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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/19/we-will-continue-to-advance-along-the-path-freely-chosen-by-our-people/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/19/we-will-continue-to-advance-along-the-path-freely-chosen-by-our-people/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">We will Continue to Advance Along the Path
Freely Chosen by Our People</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/raul-castro/">Raul
Castro</a></span></div>
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<p><em>Full text of speech by President Raúl Castro Ruz
during the closing session of the National Assembly of
People’s Power, July 14.</em></p>
<p>As is customary this time of year, we have had a fair
amount of activity. June 28, we held a Council of
Ministers meeting, during which we reviewed, among other
items, the issues which would be presented to this
ordinary session of the National Assembly of People’s
Power.</p>
<p>Since Monday, deputies have been working in their
respective commissions analyzing the principal questions
of national affairs, and received extensive information
on the implementation of the economic plan during the
first half of the year, and the settlement of the 2016
state budget.</p>
<p>Our Parliament was likewise updated on the Cuban state
plan to address climate change, identified as “Tarea
Vida” (Task Life), an issue of special strategic
significance for the present and future of our country,
given our condition as an island, to which the nation’s
scientific and technical strength has contributed over
more than 25 years.</p>
<p>Very closely linked to “Tarea Vida,” today we approved
the Terrestrial Waters Act, on which we have been
working since 2013 with the participation of bodies and
institutions of greatest incidence in the integrated,
sustainable management of water, a vital natural
resource that must be protected in the interest of
society, the economy, health, and the environment,
especially in the situations of prolonged, and
increasingly frequent drought we face, about which much
information has been provided to our people, and this
must continue.</p>
<p>Since the plan and budget for the current year were
being prepared, we have warned of persistent financial
tensions and challenges that could complicate the
national economy’s performance. We likewise foresaw
periodic difficulties in the delivery of fuel from
Venezuela, despite the unwavering commitment of
President Nicolás Maduro and his administration.</p>
<p>Amidst these difficult circumstances, encouraging,
modest results have been achieved. The Gross Domestic
Product grew by 1.1% in the first half of the year,
which indicates a change in the economy’s direction as
compared to last year. Contributing to this result were
agriculture, tourism, and other exports of services,
construction, sugar production, and the transportation
and communications sectors.</p>
<p>Progress has been made on prioritized investments that
are laying the foundation for the nation’s development.</p>
<p>Free social services have been assured for all Cubans,
including education and public health.</p>
<p>The internal monetary balance has improved, as
reflected in a smaller increase in retail prices in a
better supplied market. The budget deficit is currently
below what was foreseen.</p>
<p>On another issue, pains were taken to maintain strict
fulfillment of payment commitments to our principal
creditors, which resulted from the restructuring of
Cuba’s foreign debt. However, despite many attempts, we
have not been able to stay current on running accounts
with providers, to whom I reiterate our gratitude for
their confidence in Cuba and our intention to honor each
and every one of these overdue obligations.</p>
<p>The situation described obliges us to continue adopting
the measures required to fully protect income from
exports, the production of food, and the provision of
services for the population, while at the same time we
avoid all unnecessary expenses, and guarantee the most
rational and efficient use of the resources available to
support established priorities.</p>
<p>Moving to another topic, in accordance with agreements
reached at the 6th and 7th Party Congresses, the
expansion of self-employment and the experiment with
non-agricultural cooperatives was authorized, with the
purpose of gradually freeing the state from
responsibility for activities that are not strategic,
creating jobs, supporting initiative, and contributing
to the national economy’s efficiency in the interest of
developing our socialism.</p>
<p>More recently, this past June, these forms of property
management were recognized as among those operating
within the Cuban economy, in an extraordinary session of
Parliament dedicated to analyzing and approving
programmatic documents for our Economic and Social
Model, after the conclusion of a consultation process
with members of the Party and youth, representatives of
mass organizations, and broad sectors of society.</p>
<p>We currently have more than half a million
self-employed workers and more than 400 non-agricultural
cooperatives, which confirms their validity as a source
of employment, while contributing to an increase and
greater variety of goods and services available, with an
acceptable level of quality.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, as we discussed in the Council of
Ministers meeting this past June 26, deviations from the
policy established on this subject have been noted, and
violations of the legal regulations in effect, such as
the utilization of raw materials and equipment of
illicit origin, under-declaration of income to evade tax
obligations, and insufficient state control at all
levels.</p>
<p>With the purpose of eradicating the negative phenomena
detected, and assuring the development of these forms of
management within a legal framework, the Council of
Ministers made a series of decisions which will be
broadly disseminated as the updated regulations are
published.</p>
<p>I believe it is appropriate to emphasize that we have
not renounced the expansion and development of
self-employment, or the continuation of the experiment
with non-agricultural cooperatives. We are not going to
draw back or stop, nor will we allow the non-state
sector to be stigmatized or face prejudice, but it is
imperative that laws be respected, progress
consolidated, positive aspects – which are more than a
few – generalized, and illegalities and other deviations
from established policy resolutely confronted .</p>
<p>I am sure that in this effort we can count on the
support of the majority of citizens who are working in
this sector in an honest fashion.</p>
<p>Let us not forget that the pace and scope of the
changes we need to make to our model must be conditioned
by the capacity we have to do things well and rectify
any misstep in a timely manner. This will only be
possible if adequate prior preparation is ensured –
which we haven’t done – training and comprehension of
established regulations at every level, follow-up and
guidance of the process – aspects marked by a fair dose
of superficiality, and an excess of enthusiasm and
desire to move more rapidly than we are truly capable of
managing.</p>
<p>I believe this issue I have just mentioned is perfectly
well understood. It is necessary that what we have
decided be implemented. The country, and the Revolution
as well, need it. The desire to do things quickly
without adequate preparation, of those who must
implement the measures in the first place, leads to all
these errors, and later we criticize those we shouldn’t
criticize.</p>
<p>Criminal acts have been committed; information exists
on cases when the same person has two, three, four, even
five restaurants. Not in one province, but in several. A
person who has traveled more than 30 times to different
countries. Where did they get the money? How did they do
this? All these problems exist, but we should not use
them as a pretext to criticize a decision that is
correct.</p>
<p>What is a state, especially a socialist state, doing
administering a barbershop with one chair, or two or
three, and with one administrator for a certain number
of small barbershops – not many. I mention this example
because it was one of the first steps we took.</p>
<p>We decided to establish cooperatives; we tried some,
and immediately threw ourselves into creating dozens of
construction cooperatives. Has no one analyzed the
consequences this brought and the problems that this
haste created? To mention just one case. And like this
one, there are quite a few. This is what I want to say
in simple, modest language. Whose errors are these?
Mainly, ours, we leaders who developed this policy,
although in consultation with the people, with the
approval of Parliament, of the last Congress, of the
last meeting we held here this past month, to approve
all the documents I mentioned at the beginning of my
remarks. This is the reality. Let’s not try to block the
sun with a finger. Mistakes are mistakes. And they are
our mistakes, and if we are going to consider
hierarchies among us, in the first place, they are mine,
because I was part of this decision. This is the
reality.</p>
<p>Regarding our foreign policy, I would like to say the
following:</p>
<p>This past June 16, the President of the United States,
Donald Trump, announced his administration’s policy
toward Cuba, nothing novel for sure, since he retook a
discourse and elements from the confrontational past,
which showed their absolute failure for over 55 years.</p>
<p>It is evident that the U.S. President has not been well
informed on the history of Cuba and its relations with
the United States, or on the patriotism and dignity of
the Cuban people.</p>
<p>History cannot be forgotten, as they have at times
suggested we do. For more than 200 years, the ties
between Cuba and the United States have been marked, on
the one hand, by the pretensions of the northern
neighbor to dominate our country, and on the other, by
the determination of Cubans to be free, independent, and
sovereign.</p>
<p>Throughout the entire 19th century, invoking the
doctrines and policies of Manifest Destiny, of Monroe,
and the “ripe fruit,” different U.S. administrations
tried to take possession of Cuba, and despite the heroic
struggle of the mambises, they did so in 1898, with a
deceitful intervention at the end of the war which for
30 years Cubans had waged for their independence, and
which the U.S. troops entered as allies and then became
occupiers. Negotiating with Spain behind Cuba’s back,
they militarily occupied the country for four years,
demobilizing the Liberation Army, dissolving the
Revolutionary Cuban Party – organized, founded, and led
by Martí – and imposed an appendix to the Constitution
of the nascent republic, the Platt Amendment, which gave
them the right to intervene in our internal affairs and
establish, among others, the naval base in Guantánamo,
which still today usurps part of the national territory,
the return of which we will continue to demand.</p>
<p>Cuba’s neocolonial condition, which allowed the United
States to exercise total control over the economic and
political life of the island, frustrated, but did not
annihilate, the Cuban people’s longing for freedom and
independence. Exactly 60 years later, January 1, 1959,
with the triumph of the Revolution led by Comandante en
Jefe Fidel Castro, we became definitively free and
independent.</p>
<p>From that moment on, the strategic goal of U.S. policy
toward Cuba has been to overthrow the Revolution. To do
so, over more than five decades, they resorted to
dissimilar methods: economic war, breaking diplomatic
relations, armed invasion, attempts to assassinate our
principal leaders, sabotage, a naval blockade, the
creation and support of armed bands, state terrorism,
internal subversion, the economic, commercial, financial
blockade, and international isolation.</p>
<p>Ten administrations held office until President Barack
Obama, in his statement of December 17, 2014, without
renouncing the strategic goal, had the good sense to
recognize that isolation had not worked, and that it was
time for a new focus toward Cuba.</p>
<p>No one could deny that the United States, in its
attempts to isolate Cuba, in the end found itself
profoundly isolated. The policy of hostility and
blockade toward our country had become a serious
obstacle to relations with Latin America and the
Caribbean, and was rejected almost unanimously by the
international community. Within U.S. society, growing
majority opposition to this policy had developed,
including among a good portion of the Cuban émigré
community.</p>
<p>In the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Cartagena de
Indias, Colombia, in 2012, Ecuador refused to
participate if Cuba was not permitted to attend, and all
Latin American and Caribbean countries expressed their
rejection of the blockade and Cuba’s exclusion from
these events. Many countries warned that another meeting
would not take place without Cuba. As such, we arrived
in April 2015 – three years later – to the Seventh
Summit in Panama, invited for the very first time.</p>
<p>Over the last two years, and working on the basis of
respect and equality, diplomatic relations have been
reestablished and progress made toward resolving pending
bilateral matters, as well as cooperation on issues of
mutual interest and benefit; limited modifications were
made to the implementation of some aspects of the
blockade. The two countries established the bases from
which to work toward building a new type of
relationship, demonstrating that civil coexistence is
possible despite profound differences.</p>
<p>At the end of President Obama’s term in office, the
blockade, the Naval Base in Guantánamo, and the regime
change policy, remained in place.</p>
<p>The announcements made by the current U.S. President,
last July 16, represent a step back in bilateral
relations. This is the opinion of many people and
organizations in the United States and around the world,
who have overwhelmingly expressed their outright
rejection of the announced changes. This sentiment was
also expressed by our youth and student organizations,
Cuban women, workers, campesinos, Committees for the
Defense of the Revolution, intellectuals, and religious
groups, on behalf of the vast majority of the nation’s
citizens.</p>
<p>The U.S. government has decided to tighten the blockade
by imposing new obstacles on its businesspeople to trade
and invest in Cuba, and additional restrictions on its
citizens to travel to the country – justifying these
measures with out-dated rhetoric regarding the Cuban
people’s exercise and enjoyment of human rights and
democracy.</p>
<p>President Trump’s decision disregards the support of
broad sectors of U.S. society, including the majority of
Cuban émigrés, for lifting of the blockade and
normalization of relations, and only satisfies the
interests of an increasingly isolated, minority group of
Cuban origin in South Florida, who insist on harming
Cuba and its people for having chosen to defend, at any
cost, their right to be free, independent, and
sovereign.</p>
<p>Today, we reiterate the Revolutionary Government’s
condemnation of measures to tighten the blockade, and
reaffirm that any attempt to destroy the Revolution,
whether through coercion and pressure, or the use of
subtle methods, will fail.</p>
<p>We likewise reject manipulation of the issue of human
rights against Cuba, which has many reasons to be proud
of its achievements, and does not need to receive
lessons from the United States or anyone else
(Applause).</p>
<p>I wish to repeat, as I did so in the CELAC Summit held
in the Dominican Republic in January of this year, that
Cuba is willing to continue discussing pending bilateral
issues with the United States, on the basis of equality
and respect for the sovereignty and independence of our
country, and to continue respectful dialogue and
cooperation in issues of common interest with the U.S.
government.</p>
<p>Cuba and the United States can cooperate and coexist,
respecting our differences and promoting everything that
benefits both countries and peoples, but it should not
be expected that, in order to do so, Cuba will make
concessions essential to its sovereignty and
independence. And today, I add, nor will it negotiate
its principles or accept conditions of any kind, just as
we have never done throughout the history of the
Revolution.</p>
<p>Despite what the government of the United States does,
or does not decide to do, we will continue advancing
along the path sovereignly chosen by our people.</p>
<p>We are living in an international situation
characterized by growing threats to peace and
international security, interventionist wars, dangers to
the survival of the human species, and an unjust and
exclusionary international economic order.</p>
<p>As is known, since 2010, the United States has been
implementing the concept of “unconventional warfare”
conceived as a set of activities aimed at exploiting the
psychological, economic, military and political
vulnerabilities of an adversary nation in order to
develop a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce,
change, or overthrow its government.</p>
<p>The method was tested in North Africa, and even in
Europe, and has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths,
the destruction of states, has torn apart societies and
caused their economies to collapse.</p>
<p>Our America, which proclaimed itself a Zone of Peace in
2014, is currently facing an adverse situation.</p>
<p>The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is suffering an
unconventional war – which didn’t begin now, but a long
time ago – imposed by imperialism and oligarchic coup
sectors which have incited violence in the streets and
fascist acts, such as the frightful scenes of youths
being burned alive.</p>
<p>Foreign intervention in the Bolivarian and Chavista
Republic must stop. Terrorist and coup violence must be
unequivocally condemned. We must all unite in the call
for dialogue and abstention from acts which contradict,
through manipulation and demagogy, their stated
intentions.</p>
<p>The Organization of American States (OAS) and its
Secretary General must end their aggression and
selective manipulation of reality against Venezuela.</p>
<p>It must respect Venezuela’s legitimate right to resolve
its internal problems peacefully and without any foreign
intervention. The exercise of self-determination and
finding solutions by themselves, is up to the sovereign
people of Venezuela alone.</p>
<p>We reaffirm our solidarity with the Venezuelan people
and the country’s civic-military union led by
Constitutional President, Nicolás Maduro Moros.</p>
<p>The aggression and coup violence against Venezuela
harms all of Our America and only benefits the interests
of those set on dividing us in order to exercise their
control over our people, unconcerned about causing
conflicts of incalculable consequences in this region,
like those we are seeing in different parts of the
world.</p>
<p>Today we warn that those attempting to overthrow the
Bolivarian Chavista Revolution through unconstitutional,
violent coup methods, will shoulder a serious
responsibility before history.</p>
<p>To comrade Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a victim of
political persecution and coup plotters, we express our
solidarity in the face of an attempt to block his
electoral candidacy with a legal disqualification.</p>
<p>Lula, Dilma Rousseff, the Workers Party and people of
Brazil, will always have Cuba on their side.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>This past July 14, the Council of State decided to call
general elections, during which delegates to municipal
and provincial assemblies, and deputies to the National
Assembly of People’s Power – who will chose the Council
of State and President of the Parliament – will be
chosen.</p>
<p>At the same time, the electoral commissions which will
direct the process at different stages were constituted,
and candidacy commissions established.</p>
<p>It is imperative to note the vital political importance
of this electoral process, which must constitute an act
of revolutionary reaffirmation by our people, and
demands concerted efforts by all institutions and
organizations.</p>
<p>We are certain, as the Cuban people have demonstrated
on past occasions, that the elections will be an example
of a genuinely democratic exercise, supported by broad
popular participation, legality, and a transparent
electoral process, which does not feature competing
political parties or campaign fundraising, but in which
nominating and choosing candidates is based on the
individual’s merit, ability, and commitment to the
people.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, and to conclude, compañeras and compañeros,
only 12 days remain until we celebrate the 64th
anniversary of the assaults on the Moncada and Carlos
Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons. This time the central act
will be held in the province of Pinar del Río and the
main speaker will be Second Secretary of the Central
Committee, compañero José Ramón Machado Ventura
(Applause).</p>
<p>In celebrating National Rebellion Day, for the first
time without the physical presence of Comandante en Jefe
of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, let us
propose to face the new challenges under the guidance of
his example, his revolutionary intransigence, and
eternal confidence in victory.</p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <em><strong>Raul Castro Ruz</strong>
is the president of Cuba.</em> </p>
</div>
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