Raúl: Unity is paramount
Text of speech by Raúl Castro yesterday (June 14) in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, as published in Juventud Rebelde and translated by Progreso Weekly. Translator’s clarifications appear [in brackets].
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Dear Comrade Evo, dear presidents, Bolivian brothers:
I am privileged to know the heart of South America, the nation founded by Simon Bolivar, to whom it owes its name.
For a long time now we have owed this visit to Bolivia. We Cubans admire the centuries-long history of struggle of the Bolivian people to live well, in harmony with Mother Earth, the Pachamama.
We know about the righteous rebelliousness of the Bolivians, who never submitted themselves to the invaders or allowed others to empty their mountains by the excessive extraction of minerals, as they did with the famous mountain of Potosi.
We have come to join you at this Summit of the Group of 77 plus China. We are more than 130 nations with common problems. Together, we constitute an important international actor. We can influence, if we so decide, the decisions of the United Nations in matters of peace and development, in the preservation of the environment. It was very important to be here with you, supporting the leadership and example of comrade Evo Morales and Bolivia.
We wish to thank the Bolivian people for their generosity and solidarity. Especially for hosting, as a family, hundreds of Cuban collaborators, and because — by being protagonists in a process of unprecedented change in your country — you have made an invaluable contribution to the process of struggle in Our America, as José Martí called it, for the definitive independence and integration of all our peoples.
Evo has told me details of the peasant struggles in this country, of the original peoples, of the coca growers, when he was a union leader out there in the Chapare region. We also talked about the miners, whose unions are among the most combative in the region. I told him, on the basis of our own experience in Cuba: united, those masses of workers, with the political and class consciousness they have acquired, with the combativeness they have accumulated during their struggles, are truly invincible.
That is the experience of several of our brother countries. Notice that the first thing imperialism and the oligarchy do is to attack the unity of the people, divide the people, exacerbate the differences that are always there, pit friends and brothers against each other. That strategy of division can only be answered with unity, unity and more unity.
Today Venezuela deserves our most resolute support. Imperialism and the oligarchs, who could not defeat President Chávez in 18 elections, the coup d’état and the oil coup, think that the time is ripe to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution and overthrow the government of President Maduro, employing methods of unconventional warfare.
Defending Venezuela, we defend Bolivia and all of Our America. Venezuela is today the leading edge of the defense of our independence, freedom and dignity.
It would be a hard blow if someone were to slow down the process of true integration in which various organizations participate and whose apogee is the CELAC [Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.]
Look at what Bolivia has done: it nationalized the hydrocarbons and placed them at the service of all Bolivian men and women. It ended the exclusion and exploitation of the nation’s majority indigenous and peasant communities. It redistributed the nation’s wealth for the benefit of all the people, especially the most vulnerable sectors. It reduced extreme poverty by 20 percent. It proclaimed itself a land free of illiteracy.
[It issued] bonuses to pregnant women and newborns, to families with children in elementary school. The school breakfast and pensions for the elderly are important achievements. More than 6,500 poor Bolivians have studied at the university, mostly medical careers, or qualified as social workers. Dozens of full-service clinics and eye-care centers have been built to serve the health of the humble people of Bolivia. In just ten years, the program “My Health” has provided millions of medical consultations and more than 600,000 Bolivians have recovered their sight.
Factories are built, culture, sports and science are developed, trade between our countries is increased. The rate of unemployment has been reduced and the Bolivian economy rises steadily above 6 percent.
Evo: We wish you success in this immense task, as we wish to all of you, dear Bolivian brothers and sisters.
Let us build together the Big Homeland, let us defend our unity. Allow me also to say here, like Che Guevara, “On to victory, always!”
Thank you very much.
