[News] Speech by Cuban President Diaz-Canel at closing of the VI International Conference for the Balance of the World

[Anti-Imperialist News]

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*Martí accompanies not only Cubans, but all citizens of the world who 
firmly believe in the possibility of improving and balancing this world, 
and who do so against the current of barbarism visible today in the 
height of greed and in the infinite pain caused by the greedy due to 
their absolute contempt for human suffering.*

------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Photo: Estudios Revolución*

*Speech given by Miguel Díaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Central 
Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, 
at the closing of the VI International Conference for the Balance of the 
World, on January 31, 2025.*

*Dear friends, followers of Martí who fight for the balance of the world 
with the weapons of ideas, the only ones capable of saving and 
emancipating human beings:*

*I want to begin by thanking you for your enthusiastic and supportive 
participation in this event that is being held by a 172-year-old man 
who, however, is not an old man: José Martí is an eternal man, something 
that does not need to be explained in Cuba, because we feel it everywhere.*

*And he needs to explain himself less before an audience like this, 
because it is precisely about that eternity that makes José Martí a 
contemporary of ours, but also of the girls and boys who are yet to be 
born, that you have spoken about most in these days of Martí in Havana.*

*I always like to begin by thanking the visitors for their audacity in 
showing their solidarity with Cuba in person, because they do so not 
only by assuming the costs of travel and accommodation, but they also 
face threats and punishments, especially designed to condemn us to 
solitude, since no other weapon has worked in the attempt to subdue the 
rebellious and worthy people of Fidel and Raúl Castro, leaders of the 
generation that did not let Martí die in the year of his centenary.*

*The massive attendance at this conference, with more than a thousand 
people from 98 countries, including more than 400 Cuban delegates, is 
also a tremendous encouragement to the people of Cuba, because it is a 
recognition of their heroic resistance in the context of a world in 
threatening imbalance for the human species, where even dignity is 
negotiable.*

*Cuba knows this very well, having been paying for 66 years the very 
high price of not having a price.  Because, as the eternal man who calls 
us and brings us together said, “poverty passes: what does not pass is 
the dishonor that men tend to bring upon themselves under the pretext of 
poverty.”*

*Martí was perfectly defined by the Cuban poet José Lezama Lima as “the 
mystery that accompanies us,” an expression that could be interpreted as 
the depths of knowledge and love that, so immense, are never fully 
deciphered.*

*And it is very true: Martí accompanies us Cubans incessantly. His 
presence ranges from a simple bust dedicated to him in a school, a 
workshop, a factory or a hospital, to the dazzlement that continues to 
assail us as we read his verses or his definitions that seem written for 
the 21st century.  And this discovery occurs as we move through total 
admiration for the coherence of his thought and his way of acting.*

*But Martí accompanies not only Cubans, but all citizens of the world 
who firmly believe in the possibility of improving and balancing this 
world, and who do so against the current of barbarism visible today in 
the height of greed and in the infinite pain caused by the greedy due to 
their absolute contempt for human suffering.*

*I speak first of the Palestinian holocaust at the hands of the 
Government of Israel and those who feed that desire to kill, but also of 
the brutal persecution and humiliating deportation, handcuffed and 
chained, of thousands of migrants who have broken their backs under the 
whip of the economic imbalance that forced them to emigrate.  From here 
we ask for Palestine to be free! (Applause.)*

*And I am speaking, of course, of Cuba, hundreds of times a victim of 
terrorism, whose noble name has been included and re-included in an 
infamous list of supposed sponsors of terrorism, so that obedient 
international banks close the doors to any commercial or financial 
management that contributes to solving the basic needs of the Cuban people.*

*I am speaking of Cuba, from which the United States stole a piece of 
land in the name of a friendship that it never honored by using that 
territory, illegally occupied for more than a century, as a military 
base and prison where people that the empire declares enemies and guilty 
are tortured and locked up in a legal limbo, most of the time without a 
single piece of evidence of their crime.*

*As if this infamy, which has been condemned hundreds of times by 
international courts, were not enough, now they tell us that 30,000 
deportees will be sent to the American Naval Base in Guantanamo.  Once 
again, illegality, ignorance of international treaties, and the 
unacceptable idea that there are countries and people superior to the 
rest of humanity.*

*Despite everything, as we say here, and the presidential orders of the 
masters of the world, we will not remain silent in the face of infamy 
nor will we lose confidence and faith in human improvement, future life 
and utility.*

*Martí also accompanies us in optimism, because in him we have the 
hopeful being that Pope Francis calls for, and we have the fighter who 
came to express that “Human honor is imperishable and irreducible, and 
nothing disintegrates or diminishes it, and when it is oppressed and 
made to fade from one side, it leaps out inflamed and powerful from the 
other.”*

*Because of statements like that, he becomes a reference for us and 
someone essential to undertake the daily battle for justice on a planet 
about to agonize under the empire of greed.  We do not give up! We 
learned with Martí that from pain and the need to put an end to it, the 
strength and will to face and overcome the greatest challenges are born.*

*The great poet and devoted Martian Fina García Marruz, tirelessly 
studying the work of the Apostle, pointed out some keys to understanding 
the routes of radicalization of his political thought.*

*Fina, the companion of the teacher and very Martian Cintio Vitier, said 
the following about Martí: “The revolutionary organizer was born in the 
prison. There he understood that it was impossible to build a triumphant 
revolution with hatred. He thought that our battle was for justice, not 
revenge.  With his fiery speeches, he turned the worst of enemies into 
friends.  He lit the flame of love.”*

*And Martí is the same human being who – perhaps because of his poetic 
essence, his extreme sensitivity and his capacity for analysis that 
allowed him to see where others remained blind – became so radicalized 
that in an unfinished letter to his beloved brother, Manuel Mercado, he 
wrote a paragraph that was crucial for the destiny of Cuba, which almost 
all Cubans know by heart.*

*Martí says: “I am already in danger every day of giving my life for my 
country and for my duty – since I understand it and have the courage to 
carry it out – of preventing in time, with the independence of Cuba, the 
United States from expanding throughout the Antilles and falling, with 
that added force, on our lands of America. Everything I have done until 
today, and will do, is for that.”*

*It seems that he said everything and for all times, as if there were no 
time barriers.  Martí is read and his ideas continue to be of 
inexhaustible use, even though he was not a witness to the discoveries 
that humanity has experienced after he fell heroically in combat.*

*Few like him could foresee, at the very hour of his birth, this danger 
that now overflows before our eyes, of a modern empire that disrespects 
rights in the name of a divine mandate, ready to destroy the very 
balance of civilization.*

*It seems that he has expressed himself at this time when he predicted 
that “when empires reach the peak of their prosperity, they are on the 
edge of the precipice that devours them.”*

*He defined like no one else the “greedy neighbor, who confessedly 
desires us” and asked to be alert “against the possible greed of a 
strong and unequal neighbor”; and in the case of Cuba, he spoke about 
“the independence of the happy archipelago that nature placed at the 
center of the world.”*

*He knew that, for reasons of origin, while those in the North bought, 
those in the South cried, and it was then that he emphasized the need to 
understand this essential difference, so that only a bridge of mutual 
respect between two cultural universes would be viable.*

*He never promoted animosity against the good and talented children of 
the continental mass of the North, but his reflection was extremely 
clear regarding the risks of accepting that the nations recently 
liberated from the decadent Spanish empire would fall subordinate in an 
unequal relationship with the new empire in gestation.*

*This can be verified in his essential essay “Our America,” where he 
states: “We can no longer be the people of leaves, living in the air, 
with the crown laden with flowers, crackling or humming, depending on 
whether the whim of light caresses it, or the storms beat and cut it 
down; the trees must line up, so that the giant of seven leagues does 
not pass!  It is time for counting and for the united march, and we must 
walk in a tight square, like silver in the roots of the Andes.”*

*This warning from Martí is useful today for the entire world and not 
only for our America, all of us facing, in some way, the desires of the 
Rome of the 21st century that has shown itself capable of arrogantly 
passing over human diversity.*

*Surely there are many of us, even in this Martí audience, who have 
asked ourselves why Martí emphasized the centrality of Cuba and by 
extension of the Antilles in the balance of the world.*

*Dr. Armando Hart Dávalos, father of these events For the Balance of the 
World, answered the question in more than one text or conference. I 
quote one of his articles:*

*“The question we must ask ourselves is why Martí wanted a free Cuba, a 
free Antilles and a free America.  He expressed it in such a clear way 
that it should not give rise to doubts or confusion.  In his article on 
the occasion of the commemoration of the second anniversary of the Cuban 
Revolutionary Party, published in 1894, he noted:*

*In the faithful of America are the Antilles, which would be, if 
enslaved, a mere pontoon of the war of an imperial republic against the 
jealous and superior world that is already preparing to deny it power, a 
mere stronghold of American Rome; –and if free– and worthy of being so 
by the order of equitable and hard-working freedom– they would be the 
guarantee of balance on the continent, that of independence for the 
still threatened Spanish America and that of honor for the great 
republic of the North, which in the development of its territory– 
unfortunately, already feudal, and divided into hostile sections – will 
find more secure greatness than in the ignoble conquest of its smaller 
neighbors, and in the inhuman fight that with the possession of them it 
would open against the powers of the world for the predominance of the 
world.”*

*Another indispensable follower of Martí when it comes to understanding 
the fulfilled predictions of the Apostle is Dr. Pedro Pablo Rodríguez, 
who is here, patient and diligent director of the Critical Edition of 
the Complete Works of the Master.  His substantial essay “José Martí and 
his concept of the balance of the world” cannot be ignored to get to the 
bottom of Martí’s anguish about the balance of the world.  And here what 
I read from the author Pedro Pablo will be longer, because the following 
fragment seems fundamental to me:*

*“A thinker of aphoristic and polysemic style, from the beginning of his 
stay in New York he systematically warned about the expansionist danger 
represented by the nascent monopolies in the United States, which 
increasingly controlled the government leadership and dedicated 
themselves to the exercise of politics through the corruption of 
democracy, and imposed a foreign policy controlling the Latin American 
markets that supplied raw materials and food, and consumers of northern 
industry. For these plutocratic interests, which Martí considered 
harmful also to the popular majorities of the United States, there were, 
in his opinion, no commercial or geographical borders to prevent, with 
the territorial, the consolidation of economic dominance over Latin 
America.*

*“Proof that these were not assumptions or poetic dreams, but rather a 
brilliant analysis of the realities of his time and a lucid look at the 
immediate future is that between 1898 and 1930 the United States 
intervened militarily, and even governed directly in some cases, in 
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Panama, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, 
Mexico and Nicaragua.”*

*Later, Pedro Pablo explains something that is very present today, in 
our days, and Pedro Pablo says: “Obviously the foreseeable proximity of 
the opening of the Panama Canal made Martí coincide with many observers 
of that time in the perception that with that route the importance of 
the Antillean and Central American zone would increase for the 
geopolitics of the hegemonic States of that time. He was so convinced of 
the importance of a balance between the great powers that in the 
Manifesto he wrote in the Dominican city of Montecristi to explain why 
the last Cuban War of Independence had begun in February 1895, he 
stated: “The Cuban war of independence, the crux of the bundle of 
islands where, within a few years, the commerce of the continents will 
be crossed, is an event of great human significance, and a timely 
service that the judicious heroism of the Antilles provides to the 
firmness and fair treatment of the American nations, and to the still 
wavering balance of the world.”*

*This is the essential fragment of our dear Pedro Pablo’s essay. You 
will surely find in various moments of what you have read, how much José 
Martí foresaw, and with how much reason, the serious dangers that are 
upon us today, when we are not even yet the united America that can face 
them.*

*Let us say it with absolute clarity.  The aggressive conduct and 
pretensions of the United States, which are manifested by the recently 
installed government, threaten the population of that country, 
especially the most humble and dispossessed segments.  They also 
threaten international peace, including that of our region of Latin 
America and the Caribbean.  It is not possible to ignore this reality.*

*In the political scene of that country, the political, economic and 
social forces that have gained the most influence embrace xenophobic, 
racist, discriminatory and supremacist ideas that humanity struggled to 
overcome after the end of the Second World War and the defeat of Nazism 
80 years ago.*

*It is a worrying phenomenon that can be observed in several countries 
in different regions.  Reactionary political parties and political 
figures have been gaining ground.  It is even manifested with the 
frequent and dangerous support of poor, humble and working class 
sectors, who identify with the politicians and programs that are 
exponents of these currents.  It is a phenomenon that often reflects 
desperation, helplessness and pessimism in the face of growing injustice.*

*These currents are inherent and the fruit of capitalism, of its 
selfish, predatory and exclusive nature. They have gained strength as a 
consequence of the expansion of neoliberal policies in the last 40 years 
and of their resounding failure to respond to the interests and needs of 
the majority, guarantee better standards of living and promote social 
justice.*

*These are policies whose most palpable result is the growth of 
inequalities, social polarization, exclusion, distrust of others and 
cultural, ethnic and religious frictions.  The results are also 
disorderly emigration, the growth of illegality, drug trafficking and 
corruption.*

*They have largely contributed to the erosion of the sovereign power of 
several countries, to the loss of true self-determination and to the 
coming to power of governments clearly subordinated to the will of 
imperialism and the large transnationals and corporations that feed it.*

*Unfortunately, even when progressive or leftist forces have governed, 
they have, on certain occasions, lacked the time, the strength, the will 
or sufficient independence to confront the neoliberal economic programs 
that are at the root of many of the political and social problems that 
developing countries suffer today.*

*The international order born out of the end of the Second World War, 
which to a large extent prevails today, is the heir of colonialism, of 
the history of exploitation, plunder and slavery that enriched a 
specific set of colonial powers and their societies, at the cost of the 
suffering, uprooting, destruction, submission and underdevelopment of 
the former colonized territories.*

*Imperialism as a system of domination is not a new phenomenon. However, 
the era of neoliberal globalization has taken more sophisticated and 
less visible forms. It is no longer just about direct territorial 
occupation, although this is still a current practice, as our heroic 
Palestinian brothers suffer firsthand. It also manifests itself in the 
control of markets, natural resources, supply chains and, above all, 
technology and information.*

*The oligarchies that dominate the world today not only accumulate 
wealth, but also concentrate political, cultural and social power, 
perpetuating a benefit that favors a few at the expense of many.  Large 
industrial corporations, financial conglomerates and technology giants 
have woven a network of influence that transcends borders.  Their 
decisions affect the lives of millions of people, from access to 
medicines to the privacy of our data.  These elites not only seek to 
maximize their profits, but also to consolidate their hegemony, imposing 
standards and norms that perpetuate the dependence of what is 
increasingly recognized as the Global South.*

*Although colonialism was almost completely abolished in the second half 
of the 20th century, its conditions and shortcomings have prevailed in 
new forms.*

*This is the essence of the current international order and explains the 
unacceptable reality that the gap between developed and underdeveloped 
countries tends to widen, rather than narrow, with no prospects of this 
trend changing.*

*There are plenty of documents, declarations, speeches and resolutions 
from the United Nations and its agencies that describe this scenario. 
Proposals on how to respond and what to do have a history that dates 
back at least to the 1960s of the last century.  It is well known that 
the possibility of change and the prospect of a more just and 
sustainable international order have met with fierce resistance from the 
great economic and military powers, largely representing the former 
colonial powers.*

*Developing nations, and especially their peoples, have the right to 
dream that a better world is possible! And they have the right and the 
duty to fight for it! (Applause.)*

*This will not be possible if we do not make significant progress 
towards an international order different from the current one.  It must 
be a truly democratic order, in which all nations have the opportunity 
to contribute and be truly represented on equal terms. It must be a 
sustainable order, which promotes peace, security for all, social 
justice, equitable prosperity, respect for cultural, ethnic and 
religious plurality; which promotes democratic access to science and 
technology, and human rights for all, not just for privileged elites; 
which is based on solidarity, cooperation and respect for the right of 
each country to choose its political, economic and social system without 
foreign interference.*

*In this new order, what is fundamental is its content and the 
commitment that we are able to mobilize to achieve it.*

*The challenges to achieve it or even get closer to it are immense. How 
to do it is a difficult question to answer.  But there is no doubt that 
unity, strategy and a clear vision of what we want to achieve are 
required.  And, as Fidel said: Sow ideas!  Sow ideas!  Sow ideas! And 
sow awareness! (Applause.)*

*After reviewing José Martí and evaluating the current moment, all 
doubts are cleared. It is he who warns us and is also the antidote 
against all imbalances, because he helps us understand the only possible 
language, because it is common: the human one.*

*His spirit leads us to defend ancestral roots, our identities that the 
new colonizers dream of dismantling, our dignity, our creative 
possibility, the much-needed unity, self-esteem for being these natural 
women and men that we are, courage, stoicism, sensitivity, that powerful 
force about which Martí said: “Through love one sees. With love one 
sees.  Love is what sees” (Applause).*

*From this platform that we erect in his memory, I want to share with 
you the fervent wish that Martí continues to call us, that his optimism, 
raised like a sword, even in the most adverse scenarios, be our horizon 
and our teaching, and that, protected by him, we never abandon the 
certainty that, as he said with all firmness: “Honor can be tarnished. 
Justice can be sold. Everything can be torn apart. But the notion of 
good floats above everything, and never sinks” (Applause).*

*Let us have as a legitimate desire to become, with daily effort and the 
best dreams, true disciples of José Martí, just as Fidel did and with 
him the Generation of the Centennial of Martí, as did so many worthy men 
and women who brought the Apostle to our time.*

*Along these paths I am sure that we will find, day by day, meaning to 
his tremendous affirmation that “Happiness exists on earth; and it is 
conquered with the prudent exercise of reason, the knowledge of the 
harmony of the universe, and the constant practice of generosity.”*

*From free and sovereign Cuba, which resists and creates tirelessly, 
carrying in its heart “the doctrines of the Master,” as Fidel did before 
those who judged him in 1953, we confirm to the followers of Martí 
everywhere who have accompanied us in these days, that we will continue 
fighting for the balance of the world, as a contribution to the 
preservation of the human species!*

*Long live Martí! (Exclamations of: “Long live!”)*

*Long live his ideas! (Exclamations of: “Viva!”)*

*"Hasta la victoria siempre!"  "Ever onward to victory!" (Exclamations 
of: "Venceremos!" “We will win!”)*

*
(Cubaminrex-Presidency) / English translation: Ed Newman / Radio Havana 
Cuba*.com 
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