The following is the text of Fidel Castro's speech on July 23 at the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid, which commemorated the 500th anniversary of the landing of Christopher Columbus in the Americas. The translation is by Radio Havana.
Your Majesty, Excellencies:
Great was Columbus' feat, and intrepid were those capable of conquering and colonising tens of millions of square kilometres of populated lands in the Western Hemisphere. But also without precedent in history were the examples of heroic resistance, like that of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital; and unparalleled was the feat of those, led by Bolivar, who later liberated an entire continent.
Together we have written a dramatic and fabulous history. But one doesn't travel so far just to attend a commemoration, as important as it may be. What brings us here is the awareness that Latin American unity has yet to exist; our independence has yet to be consolidated; and our full development has yet to be attained.
We commemorate the quincentennial at a time when the international balance of forces has been disrupted, when concepts essential to sovereignty are being questioned and when unipolar authority is emerging in the world. What will happen in the next 500 years? Will most of humanity be subjected to worse forms of domination? Will they be ignored or crushed? Absorbed in an economic, political and cultural order whose power comes not only from the most sophisticated weapons, but also from its monopoly over advanced technology, the world economy and the mass media?
Will humanity's rights be guaranteed by the United Nations, whose functions have been usurped by a
Security Council, in turn manipulated at will by the world's greatest military power? A power which imposes its policies on that minuscule group of countries wielding the veto — an anachronistic, irritating and anti-democratic privilege unworthy of our times.
We even ask ourselves if humanity could survive the destruction of the environment by the wasteful and alienating consumer societies, which have been unable to solve their own pressing economic and social problems. This has been clearly demonstrated in the wealthy city of Los Angeles, in a country posing as a model political system, but where racist violence is more brutal every day. Where the rich get richer, and the poor poorer. Where black and Latin people are ever more discriminated against.
As we meet here, that same country, the greatest military power in history, has proclaimed the barbaric right to kidnap citizens of any nation anywhere in the world: the empire trying to govern the planet. A planet that is ungovernable.
This is the same empire that for over 30 years has unmercifully blockaded Cuba, a small Latin American country. Not even food or medicines are exempted. It tries to bring Cubans to their knees by starvation, by smothering them economically, because they have refused to give up their independence or their ideas. This is genocide, an outrage against humanity. Is this what they mean by the New World Order? Is this the future awaiting any nation which aspires to genuine independence?
And what hope is there for the Third World as a whole? In disturbed and confusing times, some have opted to sell their souls, dreaming that their change of ideology will bring them the life of Paris or London. Countries once considered industrialised now demand billions of dollars as they scamper to become consumer societies, vying for the same resources needed for real development.
The enormous budget deficits of the one dominant power siphon off substantial funds from the world economy.
What will be left to overcome underdevelopment for the world's vast majority, those in Latin America, Africa and Asia who were colonised precisely 500 years ago? Will they have to live on alms and the leftovers of the rich nations?
Whatever the responses to these questions, we Latin Americans cannot escape the historic necessity to unite and integrate ourselves, before all else. Latin America's economic and political integration is now a goal inscribed in the Cuban Constitution. Divided, our peoples can never achieve independence, respect from the powerful, the well-
being we strive for, or a dignified place in the world.
I would like to take this exceptional opportunity to greet the Spanish people, courageous and noble descendants of those who struggled 700 years for their independence, those who in defence of their country defeated the once invincible armies of Napoleon. I am grateful for your warm hospitality, and thank you above all as a Latin American, that I can speak here today in Spanish and not English.
As Cubans, we consider ourselves inheritors of the Spanish people's finest traditions: nothing is impossible for those who struggle. As he was about to resume the war for Cuba's independence, our national hero José Martà — son of Spanish parents — wrote a passage which seems to have been conceived for this meeting: "Cuba doesn't go about the world a bothersome beggar; but as a sister nation, who has earned the right to act as such. Saving herself, she saves others. Latin America will not fail her, because she will not fail Latin America."