Fidel Castro - GUNS YES! AND WHO IS TAKING THEM AWAY FROM THE PEOPLE lyrics

Today, on 27 November of this year, there is a circumstance worthy of attention and that is that this event, this year, is a bigger affair than the one last year. This means a lot; it means that, with the pa**age of time, these memorial celebrations are not losing in warmth and in importance to the people, as used to happen in the past. The presence of a greater number of Cubans at this ceremony tonight means that patriotic and revolutionary memorial celebrations are met each time with the ever greater warmth of the people. Why is this so? Simply because the revolutionary consciousness of the people is growing and becoming stronger. But it is not just that we have a large number of Cubans present here, this year, on the steps of the university; this fact also signifies a defeat for the counterrevolution. This event here today means much to the Cuban revolution after almost 2 years of revolution, after all of the radical and profound measures which the revolution has introduced in our country. If this ceremony were to take place in the rural areas and if the peasants were to attend in a large ma**, that would be something very natural. If this ceremony were to take place among the workers and if the workers were to attend in vast ma**es, this would be very natural of course. The working cla** and the peasants, for the most, are also agricultural workers, they are all with the revolution and this of course is very logical. The reactionary forces did not try to fight within the working cla**. The counterrevolution did not try to win ground among the peasants; the counterrevolution placed its hope of regaining some of its positions in the University of Havana and the student circles. Why is this so? Because the student ma** is a heterogeneous ma**. The composition of the ma** of students is a rather varied one and, generally speaking, the children of the poor families did not have an opportunity to study at the university. The opportunity to study in Cuba was in an inverse ratio to the need to study. In other words, in order not to confuse anybody with arithmetic here, it was in an inverse proportion to the available resources. The poorer a family was, the less opportunity it had to send its children to study at the university. Who, for example, shined shoes in the streets of our capital? Where did the kids who sold newspapers at night and early in the morning come from? What opportunity did they have to study at the university? And what opportunity did the children of the peasant families have -- out there, in the rural areas, where they did not even have grade school teachers. Those youngsters whose family had the money could go to the city and study at the institutes and at the university. Those who were most privileged were able to study abroad, in the United States or Europe. The poorest families could not do this; in general, they were unable to send their children to the university. Of course, there might have been a few poor students at the university. At the university and in the institutes, there are many children from poor families, children from middle-income families, and children from rich families. It might happen that a poor student could not go to school, to college, but it would have been impossible for a rich youngster not to be able to go to school. The rich youngster who did not study did not do so because he simply did not want to study. But, generally speaking, the rich families wanted their children to study and they were very much concerned with perpetuating their interests through them. There were students whose family interests were affected by the laws of the revolution. This is why the counterrevolution, all over the world, does not try to gain ground among the peasants. What could the counterrevolution say to a peasant who has been freed from rent payment? What could it tell to a man whose life has been radically changed? What could it say to someone whom the revolution had liberated from misery, exploitation, and humiliation? What could the counterrevolutionary possibly say to the worker? The counterrevolution primarily approached the education centers, particularly the centers of higher education. And it tried to recruit its agents at these centers from among the children of rich families. Among the children of families which were affected by the revolutionary laws. The counterrevolution did not try to do any recruiting in the little public school which the revolutionary government is opening up, way out in the mountains. Pro-Batista Professors The counterrevolution does not go to the military barracks and to the fortresses that have been converted into schools, where the children of workers and of poor families are studying. The counterrevolution knows that it has no business there and could not possibly find anything there. And when it does look for something, it does not look for it among the students; it looks for it among the professors in those educational institutions. I want to make this quite clear because there are still some pro-Batista individuals among the teaching body in the high schools, because there are still pro-imperialists, reactionaries, and counterrevolutionaries among the high school teachers. The counterrevolution approaches them. The counterrevolution addresses itself to them, in order to turn them into instruments for its attempts against the people. And the counterrevolution above all, as you know, addresses itself to the colleges of the privileges. Here, in the colleges of the privileged, here is where the counterrevolution does all of its recruiting, here and in the colleges of the superprivileged, where it would be difficult to find any youngster whose interests have not been affected by the laws of the revolution, in other words, his interest as a member of the privileged cla**, as a member of a big landowning family, as a member of a business business family, as a member of a sugar plantation family, a member of a big finance family or a family that owned property in the city, or as a member of a professional family in the service of those interests whom the revolution has wiped out in our fatherland: it would be difficult here to find a young man who was not in one way or another affected by the revolution, in terms of his interests; this was a revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble. Since I am talking here in the name of that revolution, I must speak very clearly to our people on this subject, particularly to the humble citizens of our nation: and I must also address the privileged of yesterday and the semiprivileged of today, because they are left with some privileges. Above all, I want them to know that we, the leaders of the revolution, and the people altogether, who support us and who back up this revolution with their enthusiasm and their invincible faith, we know what we are doing and we are familiar with the problem from the bottom up; I want these semi-privileged people to know that they can stay here: we understand what the situation is and we understand why these centers constitute fertile soil for the counterrevolution. And when we talk about the professors here, we are not really criticizing our comrade, the Minister of Education. It is not easy to tackle the heritage which the past has left us here. At any rate, this is a natural consequence of the revolutionary process and above all it is a natural consequence of the process of a revolution as generous as this one. A revolution which has been as generous as this one, but a revolution where generosity has not weakened it; although it is generous it has tremendous moral strength and because of its tremendous moral force it can act. Anti-Cuban Sermon In many of these centers, they preach the counterrevolution quite open; they preach hatred against the fatherland quite openly; they openly preach cla** hatred; they preach hatred for the humble peasantry, for the perker, for the humble youth, and for the humble people. In other words, they preach hatred against the measures and steps which were taken, not in order to benefit privileged minorities, but in order to bring justice to those who need it, in order to bring well-being to those who need it, in order to bring progress and improvement to those who need it. But they do this quite openly and without restraint. And why do they do it openly wand without restraint? Ah! Because there is nobody more foxy than a counterrevolution. There is nobody in the world who is more cynical than a counterrevolution. And you know who the scribes and the Pharisees are and you know who the anti-Christians are, in other words, those who do not cast their lot with the poor of this world, those who do not want to enter Heaven, not even through the eye of a needle, in other words, those who want a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Those who never lived in the humble sections of town, in the poor villages and in the deserted hamlets, those who devoted themselves to promoting the privileged cla**, which was its master. Those Pharisees and scribes, those who make up the entire corrupt crew of the counterrevolution. They know what the revolution wants; they know what the revolution proposes to accomplish; they know that the revolution is generous; they know that the revolution does not want to play there game; they know that the revolution does not want to fan the fire of internal campaigns against the fatherland. They know what they are up to but they also know that they are not going to fool anybody; they know that nobody is going to be confused by them because they are in the service of international interest; they do not care about the fire here; they are only concerned about the fire abroad. They want to create conflicts here in order to make propaganda elsewhere. They Use the Temples and the Schools for Their Criminal Campaign Those who use the temples or the schools of the overprivileged here in order to launch their criminal campaign against the revolution which has done so much for those who needed to have something done for them, in other words, the poor of the fatherland. Those who want to rise up against the revolutionary fatherland because the revolutionary fatherland destroyed egotistical interests, destroyed immoral interests, immoral in the eyes of men and in the eyes of God; those who rise up against the fatherland because the fatherland destroyed those immoral and egotistical interests, they know that they cannot fool anybody here. They are wrong if they think they can convert some of the students here into counterrevolutionary agents because those who died on the cross in Rome, those who were k**ed in the Circus, without denying their beliefs, those were not the children of the Roman partisians; they were the children of the Roman plebians. Those who burned on the cross, those who were devoured by the fierce animals, they were slaves or semi-slaves; they were the poor of Rome; and these were the people who had a strong faith; these people were not accustomed to the comforts of the ruling cla** which lived from one feast to the next. But they did not have an easy life, after all, because they had no belief to guide them, because they were not loyal or faithful to any religious or political idea; amid all their wealth, they were not satisfied, they did not know what suffering meant and what pain was; and in our time, these people were riding around in luxurious automobiles, they always had plenty of food, but no belief that judgement day would ever come. The Final Judgement on Privilege And so the hour came in our fatherland for the final judgement of the privileged and the final judgement on the criminal exploitation of our people. We did not find any heroes among the children of the privileged; we did not find the kind of conviction that enables men to die for their beliefs; that sort of thin we never found among the children of the privileged; they simply could not get used to the idea of dying in front of those who were always prepared to die. But they are now being recruited to make propaganda abroad; they are being recruited to cause provocations. They know what they are up to, they know that the revolution is generous, they know that the revolution does not want to fan the flames of the campaigns against the fatherland; and they utilize this fact in order to spread reactionary opinions, cla** opinions, opinions of the cla** which has lost its privileges, egotistical opinions, opinions against the fatherland, opinions against the revolution, opinions against the people; they try to spread these opinions among children whose minds are not yet fully formed. They know what the attitude of the revolution is and they continue to provoke it. Perhaps they imagine that the revolution is afraid of them; perhaps they think that the revolution trembles at the thought of the day when all of these crimes and all of this shame will have to be judged. (Prolonged ovation) The Case of the University of Villanueva They set themselves the task of spreading the most unfounded lies; and in spite of all this, the revolution has proved what its attitude toward these centers is; this was the policy of the revolution from the very first moment on; we even went so far as to ask a group of teachers at one of these colleges to help us solve these problems and we talked to them and we asked them to change their attitude, to renounce some of the legitimate rights which they had in view of the revolutionary policy of ours which was aimed at demonstrating our generous attitude toward these sectors; we ask them not to adopt a belligerent attitude against the revolution; we went to that university of the super-privileged which had expelled a group of youths; we went to that 100% Yankee and pro-Yankee university in order to talk with the students and to ask them to be generous to those students who had been expelled, while thousands of other students were giving their lives, while dozens upon dozens of students fell, a**a**inated in the streets, and while they did not even have the basic decency to express their solidarity with their comrades at the University of Havana; amid the fatherland's adversity, the university closed its doors and preferred to launch its students against the tyranny. The Priests Also Got Checks However, the revolutionary government toned down the sanctionist that were asked by students who had lost two or three or even four years of study time while those young gentlemen were getting their degrees without any trouble. In other words, the revolution does not want to give anybody an opportunity accuse it of having been aggressive or hostile to those centers of the privileged. But the revolution was against privilege; the revolution was against the economic interests of the privileged cla**es; this was not a problem of religion, there was not problem of religious beliefs, instead there was a problem of material interests, a problem of money, an economic problem; but all the rest, faith and belief and religion and other things served as a pretext to protect, no religions, nor faith, but the low-down and egotistical interests of individuals, the economic interests, because the revolution discovered that there was a close link, for example, between the ranch owners, the military, and the clergy. When the sugar plantations and mills were nationalized it was found that subsidies of several hundred pesos were given to some clergymen; in other words, they sent their checks not only to the cops, they sent their checks not only to the sergeants, the lieutenants, the captains, and the majors; they sent their checks not only to the famous lawyer who defended their interests, the sacrosanct interests of these gentlemen. They sent their little checks also the clergy and this resulted in a rather repugnant marriage between the exploiting ranch owner, the ranch owner who exploited the workers and the poor peasants, the cop who gave information and did the a**a**ination work, the lawyer who collected tremendous fees in order to defend their privileges, and the priest who preached submission among the workers and the peasants. Cops in Ca**ocks Some of these cops in ca**ocks did not preach the Gospel of Christ; they preached real counterrevolution sermons in the churches; and put out parish bulletins which the faithful received with the national anthem on their lips. Ah, yes! The god faithful did not know all that. The humble faithful did not know about that: they did not know that these hypocrites received their checks from the ranch owner who exploited the humble people of our fatherland. The revolution did not adopt any hostile attitude toward religion. The revolution did not clash with the church. The revolution nationalized the sugar plantations but not the church. The revolution did not clash with the laws of the church, it did not clash with the faith; it was never against the interests of any church, nor has it ever harmed any religious rites. Ah, yes! But the revolutionary laws did go against the big landowners, against the monopolies, against those who exploited the poor tenant farmer, against big property and the land rend system. But no revolutionary laws were promulgated against any church. We have never used any arguments against religion but, nevertheless, they insist in harming the interests of the cla**es for whom these laws were pa**ed. These truths were denounced here by a worthy Catholic priest. These same truths were proclaimed here by a man who came here, wearing his habit, to speak from this revolutionary tribune, to serve his fatherland, to serve the people, without denying Christ; here one can serve a faith or a revolutionary line and a religious faith, because the revolution practices freedom of religion and worship and it respects those who believe and those who do not have any religious affiliation. But one thing is certain: in this fatherland of our we have all of those who love the fatherland and in the revolution we have all of those who love the people. Those who do not belong within the revolution are those who hate the people. Those who do not fit into the revolution, nor into the fatherland, those who cannot love God -- they are the ones who serve the egotistical interests of the privileged. They are the ones who cannot speak from this tribune where the truth shines; and the entire big lie was done away with from the very first moment and these arguments explain why the counterrevolution tries to take up positions among the students in the universities and in the private colleges. And so it tries to recruit among the students in the private colleges. But we are not going to get angry. We said that we would put up schools for the humble families, better than the best private schools; and we are carrying out our promise. It is difficult for some of the schools to compete with the school center at Ciudad Libertad. It is logical that, as these schools grow, the others will continue to shrink, for two reasons: first of all because there will be schools better than these other schools and, then, because the privileged will not be privileged anymore. The Government Is Not Closing the Schools This money of the big landowners, which used to be employed in supporting the schools for the privileged, will now be used to build schools for the people. In addition, we have converted the military barracks into schools and we have also built some new school facilities. Of course, they, the privileged, are not happy with that. What are they trying to do now? Before shutting the schools down, they double and triple their provocations in order to call attention to the fact that the schools, which are being closed because there are no more special privileges for anybody, have been closed by the government; they do this for international consumption. The government is not shutting any schools down, as they would like to have you believe at that "University of Yankee Land." The revolutionary government is not afraid of the activities of these Yankee Land organizations; they have no right to act with such impunity and they should not entertain any illusions that the poor might not be with the revolution in this struggle; the poor will fight and the privileged will find themselves all alone; the privileged are not cut from the same cloth as those who knew how to die well in times of ancient Rome. The privileged take refuge in the emba**y and then they go off to Miami. And they go there and live in a section of their own; it would readily be interesting to see how some of them live there; it would be interesting to see whether they live any better there; and still they dare criticize the revolution when it wants to take over certain homes, when it wants to build school centers and give the people bread. And then they dare say that the revolution is bad. It is so bad that it left the landowners with 30 caballerias. It is so bad that it left the owners of big buildings, people who owned many houses, with 600 pesos. But they are so good and they believe these stories to the effect that the Marines of the United States Navy would come; and so that went away and they left us the 30 caballerlas and they left us their 600 pesos. Nobody will miss them. They could not live on 30 caballerias of land. They could not live on 600 pesos. Especially if the Americans were going to come. Then they would get their big estates back; then they would get their big apartment houses back. It is quite possible that there are very few places in the world where they had residences such as the ones these people had here. It is possible that such residences, with all these luxuries might not even be found in the United States. By say of a revolutionary lesson, we recommend that you take a walk through these grand palaces; and then you ought to take a look at the humble huts in which humble families live just a few blocks away; in one place, millions and millions would be spent on residences and just a few blocks away people would be living in small apartments which rented for 60 and 80 pesos. This is why these rich people like the fatherland, but Marti said that the fatherland was for everybody and for the good of all. The revolution has come to fulfill this promise by Marti, to the effect that the fatherland belongs to everybody and it has accomplished this in a singular form. It achieved this without using the guillotine, because, as we know, in France they did not just tap the privileged on the head, they chopped their hands off altogether. When the slaves had their uprising in Haiti, they took the coffee plantation owners and chopped their heads off. In those days, when the people rose, things were not as gentle as they are today. Here, whenever somebody feels that he cannot stand it any longer, he simply takes a cab to the emba**y. Our attitude has always been generous. If they want to leave, let them go. If Uncle Sam wants to pay their expenses, well, that's just fine with us. It is better for them to go there than to be a financial burden to us. They have set up a find to help refugees. These are the refugees who have left 30 caballerias of land behind; these are the refugees who left big bank accounts behind. Here, they have lots of capital invested in real estate and houses. What are we supposed to do with that? These houses are good for our guests, of course, for the worker leaders and the students and for all illustrious visitors, the kind which the revolution always receives. We are going to fix up 100 of these houses in grand style and we will leave the Cadillacs in the garages, for use by our guests. Thousands of Scholarships And our high school students can be the tourist guides for these people and they can be the chauffeurs of these Cadillacs. And then, these same students will go to the university and in the future they might even advance to become amba**adors of the Republic. And it is not going to cost them a penny. We will maintain the gardens and we are even going to improve them. And we are going to employ other centers of this kind and we are going to equip them so that they can handle visitors. When we have visitors, the students will take care of them and after the visitors have left they can go back to school. And in this way, those Cadillacs will last us a long time. This is what we are going to do with the houses in Cubanaean which the illustrious families have left voluntarily i order to claim the hospitality of Uncle Sam. All right, thanks a lot for all these houses! This, very simply, is what has happened here, sons of these gentlemen leaves and we now have a school which used to be called Havana Military Academy. All right. We are already building additional wings and we are going to have our first technological school for young rebels here; a thousand revolutionary brigades will attend this school. Not a single building will stand empty because the revolution already has the necessary organization and manpower for doing everything that we want to do here. We already have 600 university scholarship students and we have a capacity for 2,000 more; we are finishing up 3 buildings which can be used as dormitories for another 2,500 scholarship students. And all of them come from humble families; anybody who wants to get an education need only apply for his scholarship. They do not need any sponsorship, they do not need any recommendations. All they have to do is come to the office and say "I want to study for such and such a career and I have no economic resources." What are we doing with these students? Do we give them alms? No! Is this some kind of government charity? No! These students are going to pay after they get through studying. We are simply advancing them the money. How are they going to make out there? Well, they are going to live under the best conditions possible. They will have books and clothing and all their expenses will be paid and they will have good food and they will get 10 pesos per month during the first year. And as they make progress, they will be given more funds. They will have everything to concentrate on their studies: a library, dining room, social facilities, and an athletic field. They will lead a real student life, while University City is being built. They will have all necessary opportunities for becoming magnificent engineers; and then, over a period of 10 years, they will repay the cost of their studies and they will thus help thousands upon thousands of new students to attend college and get their scholarships. What is the revolution doing? It is simply offering them this opportunity. And the simple thing will be done by the University of Las Villas and the University of [Unreadable text]. None of the Poor People Ever Plant Bombs No, they never do that. These bombs are planted against the poor people. None of these bombs are planted by poor people who have received benefits from the revolution; these poor people include the poor mountain farmer, where we have sent 1,000 teachers to teach the children of the mountain farmers; none of these bombs are ever planted by a worker or a former sharecropper whom we have given the right to own his home; none of them are ever planted by a family whose children are studying in the old fortresses where their sons were a**a**inated; none of these bombs are planted by patriots, in other words, by people who really love their fatherland. Who does plant these bombs? The cops, the people who have been subverted, the agents of imperialism, those who grovel before the foreigners, those who want to soak the fatherland in blood. In the past, the revolutionaries used dynamite to fight against crime, corruption, tyranny, against the cope, the political thieves and the wrong-doers, those who extracted the fatherland's wealth, in order words they used dynamite to fight against privilege. And so they tried to a**a**inate them and to [Unreadable text] confessions out of them under torture. The revolutionary, who fought for his ideal, know that there was a torture chamber in every bloc, that instruments of terror were awaiting him at the police stations, he knew about the hell and the terror at the police stations, he knew about the shot in the back of the neck, the big pool of blood where his corpse would fall; and he valiantly confronted all that. Nobody paid him, nobody reimbursed him for his services. The counterrevolution, the agent of imperialism, the criminal who gets paid for his services by the emba**y, he knows that there are o crimes awaiting him, he knows that his life is guaranteed by the generosity with which the revolution has treated the terrorists. I believe that not a single terrorist has as yet faced the firing squad. They know that nobody will lay a hand on them in the police station. They know that the revolution has been generous and that the revolutionary courts have been benign. But we know that, in the heart of a criminal who gets paid for his services, there is no valor for confronting the revolutionary tribunals and for facing up to the punishment which he deserves because of his crimes. They Are Satisfied With Making Noise But we must now become impatient because of all this. This is only the proof of their powerlessness. Where are the mercenaries who were being trained in Guatemala? Where are the aircraft and the landing vessels? How come they have not landed as yet? How come they have so far been content with just making noise and planting little bombs? They know that we have thousands of men ready; they know that we have plenty of supporting weapons ready, including guns, machine guns, antiaircraft guns and other heavy weapons. They know the number of battalions which we have organized and armed. They know about the extraordinary mobilization of the people and they know what these guns in the hands of the workers and the peasants and the students mean; these are the university students who have taken off their uniforms in order to put on the blue shirts of the worker militia; they understand the great honor that has been accorded them in allowing them to stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers of the country. The enemies of the fatherland and of the revolution know that these weapons are in the hands of the people. They Have No Hope of Victory They know what it would take to win; they know that they don't have a chance now that the working cla** and the peasants of the country have been armed -- with guns, not just automatic rifles, but guns of considerable caliber and in considerable numbers; the mercenaries who could defeat our people have not yet be born and the imperialists who could do this have not yet been born. And this is why they brood about their powerlessness and this is why they keep in making noises which only serve to stir the people up more. What idiots they are! When we were fighting, even under the most difficult circumstances, we were sustained by the idea that we were in the right, that we were defending a just cause, that the people would rise up in support of that cause, and that we would destroy the enemy. What hope do they have of destroying the people if they advocate such ignoble objectives? What hope of victory would they possibly have? Are they incapable of figuring out what a people in arms really means? Could they be so stupid as to harbor the most remote hopes? They are incapable of tackling even a portion of the people but now all our people have become stirred up and a good portion of the world supports us. The Heritage of the Revolution What about their hopes, then? Do they perhaps hope that they could mobilize the unemployed? The 200,000 workers who got jobs after the revolution? Or are they going to mobilize, against the revolution, the 35% new industrial workers who have found work? Were they able in any way at all to stop the work of the revolution? Judging by what they have accomplished in recent months, it would seem that anything they can do in the future will be much worse. So far, we cannot see any of the fruits of their endeavors to date. But they act as if we had not created 600 scholarships at the university. As if we did not have 600 members from the youth brigades here, the first detachment from the first 2,000 who are going to come here. Those 600, who have a 5th-grade education, are already prepared to matriculate at various education centers; 150 will go to the aviation school. Those who have the talent and the interest will learn how to handle machinery for civilian use. And after that, we will teach some of them to handle agricultural machinery. And then they will get some military training. And then will come those who will fly our big transport aircraft. This is how we are going to train our future pilots. But all of this began through the youth brigades of the "Camilo Cienfuegos" revolutionary project. And they will have had to spend 4 months in the Sierra Maestra. They will have had to climb Mt. Turquino 5 times and they will keep climbing it. None of these youths will able to fly an aircraft overnight. These youths will be the purest product of this revolution. They will be the seeds for the new fatherland because they will build a generation that will be better prepared for continuing our revolutionary effort. The revolution must guarantee our climb to an ever better future. The enthusiasm of the people today must be replaced with the enthusiasm of a generation which will be entirely the product of the revolution. A short while ago, I talked about the heritage of the past and the heritage which the Cuba of tomorrow will receive -- if we accomplish all we set out to accomplish. We will have tens of thousands of engineering scholarship students. We will have tens of thousands of young people selected because of their abilities, their natural talents; those who are weak in character and spirit will remain behind and the best will have the opportunity to go on successfully and to keep progressing. Some will attend the schools of art and maritime officers and within a year they will be handling the first high-seas fishing fleet whose ships are already being built by our shipyards. Others will go to the naval schools, where, in a 6-month course, they will learn the indispensable fundamentals that will enable them to be crew members on war ships. They will serve without pay for 2-1/2 years. These 2-1/2 years will be partly apprenticeship and partly coast guard duties. They will defend our sovereignty and then they will have a guaranteed job in our national merchant marine and they will sail the ships of Cuba all over the world. In other words, this is the opportunity they will have. Some of them will go to the aviation school and others will go to the naval school. Others, still, will go to the technical schools where they will constitute combat units while they study. At the end of their studies at the technological school, they will be able to go to the factories or they can get scholarships to the university in order to complete their higher studies. And these will be sons from humble families. Many of them have been selling newspapers and others have been shining shoes or doing other work of this nature. These youths indeed are the pure extract of the revolution. There will be no counterrevolutionaries among them. What a contrast between them and the little gentlemen at the Yankee University of Villaneuva! The youths who have pa**ed the toughest tests, the youths who have exhibited this formidable spirit, are the guardians of the revolution, the defenders of the fatherland; they will handle our warships and combat aircraft and they will handle the heavy weapons and they will continue their studies all the time. In other words, they will be students while they prepare for peaceful and creative work. Each brigade will have its own teacher and those who have already achieved a higher level will be able to go to a certain education center. Those who have not yet achieved a higher level will, grade by grade, acquire the necessary knowledge; at the same time they will be sent cut into our mountains to plant trees that can be cut down for lumber, vast zones with millions of timber trees. They will do work for the people, they will build school cities. And they will march on and on, 2,000 will be involved in this test, 3,000 will be sent to the mountains, to the encampments in the Sierra Maestra, and 10,000 will be there by next February 28. Tens of thousands of youths, such as these, are already being organized and they will be engineers and diplomats; they will be professional men and sk**ed workers in the factories; they will be the captains of our ships and they will be the pilots of our planes. And that is the revolution, the revolution which will seek out the best in the fatherland. By calling on the best in the fatherland, the revolution will prepare a better future for all Cubans. And so we will continue to march on with what we have. But what we have is not exactly perfect. We have taken over the heritage of the past which in many respects is negative; nevertheless, the people have gone into action; the professional men have responded to the need; many of them, by the way, are products of the past; but they have responded to the revolution and they have come out against those who have left the fatherland; and they have come here, to these steps in front of the university, to swear loyalty to the revolution and to the fatherland henceforth. And these professional men are responding and the miserable individuals, the low-down cowards and the men who are so poor in spirit and who have left the fatherland -- they look more miserable every minute. And the students, who will graduate as physicians in the next few months, have sent the revolutionary government a document; this coming graduating cla** is much larger and much better than the preceding cla** which is now in the field and which, directed by 2 or 3 suspect leaders, made some exaggerated economic demands and indicated that they did not want to go on working for the revolution and for the people under these circumstances. We think that it was unfair that the doctors, who were in the field in the beginning, should be making 240 pesos a month. And this was not a matter of money because the revolutionary government and the national economy is not shaken up by a few pesos more or less; this was a moral issue. What we were concerned with here was the moral quality of the doctors; some of those doctors, who graduated with the preceding cla**, were not entirely up to the requirements of the revolution; two or three of these openly counterrevolutionary petty leaders stirred them up and prevailed upon them to a**ume an incorrect position. But the boys who are going to graduate this year have had a diametrically opposed attitude. (Fidel next read a document from the 6th-year medical students, stating that they would support the measures of the revolutionary government with their lives, if necessary; that they are at the unconditional disposition of the Cuban authorities for whatever may be necessary, that they readily and with a spirit of sacrifice accept the pay which the revolutionary government thinks proper and can pay them, that they reject as counterrevolutionary any attitude that tends to downgrade the spirit of the revolution and that they ask all of their fellow students in this course to accept this revolutionary posture.) Well-Paid Engineers Now, what do we propose to do with the engineers? Well, very simply, we will pay them according to merit, in other words, we will pay them well, because an engineer must dedicate the portion of his life to study without getting any income. This engineer certainly deserves the incentive of good pay, as compensation for the efforts he has made and in return for the service he renders the country. We are very much concerned with revolutionary engineers, we want revolutionary engineers, and the people of the country are prepared to pay these revolutionary engineers according to merit. And we believe that we can do this because the economy of the country is growing at an extraordinary rate. We are building hundreds of settlements and housing developments and we want at least one doctor in each settlement. For this, we must have doctors. In the past, the engineers could not find work; for many years they had to work for miserable salaries. The revolution now has put all of these engineers to work. There is not a single doctor, engineer, or professional technician with a university degree who does not have a job now. It would therefore be unpardonable for the engineers to refrain from pitching in now, because they did not pitch in when the country lived amid terror and crime; but now that the country is underway, the engineers must put their shoulders to the wheel likewise. Criminal Physicians The doctor who leaves an institution of the people is simply a criminal because the doctor is sent there to save lives and anyone who would subject many of his compatriots to the risk of losing their lives, by simply leaving Cuba, is committing a criminal act. But the architects, the engineers who treasonably leave their country are also criminals. Yesterday, the National Medical College agreed to give them one last opportunity, that is to say, they can return before 31 December; but after 31 December, 23 do not think that any of these professional men who have left their country in difficult times should be given another opportunity because they should not in any way be rewarded for abandoning their country in difficult times. These people should lose at least their citizenship and their right to pursue their profession here. Jobs for Another 200,000 And our student dormitories are now being filled up with new students and these new student housing facilities will be filled up with students who do not have any funds; the revolutionary government is prepared to spend whatever necessary in order to help them and in order to fill the universities with new students; the revolutionary government is prepared to spend whatever necessary in order to train engineers for tomorrow. Today we not only have a revolutionary student body but we also have a revolutionary university; the curriculum here is being revised on a large scale and we have at last carried out the university reform also. Last year, we were just talking about university city; well, within a few days, we will begin construction on university city and the students are going to help us and the workers from the construction industry will come over to help; and the youth brigades and the Young Rebels will pitch in and help; and by next September we will have a capacity for 8,000 scholarship students at the University of Havana. We can therefore look to the future with optimism in all respects, because we can see everything much more clearly right now. We can see everything much more reliability and accurately, we can say that we have a better organization now and more experience and a better outlook in all respects; the revolution is stronger and the circumstances are better. The new year will begin soon. Suffice it to say that we will create 200,000 new jobs for Cubans next year, though the agrarian reform, alone; these will be farm jobs. Now, these figures are more or less accurate, in other words, we are not exaggerating; we are in a position to provide jobs for another 200,000 people in the rural areas. This is only in the farming areas, in agriculture. But the outlook is good in every respect. The coming year will also be the year of education. The battle against illiteracy is a big battle. We propose to eliminate the very last vestiges of illiteracy within one year and we are sure that we can win this battle. Soon we going to have more than a hundred thousand persons working in this campaign; but if we see that this not sufficient, that our mobilization here is not enough, that we need to do more to defend the country in this respect, in order to eliminate illiteracy, well, then, we will mobilize many more leaders, students, workers, Young Rebels, and members of the public at large who can then teach others to read and write. The revolution has triumphed; the revolution is a reality and the revolution will continue to go on invincibly. What can imperialism do in view of the world situation which it faces? Are they not going to attack us with mercenaries? And, with each day that pa**es, do they not have an opportunity to pick up more junk with which to ferry the mercenaries over here? This is why the military strength of the revolution has grown so much; and now we can await the mercenaries, while we laugh ourselves sick. During all this time, what has imperialism achieved through its patrol in the Caribbean? More loss of prestige, and further proof that they do not know what they are doing. They have a revolution in Guatemala and they rush their cruisers and guns over. What does that mean? Fear! What does this mean? That revolutions need not be exported at all, that they happen by themselves on the American continent. They Had Made Themselves Ridiculous What have they done with their boats? They have made themselves ridiculous! What have they accomplished with all of their maneuvers? They have made themselves look ridiculous! And sugar prices have gone up tremendously in the United States. We will see what happens next year and we will see how they solve their sugar problem. At the end of December of early in January, we are going to rally all of the workers, cooperative members, planters, in other words, everybody, and we are going to hammer out a sugar policy in accordance with the prospects. There are countries that want to speculate on the sugar problem. We are going to see who can compete with Cuba in the production of sugar. We are going to pick a policy and we are going to see what happens and we are going to find what the new administration, which is supposed to replace the Eisenhower administration, will do about that. We are going to see what line it pursues because Mr. Kennedy has spouted a lot of demagogy in his election campaign, suggesting aggression against Cuba; but talk is one thing and action is another and we are going to see what Mr. Kennedy will do. Yes, indeed, we are going to see! We are going to see whether, along with our literacy campaign, Mr. Kennedy becomes politically literate and is re-educated politically. Perhaps this literacy campaign might help Mr. Kennedy understand what goes on and then we are going to see what he will do; we are going to see whether they want to pursue their policy of aggression against our country, a stupid policy, a blind policy, a policy that has failed -- or whether they decide to leave is in peace because that would be the best thing for them. At least they will have an opportunity to do so. These aggressions are costing them a lot. Many factories in the United States have been ruined and the very stupid leaders of that country have sacrificed their own workers, they have sacrificed their own industry, but they have not done us any great damage with their embargo. There Will Be Lots of s**ling Pigs This Christmas We did all right in spite of the embargo; and we can say that our agricultural output has increased at an extraordinary rate; this Christmas we will have enough frozen chickens for our Christmas dinner. And we are now gathering the grain harvest; we have more than 50,000 turkeys right now; the production of special types of pigs has increased extraordinarily; we have been developing this effort for a number of months and it has been making such tremendous progress that we will have plenty of little roast s**ling pigs this Christmas. There will be no need for those who love this dish to go without it this Christmas. The embargo has failed; we have gone on, resolving our problems and they, over there, have simply lost this market. This is a stupid policy. It would suffice to have them do the same thing all over the world and before you know it imperialism would cease to exist. If they do the same thing they did with Cuba, they will be wiping themselves out in 6 months. They will see how dumb they were in doing what they did to Cuba. We are going to plan our sugar policy and we are then going to see what imperialism is going to do about. If it persists in its aggression, that will be one thing; or it might at last begin to understand that the Cuban revolution is an indestructible reality and it would then leave us alone and in peace. We want peace. Why do we want peace? Because we have grand projects, tremendous plans, and we can see how everything is making progress here; we are happy to contemplate the future of our country, an extraordinary future for our country which will be an example for all the peoples of America and which will be an object of appreciation on the part of all the other peoples of the world. Imperialism Headed for Suicide We need peace to accomplish this great work. We hope to invest all of the energies of our people in this work; we do not want blood, we do not want a single young soldier to die, not a single soldier, not a single militia man, not a single worker, not a single Cuban. We would all like to see them working. We only armed them in order to defend this right to work; yes, we have invested these extraordinary energies in the preparation of our defense and we will continue to improve our military defenses because the best guarantee, the safest guarantee against imperialism is a condition in which we are all well armed. And we are achieving this condition. Very soon, we will be well enough armed and well enough prepared to defend ourselves against any attack. And then, back to work, to accomplish the great plans of the revolution; this military preparation will then give us the right to continue our work. It has been a requirement for our being able to continue working; perhaps we will get imperialism to reconsider and to realize that an attack upon Cuba is condemned to failure, that an attack upon Cuba would be the suicide of imperialism and it is indeed preferable that imperialism should not commit suicide because of us; instead, imperialism should die slowly, because of itself, until it has completely disappeared from history. We have been speaking these truths here quite bluntly whenever they had to be said. But we have great faith. This is why we spoke to you from these steps and this is why we believe that every day will be more revolutionary. This university is, each day, more identified with the people and in reality this is the best homage for the students of 1871; it is an obligation for us and for the students and for the entire people to honor those innocent victims of the privileges of yesterday, the innocent student victims, victims of the idea that justice would inevitably triumph over the foreign interests that exploited us and our fatherland; and those innocent victims, who were sacrificed by the exploiters of yesterday, joined the victims of more recent times, the victims of our exploiters of today. The victims included Mella, Trejo, and Echeverria; they were victims of the fact that we were a Yankee colony; they were victims of Yankee rifles; but in the end, all of these efforts helped us do away with our colonial status, do away with the privileges, and achieve true freedom and true justice so that our fatherland may shine. In expressing our homage here, we also express our appreciation to those who died in the war and our recognition for those university leaders including our comrade Rolando Cubela, who played a great role in the war and who also did his duty in peace. He will soon graduate from this university with a degree in medicine and he is certainly worthy of our public recognition; we are satisfied, highly satisfied, that he can give his name to the prize to be awarded to the honor students; he has certainly earned the right to hold his head high and to reap the appreciation of his people. We want to express our optimism and our recognition for the entire university. We are firmly convinced that the University of Havana will also be in the front rank in this glorious hour of the fatherland. If this ceremony were to take place in the rural areas, it would of course be quite natural. If this event were to take place among the workers they would certainly attend in ma**, and this would be quite natural. The peasants and the workers are with the revolution and this is very logical. The counterrevolution will not try to gain ground among the workers and the peasants; it has placed its hopes in the University of Havana and in the student sectors. This is because the ma** of students is heterogeneous and variable and because, in general, children from the poorer families did not have an opportunity to study at the university. The opportunity to study used to be in a direct ratio to the economic resources of the family. But where do they come from, those children who used to shine shoes and sell newspapers at night and early in the morning? What opportunity did they have to study? What opportunity did the children of the peasant families have -- children who did not even have a primary education? There were of course children from poor families at the university and in the institutes, but any rich boy who did not study, did so simply because he did not want to study. Among our university students, there were those who family interests had been affected by the laws of the revolution. What can the counterrevolution say to a peasant whom the revolution has liberated from misery? What can the counterrevolution say to the workers? The counterrevolution first of all went to the education centers, the centers of higher education, in an effort to recruit agents among the sons of the rich families who had thus been affected. The counterrevolution does not try to approach the little schools which have opened up in the mountains. The counterrevolution does not try to do any recruiting in the military barracks that have been converted into schools, where the worker children study. Imperialism and the counterrevolution know that they are not going to find anything there. There are still pro-Batista people among the high school teachers. There are still reactionary and counterrevolution pro-imperialists among the high school teachers. The counterrevolution contacts them in an effort to turn them into instruments for its designs against the people. The counterrevolution addresses itself primarily to the colleges of the privileged. Here, in those colleges, the counterrevolution finds fertile ground. The privileged of yesterday and the semi-privileged of today must know that the leaders of this revolution -- whom the people support with their enthusiasm and their invincible faith -- know what they are doing. In saying that there are counterrevolution professors, we are of course in no way criticizing our comrade Minister of Education. This is part of the revolutionary process and above all it is part of the process of a generous revolution, such as this one. Because it is so generous, it has the tremendous moral force it needs to take action. In many of these centers, they preach the counterrevolution quite openly; they preach hatred against the fatherland, they openly preach cla** hatred, hatred against the peasant, the worker, the humble people. They criticize laws that were not made to defend the privileges of the minorities but to bring justice and well-being to those who needed these, to bring progress to those who needed it. They do this openly and without concealment because nobody is foxier in the world than a counterrevolutionary, nobody is more cynical in the world than a counterrevolutionary. You know who the scribes and the Pharisees and the anti-Christians in this country are. They are those who refuse to cast their lot with the poor, those who want the "camel to go through the eye of a needle." They know they are not going to fool anybody here but they still serve international interests. They are not concerned with what goes on here but only with what goes on abroad. They want to create conflicts here so that they can conduct campaigns far from here. Those who use the temples and the schools of the privileged, those who want to rise against the revolutionary fatherland, because the fatherland destroyed immoral and egotistical interests before the eyes of men and God, they know they cannot fool anybody here and that they cannot trigger any fanaticism here. Nor can they generate any fanaticism among the children of the rich families, in can effort to turn them into agents of the counterrevolution, because those who in the days of Rome died without breaking with their faith were not children of the Roman patricians but rather the children of the Roman plebeians. Those who burned on the crosses, those who were devoured by wild animals, were slaves and semi-slaves; they were the poor of Rome. These were the men and women with a strong faith; they were not accustomed to the pleasures of the ruling cla**. It was difficult for the happy and the satisfied to be loyal and fanatical because they did not know what suffering and pain were. It was difficult for those, who did not serve any ideas, to be loyal to anything; it was difficult for those who were riding around in fancy cars, whose tables were always bending under the weight of the food, it was difficult for them to believe in anything; it was difficult for them to believe that the moment of final judgement had come. But the hour had come in our fatherland, the hour of the final judgement for the privileged and the hour of judgement for the exploitation of our people. Among the children of the privileged, they will not find the kind of conviction that leads men to die, they will not be able to implant the idea of dying for something in them, quite in contrast to those who are prepared to die for what they believe in. And so they recruit them in order to make propaganda abroad, in order to cause provocations. They know what they are up to, they know that the revolution is generous, nevertheless, they know that it does not want to spark the fires of campaigns against the fatherland and they exploit this in order to develop reactionary opinions, against the fatherland, against the revolution, opinions against the people, among the children whose minds are not yet fully formed. Perhaps they think the revolution is afraid of them, that the revolution is trembling at the thought of the day when it will be necessary to decree an end to all this crime and all this shame. And all this applies to this pro-Yankee University, where they did not express their solidarity with the students of the University of Havanna which closed its doors and sent its students out to fights against the tyranny in the streets. The revolutionary government has mitigated the sanctions against those who were easily able to obtain their degrees while others lost college attendance time. If there is anything you can accuse the revolution of, it is that it was aggressive and hostile toward those centers of the privileged. The revolution was against privilege, against the economic interests of the privileged cla**es; it was not against religion; this was not a problem of belief but rather a problem of money and economic interests; faith and religion served as a pretext for reopening the wounds and for advancing the egotistical interests of certain individuals. The revolution discovered the close bond that exists between the big ranch owners, the military, and the clergy. When the sugar plantations and refiners were nationalized, it was found that some of the clergymen had been getting subsidies; and so they did not sent their checks only to the cops, to the famous attorney, but also to the clergymen. Some of these cops in ca**ocks, who were vary far away indeed from the true sermons of Christ, were prevailed upon to give counterrevolutionary sermons in the churches. The good faithful did not know this. And the generous revolution did not clash with anyone in any church; it nationalized the sugar plantations and it did the same thing in the various government departments, but it did not subsidize anybody, the way the others had done. The revolution was never against any church; it has never interfered with the rights of any church or any cult; but the revolutionary laws did go against the big landowners, against the foreign monopolies, against those who exploited the poor sharecropper. These same truths were proclaimed here by someone who can serve his people without denying Christ because here you can serve a revolutionary idea and a religious faith. In this fatherland of ours, we must all love the fatherland; those who do not fit in with the revolution are those who hate the people, those who serve the interests of the rich; All of this explains why the counterrevolution tried to take up positions in the universities and private colleges. We said that we would put up schools for the children of the humble families, better schools and than the best private schools. It is logical, that as these education centers for the people grow, some of the schools of the privileged will lose some of their importance. There are two reasons for this: because we have people's schools which are better than those other schools and, second, because the privileged have been pushed aside. And if some of these colleges of the privileged, who did not resign themselves to economic downgrading, were ruined, then this would not to the fact that these measures were aimed against them, so much, as to the fact that these measures were intended to help the people as much. Before closing the schools, they tripled their efforts to make everybody believe that the revolutionary government had shut them down; but the revolutionary government did not close them. This is what they are doing at the university of Yankee Land now. The revolutionary government does not give them a pretext for launching a campaign, but this does not mean that these gentlemen of Yankee Land have the right to go unpunished. Let them not engage in any illusions: in this struggle, the poor will be with the revolution and the poor will fight and the privileged will be left alone; the privileged are not cut from the same cloth as those who in ancient Rome know how to die. They always escape to the emba**y. All you have to do is visit the Country Club and then walk through the slum district of Las Yaguas. This revolution is so "bad" that it left the landowners with 30 caballerias and that it left the owners of big houses with an income of 600 pesos a month. And they are "so good" that they listened to the rumors to the effect that the Americans would come; and so they departed, and they left us their 30 caballerias and their 600 pesos -- and this is just fine; they also left us the country club. They believed that the Americans would come and return their big estates to them. They yearn for that world in which 400 or 500 lived in palaces while millions lived in slums. Marti put it quite clearly: "the fatherland belongs to everybody and exists for the good of all." The revolution has accomplished this basic principle stated by Marti without the guillotine. Whenever the people rise, they do not do so very gently. It is better for Uncle Sam to pay their expenses than for us to have to pay them. What are we going to do with the houses they have left us? We are going to use them for our guests, for workers leaders and peasant leaders, for our visitors. We are going to prepare a hundred houses and we are going to put Cadillacs and everything else in them and all of this will be for our visitors. The high school students and the pre-university students will be the guides and even the chauffeurs for these visitors; and then they can study for a diplomatic career and they might even make amba**ador someday. We already have 600 university scholarship students and we have a capacity for another 1,000; we are putting up 3 student dormitories which will be able to accommodate another 2,000 students. All of this is for students without money. Are we giving them alms? Is this some kind of government charity? No! These students are going to pay for their studies; all we are doing is advancing them the money now. They will have everything to concentrate on their studies and they will leave a real student life while we build university city. This is what the revolution will do at the University of Havana and the University of Las Villas. That bomb was not planted by any peasant or any worker or any family that owns its own home; none of these bombs were planted by humble citizens or patriots. These bombs were planted by cops, by the men who have sold out, by the men who have been kicked out, by the men who have been agents of imperialism, by those who bow before the foreigners. In the past, we used dynamite to fight against the tyranny, against the wrongdoers, against the imperialist exploitation; and all the time they were a**a**inating our people and trying to extract confessions through tortures. The revolutionary knows that shot in the back of the neck was waiting for him; he knew that he would end up in a pool of blood; and the revolutionary valiantly fought for his ideal. The agent of imperialism is a criminal who gets paid for his services by the emba**y and he knows that the terrorists have been treated with generosity. And they will fly the combat planes and sail the warships and handle the heavy weapons and all the time they will continue to prepare themselves for their civilian careers. And so we will continue to march forward with what we have; what we have is not perfect but this is only because we had to take over the heritage of the past. The doctors who were graduated with the last cla** were not really up to the requirements of the revolution; two or three petty leaders prevailed upon them to adopt a rather money-minded attitude here. All honor to the students who will graduate in the next cla** to come, all honor for the patriotic and revolutionary document which they have signed. We propose to pay our engineers on the basis of merit, in other words, they will be paid well. The country's economy is growing at an extraordinary rate; we are building a hundred housing developments and we want to have at least one doctor in each. The doctor who goes away and leaves the country is nothing but a criminal; he is the man who subjects our compatriots to the risk of having to lose their lives and he does this by abandoning his country. And the engineers, the architects, and the other professional men who leave the country are also traitors. As of 31 December, no professional will be given any opportunity to return to the country; they will lose their citizenship and their right to exercise their profession here. Today we have a revolutionary student body and a revolutionary university because we have at last carried through our university reform. Within a few days, we will begin to build university city; and by September of next year we will have a capacity for 8,000 scholarship students and the University of Havana. We need peace to accomplish this great work. We do not want blood; we do not want a single Cuban to get k**ed. We invested all this energy in the preparation of our defense so as to be able to defend the right to work in peace. Perhaps we will get imperialism to reconsider and to refrain from attacking Cuba because an attack upon Cuba would be suicide for imperialism; it would be better for imperialism to die a slow d**h until it has disappeared completely from history. This vast flight of stairs in front of the university has become increasingly revolutionary each day and it has identified itself more and more with the people and there can be no better tribute to our students here. These are the students who also died as victims of the privileged cla**, victims of the Spanish colony, and these victims included Mella, Trejo, and Jose Antonio Echeverria, victims of Yankee rifles, of Yankee exploitation. We want to hail the student leaders who fought in the war and who continue to fight in peace. Where are the mercenaries who have not yet landed? Where are their aircraft and their boats? They know how many men we have, they know how many weapons and cannons and machine guns and antiaircraft guns and heavy weapons we have. They know what it means to have all of these weapons in the hands of the workers, the peasants, and the students. The counterrevolutionaries know that there are no mercenaries or imperialists who could take the cannons away from the peasants and the workers -- yes, cannons of considerable caliber and in considerable numbers. What hopes have they of victory? Do they realize what it means to face a nation in arms? And they will also have to face that part of the world that supports us. Where are their hopes! Could they possibly stop the work of the revolution? Well, they haven't seen anything yet. Already, we have our first university scholarship students here, and the first 600 of the youth brigades, which will climb Mt. Turquino 5 times, are already here. Our future pilots will start out in the "Camilo Cienfuegos" revolutionary work youth brigades. They will have spent 5 months in the Sierra Maestra and they will have climbed Mt. Turquino 5 times; none of them will learn to fly a plane overnight. But their most legitimate pride will always be to the revolution. They will be a generation that will be better prepared for continuing the work of the revolution because the revolution must make sure that it will continue to advance. We will have tens of thousands of scholarship students, tens of thousands of youngsters who will be selected on the basis of their merit and special conditions. Those youngsters from the humblest families are the pure extract and essence of the revolution. The counterrevolutionaries are not going to find any recruits among them. Now we can see everything more clearly; we have a better organization and more experience and better prospects and the revolution is stronger. Next year, in the rural areas, through the agrarian reform alone, we are going to create another 200,000 jobs for Cubans -- in agriculture alone. -END-