chance for a better and more equitable life, what purpose, what
inducement, what desire to excel, to gain mastery beyond the
first simple steps, can it offer to those who devotedly care for the
generations of children and young people on whom imperialism will
later gorge itself? What can it offer to these people who live on
degrading wages in most countries, who almost everywhere suffer
restrictions on their right of political and social expression,
whose economic future doesn't exceed the bare limits of their shaky
resources and compensation, who are buried in a gray life without
prospects which ends with a pension that does not even meet half the
cost of living? What "benefits" or "alliances" can imperialism offer
them? . If
imperialism provides sources of aid to the professions, arts, and
publications, it is always well understood that their products must
reflect its interests, aims and "nothingness." On the other hand, the
novels which attempt to reflect the reality of the world of
imperialism's rapacious deeds; the poems aspiring to protest against
its enslavement, its interference in life, in thought, in the very
bodies of nations and peoples; and the militant arts which in their
expression try to capture the forms and content of
imperialism's aggression and the constant pressure on every
progressive living and breathing thing and on all that is
revolutionary, which teaches, which-full of light and conscience, of
clarity and beauty-tries to guide men and peoples to better
destinies, to the highest summits of life and justice-all these meet
imperialism's severest censure. They run into obstacles,
condemnation, and McCarthyite persecution.
Its presses are closed to them; their names are barred from its
columns of print and a campaign of the most atrocious silence is
imposed against them-which is another contradiction of
imperialism. For it is then that the writer, poet, painter,
sculptor, the creator in any material, the scientist, begins truly to
live in the tongue of the people, in the heart of millions of men
throughout the world. Imperialism puts everything backward, deforms
it, diverts it into its own channels for profit, to multiply its
dollars; buying words or paintings or stutterings
or turning into silence the expression of revolutionists, of
progressive men, of those who struggle for the people and their
needs. We cannot
forget, in this sad picture, the underprivileged children, the
neglected, the futureless children of America. America, a
continent with a high birth rate, also has a high death rate. The
mortality of children under a year old in eleven countries a few
years ago was over 125 per thousand, and in seventeen others it stood
at ninety children per thousand. In 102 nations of the world,
on the other hand, the rate is fifty-one. In Latin America, then,
there die, sadly neglected, seventy-four out of a thousand in the
first year after birth. In some Latin America countries that rate
reaches 300 per thousand; thousands and thousands of children up to
seven years old die of incredible diseases in America; diarrheas,
pneumonias, malnutrition, hunger. Thousands and thousands are
sick without hospital treatment, medicines; thousands and thousands
walking about, victims of endemic cretinism, malaria, trachoma,
and other diseases caused by contamination, lack of water and other
necessities. Diseases of this nature are common among those Latin
American countries where thousands and thousands of children
are in agony, children of outcasts, children of the poor and of the
petty bourgeoisie with a hard life and precarious means. The
statistics, which would be redundant here, are blood-curdling. Any
official publication of the international organizations gathers them
by the hundreds. Mass Illiteracy Regarding
education, one becomes indignant merely to think of what America
lacks on the cultural level. While the United States has a level of
eight or nine years of schooling for those in its population who are
fifteen years and older, Latin America, plundered and pauperized by
the U.S., has a level of less than one year of approved schooling in
the same age group. It makes
one even more angry to know that of the children between five and
fourteen years old, only twenty percent are enrolled in a school in
some countries, and in those of the highest level, sixty percent.
That is to say, more than half the children of Latin America do not
go to school. But the pain continues to grow when we learn that
enrollment in the first three grades comprises more than eighty
percent of those enrolled; and that in the sixth grade the enrollment
fluctuates from a bare six to twenty-two pupils for each hundred who
began in the first grade. Even in those countries which believe
they have taken care of their children, pupil dropouts between the
first and sixth grade averages seventy-three percent. In Cuba, before
the Revolution, it was seventy-four percent. In Colombia, a
"representative democracy," it is seventy-eight percent. And if
one looks closely at the countryside only one percent of the children
reach the fifth grade in the best of cases. When one
investigates this disastrous student absenteeism, there is one cause
which explains it: the economy of misery. Lack of schools, lack of
teachers, lack of family resources, child labor. In the last
analysis-imperialism and its product of oppression and
backwardness. The summary
of this nightmare which torments America, from one end to the other,
has lived, is that on this continent of almost 200 million human
beings, two thirds are Indians, mestizos,
and Blacks-the "discriminated against"; on this continent of
semi-colonies about four persons per minute die of hunger, of curable
illness or premature old age, 5,500 per day, two million per year,
ten million each five years. These deaths could easily be avoided,
but nevertheless they take place. Two thirds of the Latin American
population lives briefly and lives under constant threat of death. A
holocaust of lives, which in fifteen years has caused twice the
number of deaths of World War I . . . it still rages. Meanwhile, from
Latin America a continuous torrent of money flows to the United
States: some $4,000 a minute, $5 million a day, $2 billion a year,
$10 billion every five years. For each thousand dollars which leave
us, there remains one corpse. A thousand dollars per corpse: that is
the price of what is called imperialism! A thousand dollars per
death, four deaths every minute! Punta
del Este But why did
they meet at Punta del Este despite this American reality? Perhaps to
bring a single drop of hope? No! The people know that at Punta del
Este the ministers, who expelled Cuba, met to renounce national
sovereignty; that the government of the United States went there not
only to establish the basis for aggression against Cuba, but the
basis for intervention against the people's liberation
movements in any American nation; that the United States is
preparing a bloody drama for Latin America; that just as the
exploiting oligarchies now renounce the principle of sovereignty,
they will not hesitate to solicit intervention of Yankee troops
against their own people, and that for this end the North American
delegation proposed a watchdog committee against subversion in the
Inter-American Defense Council, with executive powers, and the
adoption of collective measures. Subversion for the Yankee
imperialists is the struggle of hungry people for bread, the struggle
of peasants for land, the struggle of the peoples against imperialist
exploitation. A "watchdog
committee" with executive powers in the Inter-American Defense
Council means a continental repressive force against the peoples
under the command of the Pentagon. "Collective measures" means
the landing of Yankee Marines in any country of America. To the
accusation that Cuba wants to export its revolution, we reply:
Revolutions are not exported, they are made by the people.
... What Cuba
can give to the people, and has already given, is its
example. And what
does the Cuban Revolution teach? That revolution is possible, that
the people can make it, that in the contemporary world there are no
forces capable of halting the liberation movement of the
peoples. Our triumph
would never have been feasible if the Revolution itself had not been
inexorably destined to arise out of existing conditions in our
socio-economic reality, a reality which exists to an even greater
degree in a good number of Latin American countries. It
inevitably occurs that in the nations where the control of the Yankee
monopolies is strongest, the exploitation of the oligarchy cruelest,
and the situation of the laboring and peasant masses most unbearable,
the political power appears most solid. The state of siege becomes
habitual. Every manifestation of discontent by the masses is
repressed by force. The democratic path is closed completely. The
brutal character of dictatorship, the form of rule adopted by the
ruling classes, reveals itself more clearly than ever. It is then
that the revolutionary explosion of the peoples becomes
inevitable. Although it
is true that in those underdeveloped countries of America the working
class is generally relatively small, there is a social class which,
because of the subhuman conditions in which it lives, constitutes a
potential force that, led by the workers and the revolutionary
intellectuals, has a decisive importance in the struggle for
national liberation-the peasants. In our
countries are two conditions: an underdeveloped industry and an
agrarian regime of feudal character. That is why, with all the
hardships of the conditions of life of the urban workers, the rural
population lives in even more horrible conditions of oppression and
exploitation; but it is also, with exceptions, the absolute majority
sector, at times exceeding seventy percent of the Latin
American population. Discounting
the landlords, who often reside in the cities, the rest of that great
mass gains its livelihood working as peons on the haciendas 3 for the
most miserable wages, or work the land under conditions of
exploitation which in no manner puts the Middle Ages to shame. These
circumstances determine that in Latin America the poor rural
population constitutes a tremendous potential revolutionary
force. The armies,
built and equipped for conventional war, which are the force on which
the power of the exploiting classes rests, become absolutely impotent
when they have to confront the irregular struggle of the peasants on
their own terrain. They lose ten men for each revolutionary fighter
who falls. Demoralization spreads rapidly among them from having to
face an invisible and invincible enemy who does not offer them the
opportunity of showing off their academy tactics and their
braggadocio which they use so much in military displays to curb the
city workers and the students. The initial
struggle by small combat units is incessantly fed by new forces, the
mass movement begins to loosen its bonds, the old order little by
little begins to break into a thousand pieces, and that is the moment
when the working class and the urban masses decide the
battle. What is it
that from the beginning of the struggle of those first nuclei makes
them invincible, regardless of the numbers, power, the resources of
their enemies? It is the aid of the people, and they will be able to
count on that help of the people on an ever-growing scale. Role of
Peasants But the
peasantry is a class which, because of the uncultured state in which
it is kept and the isolation in which it lives, needs the
revolutionary and political leadership of the working class and the
revolutionary intellectuals, for without them it would not by itself
be able to plunge into the struggle and achieve victory. In the
actual historic conditions of Latin America, the national
bourgeoisie cannot lead the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist
struggle. Experience shows that in our nations that class, even when
its interests are in contradiction to those of Yankee imperialism,
has been incapable of confronting it, for it is paralyzed by fear of
social revolution and frightened by the cry of the exploited
masses. Facing the
dilemma of imperialism or revolution, only its most progressive
strata will be with the people. The actual
world correlation of forces and the universal movement for the
liberation of the colonial and dependent peoples points out to the
working class and the revolutionary intellectuals of Latin America
their true role, which is to place themselves resolutely in the
vanguard of the struggle against imperialism and
feudalism. Imperialism,
utilizing the great movie monopolies, its wire services, its
periodicals, books, and reactionary newspapers, resorts to the most
subtle lies to sow divisionism and inculcate fear and superstition
among the most ignorant people with regard to revolutionary ideas
which can and should frighten only the powerful exploiters with their
worldly interests and privileges. Divisionism,
a product of all kinds of prejudices, false ideas and lies;
sectarianism, dogmatism, a lack of broadness in analyzing the role of
each social layer, its parties, organizations, and leaders, all make
difficult the necessary unity of action of the democratic and
progressive forces of our peoples. They are defects of growth,
infantile sicknesses of the revolutionary movement which must
be left behind. In the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle it
is possible to bring the majority of the people resolutely behind
goals of liberation which unite the spirit of the working class, the
peasants, the intellectual workers, the petty bourgeoisie and the
most progressive layers of the national bourgeoisie. These sectors
comprise the immense majority of the population and join together
great social forces capable of sweeping out the imperialist and
reactionary feudal rule. In that broad movement they can and must
struggle together for the good of our nations, for the good of our
peoples, and for the good of America. There is a place for all
progressives, from the old militant Marxist to the sincere Catholic
who has nothing to do with the Yankee monopolists and the feudal
lords of the land. That
movement would pull along with itself the most progressive
elements of the armed forces, those also humiliated by the
Yankee military missions, the betrayal of national interests by
the feudal oligarchies and the sacrifice of the national sovereignty
to Washington's dictates. Where the
roads for the peoples are closed, where the repression of workers and
peasants is fierce, where the rule of the Yankee monopolists is
strongest, the first and most important task is to understand that it
is neither honorable nor correct to beguile people with the
fallacious and convenient illusion of uprooting-by legal means which
don't exist and won't exist-ruling classes who are entrenched
in all the state positions, monopolizing education, owning all
media of information, possessing infinite financial resources -a
power which the monopolies and oligarchies will defend with blood and
fire and with the might of their police and armies. The Duty of
Revolutionaries The duty of
every revolutionary is to make the revolution. It is known that the
revolution will triumph in America and throughout the world, but it
is not for revolutionaries to sit in the doorways of their houses
waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by. The role of Job
doesn't suit a revolutionary. Each year that the liberation of
America is speeded up will mean the lives of millions of children
saved, millions of intelligences saved for culture, an infinite
quantity of pain spared the people. Even if the Yankee imperialists
prepare a bloody drama for America, they will not succeed in crushing
the peoples' struggles, they will only arouse universal hatred
against themselves. And such a drama will also mark the death of
their greedy and carnivorous system. Unity No nation
in Latin America is weak-because each forms part of a family of 200
million brothers, who suffer the same miseries, who harbor the same
sentiments, who have the same enemy, who dream about the same better
future and who count upon the solidarity of all honest men and women
throughout the world. Great as
was the epic of Latin American Independence, heroic as was that
struggle, today's generation of Latin Americans is called upon to
engage in an epic which is even greater and more decisive for
humanity. For that struggle was for liberation from Spanish colonial
power, from a decadent Spain invaded by the armies of Napoleon. Today
the call for struggle is for liberation from the most powerful world
imperialist center, from the strongest force of world imperialism and
to render humanity a greater service than that rendered by our
predecessors. But this
struggle, to a greater extent than the earlier one, will be waged by
the masses, will be carried out by the people; the people are going
to play a much more important role now than then, the leaders are
less important and will be less important in this struggle than in
the one before. This epic
before us is going to be written by the hungry Indian masses, the
peasants without land, the exploited workers. It is going to be
written by the progressive masses, the honest and brilliant
intellectuals, who so greatly abound in our suffering Latin American
countries. Struggles of masses and ideas. An epic which will be
carried forward by our people, despised and maltreated by
imperialism, our people, unreckoned with
till today, who are now beginning to shake off their slumber.
Imperialism considered us a weak and submissive flock; and now it
begins to be terrified of that flock; a gigantic flock of 200 million
Latin Americans in whom Yankee monopoly capitalism now sees its
gravediggers. This
toiling humanity, inhumanly exploited, these paupers, controlled by
the whip and overseer, have not been reckoned with or have been
little reckoned with. From the dawn of independence their fate has
been the same: Indians, gauchos, mestizos, zambos,
quadroons, whites without property or income, all this human
mass which formed the ranks of the "nation," which never reaped
any benefits, which fell by the millions, which was cut into bits,
which won independence from the mother country for the bourgeoisie,
which was shut out from its share of the rewards, which
continued to occupy the lowest step on the ladder of social
benefits, which continued to die of hunger, curable diseases
and neglect, because for them there were never enough essentials of
life-ordinary bread, a hospital bed, the medicine which cures, the
hand which aids-their fate has been all the same. But now
from one end of the continent to the other they are signaling with
clarity that the hour has come-the hour of their redemption. Now this
anonymous mass, this America of color, somber, taciturn America,
which all over the continent sings with the same sadness and
disillusionment, now this mass is beginning to enter conclusively
into its own history, is beginning to write it with its own blood, is
beginning to suffer and die for it. Because now
in the fields and mountains of America, on its slopes and prairies
and in its jungles, in the wilderness or in the traffic of cities,
this world is beginning with full cause to erupt. Anxious hands are
stretched forth, ready to die for what is theirs, to win those rights
which were laughed at by one and all for 500 years. Yes, now history
will have to take the poor of America into account, the exploited and
spurned of Latin America, who have decided to begin writing history
for themselves for all time. Already they can be seen on the roads,
on foot, day after day, in endless marches of hundreds of kilometers
to the governmental "eminences," to obtain their rights. Already
they can be seen armed with stones, sticks, machetes, in one
direction and another, each day, occupying lands, sinking hooks
into the land which belongs to them and defending it with their
lives. They can be seen carrying signs, slogans, flags; letting them
flap in the mountain or prairie winds. And the wave of anger, of
demands for justice, of claims for rights, which is beginning to
sweep the lands of Latin America, will not stop. That wave will swell
with every passing day. For that wave is composed of the greatest
number, the majorities in every respect, those whose labor amasses
the wealth and turns the wheels of history. Now, they are awakening
from the long, brutalizing sleep to which they had been
subjected. For this
great humanity has said, "enough!" and has begun to march. And their
giant march will not be halted until they conquer true independence
-for which they have vainly died more than once. Today, however,
those who die will die like the Cubans at Playa Giron.
They will die for their own true and never-to-be-surrendered
independence.
On May 18,1895, on the eve of his death from a Spanish bullet
through the heart, Jose Marti, apostle of our independence, said in
an unfinished letter to his friend Manuel Mercado: "Now I am able to
write I am in danger each day now of giving my life for my country
and for my obligation ' to prevent before it's too late-through
achieving Cuba's independence -the United States from extending its
control over the Antilles and consequently falling with that
much more force upon our countries of America. Whatever I have done
till now, and whatever I shall do, has been with that aim.
Patria o Muerte! Venceremos!
THE PEOPLE OF CUBA
Havana, Cuba
Free Territory of America
February 4, 1962
The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba resolves that
this Declaration be known as the Second Declaration of Havana,
translated into the major languages and distributed throughout the
world. It also resolves to urge all the friends of the Cuban
Revolution in Latin America that it be widely distributed among the
worker, peasant, student, and intellectual masses of this
continent.