Greetings From CP Cuba

FIRST of all, allow us to convey to this congress the warmest and most militant greetings of the Communist Party of Cuba, its leadership and its members, and of the Cuban people that acknowledge that you are not only a detachment of the vanguard in the struggle for socialism but also our brothers, who in spite of the difficult circumstances have always been and will be solidly supporting the Cuban Revolution.

We can never forget the permanent solidarity of the CPI(M) with the revolutionary process that our people are carrying out. With the dismemberment of the former USSR and the collapse of socialism in the Eastern European socialist countries, Cuba lost 85 per cent of its import and export markets. Due to the economic war waged by imperialism against us, we were then the victims of a double blockade. But the Indian communists quickly extended to us their generous and supporting hands. In the last years you have also had a massive presence at the two international events of solidarity with Cuba which have been held in Havana.

We are convinced that it could not be otherwise. A party forged in the struggle for independence, which has always been in the frontline of the struggle to defend the workers’ and peasants’ rights, has to be --- unavoidably --- an outstanding bearer of the banner of proletarian internationalism. The bonds of friendship and brotherhood, which unite us, will be increasingly stronger.

Esteemed comrades,

This congress is being held at a very difficult time for humanity. The barbarous, repulsive and unjustifiable terrorist attacks on New York and Washington have become a starting point for the only world superpower, in an exercise of unipolarity, to launch a war and reserve for itself the right to decide which organisations or countries are terrorist or not and which people can be the target of its attacks with "intelligent weapons," weapons which also kill children, women and elderly people, who are then euphemistically regarded as "collateral damages."

And, as if this was not enough, it also tries to impose on humanity a ferociously speculative casino economy which, based on neo-liberal recipes, seeks to leave the control of the world economy in the hands of the blind forces of market. It sees the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, as well as the transnational enterprises of the First World, as the leading forces of this scheme of universal domination, thus reserving for the national states the role of simple gendarmes which would guarantee order and the enjoyment of profits by the powerful.

The "collateral damages" of this other daily and silent war are the millions of human beings who die due to starvation and curable diseases in third world countries, the plunder of the wealth of our exploited peoples, the elimination of the social conquests attained after tens of years of workers’ and peasants’ struggles, the disappearance of non-renewable natural resources, the sharpening of the unequal exchange and of the foreign debt in an unsustainable imperial and neo-colonial economic order, and the irreparable environmental damages.

Cuba is against terrorism with the moral authority that it has, because it has made a Revolution which never used terror as a method of struggle. It is also against terrorism because it has been a victim of the state terrorism of the most powerful world power for more than forty years and that same terrorism has murdered and mutilated thousands of our fellow countrymen. In the open economic war and the cruel blockade to which we are still subjected, they have unsuccessfully attempted to subjugate all our people through hunger and disease.

As our commander-in-chief President Fidel Castro stated, no terrorist aggression will ever be launched from our territory against any country in the world. All the resources of our state and all the force of our people are ready to fight this scourge.

Cuba is against war because it is the cruelest form of terror. Terrorism will only be wiped out from the eastern when we eliminate the causes which generate it. Terrorism will be defeated forever if we eradicate hunger, poverty, unequal development, ignorance, injustice, racism and intolerance, the sequels inherited from the colonial past and the neo-colonial exploitation, and if we add to this the joint action of all governments in a legal framework sponsored by the UN.

In the present situation existing in the world, where imperialism and its allies control the mass media, together with bombs and starvation, they also attack us with the ideas and the unique way of thinking, which they try to impose on us. In predicting the voracity of the US empire, Jose Marti, our national hero, a Cuban, a Latin American and a universal man, said that: "This is a war of ideas; let us win it with our ideas." Thus, armed with the forces of Marxism-Leninism and proletarian internationalism, we are invincible.

The Cuban Revolution is indestructible. At this time, our people, more united than ever, are overcoming the difficulties caused by a destructive hurricane, are eradicating the mosquito which transmits the dengue disease and are achieving new success in the economic and social fields, reducing unemployment to 4.1 per cent and infant mortality rate to 6.2 per every one thousand born-alive, in spite of the US government’s genocidal blockade and hostility.

Our people are waging a battle for a comprehensive culture, which will enable us, in a few years, to become the most educated people in the history of mankind. This is the spiritual foundation of a new vision of socialism that will make it more humane and just, more rational and efficient, leaving no room for inequality and uprooting any type of discrimination due to race, gender or age.

Dear comrades,

We would like to finish our speech in a different way. At the congress of other brotherly parties, we have always finished our speeches by expressing our best wishes for the success of the congress and of the future tasks derived from it. Today, besides wishing you new victories in your future work, we want to request for your solidarity again.

Nowadays, five Cuban young patriots are imprisoned in the United States precisely for fighting terrorism --- the terrorism unleashed against our country by the terrorist organisations of the Cuban-American mafia in Miami, with the abetting tolerance of the authorities of the country which shelters and encourages them. Separated in different prisons and held in solitary confinement, our five heroes are serving long sentences, some of them life sentences, but they are firm because they know that they are accompanied by the love and power of all our people and by the solid encouragement of many worthy men and women throughout the world.

Today we call again on your militant solidarity, to ask you to raise your voices to demand the release of our brothers, and I say ours because they are also your brothers and they are unjustly imprisoned for fighting for justice and peace, the most sacred values for humanity.

Long live the Communist Party of India (Marxist)!

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Socialism or Death!

Homeland or Death!

We shall overcome!