'We are a satellite to principles, a satellite to ideas, a satellite to an ideal'

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B SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1991 The following speech by Cuban President Fidel Castro was delivered on April 4, 1991, at a celebration of the 29th anniversary of the Cuban Young Communist League (UJC) and the 30th anniversary of the Jose Marti Pioneer Organization. Some 400,000 young people filled Revolution Square in Havana for the occasion.

The speech, reprinted from the April 14 issue of the English-language Granma International, has been slightly edited for reasons of space.

Those meeting here are following in the footsteps of those who in 1868 made up the ranks of our Liberation Army, initiating our struggles for independence; those who, in 1895, under Marti's leadership, continued the battle; those who throughout the life of the subjugated republic fought in the streets together with Mella, Trejo, and so many of our young heroes.

You are like those who fought against Machado's tyranny, those who fought against Batista's tyranny, those who swelled the ranks of our Rebel Army.

You are like those who, when most of you were not even born yet, joined the Revolutionary National Militia, joined the ranks of our Revolutionary Armed Forces and fought at the Bay of Pigs-the 30th anniversary of which we are celebrating this month.

You are following in the footsteps of those who fought [the counterrevolutionary bands] in the Escambray Mountains, of those who lived through those terrible, difficult days of the Missile Crisis with an unsurpassable fortitude.

You are like those who accompanied Che in his liberation struggles and in his death, like those who performed extraordinary feats of internationalism, you are like thosesome of you are those—who fought over an almost 15-year period in the People's Republic of Angola; those in Cuito Cuanavale who said that it would never fall into enemy hands, those who advanced toward the southwest, whose who defeated the invading forces, those who, on the battlefield, wrote glorious pages that can never be erased.

You are the ones who have known how to keep the flag of the Revolution flying high, the ones who have known how to maintain the nation's security and independence. You are the ones who today are accomplishing great feats in the construction and agriculture contingents, and in the factories, creating, innovating, faced with the material difficulties which we are suffering from today.

You are the ones who, in any field, in those of culture and of art, enrich the spiritual life of our people. You are the ones in the research centers who startle our friends and enemies with the extraordinary successes being achieved.

Socialism's swan song?

But if I'm going to say something about this generation of young people, about this generation of students, it is that at perhaps the most difficult moment in the history of the Cuban Revolution, at the most difficult moment in our nation's history, at the most difficult moment for the international revolutionary movement, at the most difficult moment for socialism, when imperialism is drunk with euphoria, when capitalism is congratulating itself, when the triumphalism of the reactionaries is everywhere, when many who used to defend the ideas of socialism have collapsed, when today there is so much talk about the market economy (and many don't even know what a market economy is, that it is none other than capitalexperience of the Persian Gulf War; we have just seen the use of sophisticated weapons, the most modern armaments used by the United States against any country. As I have explained before, that country's leaders made enormous mistakes, it's not necessary to repeat that again, but a solution could have been found to the conflict without resorting to war.

However, the United States wanted to impose a war, it wanted to use its new weapons, to try them out, it wanted to sow terror throughout the world, it wanted to show that it owns the world, to act like the masters of the world.

Just today another resolution was approved in the UN Security Council, a monstrous, unfair resolution which violates the Security Council's own rules, violates the principles of the UN as a whole, although, to tell the truth, the UN Security Council has become a double instrument of U.S. policy.

Naturally, there was one country that said "No," as it has done many times in the Security Council. This country said "No" to the resolution, as it said "No" to the war declared on Jan.15 of this year.

We have witnessed the phenomenon of an institution created for peace authorizing war, and authorizing the most powerful imperialist country on earth to wage war. For this reason, Cuba today said "No". Two other countries abstained.

We have been consistent right to the end in our conduct in the UN, although we didn't hesitate to condemn the invasion and annexation of Kuwait, the taking of hostages, and all those other things which are, in our judgment, immoral and incompatible with international law. However, within that forum we knew how to maintain an attitude unprecedented for its honor, dignity, and spirit of consistency.

We witnessed that war. In that war, everything that we knew would happen happened; we had even warned the Iraqi leaders about that.

The United States had no interest in peace, because it wanted to try out its weapons, it wanted to sow terror throughout the world, it wanted to frighten everybody. I don't know how many people it did frighten, but I do know that it didn't frighten any of us, I know that it didn't frighten nor could it ever frighten Cuban revolutionaries.

"The Revolution is the people"

Because of this, I said to the students on March 13 that the Revolution is not any single one of us, the Revolution is not me, the Revolution is not the members of the Political Bureau, the Revolution is not the members of the UJC National Committee, the Revolution is not the leaders. The Revolution is the people, the Revolution is each one of us. I wanted to say and I hope many of you have understood me—now I'm saying it more clearly—that any one of us