[News] Fidel Mayday speech

[News at freedomarchives.org]

SPEECH GIVEN BY COMMANDER IN CHIEF FIDEL CASTRO RUZ, PRESIDENT OF THE 
REPUBLIC OF CUBA AT THE INTERNATIONAL MAY DAY CELEBRATION IN REVOLUTION 
SQUARE ON MAY 1, 2005.



(Cheering)



Listen, hold on for just a bit longer, because today you will be lucky and 
I won’t be speaking at great length.



(Cheering, and shouts of “No!”)  Nature is on our side, look at the breeze 
and the clouds; everything is on the side of our noble cause.



Dear personalities and fighters from more than 60 nations who are sharing 
this historic May Day with us;



Dear delegates to the 4th Hemispheric Meeting of the Fight Against the FTAA 
and for the ALBA;



Dear fellow Cubans:



Faced with the most powerful empire in the history of humanity determined 
to destroy our identity as an independent nation in the past, and later 
during the inevitable Revolution, we are here, in this glorious Square, 
after 46 years of heroic struggle, against which the most perfidious 
defamation and the most vulgar crimes have crashed.



Ninety miles away from that Power, Cuba is committing, and will continue to 
commit – don’t let there be any doubt about this – the sin of existing



The fallacies of asymmetric warfare that Cuba is supposedly preparing to 
wage are looking increasingly ridiculous, embarrassing and impotent; the 
great lie about the production of biological weapons, involving the enraged 
liar John Bolton, whose cynical façade they try to present –and rightly so, 
perhaps– as the perfect symbol of the current United States government to 
the United Nations



They have failed in their renewed ideological war in which they invaded or 
tried to invade our radio electronic space with a host of subversive 
broadcasts of anti-Cuban radio and television; as they have failed in their 
attempt to internationally isolate Cuba; in their support of idle 
mercenaries and their use as Trojan horses within the country; in the 
vulgar actions of the Interests Section under an agitator especially chosen 
and trained to work out his own expulsion with a well deserved kick up the 
backside; and in their intentions to suffocate us with the intensification 
of the criminal economic, commercial and financial blockade.



On the other hand, Cuban credit has grown stronger, its international 
economic relations have increased and business with US agricultural 
producers has expanded, despite the many obstacles imposed by the 
fraudulent and tricky occupant of the White House.



The maneuver to deprive our country of the dollar also failed –the dollar 
has now been dishonorably dismissed from our country where, during the very 
harsh times of the special period, it reigned as the Luis 14th of monetary 
circulation.



All their aggressive plots against our people have failed. Here we are, I 
insist, stronger than ever, more united than ever, more determined than 
ever to continue with the exceptional work of building a more just, more 
supportive, more humane and more prosperous society, like the Promised Land 
already within our grasp.



The American government, along with its many other sinister strategies to 
harm our Homeland, resorted to the vulgar option of adding Cuba to a 
spurious and cynical list of terrorist countries.



This week that draws to an end today, the State Department republished its 
updated list. It states, in a perverse and malicious way, that: “Cuba 
remained actively opposed to the US-led Coalition prosecuting the global 
war on terrorism”.



Why does Cuba have to follow the lead of a corrupt and genocidal government?



Following September 11, 2001 and the atrocious attacks on the Twin Towers, 
planned and carried out by fanatic leaders financially linked to the 
dynasty that currently reigns in the White House, individuals who were also 
trained and used by the United States Special Services, the empire’s policy 
has centered on what it described as a world crusade against the terrorism 
which, invented by them against Cuba, Viet Nam and other countries, has 
become a world tragedy. The Nazi doctrine of the preemptive and surprise 
attack on ‘any dark corner of the world’ was declared and 60 or more states 
were grotesquely cited as possible targets –one of these, of course, was 
Cuba--, as our country is first on the list of possible objectives.



No one should be surprised if with the deepest contempt we use the harshest 
words to qualify such ethylic and demented threats, as it was under such 
pretext they embarked on wars supposedly aimed at fighting terrorism.



On the very September 11, 2001, Cuba warned of the absurdity of this 
concept and advised that war would never be the solution to the problem.



Reports from the US Counter-Terrorism Center at this time show that in 2004 
there were three times more major terrorist acts (651 compared to 175) than 
in 2003.



When the American government unjustifiably invaded Iraq, it consciously 
lied about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. Actually, it was 
the oil they were after; it was a vulgar war of conquest. All the painful 
evidence has quashed Bush’s hypocritical speech that the world is now a 
safer place than it was four years ago.



What is the credibility of the shameless scarecrow designed against Cuba by 
the State Department, which has also made the mistake of giving first place 
on their list to the least fearful country and the most capable of 
uncovering their despicable lies?



On top of all this, the government of that country has been foolish enough 
to say that “the biggest cause for concern is that these States (including 
Cuba in first place) have the capacity to produce weapons of mass 
destruction and other destabilizing technology which could fall into the 
hands of the terrorists”. This at the exact time when John Bolton, the 
deranged author of this folly, is questioned by several of the most 
important intelligence services of the United States for venting his fury 
on some honest officials who had the decency to oppose his depraved and 
untenable lies. Major media outlets and what is even more worrying for the 
extremist, warmongering and genocidal mob, the members of the Senate 
Foreign Relations Committee are amazed at such shocking behavior.



The sinister aims of these lies are well known.



In addition to this hysterical behavior, on Friday April 29 a cable 
reported that the very distinguished President of the United States had 
just ordered the Treasury Department to hand over a generous amount of 
Cuba’s frozen assets to meet another lawsuit from the extremist and 
terrorist Cuban American mob in Miami.



What is truly incomprehensible and inexplicable about the US government’s 
behavior is that they published the abovementioned State Department 
document at a time when the current administration is caught up in one of 
the most embarrassing and sensitive chapters of its terrorist adventures, 
its aggression and lies against Cuba. Are they stupid, or even better, are 
they such stupid or what?



The whole world knows that Luis Posada Carriles, the cruelest, most famous 
terrorist in the western hemisphere, as acknowledged by the most important 
media outlet in this part of the world, has entered the United States and 
requested asylum from the government of that country, whose soldiers are 
dying every day and whose death toll have risen to almost two thousand, in 
the name of a war against terrorism that was unleashed after the events of 
September 11, 2001.



Our fellow Cubans, who have closely followed this unprecedented scandal, 
know perfectly well what I am talking about. Many people will now be 
wondering whether the George W. Bush administration has given birth to the 
monster that was growing heavy in their entrails. Reply: it is incredible 
but there are still no signs of labor, despite the fact that this could 
endanger the health of both, the mother and the creature, as well as that 
of the many midwives and others who are meddling in this affair, and whose 
numbers are growing by the day.



Due to the fact that over the last three days we have been focused on the 
agreements and documents signed between the Bolivarian Republic of 
Venezuela and Cuba, and  particularly on the events related to the visit of 
the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, our close brother Hugo Chávez 
Frías, and the historic progress which we are rapidly making in such a 
short period of time towards the integration of the peoples of Latin 
America and the Caribbean --two hundred years after their struggles for 
independence first began—the same that until now have been dominated and 
plundered by colonialism and imperialism which have lead them to a now 
unsustainable situation, we haven’t been able to examine the highly 
significant situation created by the return of the monster to the place 
where it was bred and trained for the long series of crimes that it has 
committed against the people of Cuba and other peoples worldwide.



Today, while we were speaking of the crime committed on October 6, 1976 in 
Barbados, with the blowing up of the passenger plane and the loss of more 
than 70 lives; between that date and the day the young Italian was murdered 
in a Havana hotel, 20 years have passed equivalent to 20 years of murders, 
of crimes committed by US governments using mercenaries and terrorists of 
the despicable caliber of Posada Carriles.



Neither can we forget more than 45 years of aggressions, mercenary 
invasions, piratical attacks, acts of sabotage, a dirty war which, in the 
midst of an atrocious and pitiless blockade, has taken the lives of 
thousands and thousands of fellow countrymen, victims of these acts of 
terrorism. How can the US government, least of all the present 
administration, accuse Cuba, the victim, and write her first on a list of 
terrorist nations, when what they should actually do is place her first on 
a list of victims of imperialist terrorism, for more than half a 
century!  (Cheering)



Since it has been almost 72 hours without news on the delivery, I shall 
proceed straight to giving you, as briefly as possible, --and taking into 
account the time and the effort you have all made over the last twelve 
hours– the latest top stories:



The newspaper, El Nuevo Herald reported on April 29 that, faced with the 
extradition request made by Venezuela, the terrorist’s accomplices were 
preparing to strengthen their legal team.



Santiago Alvarez, the  well-known terrorist and accomplice of Posada 
Carriles, said that the legal representation “is being strengthened with 
lawyers of different origins”.



According to the newspaper, the lawyers hired to assist the terrorist 
include Kendall Coffey, the former Miami district attorney who led the 
sinister team of lawyers that tried to keep the child Elián González 
kidnapped and Joaquín Chafardet, an equally mobbish lawyer who is well 
known in Venezuela, and who previously represented Posada during his trial 
in Caracas for the bombing of the Cubana airliner and is strongly 
associated with Ricardo Koesling, a representative of the Cuban American 
National Foundation in Venezuela and one of the instigators of the siege of 
the Cuban Embassy during the ephemeral coup d’état of April 11, 2002.



Accounts cited by the newspaper discuss the possibility that the 
illustrious Posada Carriles will talk to the press very soon.



Santiago Alvarez Fernández Magriñá, the abovementioned character who took 
Posada Carriles from Isla Mujeres to the city of Miami between the 16 and 
the 18 of March, in other words 44 days ago, gave an interview yesterday on 
a Miami TV channel in which he shamelessly said that Posada Carriles ‘is 
fine, he is painting, listening to the news and reading’. Then he went on 
to announce in a language that befits the ignorant and uneducated 
individual that he is that “it is very probable that in the next few days 
he will be called to the Immigration office, and when he shows up there 
they will have to see him and talk to him. Preparations are being made for 
him to give a limited interview in the next few days, as soon as the 
lawyers feel that the time is right, in order to give information on 
certain points that need answering”.  In fact, there are a million points 
that need answering:  are you well aware of that Mr. George W. Bush?



According to the Herald --which as you know has many connections with the 
Mob, I particularly refer to the so called the New Herald-- sources in the 
United States capital affirmed that Posada’s asylum request had gone down 
like a “lead balloon” in high US ranks. “It has created a lot of political 
friction”, said a top official that asked to remain anonymous. “This is the 
worst time that it could have happened”. Listen to that official’s 
phrasing: ‘This is the worst time that it could have happened’.



Information received suggests that the Bush administration doesn’t know how 
to get out of this tangled and embarrassing situation. They’re holding a 
time bomb in their hands. While they have been playing with terrorism, 
fomenting it, supporting it and nurturing it, it comes as no surprise that 
they now have a time bomb on their hands.



It has also been said that even the beleaguered Cuban American National 
Foundation, the group that gives the most protection and financial aid to 
Posada Carriles, in close coordination with US administrations, is worried 
because this matter could further harm their battered political image, and 
they are also worried that the terrorist may demand more from them because 
he has lots of information.



On the other hand, there are reports in New York press circles that the 
United States government is involved in intense negotiations with several 
Central American countries in order to secretly transfer the terrorist to 
any country in that area.



In addition to this it has been said that the Salvadoran government must 
have let the United States know through various channels that they don’t 
want Posada Carriles in their country --everybody wanting to get rid of the 
corpse, acting like rats fleeing a sinking ship--  and it is very unlikely 
that they’ll accept the terrorist. The final destination will depend on the 
pressure exerted by the State Department. We already know what results have 
been obtained by that distinguished lady who is the Secretary of State and 
who is presently traveling through our hemisphere to discuss democracy and 
lack of governability, or should I say governability, in this hemisphere. 
They haven’t even realized what has happened, they haven’t even realized 
that in one week, just one week, three governments are in the middle of 
serious crises.



Journalists are commenting that Cuba’s denunciation of Posada Carriles took 
the US authorities by surprise, but that they have by now realized the 
sensitivity of the issue and changed their initial intention of accepting 
Posada into their country.



Here, one of the distinguished speakers preceding me –it was Schafick-- 
spoke of the ‘hot potato’.  Cubans know very well how hot a potato can be 
when it is taken out of the pot, perhaps out of the pressure cooker:  it 
burns your hands, your lips, your tongue, it burns everything;  and there 
they are, with a specially hot potato that won’t cool down, one that we 
won’t let cool down. (Applause)



Meanwhile, there are reports from Salvadoran political circles that some 
leaders of the ARENA government party would find themselves in deep water 
if they didn’t help Posada.



In this context, the former Minister of the Interior and coffee 
entrepreneur Mario Acosta Oertel, “a close friend of Posada and the people 
of Miami” would be the person in charge of handling the issue of the 
terrorist in El Salvador. Acosta’s wife is the cousin of Otto René 
Rodríguez Llerena, the terrorist detained in Cuba.



According to journalists from an important US television network, their 
colleagues in Miami say they are convinced that Posada Carriles is hidden 
in a house in Florida.



Reporters from this network in Miami believe that the FBI knows where 
Posada is and who is with him, and they don’t rule out the possibility that 
one of the options might be to force him out of the country. To this end, 
they could use the procedure of accusing the person who is sheltering him, 
and those who allowed him to enter, and those who gave permission for his 
entry, and those who know how he entered and where he hiding and are saying 
nothing.



They say that they don’t understand why the FBI has not arrested Posada, 
since the terrorist was singled out as a fugitive of Venezuelan justice by 
a government preceding that of President Chávez.



However, they say that they couldn’t send him to Venezuela either because 
the American government is convinced that that would be tantamount to 
handing him over to Cuba.



Such a sophism! It was precisely Cuba that, from the beginning, 
relinquished its most legitimate right to judge him since it was her sons 
and daughters, in huge numbers, who have been among the victims of this 
monster’s crimes, a monster bred and trained in the United States and used 
by them for decades. If not, how could it be explained, or rather, how 
could the shameless blackmail plaguing the most powerful superpower ever 
existing be explained?



It is the opinion of the reporters that the FBI are carefully evaluating 
the scenarios to which they are being exposed, and they feel that the Bush 
administration still hasn’t decided how to deal with the case --they are 
truly mute, paralyzed, puzzled-- but they assume that when Posada enters 
into the public eye the FBI will have a plan ready.



TV journalists in Miami are saying that the big networks in the United 
States are on Posada’s trail and some of them are very close to finding out 
his whereabouts. One version of events is that he is hiding out in an 
exclusive neighborhood on the outskirts of Miami, in a very expensive house 
valued at three million dollars. There he spends his time reading, 
listening to the news and painting, like a new Picasso; there in the lair 
of the Empire whose political and cultural ideal, at least that of the 
present administration, is to have painters with blood-stained hands and 
with the barbaric notion: ‘We put the bomb, so what?’, or in that infamous 
phrase used to describe the case of the young Italian Fabio di Celmo: ‘He 
was in the wrong place at the wrong time’. It now seems that it is he, as 
well as the US government or the President of this administration, who are 
in the wrong place at the wrong time.  (Applause)



You can see what 180,000 people working in the Department of Homeland 
Security, those 22 bodies that cooperate and participate in their 
anti-terrorism struggle and in the protection of US internal security, have 
not been able to accomplish; neither have the 15 intelligence agencies 
working on a budget of billions of dollars; what these have not been able 
to accomplish or discover, the US media will succeed in accomplishing and 
discovering.



They also say that the FBI is not keeping watch on the area where Posada is 
supposedly staying, and that Eduardo Soto, the terrorist’s lawyer, has 
opted to give his statements and public interviews to Hispanic television 
channels, without realizing that Posada has now become a priority target 
for the majority of the country’s TV channels, that are starting to work 
towards finding and filming him, and that if the FBI doesn’t find him, the 
television networks will.



In a recent letter republican Senator Norm Coleman, confirmed that the US 
Department of Homeland Security had received a request for asylum on behalf 
of Posada Carriles.



You might recall that a few days ago the University of Informatics Sciences 
(UCI) had been looking into the obligations of a lawyer or any other person 
who is filing a plea for exile, and found out that it is a crime punishable 
by several years in prison to violate these procedures.  What would the law 
say about those holding high office, indeed very high office, who act as 
accomplices for the cover-up, or are accomplices of that terrorist when 
they allow or authorize his entry, or even worse, those that allow his 
entry without any previous consent?  And there you have a government 
paralyzed for a month and a half, incapable of arresting the terrorist and 
all of his minor accomplices who bypassed the orders of higher authorities.



The Senator’s letter means that there is finally news of a zealously 
guarded document that we have been eagerly looking for over the last few days.



What does this letter say exactly?



“Dear Mr. Hughes:



“Thank you for taking the time to contact me concerning Mr. Luis Posada

Carriles.



“As you may know, Mr. Carriles was pardoned by Panamanian President Mireya

Moscoso on August 26, 2004.  Mr. Carriles attorney has alleged that

Mr. Carriles entered the United States through Mexico a few weeks ago.



“I have shared your concerns with the Department of Homeland Security

(DHS).



“DHS has confirmed that Mr. Carriles attorney has filed an asylum request 
for his client.   However, because of his past acts of terrorism that he 
has, by his own admission, claimed to have planned and carried out, Mr. 
Carriles is not eligible for asylum.



“DHS cannot confirm Mr. Carriles entry into the country, but has alerted 
all major law enforcement agencies of his possible presence.”   If they 
want to find out, all they have to do is to find Mr. Santiago Alvarez, the 
man who brought him by boat to Miami from Isla Mujeres. They could never 
deny that, they must swallow the whole nightmare, but this is not a 
nightmare; it is an irrefutable and indestructible truth. They could have 
found out where this creature was in five minutes, in the country where the 
authorities, the special services and the government had spawned him.



The Senator continues: “
If he is found, Mr. Carriles would face immediate 
deportation from the United States for his past terrorist activities.



“Thank you once again for taking the time to contact me. I value your 
advice. If I may be of further assistance to you in the future, please do 
not hesitate to contact me again.



Sincerely,



Norm Coleman

United States Senator”



In the next few days, we will be receiving very interesting news. The US 
government, blackmailed by the crows it created, has lacked the courage to 
pursue the only path left to it:  the immediate arrest of Posada Carriles, 
abiding by national and international laws and placing him at the 
disposition of the Venezuelan Court that must put him on trial.  I have 
already said that Cuba has relinquished its right, just so that they will 
not have a minimum excuse.



In Venezuela there is a Bolivarian government that is respected worldwide, 
where there are many journalists.  Would that not be the best place to put 
him on trial, since Cuba won’t do it?  What excuse can they come up with to 
avoid sending him there?



We have even proposed that Venezuela is in the best position to do so. We 
would even accept an international absolutely impartial court, convened in 
a location where they might agree to try this murderer.  This is not even 
an important individual; the importance of this individual lies in the fact 
that his presence reveals to the world the immense hypocrisy,  the lies, 
the immoral acts and the cynicism that the Empire uses to dominate the 
world. This is what’s important, let’s not forget it. The world demands 
that injustice be put on trial; the world demands that hypocrisy be put on 
trial; the world demands that these imperialist methods of deceit and 
domination, a domination that is harder and harder to maintain on the 
world, be put on trial.



I promised not to talk at great length; it only remains for me to thank our 
speakers. (Applause)



We were afraid that this event would go on for too long.  We realize that 
this is summer, the sun is strong and the people began to mobilize, those 
close to Havana, at 10 o’clock last night, and that at 2 in the morning 
they were already on their way, so that we might bring together a million 
three-hundred thousand people, all of whom are not readily visible here, 
because all the empty spaces and avenues around this Square are filled with 
fellow Cubans.



You all deserve our infinite recognition for your revolutionary and 
patriotic spirit, for your support of such a just cause, for your dignity 
and revolutionary spirit; for your quietness and the attention paid to the 
valiant, moving and eloquent words we have been hearing from all those who 
have stood on this podium today, to widen our knowledge of the horrors 
committed by US Imperialism against the peoples of Latin America and whose 
words have strengthened our self-confidence and resolve that our nations 
will be free and will unite closely to defend the same common causes we 
defend here, speaking the same language that we have been hearing here 
today, even the English language;  Because at the end of the day, it will 
not be too difficult, thinking of those peoples who once struggled against 
colonialism and who lost many of their sons and daughters in the struggle 
against fascism, that these peoples will unite with their Latin American 
brothers and sisters, in the struggle for justice, in the struggle for 
truth, in the struggle for the survival of our species which is at stake today.



Let us never forget this event. Let us never forget the words of solidarity 
spoken by our brothers and sisters from the South, the Center and the 
North.  Language will not be an obstacle, because all of us that speak 
Spanish or Portuguese will learn English, and one day, all those speaking 
English will learn the languages of Latin America, Spanish and Portuguese. 
(Applause)



As I told you recently, the main slogan of the mobilization of this May Day 
has become: ‘Humanity has a yearning for justice’. You have proven this 
here today. (Applause and shouts of: “Fidel! Fidel!”)



And looking out onto this huge, unsurpassable and emotional crowd, I 
remember that unforgettable October 15, 1976 as if it were today, the 
moment in which we bid farewell to the victims of that monstrous act of 
terrorism against the Cuban airliner over Barbados, which made me state: 
“When an energetic and forceful people cry, injustice trembles!”



We shall see!



Long live the 30th Anniversary --which we also commemorate today-- of the 
glorious and exemplary victory of the heroic people of Vietnam, a victory 
that the imperialists should never forget!



Patria o Muerte!

Venceremos!



(Ovation.)



The Freedom Archives
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