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Fidel Castro presides over the main ceremony for the 26th of July, General of the Army Raúl Castro gives keynote speech
BY RODOLFO CASALS (Granma International staff writer)
THE Day of National Rebellion, commemorating the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada Garrison by Fidel Castro and his comrades of the Generation of the Centenary of José Martí's birth, was celebrated this year in Las Tunas, capital of the eastern province of the same name, and was attended by thousands of local residents.
President Fidel Castro; First Vice President and General of the Army Raúl Castro; and other survivors of the heroic assault presided over the ceremony which included delegations from friendly countries; and the diplomatic corps in the island.
The Moncada attack gave rise to the landing of the Granma cabin cruiser expeditionaries three years later, the guerrilla battle in the Sierra Maestra and the victory of January 1, 1959. In Major General Vicente García Revolution Square, named after one of the most outstanding patriots in the war for independence and against Spanish colonial domination, the three speakers at the event paid tribute to the unforgettable memory of Comandante Che Guevara, his example and his work.
Student leader Froilán Rodríguez spoke in the name of the younger generation, of young people who, as he said, are proud of having Fidel and Raúl as its guides. Misael Enamorado, first secretary of the Communist Party in Las Tunas, concentrated his speech on noting why the province had been chosen in a national competition to host the 44th anniversary of July 26.
Among other achievements, it fulfilled its annual sugar cane target with a harvest of more than 474,000 tons, reduced costs and improved its agribusiness efficiency; its root and garden vegetables and grains production amounted to over 92,000 tons; over 6000 tons of fish were caught; over 36 million litres of milk produced; and the province's infant mortality rate stands at less than eight per 1000 live births.
During the celebration, Victoria Velázquez, first secretary of the Young Communist League (UJC), presented President Fidel Castro with two cheques: one for over 27 million Cuban pesos and the other for 365,597 US dollars, which had been collected in donations from the Cuban population, its institutions and organisations to offset the costs of the 14th World Festival of Youth and Students, two days prior to its inauguration.
The keynote speech was given by Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces Raúl Castro, who recalled the United States had sunk its claws into Las Tunas at the end of the last century through the use of violence, the eviction of campesinos and the purchase at ridiculously low prices of land that should have gone to the Cuban state, and the installation of puppet leaders in the presidency of the Republic to facilitate the total penetration of U.S. finance capital.
Thus, within barely 15 years, Las Tunas was converted into an enormous sugar cane plantations of 3750 square kilometres, or 56.88 percent of the province's territory.
Moreover, to the east, in Holguín, the United Fruit Company alone had 115,200 hectares of land, and to the west, in the provinces of Camagüey and Ciego de Ávila, General Sugar dominated 104,520 hectares. For its part, American Sugar extended its domination over 133,585 hectares, but when the Agrarian Reform law was put into effect in Cuba in May 1959, that enterprise presented land deeds covering 281,400 hectares, and which fraudulently included the keys and islets located to the north of the region.
Likewise in Ciego de Ávila, Cuban Cane owned 192,450 hectares of land. In total, in what was then Oriente province and Camagüey, U.S. companies controlled 1,393,492 hectares and owned numerous sugar mills. By 1924, the United States dominated 60 percent of the island's sugar production, the principal branch of its economy.
Raúl stated that those figures explain why, when the Agrarian Reform Law went into effect, the United States passed a death sentence on the Cuban Revolution. A few months later, when there was still no talk of socialism in Cuba and Cuba did not even diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Washington gave the green light to Operation Pluto, which ended with the defeat of the mercenary forces on the sands of the Bay of Pigs.
The Cuban people will not permit U.S. companies to control the country's lands again, he declared. It took 90 years of incessant struggle, from 1868 to 1959, in order for Cubans to gain control of their own destiny.
The United States, he said, did not resign itself to having lost its neocolony, and has spent more than 38 years trying to crush the Revolution and the example that it represents for the rest of Bolívar's America. The past eight U.S. administrations have been hostile towards Cuba and have supported the blockade. The ninth, led by President Bill Clinton, passed the Helms-Burton Act - a creation of the Miami anti-Cuba Mafia and the ultraconservative segment of the U.S. Congress - as a means of intensifying the blockade. Driven by political opportunism while seeking his second term in office, Clinton bowed to the pressures exerted by the ultra-right and is now facing universal criticism in regard to that legislation.
If the insane provisions of the Helms-Burton Act are fulfilled, he noted, this would mean condemning the country to economic paralysis and forcing Cubans to surrender out of hunger and disease. This is a monstrous, fascist plan, repudiated throughout the world, and yet this legislation is not original in its genocidal aims. It is the modern, U.S. version of the internment policy applied in Cuba a century ago by Spanish General Valeriano Weyler, in an attempt to crush the uprising for independence.
At that time in history, hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes. Over a period of one and a half years, more than 300,000 Cubans, mainly women, children and the elderly, either died or suffered injury or illness. The country's population diminished by 20 percent as a consequence of the internment policy, but nevertheless, Weyler failed in his efforts to win the war in two years, because the Cuban people resisted and succeeded in defeating the largest colonial army that Spain or any other metropolis had ever deployed in one of its possessions.
Raúl asked why the Cuban people would not be able to do the same today, given that they have everything needed to defeat the new Weyler plan. Moreover, even if the United States were to dare to invade the island, the Cuban people are prepared to fight back against such a crime. They can try to destroy Cuba, but they will never succeed in conquering it, Raúl proclaimed.
He reiterated that the United States has stepped up its ideological, political and diplomatic aggression against Cuba, and has turned once again to biological warfare by introducing blights that destroy crops used to feed the people.
He noted that this past June, the head of the U.S. State Department's Cuban Affairs Office visited Cuba, and while here, in addition to the official meetings held, he also met with the leaders of counterrevolutionary groups, self-proclaimed dissidents. In so doing, he acted in an openly interventionist manner, inciting internal subversion and urging them to demand the presence of international observers at the upcoming partial elections in October and general elections in January 1998.
With regard to the explosions that occurred in two Havana hotels, causing material damage and minor injuries to three people, he stressed that these were not isolated incidents. Over the last few years, he noted, several attempts to carry out acts like these have been frustrated, and Cuba has proof that they are planned in the United States, and that the materials and the people used are from the United States, where these terrorists are organised and trained.
The Cuban authorities are in possession of some of the means used in these acts and have detained a number of the individuals guilty of executing them; some have already been sentenced, while others are awaiting trial, he said.
Aside from other goals, these terrorist acts are aimed at hindering the rapidly expanding development of tourism in Cuba. Raúl pointed out that the current U.S. administration has taken action against 15 of these terrorist groups, confiscating materials and plans for carrying out acts of violence against Cuba.
Of the 43 people involved in these cases, only three were given light sentences and are already out of prison. And recently, in rigged criminal trials, the hijackers of two Cuban civil aviation planes were acquitted, in flagrant violation of the migratory agreements signed between the two countries.
The Cuban people will never retreat. They will continue their struggle and defeat all plans aimed against the Revolution, he declared.