Fidel Castro - SPEECH AT FIRST NATIONAL CONGRESS lyrics

"Comrades of the Congress of Municipal Education Councils: "Let us talk about education now. It is highly significant that the members of the congress themselves -- who gathered here to take up these problems of education -- are also preoccupied with the problems of the defense of the revolution and the fatherland. This means just one thing and that is that we are very much aware that we must work and fight in all areas; that we must acquire more and more awareness each day; that a revolution is not just a creative effort but that a revolution must not only create but must also defend what it creates and that it must fight while creating. Creative Effort "We have gathered here today to engage in a creative effort, to accomplish another task among the many which we have set for ourselves; we have gathered here, perhaps, to accomplish one of the most beautiful tasks which the revolution must accomplish and certainly one of the tasks which is most strongly felt by our people; the mission of teaching the people, of education our citizens, of giving each and every one of the children of our fatherland an opportunity to learn, regardless of cla**. "We must confess that, among all of the tasks of the revolution, none is more stimulating and none is more beautiful than the educational task of the revolution. One might say that this is an indispensable pillar in the achievement of the success of all of the other things which we have proposed for ourselves here. This explains the importance of this Congress and the importance of this day as far as the revolution is concerned. Difficult Task "We have proposed something very ambitious for ourselves here, a difficult task, a task which in reality will put to the test the capacity of each and every one of us, a task which will test the capacity of our people; this is so because we propose, within a year, to do something which others either could not or did not want to do in 58 years. In other words, we propose that, in 1961, which we called the year of education, we will wipe out illiteracy in Cuba. "How many times have we heard people talk about that problem? How many times have studies and papers been written on that topic and how many times has this theme been discussed? Almost from the very age of reason on, each one of us has been hearing all this talk about the problem of illiteracy, the problem of the lack of schools, the teacher shortage, etc; we have always heard that the illiteracy rate was supposed to be 40, 38, or 37%. An Old Evil "This is therefore a kind of old evil which has hurt all of us much and which has depressed us a lot; this is an evil which in the past no one has tried to remedy, nor did we have any great success in advancing this very important cause. First of all, we had a shortage of 10,000 teachers in the rural areas. We heard that the total number of teachers in the rural areas was about 5,000, whereas we would have needed 15,000. How could anyone reduce the illiteracy rate if we did not have teachers for 2/3 of our rural children? And, furthermore, the existing schools, the remaining 5,000 cla**rooms, very often did not have the necessary training aids and on some occasions they even lacked the most essential tools of education; there was no clothing, no shoes for the children who had to go to school and even though the school might have been nearby, they did not go there very simply because they had neither clothing nor shoes to go to school with. "This is a truth that we all are only too familiar with. Not even the enemies of the revolution could deny that. It is certain however that the revolution, over the period of 1 year, has already created about 10,000 cla**rooms needed in the rural areas -- and those which we still need will be provided during this quarter; furthermore, as of the beginning of 1961, we will provide the 10,000 cla**rooms which we need in order to provide our entire school-age population in Cuba with a teaching staff. (Applause) A Formidable Job "Let those who still dream about these things and those who have managed to create the impression abroad that Cuba might keep losing ground in this report, let them take a close look here at the formidable job we have done in increasing the number of cla**rooms from 5,000 to 15,000 in just one year, in our rural areas (Applause); let them look at our achievement in providing teachers for the entire rural school-age population in Cuba -- something that certainly looked difficult before it was done. But that is not all; our teachers today are fulfilling a promise which the government made only 5 months ago, in the most distant corners of our mountains (applause), in other words, places where nobody ever dreamed of having a school, in other words, small hamlets and family groups situated in out of the way valleys, where there were no means of communication; that is where they have teachers today. Concentration "And this was by no means an easy task because the teacher training institutes were concentrated in the cities. Almost all of the teachers came from a city environment and it was not easy for us to get the graduates of our schools to adjust to a way of life in the mountains which they were quite unfamiliar with and which they had never known anything about before; these were people who had never before been separated from their families; they included young girls; it was very difficult for them to do their job in places where even the most basic conveniences, such as we are accustomed to them, were lacking. "In other words, the first thing we had to do was prepare our personnel so that we could send them out into the mountains; here the revolution demonstrated its capacity to mobilize the resources of the people and to recruit the necessary personnel so as to meet the school requirements in those places where the problem looked very difficult to solve. So much for anyone who thinks that our fatherland might ever turn back to the past (shouts of "Never!"). Broad Transformation "In reality we can say with great satisfaction that Cuba has achieved a very broad and very profound transformation; in other words, we have started up the machinery of history of our fatherland (applause), a machinery which was very difficult to start up, a machinery which required many new parts and which required many structural changes; however, although it is difficult to make the machinery of history of a country go forward, it is even more difficult to make that machinery of history of that country go backward (strong applause), especially when we are dealing with a history such as ours, which never moves backward (applause); on the contrary; we have ways of speeding up this machine of history (applause) and the Revolutionary Government is able and willing to speed up the march of history of our country! (applause) "The enemies of the revolution, who have the complete backing of foreign interests, and the foreign interests themselves, have launched their offensive against the revolution (shouts: "firing squad! firing squad!"). We know perfectly well what a revolutionary process is and, on various occasions, we have explained some of the ideas on that subject. This is a process which involves various stages. First the revolutionary struggle strings up against the tyranny. That struggle had two stages or phases; but each new stage meant that we have overcome the proceeding one and each new stage culminated in the crushing victory over the military apparatus of the big interests. Imperialist Offensive "On 1 January the military machine of the tyranny and of imperialism in Cuba was crushed and the victorious revolution came to power; the enemy was confused and in disarray and required tome to reorganize in order to try to undo that defeat. The enemy of course returned to the attack. A revolution is a long, sometimes very long and broad process which goes on for stage after stage. The revolutionary now is in the stage in which its enemies have regrouped and reorganized their forces and have returned to mount another attack against the revolution. In other words, the revolution today confronts the offensive of imperialism and the reactionary forces which are on the offensive. "We all must be familiar with this process so that we can understand it perfectly well. This offensive will be continued and it will become more intensive each day; we will once again become involved in stages of struggle but there will also come another victorious stage. In other words, the enemy is now gathering his forces, he is attacking from various directions, he is marshaling his resources and mobilizing all means at his command. Of course, this is no longer just the beginning of the revolutionary movement, and we are not in the very first months of the struggle against the tyranny now; the enemy now does not just face a group of men. The Defeated "It is not true that the counterrevolutionary enemy is now weaker than when the tyranny was in power; the counterrevolutionary enemy is stronger than the tyranny ever was. Why? Because he has rallied those who were defeated by the revolution during the phase of the struggle against the military machine; he has rallied the interests that were affected by the revolution, both Cuban and foreign interests, that is to say; he has rallied all those who are resentful about all this; he has rallied the worst of the dregs of society; he has rallied all the vicious individuals, all of the corrupt individuals, all of the immoral and egotistical individuals, all of the shameless ones and all of those who would sell out their fatherland (prolonged applause); he has rallied all of the a**a**ins; he has rallied all of the torturers; he has rallied all of the informers; he has rallied all of the exploiters; he has rallied all of the traitors; and, above all -- and I am saying this primarily because without this the counterrevolution would be absolutely nothing -- he has rallied the powerful interests of Yankee imperialism to serve as its leaders and fundamental force (shouts: "Throw them out!"). But that is not all: he has rallied the international reactionary forces throughout Latin America; against the Cuban Revolution, as against all of the just revolutions, he has rallied the colonialist and imperialist reactionary forces throughout the world. More Powerful Then Ever Before "Because of this, because of this, the counterrevolution is stronger than the tyranny was. But, as we said before, the revolution is no longer a small group of men, such as it was during the very first few months when the movement was in its beginnings; it is not just a handful of riflemen, with whose help we upheld the banner of the revolution for more than 1 year, in those days when it did not occur to anyone to rise up; this actually was quite odd: it did not occur to anybody to rise up; nobody thought of taking up arms; everybody thought that it was impossible to fight against an army. And those of us who launched the revolutionary struggle, when practically everybody believed that this was absurd, when these small guerrilla nuclei did not please certain people, those of us who did that at that time were all alone, absolutely alone, just a little handful of men; but we certainly are not today what we were then. Today the revolution is likewise much stronger than it was ever before! Today the revolution has many more weapons than it ever had before! (Applause) Today the revolution has much more experience than it had ever before and it has a much better organization than it ever had before. The revolution today does not consist of just a handful of men; today the revolution consists of the best and the most honest and the most patriotic members of our nation (Applause); today the revolution has rallied the best in our people, all of the generous citizens of our country, all of the honest men in our nation, all of the selfless citizens of our people, all of the men and women who are full of the spirit of sacrifice and full of a fighting spirit, all of the men and women who worship the ideal of our people, all of the men and women who are full of the revolutionary consciousness (Applause). Corrupt Counterrevolution "And so we see that the counterrevolution has rallied all of the lowest elements, the gangsters, the cowards, the a**a**ins, the corrupt, the torturers, the exploiters, the mercenaries, the traitors and the men who would sell their own fatherland (shouts); on the other hand, the revolution has rallied all the best in our fatherland. And through these best elements, the fatherland is prepared to fight as many battles as may be necessary in each and everyone of the stages of the revolution (applause). "In other words, we have a counterrevolution, strengthened by powerful foreign interests, confronting a revolution that has been strengthened by the rally of the people and by the solid support from all of the peoples of the world and all of the antiimperialist and anticolonialist governments of the world. (Applause) "This an*lysis is indispensable in helping us understand the terms in which the battle of the revolution will be fought, the terms under which the forces have grown, and the array of forces on which we can count everywhere. And so, the scum has mobilized. Now, what scum is that? The scum of 50 years of republic: the former military men of tyranny, tens of thousands of former members of the armed forces of the tyranny; tens of thousands of politicians who lost office when the revolution triumphed; vast crowds of plunderers greedy people, exploiters, merchants who traffic in anything. Know Your Enemy (Some members of the audience shouted: "the priests.) "Dri Fidel Castro. -- "A good part of them (applause). In other words, the whole world will know what elements the revolutionary forces are made up of and what elements the counterrevolutionary forces are made up of, in other words, here everybody will know his enemy and he will know him perfectly well, on the basis of his general outline, on the basis of his many characteristics, his past life, his past profession, and his present deeds. "We said that this whole crowd of politicians and merchants and egotists and exploiters and plunderers of the people are the human material on which imperialism counts, because this battle against the Cuban Revolution is not directed by Cubans. The battle against the Cuban Revolution is today directed by imperialism itself; the battle against the Cuban Revolution is directed by the Yankee State Department (shouting), the Yankee CIA, and the Yankee warmongers in the Pentagon. They are also mobilizing all of their economic resources, all of their tremendous, fabulous economic resources. Imperialism Is Clever "We must know that this is exactly what we face now; we must know that imperialism here counts on all of the scum from the past, that this is its manpower, that this is its instrument which it uses along with all of its voluminous resources; we must realize that it is utilizing all of the contacts which it established over 50 years here, that it is utilizing the men who were trained very often at imperialism's own universities; these are the men who imperialism trained through its own propaganda and molded to its own taste. We must know that imperialism is very sk**ful in counterrevolutionary matters, utilizing all of its available resources, because it has done this in other countries, because it has applied its tactics in other countries, we must realize therefore that our revolution is confronting this kind of enemy today and that we must in turn mobilize all of the resources and means which we have. This is the explanation behind the terrorists, the uprisings, and the landings. In the beginning, nobody could figure this out exactly, nobody knew what it meant to us that the enemy, over there, received the 'tigers of Masferrer' (shouts) nobody knew why the worst a**a**ins were received over there. But now there are very few people left who still do not understand this. Assa**in Reserve "They received them there in order to recruit their mercenaries, their reserves of criminals, whom they could use at the right moment. But even though imperialism quite sk**ful in counterrevolutionary matters, even though imperialism has staged many counterrevolutions, even though imperialism has pulled off many international maneuvers, we can say that imperialism here confronts a very tough task (applause); imperialism here confronts a tough people; imperialism here confronts a tough revolution. "And we will keep on learning. The revolution is a great teacher, a formidable teacher, because it teaches us much and that word, that word revolution, which to many people, in the beginning, had a rather vague and general meaning, will continue to take hold of all of our mines and will continue to develop a whole series of ideas and a series of concepts which will enable us to continue discovering the truths that make up a revolution; this is a word which we have heard often; this is an event which we have read about in the history of other peoples; but we have always seen it from a distance, we always thought that we could not possibly understand how any people could realize that it is an actor in the revolution, just as our people is an actor in the revolution today. Difficult Battle "And we will keep on learning, we will learn better each time, and this is why we can say all this, this is why we have learned so quickly; and this is also why we can say that imperialism confronts a very difficult problem here; imperialism faces one of the most difficult battles which it has ever been involved in. We must now begin to understand all of this and we must figure out the exact terms of the problem so that we will not be fooling ourselves and so that we will not be making any mistakes; we must see things clearly. That is our task. Our task -- or, better still, our policy -- never will be a policy of sticking our heads in the sand like an ostrich. No! Let imperialism adopt the policy of the ostrich! (Applause) We will never stick our heads in the sand so that we do not have to see what goes on. We are going to lift our heads so that we may see and so that we may see with great clarity, so that we may perfectly understand what we must understand now and so that we can explain it to the people, so that we can help the people understand, together with us, the very essence of the revolutionary problem. In short, a new struggle is coming up. Expeditions "About 2 weeks ago, at a rather improvised television conference, at the revolutionary CMQ (applause), I said this: other expeditions or invasions will come; they are bound to come, there is nothing left for them to do but to come. When this game of arms begins, when the conspiracy begins, these men are nothing but instruments; from the moment they are taken to those training camps, they cannot get away and they will keep coming over, even though they know in advance what the result will be; or they will come because they think the situation in Cuba is different, because they have been fooled by others or because they have deceived themselves. I said that it is necessary for them to come. Before the week was over, the first little groups reached the coast of Cuba and I said on that day: remember how many things I predicted and how many have come true! On that day I a**umed the responsibility of making sure that they would come. But they are only the first; many more will come; that is the only thing left for them to do because they are already a part of the machinery of counterrevolution and this machinery is not run by them, it is run in Washington, by others, and they are the simple instruments who are caught up by events. On the Defensive "We must know this because imperialism and the reactionary forces are on the offense, while the revolution is defending itself. Does this mean that the revolution is on the defensive? Yes, the revolution is on the defensive. Is it a mistake to say that the revolution is on the defensive? No, it is not a mistake because, very simply and plainly, this is the accomplishment of an inevitable law in the history of revolutions: phases of advance, phases of struggle, counterrevolutionary offensives, revolutionary counteroffensives. This is the same that happened many times during the war. The army organized his forces, he attacked, he was defeated, he withdrew, and regrouped, and after a few months, he returned to the attack, he was defeated again, and he withdrew and regrouped again. And this went on until after the April strike, right after the April strike, a revolutionary defeat, which was followed by a counteroffensive by the tyranny, on all levels; we entrenched, we waited for the enemy to come, we defeated him, and then began to the revolutionary advance, the push all the way to Las Villas, the capture of the cities and the victory of 1 January. (Applause) Situation Estimate "We must know how to prepare a situation estimate, we must know how to find out when the enemy will attack; we must know how to figure out when the enemy will launch his offensive because we must know at any moment what the enemy strength is and what he is about to do; this is what the revolutionary government has been doing with respect to the imperialist offensive. First of all, the revolutionary government has been preparing itself and the people for many months now. In response to the first attacks, the revolutionary government took all of the necessary initial measures; but, within this framework of offensive and counteroffensive, there are attacks and counterattacks, and at this moment the revolution is counterattacking and this week the revolution will counterattack energetically. (Applause) "Does this mean that the counterattack will liquidate the imperialist offensive, the present imperialist offensive? No. It will wipe out the first manifestations of the imperialist offensive but the imperialist offensive will continue, more protracted struggle is coming our way, and there will be more big defeats for the enemies of the revolution. (Shouting from the audience) No, for the revolution, there will be no defeat! The revolution will know where it stands and where it must be prepared and it will know what to do. The defeats which the counterrevolutionaries suffer today are small defeats; the small groups of insurgents whom we have wiped out, the small landings that have been wiped out -- these are the small defeats of the imperialists now. Of course, they entertain many illusions about that. Trained Army "Sometime ago, I said here that we would find these little groups, even if they tried to hide in the Escambray Mountains (applause) and I indicated that they would force us to mobilize the militia, perhaps several thousand militiamen. (Applause) "But why not the Rebel Army? Because the Rebel Army is now training for bigger and more important battles which we will have to fight. (Applause) The units of the Rebel Army are in training. These are formidable fighting units which are now in their training camps, artillery units of the Rebel Army, mortars of all kinds, and the best military equipment; (applause) these are men who have gone through rigorous training. We have not interrupted the training of the Rebel Army units in order to fight these small counterrevolutionary groups. We have mobilized the rural militia units and we have also employed the worker militia units which are in training. The Militia Forces "In other words, in order to fight the small counterrevolutionary groups in Escambray, we are mobilizing the militia forces in Escambray, about a thousand farmer militiamen. But in order to prevent every last one of these counterrevolutionaries from moving around, we are mobilizing 700 peasant militiamen in the Sierra Maestra and in the Second Front of Oriente. (Applause) In addition to the officers, that is to say, the militia commanders from the capital, who are training in the province of Matanzas, we also mobilized a company which will be a**igned there on a rotating basis. "In summary, to prevent these people from playing at war, to prevent them from playing with guerrilla war, that is, the people to whom Kennedy is offering aid, we want to present some evidence here; here are the serial numbers and the makes of American weapons dropped by an American plane to its heroic servants in Escambray; these weapons fall into the hands of our militia forces in the mountains who were just waiting there for the parachute to come down. (Applause) "Of course, we did not say anything about that. Why? Because we were waiting for more parachutes to come down, with more weapons. This is true even though our weapons are better than the Yankee weapons. (Applause) Mobilization "Our rifles are better than the Yankee rifles (shouts from the audience); they thought that their weapons were better and they came to believe that they were stronger than they are, that they had a tremendous counterrevolutionary front going here, and that the revolution was powerless in the face of this front! And so they packaged their weapons for air-drops to the peasant militia forces in Escambray. (Strong applause) Just so as not to give them the wrong idea, we mobilized 3,000 peasant and worker militiamen to go into those mountains and they combed the area, bush by bush, cave by cave, and rock by rock. (Applause) Of course, we soon had them on the run (laughter) and only three counterrevolutionaries died, trying to escape (shouting from the audience); another 102 plus another 12 were taken prisoner, making a total of 114 prisoners. (Applause and shouts; "To the firing squad!") In other words, the glorious soldiers of imperialism (shouting: "Throw them out!") only died, trying to escape or when they ran out of steam and could run no more; the others simply hoisted the white flag! (Shouting from the audience) "In other words, this dashed the hopes of Kennedy, Nixon, and the other imperialists (shouts: "Throw them out!"). These data are highly revealing. Of course, they could not possibly say that a single prisoner was ever murdered; they could not possibly say that a single prisoner was ever beaten; they could not say that a single prisoner was ever tortured; they could not say that even one of the wounded was not given immediate medical care; they could not say that a single peasant hut was burned; they could not say that a single peasant was arrested; they could not say that a single aircraft ever strafed any of the areas in those mountains. They Will Fail "We do not need aircraft to force the 'glorious soldiers of imperialism' to hoist the white flag. (Applause) This should be emphasized because not a single statement was obtained from these men through torture or through any kind of physical mistreatment; we do not need their information; they were where they were; sooner or later, they will have to come down and they will learn that it is very difficult to escape the tight dragnet of the peasant militia forces which occupy that zone. (Great applause) "They had to capitulate even though we only used ground forces, even though we did not employ any aircraft, even though we did not use any cruel methods; but we will keep those aircraft and the weapons they dropped for the time when the 'big groups' come over. (Shouting and applause) We will keep these weapons for the time when those groups which are now being trained in Guatemala and on Swan, decide to come over; we are going to save those weapons for that moment to give them a real big reception when they arrive. (Applause) But these little groups of infiltrators we can handle with our peasant militia patrols. "We will see whether they have learned anything. If they do not learn anything, well, then they will be in for it. They will learn that you cannot play war with a revolution and that the history of the 'egg of Columbus' cannot be repeated here. (Shouting and laughter) Because, to fight these little guerrilla actions, you have to fight against the peasants; in other words, this is a guerrilla struggle by the exploiters and the foreign monopolies against the peasants; and although the imperialism is becoming more brutal each day, it will meet defeat at the hands of the peasants. (Applause and shouting) We Hope That They Will Learn Their Lessons "This is why we hope that they will learn something from all this and this is why we say that these were just skirmishes, yes, skirmishes! Does this mean that acts of terrorism and sabotage will end? No! As a matter of fact, they might even be increased; imperialism will employ more resources, it will increase its aid and support to these groups, it will mobilize thousands of gangsters and criminals, it will mobilize its millions upon millions of dollars, it will give them explosives and it will enable them to come over to engage in acts of sabotage; we must be prepared for this but we must also realize that we can lick them. Sooner or later, within a period of months or perhaps less than that, the imperialist offensive will suffer a rude blow, a decisive blow and this will force them to wait for another phase; in other words, we are going to have to absorb not just one imperialist offensive. We are going to have to absorb many imperialist offensives in Cuba and each time the methods and tactics will be different; now they are sending their little counterrevolutionary groups over, their groups of mercenaries; we have made direct aggression difficult for them; we have warned the world against this provocation and we have made it difficult for them to engage in direct intervention; this is why they entertain all kinds of illusions and it is good for them to do this; they are now in a phase in which they employe mercenary and counterrevolutionary elements, instead of directly using their own regular forces; the Pentagon is doing this now because it knows that, if it ever attacks us with its own forces, these will not exactly be hit with mud pies. (Applause) Aggression Is Difficult "And so we made it more difficult for them to launch direct aggression; this is why they make ma**ive use of mercenaries; this is why they resort to terrorism and this is why they try to rely on puppet governments, such as those in Guatemala; this is why they train expeditionary forces, such as those that are now in training in Guatemala and that are supposed to crush the revolutionary movement. "In view of this situation, they will continue to provide more and more support and resources for the terrorists and the terrorists, in turn, will become bolder; yesterday, they planted two bombs in two motion picture theaters in the capital. (Shouts from the audience) Today, in the morning, they put a bomb in the sewer system of the capital. In other words, they will step up these activities, accompanied by a general upsurge in the imperialist offensive; but this will only be the beginning of their downfall, when their central forces are launched in the attack and when they will have to take a tremendous blow and when the people and the civil organization of the people improves and advances; this will happen because we are pushing the military organization of the people in the militia forces, in combat battalions; but we must also organize the people in terms of civil defense, in the form of collective vigilance committees, or in the committees for the defense of the revolution. (Applause) In other words, the civil defense of the revolution, the civil defense of revolution! We must do this to watch out for the counterrevolutionaries, to repress their activities and in order to be prepared in case the struggle breaks out, so that everyone can accomplish the mission a**igned to these committees, which must be organized, block by block, section by section, city by city. This of course also applies to the rural areas and it concerns not only the militia forces; in other words, we must continue to work on the regulations for the formation and organization of committees for the defense of the revolution so that the whole nation may participate in this effort, in its battle for its liberation and its triumph. (Applause) The People, All Present and Accounted For "But does the upsurge in terrorism mean that the people are going to pull back, with their tails between their legs? No! At the two movie theaters, which I mentioned earlier, the audience simply stayed there and shouted: 'To the firing squad! To the firing squad! To the firing squad!' (Applause) "Does this mean that the people are simply not going to go out into the streets anymore? No! The people are going to continue taking their walks; the people will continue to go to the beaches and to the movies and everywhere else! (Applause) And we will go everywhere with the people; we will go wherever they go and we will continue to meet with the people anywhere and everywhere simply (applause) because we are not afraid of the counterrevolutionaries, we are not afraid of imperialism, and we are not afraid of the a**a**ins of imperialism who try to stir up trouble and terror. "We leave the terror to them, in other words, their terror of the Cuban Revolution, their fear of the Cuban Revolution. That is what we leave to them and we will go on making the revolution, satisfied by the fact that we are making the revolution, and determined to continue to make the revolution, so long as it may be necessary to make the revolution, (Applause) without losing our calm dispositions. Let them get all excited! "What do they want? Do they want us to appear cruel? Well, they are wrong; they are not going to succeed in picturing us as being brutal; nobody has ever slapped them and nobody is ever going to hit them, no prisoner is ever going to be hit, no! We are not going to discard our civilized methods; we will always be able to say -- anywhere on earth, wherever we happen to be -- we will always be able to say that our police and our army and our authorities can teach them a great lesson in civil behavior and in respect for the human individual; we will always be able to teach these lessons to the police and to the repressive forces of imperialism. In other words, our ethics will always be high. We Will Punish Them "What do they want? That we punish them? All right, then we will punish them. But, to what extent? Well, to the extent that ... all right to what extent, to what extent do they want to be punished? No, to the extent that it may be necessary and to the extent that they try to get punished! And after that, let them not try to blame the revolutionary government because the revolutionary government has been extremely generous and the revolutionary government can point to a record of generosity, excessive generosity, as a matter of fact, because we preferred to be guilt of an excess of generosity rather than an excess of severity. "But, what do they want? Do they want to have a run-in with revolutionary justice? Do they want to challenge the laws of the revolution? Well, then they will have to go on the basis of the acts which they perpetrate. But they will not incriminate us; we want to say this here quite clearly, we want to emphasize that we never want to apply excessive punishment; we never want to be excessively severe; we know what the circumstances force us to do, we know that the circumstances force us to punish them, we know that the counterrevolutionaries force us to apply severe measures against them. Defend the People "But we must also clarify here what the spirit of the revolutionary government is, what the spirit of the revolution has always been, and we must explain the efforts which the revolutionary government has made in order to advance the revolution, without severity; we must also point out that the revolutionary government is conscious of its duty, above all its duty to defend the people, to defend the laws of the revolution, to save the fatherland, above all, to safeguard the interests of the humble people in our country; this is whom we are defending, the humble peasant, the little child who does not have a school to go to, the worker, the person who has been discriminated against, the poor person, in other words, the exploited and sorely-tried portion of Cuban society; these are the interests which will be defended by a revolutionary government that is fully aware of its duty to defend the interests of the humble people of the fatherland against the great Cuban and foreign exploiters; the revolutionary government is aware that it must defend the best in the fatherland against those who have sold out, against the powerful foreign enemy and against the criminal and exploiting foreigner; the revolutionary government will apply the measures that are necessary in order to punish these people in keeping with the circumstances. "We do not want to be forced to execute anybody by firing squad -- but he who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword (Ovation and shouts of 'To the firing squad! To the firing squad!'); he who raises the foreign sword against his own compatriots, whom he wants to k**, that person deserves no punishment other than the sword, in other words, he too deserves d**h. (Applause) Nevertheless, the incorrigible enemies of Cuban society, the bunch of incorrigible and corrupt individuals and a**a**ins who for so many years have soaked our soil with blood and subjugated our fatherland, they still have plans to spill more blood on our soil and they want to run the country once again, they want to return so that they can perpetrate the horrors which they have been perpetrating in the past, horrors which will be indescribably greater than those of yesterday because then there will be no principles to hold them back, no ethics and no reason and no human compa**ion to stop them; they might demand the right to live because this is a biological law of Cuban society; but let them not try to annihilate us. If it is a question of us or them, we will annihilate them first! (Applause) Our people has the right to live and it has the right to punish, with extermination, all those who try to exterminate it, all those who want to destroy it, all those who want to spill the blood of our people; this is why we say this; this is why Cuban society has a right to its own destiny and to its own life. A Record for History "But let history record our sentiments now; let history record our pain in the face of the sad fact that our country, through 50 years of exploitation, through 50 years of rising anger, must today suffer the existence of a scum, a social scum created by the past, an instrument today of the enemies of the liberation and progress of our fatherland; let the record of history show that the historical responsibility falls upon the exploiters and the criminal imperialists, that it falls upon those who plunder the peoples and who sack the colonies and who exploit the nations, because we are only liberating ourselves from these crimes, from the crime of exploitation, from the crime of oppression, and from the crime of plunder. Let the historical responsibility fall upon the shoulders of the great criminals of today, who are nothing but the Yankee imperialists, the leaders of the imperialists of the entire world! "Let the responsibility fall upon those because history will judge their responsibility correctly, their aggressions, their abuses, their cowardice against the little nations, especially their great cowardice of today; full power of an entire empire and of the millions of people in that empire, committed to the task of destroying the future of a little people. And that little people will defend itself and it will defend itself with the rigor that is necessary! And let the responsibility fall upon those who must die in front of the firing squad! (Tremendous applause) Drastic Measures "And let the people henceforth know what we are tackling here and what we are trying to do here; let the people know that the hour nevertheless has not come for applying more drastic measures; let the people know that we will have an opportunity to prevail later on. Just because the offensive has begun does not mean that the revolution must immediately take the most drastic measures; the revolution however will apply drastic measures as the imperialist offensive is stepped up, as the imperialist offensive becomes more severe; and the revolution will apply drastic measures gradually, as the imperialist attack is stepped up. We will not be afraid because we know perfectly well where we are and where we stand and these are just the first skirmishes; we are just beginning and the severity with which the revolutionary tribunals will punish them will just be the very first acts of severity by the revolutionary tribunals; and this severity will increase as the attacks are stepped up; this severity will increase as they launch their offensive; we will not lose our clam composure, not will we become impatient. And it is possible that the people might be much more impatient than we. The People Are Impatient "In Baracoa, the people wanted to lynch the first prisoners of the 'tiger' and 'gringos' group who arrived there. (Applause) The people were impatient but Raul was there and talked to the people; he interrogated these criminals in public so as to create evidence before the people as to the lowdown mercenary role of these men who are in the service of a foreign power and he calmed the people down. Still, the people are more patient than we; but it is better that the men who have responsibility of government, the men who hold the great responsibilities of government, keep the people calm and that they be much less impatient than the people; it would be much more dangerous if the government were to become more impatient than the people and we would rather have the people be more impatient than we. (Applause) Let the people demand more severity than we demand; this means that, far from using excessive severity, we who have tremendous responsibility for our country, we who march side by side with the people, will never exceed our application of severity above and beyond the degree exhibited by the people; it is always better for us to be less severe than the people would want us to be but we will never be very far from the degree of severity which the people want us to apply. (Applause) We Will Defeat Them "I said that we were going to talk about education, first, and counterrevolutionary problems, second. Well, we did it the other way around: we talked about counterrevolutionary problems first and now we have to say something in brief -- in brief but in truth -- on the fundamental objective of this congress; the important thing here is not only for us to defeat the counterrevolution -- certainly we believe firmly that we will crush the counterrevolution in all battles and in all offensives. (Applause) The mission which we have in our country is not just to defeat the counterrevolution or any other counterrevolutions but to make the revolution; this is our mission in our country. Our mission in this country is to create; we fight because we want to create; we fight because we must defend that which has been created. We fight because we want to keep on going forward; and, above all, we are not here to fight but we are here to create. "The thing that would be a victory for the counterrevolution would be a delay in our plans for the revolution, a delay in the plans for the agrarian reform, a delay in our educational plans, our industrialization plans, or plans for housing construction, our plans for the general development of our economy; that indeed would be a victory for the counterrevolution. And this is why the counterrevolution must win the battle not in the military sphere only; it must also win the battle in the field of revolutionary creation. We Will Continue to Advance "Now, have they delayed us? No. Indeed, we can say the exact opposite: the revolution has advanced even though they have attacked the revolution. They have not delayed us. And they are not going to delay us! (Shouts: "Never!") And, to demonstrate this, we have this very ambitious goal here for the next year: we want to wipe out illiteracy completely in Cuba. (Applause) Here we have an opportunity to prove what the people can do. "We are not going to be delayed, not in the construction of a single house, not in a single cooperative, not in a single school, nor in a single factory; they are not going to delay us in any way at all; on the contrary, the greater the counterrevolutionary offensive of imperialism, the better must be the creative effort of the revolution. "We are not going to talk about other fields here today because we have gathered here today to take up the subject of education; but let us see what we have already done. There are no more big military posts or barracks which have not been converted into a big school center; in Ciudad Libertad we already have thousands of children attending cla**es and here, in the building of the General Staff, we have the Minister of Education and we have 2,000 slots for university scholarships for poor families and these facilities are going to become operational soon; (applause) Moncada barracks has been converted into a school city; the barracks of the Holguin regiment, in Holguin, were converted into a school center; the barracks of the Camaguay regiment have been converted similarly into a school city; the barracks of the Santa Clara regiment have been converted into a school city; the Geicuria barracks have been converted into a school center and the other new barracks which we were going to convert into a school city has not yet been converted because we are still training militia leaders there; the Havana barracks have not yet been converted because we are training militia men there but the Pinar del Rio barracks is likewise now being converted into a school city. "This will leave us only with the big fortresses -- and Ciudad Libertad and possibly La Cabana which will soon be converted into a big education center. And that will leave us with just two, the Matanzas barracks and the Havana barracks, because we are using them for training militia men. Work Battalions "During the summer, some people said that there were soldiers in the Rancho Boyeros Technological School as well as in Matanzas and Holguin. Did this mean that we were going to convert some of these schools into military barracks? No; these were work battalions which were going through a 3-month course at these technological training centers; and they are now busy, building houses for the peasants. This is why you, in pa**ing some of these places, thought this because you happened to see Rebel guard, standing guard on the outside, simply because these men were there, taking a 3-month course. "In other words, we have converted all of the big fortresses... (a voice from the audience shouts something to Dr Castro)... and you say that I am not lying? You say you are from Camaguey? Ah, yes, there is another one! I must have forgotten... (laughter)... This does not include the very large number of company and squadro-sized barracks which we likewise converted into school centers. We have created 10,000 spaces for teachers; we have sent teachers to the very last corners in the mountains; we are building 150 school centers at this moment and each of them will have 7 cla**rooms; we have built facilities for 4,500 university scholarship students (applause); we have set up the national printing office which can turn out 150,000 books every 48 hours; and we have broken records in the sales of books; these were certainly world records which we broke here, such as in the case of Tiburon and Las Sardinas, where we sold 174,000 in one week. This is a fabulous figure which nobody ever dreamed of achieving but all of this is now within the reach of the people; we are putting out all kinds of books here. Our people, over the next few years, will come to be one of the best educated people of the world, a people who is studying, a people who is learning because this is what we want; we do not want to inculcate any idea into anybody; instead we want everybody to discover the truth for himself, just as we have been discovering the truth for ourselves. To Everyone His Own Ideas What we want to give to the people is the instrument which will enable them to acquire their own idea about the trusts of society and the truths of the world. In other words, we want our people to learn how to think and this is why we are going to print millions of books every year and these will be sold in order to supplement our task of education; the youngsters, whom you teach, will, each one of them, be able to have a library of his own, at home, even though it may be rather modest at that. And this is really something, at that: in a little more than 1 year we have converted the fortresses and many military barracks into schools; we have created a national printing office which can print millions of books that will be sold for 20, 25, and 30 centavos; we are building hundreds of school centers; we have established 10,000 cla**rooms; we have pushed through a tremendous education reform; we are going to establish basic secondary education facilities in each municipality; we are going to create numerous technological schools -- that is something! Especially when we compare this to all of the things that were never done in 50 years, in 58 years, especially when we realize that the revolution has accomplished all this in a little more than 1 year. These, are the facts. (Applause) Difficult Task "No matter how painful it may be to the enemies of the revolution, it will be very difficult to burn the books which we are printing now; it will be very difficult to destroy the national printing office, it will be very difficult to go back to publishing La Marina [The Navy] and all of those other yellow-press and mercenary periodicals. It will be very difficult to destroy the school centers which we are not putting up; it will be very difficult to convert these schools back into fortresses; it will be very difficult to make the men and children we are teaching now into brutal individuals; it will be very difficult to eliminate the 10,000 cla**rooms which we have created; it will be very difficult to take all of this away from our mountaineers, way out in the mountains, it will be very difficult to deprive them of the teachers whom we have sent and, in return, send them a tax collector or some other kind of exploiter; it will be very difficult to deprive the farmers of their land and to force them to pay rent once again, to force them to pay 20% or 30% of their harvest, in kind; it will be very difficult to take a portion of their price away on the market; it will be difficult to destroy their cooperatives and their settlements; it will be very difficult to return the factories and the refineries which we have nationalized to the electric power trust or to the telephone company trust or to the petroleum trust. "Very difficult! This will be so difficult as to be impossible because this is one of the very few impossible things that exist in the truth of the world: this would mean forcing back a people who has advanced as far as our people has. (Applause) "It will be very difficult to take the little boats once again from the fishermen and to take their houses away from the tenants and to take the land away from the peasants and to take the beaches away from the people. In other words, all of this will be very difficult and everybody must realize that all of this will be difficult, very difficult, I tell you. Great Gain "This is what we have achieved in education. It is something but we must still achieve more. The greatest success we have yet to achieve will be the one we must achieve next year. Why are we getting ready to eradicate illiteracy next year? Because we already have many thousands more teachers at work, because we have the national printing office, and because we have a better organization. We could not have aspired to that last year without the national printing office. We had no place to print our textbooks and we did not have enough teachers. But now we do. Now we must resolve to win the battle against illiteracy in 1 year. Some people say that this is very difficult but we do not think so and we believe that we can achieve this. How? By making everybody a teacher, everybody who knows how to read and write. (Applause) "We will must each somebody! Yes, all of us! Are we all teachers here? No. But somebody will explain to us how to handle a textbook and how to teach others to read and write and we will then go out and teach somebody. I am learning how to teach somebody to read and write! (Applause) "Everybody is a teacher. "And so we will turn each and everyone of us into a teacher, with a textbook, and we will keep a record of the persons who teach somebody else how to read and write. Now, this effort will have to be centralized in you, in the municipal education councils. This is the closing session of the congress; you will go home, very happy, but you will have to remember that you will have to give an account of yourselves next year and you will have to explain what you did during the year of education. (Applause) Now, what must we do? We must go back to the people and we must get together all of the persons who want to help us in this plan: the labor unions, the peasant a**ociations, the cultural a**ociations, everybody, even a land owner whose land the revolution took away, provided he wants to help; if he wants to come, yes, tell him to come, tell him that we will accept him and that we let him do something useful for the people -- if there is something that he can do let him do it. Great Task "All right, what I am trying to tell you is that you, all of the professional organizations, will constitute the nucleus of teachers and educators, together with the labor unions, the peasant a**ociations, the professional a**ociations, the cultural institutions, the revolutionary organizations and the municipal organizations, the women's federations, the young rebels, and finally all of the institutions connected with the board of education -- so that we may altogether accomplish this task in the city. In some cities this will be more difficult than in others but we can help those cities and we can back them up. "We must also mobilize the students, the basic secondary school student, the teacher trainees, and the college students; we must mobilize everybody who can read and write and everybody must fight this battle in the municipalities. And if there is any city that still has illiterates, it will be you who will be held responsible, you off the board of education in each and every city. (Applause) "And we will soon see which municipality achieves the greatest success. You know that, as soon as a person has learned to read and write, he is to write a letter, in his own handwriting, a letter to the office of the Ministry of Education, which we are going to organize, and as reward, he will be sent a book, as a present. (Applause) This will be a book on the geography and history of Cuba and on some of the basic outlines on the history and geography of the world; it will be well explained and it will be presented in a simple manner so that any man or woman of the people will be able to understand the subject matter. Education: a Virtue "You must not be discouraged in any way: we must convert education into a virtue and we must turn ignorance into a vice; we must see to it that anybody who cannot read or write will be ashamed of himself, especially after we give everybody an opportunity to learn how to read and write. And we must make sure that it will be considered a vice and a defect, one of the most highly condemnable and one of the saddest and most painful vices and shortcomings; and we must see to it that nobody will be happy to be ignorant. We must create a revolutionary consciousness and we must develop in each citizen the realization that inability to read or write is a shame and a disgrace and that anybody who does not know how to read or write will have to hang his head in shame because he will be the victim of one of the most despicable shortcomings. We must develop this consciousness so that everybody will learn how to read an write. It is a crime that the wealth accumulated by humanity through the most intelligence minds of the human race is lost to millions of human beings, to more than a million, almost 2 million Cubans; all of this tremendous cultural heritage accumulated by man down through history is lost because of this illiteracy; anybody who knows how to read and write and who has a library at home has a tremendous treasury there and can consider himself much more fortunate than those who cannot accumulate any treasures of truth and intelligence but only pile up treasures of money and egotistical wealth. And now, anybody can avail himself of this opportunity. Conversion "Let us convert ignorance into a vice. Let us convert ignorance, that is to say, the concept of ignorance, let us convert it into a defect and into a disgrace for each and every citizen, so that everybody will try to learn how to read and write, whether to be young or old, whether he be 12 or 80 years old. If a person does not know how to read or write, we have to teach him patiently how to read and write. (Applause) "Here is the main issue: on 31 December of next year, there must not be a single illiterate left in Cuba. This is your responsibility. And you can start working on this for the remainder of this year and in addition you have all of next year. Mobilize yourselves and organize everybody who could help you and let us all pull together to accomplish this great crusade. "At the Ministry, they are now drawing up the lesson plans and the charts and training aids for use by anyone who is going to go out and teach other people how to read and write. Battle of Culture "I only want to know whether you think that we can win the great battle of culture in 1961. (Shouts of yes! (Applause) And I want to know if you will pledge yourselves to this task (shouts of Yes!). Good, the entire Cuban nation is a witness to the promise you have given here today. "It now remains for me to tell you that you are the great army of education in our country and that you face a great battle. We fervently hope that you will fight it successfully; we want you to know that we are among those who are prepared to work with you in this campaign and we want you to know that the people of Cuba will know how to reward the teachers for what they are doing for the people today. "And finally, let us be mindful of the father of the fatherland, let us remember Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, to whom the teachers have today rendered the greatest homage! (Ovation) -END-