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1959-09-24

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1974-09-24

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1. “There was a marked increase in the production of nickel, including, significantly, that from the Moaplant, and the development plans are extremely promising. Cement production will double in 1968. The national programme for energy development increased the output of electricity in 1965-1966 by 13 per cent. The hydraulic development plans are going forward. Preliminary work has started on what will be from 1970 onward the centre of industrial development: integrated mining of the laterites in the north-east. This will lay the foundation of the future steel industry, which will specialize in nickel steel and other alloys, and in the production of aluminium, chrome and ammonium sulphate. 129.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

2. “Our people's immense efforts to overcome the economic backwardness inflicted on them by imperialist domination have included an extensive plan for training technical and specialized personnel. In 1966, 16,358 university students were taking soil, fertilizer and stock-raising courses. The estimate for 1970 is that Cuba will in this way have 15,000 technicians at pre-university level and some 5,000 elementary-level Instructors. By 1975 the plan should have provided no less than 100,000 middle-level technicians. These technicians come from the ranks of the agricultural and industrial workers, many of whom were illiterate in 1959 and indeed most of whom had scarcely passed the first three school stages. 128. In the meantime the industrial sector has not been at a standstill. Between 1963 and 1966 considerable progress has been noted.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

3. “The use of the most up-to-date techniques in agriculture and stockraising, such as large-scale fertilization (1,150,000 metric tons of fertilizer were used in 1967 as against 160,000 metric tons in 1957), and the spread of irrigation and mechanization are at the base of Cuba's agrarian revolution. In addition, the attention of the whole population is being focussed on the countryside. 126. In the fishing industry more than 53 million dollars has been invested in the purchase of 41 ships, the building of four more for fishing in distant waters, and the fleet of middle-sized ships fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result the catch increased from 23,000 tons in 1959 to 43,000 in 1966, and this year will reach 60,000. 127.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

4. “In 1965-1966 there was a 13 per cent increase in agricultural production other than of sugar-cane, and the levels of the early years of the Revolution, which were the highest of all time, are now being reached again. The plans for the production of citrus fruits and coffee are opening unsuspected horizons. 124. In 1965 more than 6 million tons of sugar were produced. The 1966 harvest, however, suffered from the severest drought of the century. The 1967 harvest was over 6 million tons, and the 1968 figure will be larger. Substantial investments in industry and agriculture are providing the industrial capacity for producing 10 million tons. 125.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

5. “Surely only those who benefit from it can be proud of the "representative democracy" which keeps the average cultural level of the continent barely at the second stage of elementary education. Who would dare, without lying, to attribute this situation to "Castro-Communist subversion"? Or is the Cuban Revolution also responsible for the uprising of the black population of the United States against its exasperating living conditions and the crime, oppression, outrage, injustice and discrimination which it has suffered for so many centuries? 122. In contrast to the miserable existence of the Latin-American masses, the Cuban people have enjoyed free social services — health, education — on a scale never equalled throughout the continent. 123. The agricultural sector, far from stagnating, has made impressively rapid progress.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

6. “In 1965-1966,4,209 students graduated from institutes for technical vocational training; at the end of 1966, 425 students graduated in the technology of soil, fertilizers and stock-raising, and it is hoped that 3,000 will do so in 1970, In 1966 the number of fellowship-holders rose to 103,386. Since 1961 illiteracy has been practically wiped out; its incidence is now only 3 per cent. 121. When it is so easy to point out the causes of the Latin-American revolution, as has been done in many ECLA and UNESCO reports, how can they be overlooked? Can Latin America rest content that over half Its population of fourteen years of age is illiterate? In Haiti the proportion is 85 per cent of the population, In Ecuador 69.4 per cent, in Guatemala 68.5 per cent, in Bolivia 61,2 per cent, in El Salvador 53.7 per cent, and in Nicaragua 50.4 per cent.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

7. “(This picture is, of course, quite different from that in the rest of Latin America. In Brazil the infant mortality rate is 170 per thousand births; in Haiti 171,6 per thousand; in Chile 111 per thousand; in Guatemala 92.8 per thousand; in Peru 94.8 per thousand; in Bolivia 86 per thousand; in Colombia 83 per thousand, and according to a recent statement by the Minister of Public Health, 100 children die of hunger daily in that country). The extension of health services can easily be seen from their budget allocations, which rose from 23 million dollars in 1959 to almost 158 million dollars in 1967. 120. Out of an estimated total of 8 million inhabitants, Cuba has a student population of more than two and a half million, composed of children, young people and adults. The number of teachers has risen from 17,355 in 1959 to 41,922 in 1967.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

8. “More than 140,000 families stopped paying their town rent at the end of 1965, and in 1970 housing will be completely free. For the first time in the history of Latin America, medical assistance reaches the remotest parts of the country. In the last two years the number of urban hospitals has increased from 144 to 162, and of rural hospitals from 34 to 46. Before the Revolution there was not a single rural hospital in Cuba. 119. The medical assistance and mass vaccination plans have considerably decreased the infant mortality rate, which today is one of the lowest in America; and the national death-rate has dropped to 6.3 per thousand. Poliomyelitis has been completely wiped out and half a million children are vaccinated against various Illnesses each year.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

9. “Not for nothing has its underdeveloped back garden resolutely stood up and said "that is enough." 117. In spite of the Yankee imperialists' illegal blockade and the harassment, aggression, provocation and threats of all kinds committed against my country in the time — almost nine years — since the triumph of the Revolution, the situation in Cuba today is quite the reverse of the desperate situation in which the vast majority of the 250 million Latin Americans eke out a living. The strategy behind our economic policy is based on turning agriculture and stockraising into a springboard for full development. 118. Cuba does not suffer from the involuntary unemployment or underemployment which plague the economies of the rest of Latin America. No one has to go to bed hungry for lack of money.”

   1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

10. “In Latin America there is a vast mass of books, magazines, newspapers, films, teachers, fellowship holders, emissaries and Jehovah's Witnesses preaching the "glories" and "virtues" of the empire and denigrating our historic, artistic and cultural heritage with the fatuous superiority of decadent Rome. 116. But even on that front Yankee imperialism is suffering defeats which foreshadow its decline. The highest-ranking Latin-American writers, artists, teachers and journalists are standing out against this ideological penetration campaign with exemplary firmness and dignity. Their ideological counter-offensive has been launched, and the revolutionary vanguards of our peoples are unshakably determined to lead the second war of independence to victory. This is making the "ideologists" of great America swallow aspirins by the dozen.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

11. “The Yankee imperialists, grown grey in their dishonourable profession, cannot underestimate the importance of ideological penetration as a means of strengthening their political, economic and military domination of Latin America. Although the influence of American ideology on our continent dates back to the period following the struggle for emancipation, it has definitely reached its peak in the last few years, above all since the Cuban Revolution, which has an ever-increasing impact on Yankee imperialist strategy and tactics. The precise nature and specific purpose of this policy of ideological penetration is first the spiritual deformation and next the brainwashing of the Latin-American peoples.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

12. “These crime schools produce and train thousands of officers from the "representative democratic" fascist régimes of the continent to fight national Liberation movements and patriotic guerrilla forces. 114. It is hardly necessary to add that most of the Latin-American armies, as a result of their complete subordination to the military interests of Yankee imperialism, have become colonial garrisons of the Pentagon, directly under the orders of the "Green. Berets", whose specialized methods far outstrip those of Hitler's assault troops. The courageous people of Viet-Nam could give hair-raising accounts of their studied savagery. 115.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

13. “Ecuador: military bases at Puerto de Salinas and on Galápagos Island; naval air base in Esmeralda province on the Pacific coast close to the Colombian frontier. Chile: several tracing stations which cloak other military activities. Brazil and Venezuela: military training centres. 113. The operations of this network of military, naval and air force bases are closely co-ordinated with those of the Yankee military missions, the Central Intelligence Agency and the anti-guerrilla schools situated at Fort Bragg and Fort Lee (United States), at Fort Gullick (Panama Canal Zone) and at the advanced war school in Argentina. That is not all. At Fort Davies in the Panama Canal Zone, with edifying zeal, an academy for repressive police trains cops and thugs to bludgeon, torture and murder the workers, peasants and students of Latin America.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

14. “Puerto Rico: Ensenada Honda (headquarters of the naval command of the Caribbean and Antilles), with facilities for atomic submarines equipped with Polaris missiles; Vieques Island, off the coast of Puerto Rico (training camp for Marines and counter-revolutionary invasion groups), with strategic facilities in Aguadilla, Salinas, Isla Grande and Fort Brooke. Jamaica: the Portland Village, Old Harbour, May Pen and Santa Cruz naval bases. Trinidad: the Chaguaramas naval base and the military facilities at Punta Icacos, Chaguanas and Saint Andrews; Guyana: one naval and one air force base, Panama: the Fort Randolph, Fort Davies, Fort Gullick, Fort Clayton, Fort Kowwe and Fort Sherman naval bases and the Francia, Albrook and Howard air force bases.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

15. “It does not enter their heads that the loftiest expressions of that spirit are the foul negro ghettos of the northern states and the refined notices "For Whites Only" on the public conveniences of the southern. 112. The political organ of this strong-arm system for maintaining the political and economic hegemony of the United States in Latin America is the OAS, and its military instrument is the Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, cast in the Same mould as NATO, CENTO and SEATO. To give an idea of how far Yankee imperialism has besieged Latin America, I will list the distribution of its military, naval and air force bases. Cuba: the Guantánamo naval base.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

16. “Not the high-level meetings at Punta del Este to organize alleged common markets or integration — though these now have the support of the Yankee Government since its minor partners have given it more explicit guarantees for its investments, properties and privileges. 111. But the tragic picture still lacks a few pieces. Yankee imperialism, the champion of the "free world" and the paladin of "representative democracy", has strewn the Caribbean region with military, naval and air force bases and have established some more beyond the Panama Canal. I am sure that quite a few simple people believe that this threatening barricade, is appointed by Providence to protect from subversive contacts the spirit of Western Christian civilization, which the ruling class of the United States embodies and defends.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

17. “It is against these insufferable conditions that the Latin-American peoples are rebelling. These are the reason why new contingents of workers, peasants, students and intellectuals daily embrace the cause of national liberation. The origin and motive of the revolutionary movement in Latin America are not specifically the Cuban revolution; they are the exploitation, oppression and poverty imposed on the continent by the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys. Nor can anyone stop this gigantic march towards independent development, well-being, culture and dignity. Not the vaunted Alliance for Progress, which since its creation in 1961 has not been able, nor will it ever be able, to avoid the inexorable deterioration of the Latin-American economy.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

18. “Thus the net flow of finance tends to decrease, leaving a net deficit which adds to its indebtedness. Already in 1965 Latin America had the dubious honour of being the principal debtor among ninety-seven developing countries, with an external debt of 11,900 million dollars. 109. Imperialist exploitation has had other direct effects: malnutrition (Bolivia 45 deaths, Peru 24 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants); lack of adequate housing (affecting 14 per cent of the inhabitants of Chile, 38 per cent of the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro and 2,500,000 persons in Venezuela); infant mortality (171 per thousand in Brazil, 114 per thousand in Chile, 95 per thousand in Guatemala); inadequacy or almost total lack of social security; endemic illiteracy and outbursts of primitive tyranny. 110.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

19. “The result is that for 1965 and the first half of 1966 Latin America has a deficit of 370 million dollars in its trade with its principal supplier. It is estimated that between 1955 and 1966 the fall-off in the terms of trade cost Latin America no less than 21,390 million dollars at 1950 prices, twice the value of its exports in that last year. If the outflow of profit and the fall-off in the terms of trade (at 1950 prices) are added together, its loss between 1956 and 1967 amounts to 31,431 million dollars. 108. It is therefore not at all surprising that Latin America tends to run into debt in order to survive. In 1966 its debts amounted to 12,000 million dollars. In addition, the Latin-American countries have to pay 5,000 million dollars a year to service capital and interest.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

20. “For each dollar the United States invests in Latin America it receives three. The United States monopolistic capital contributes to the permanent underdevelopment of Latin America; but these profits gained abroad. Only Asia, where the United States receives six dollars for every dollar it invests, is more basely exploited. 107. Imperialist plunder is also a factor in what is euphemistically called deterioration in the terms of trade: falling export prices combined with rising import prices. Despite its evangelic declamations in UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), the United States maintains its policy of restricting imports of the main commodities exported from Latin America; it continues to subsidize its own agricultural produce and encourages the manufacture of substitutes for Latin-American exports.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

21. “The Survey of Current Business states that 29 per cent of all Yankee investment (2,741 million dollars) went into the manufacturing industry. Of course only 5.5 per cent of that sum was for productive machinery. 105. In Argentina the International Packers control 60 per cent of the meat exports. Between 1956 and 1965 the United States derived 586 million dollars' profit from its direct investments. Between 1960 and 1965 its firms gained more than 5,000 million dollars from Latin America. For the ten-year period 1956 to 1965 the figure was above 7,000 million dollars. 106. I could easily go on listing ways in which United States monopolistic capital contributes to the permanent underdevelopment of Latin America; but these figures from the Survey of Current Business speak for themselves.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

22. “While the prime objective of the development policy has been import substitution, care has been taken not to include branches of industry which might compete with United States monopolies. Thus there are consumer goods and raw materials, but none of the means of production necessary for development or even for earning through exports the income needed to finance it. According to ECLA figures, 50 per cent of Latin- American industrial production is for consumption, 33 per cent is for raw materials and the remaining fraction — one tenth — is for investment and export. Since 50 per cent of Latin-American imports are in fact raw materials and consumer goods, this industry is obviously inefficient. 104. This sector too has benefited from "United States aid".”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

23. “In Chile 90 per cent of the copper belongs to such "national" firms as Braden Copper or the Anaconda, which extract $50 million worth of profit; in the Dominican Republic the total bauxite production belongs to the Alcoa; in Brazil the Hanna Mining Company of Cleveland and the Antunez Mines (a subsidiary of the Bethlehem Steel Company) have gained control of one of the world's largest reserves of iron (9,000 km2 in Minas Gerães) with no less than 24,000 million metric tons of ore and the largest reserves in the world of bauxite, thorium, uranium and niobium. 103. In the manufacturing sector there is evidence of similar stagnation. From 1955 to 1960 that sector grew at an annual rate of 6.4 per cent, from 1960 to 1965 of 5.3 per cent, and in 1966 of only 5 per cent.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

24. “These investments are supposed to contribute to the development of Venezuela; but, according to its Central Bank, the invested capital was amortized as early as 1954, Moreover, these companies cover five times as much land as is cultivated; and at the present rate of extraction the reserves will be exhausted in fourteen years. Lastly, between 1952 and 1963 profits worth $6,226,000 were transferred from Venezuela to the United States (ECLA, "Economic Survey of Latin America", 1964). 102. There can be no doubt that the effect of the Yankee monopolist capital invested in Latin America is to decapitalize it. Venezuela's situation is not, of course, unique.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

25. “Five thousand million dollars' worth of minerals are exported yearly; but that sum, which could be one of the main pivots of the region's development, does not belong to the producers. According to the Survey of Current Business, 44 per cent of United States investments in Latin America are in mining (12 per cent) and petroleum (32 per cent). The annual profits of the United States companies amount to 700 million dollars. In Venezuela 60 per cent of the petroleum is in United States hands: in 1964 the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, through the Creole Petroleum Company, controlled 38.5 per cent of the total production, the Mene Grande Oil Company 11.9 per cent, Mobil Oil 4.1 per cent and likewise the Sinclair Venezuela Oil Company and the Atlantic Refining Company. 101.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

26. “The agricultural crisis has been due not only to the low yield of the non-intensive farming and the low technical standard of the exports, matching the niggardly consumption of fertilizers. It has been due mainly to the out-moded system of land tenure, to the prevalence of the large estate and the uneconomic small-holding. (Around 1 per cent of the landowners hold approximately 67 per cent of the land, while 76 per cent only hold 4 per cent of the arable). 100. Mining, which produces 35 per cent of the export earnings of Latin America, has expanded much more slowly than in other regions of the world. Except for petroleum, its share of the total world production has fallen since 1960.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

27. “Half of that revenue comes from its agriculture and stockraising sector, which according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) was static from 1950 to 1964, and at present the livestock production is lower than it was in 1950. Agriculture, which provides 46 per cent of the employment is not making any headway. According to one ECLA report, in ten out of the twenty Latin-American republics the agricultural production has increased less during the last decade than the population, and in five its growth- rate has been over 1 per cent higher. Thus there has been a widespread agricultural crisis in the Latin-American region with its peak, as I have said, in the livestock sector. 99.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

28. “Really this is just the tip of the iceberg formed by the imperialist exploitation and the sell-out by the Latin-American ruling classes, which have accepted the backward, distorted and dependent economic structure on which the Yankee imperialists and their lackeys in the Organization of American States pride themselves so much. A brief review of the economic situation of Latin America reveals the essence of its underdevelopment and the true and legitimate cause of the Latin-American revolution. 98. Despite the continual appeals for the industrialization of Latin America, it is still atypical producer of primary or basic commodities, from which it obtains about 90 per cent of its export earnings.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

29. “In the last six years the annual growth-rate of the gross national product was 4.4 per cent, which, in conjunction with the population's growth-rate, represents an annual increase per caput of 1.3 per cent. Nothing, then, could be further from the United Nations Development Decade's objective of counteracting economic backwardness by achieving an annual growth rate of 5 per cent. In fact, in many countries the growth-rate has been negligible: Argentina 1.1 per cent, Brazil 0.7 per cent, Paraguay 0.52 per cent, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Chile below 2 per cent per year; and in others the economy has regressed: Haiti -2.9 per cent, the Dominican Republic -1.3 per cent, Uruguay -0.1 per cent. 97.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

30. “Latin-American peasants, starving and over-worked by foreign monopolies and creole oligarchies, harvest 60 per cent of the world's coffee, 45 per cent of its sugar-cane and 27 per cent of its sugar, 20 per cent of its cocoa, 15 per cent of its cotton, 67 per cent of its bananas, 11 per cent of its meat and 10 per cent of its oil seeds. In all, this is about 20 per cent of the world's agricultural exports. 96. In reality, however, the Latin-American economy is far from prosperous and its prospects are by no means hopeful. Apart from a brief interlude in the period 1964-65 when economic trends were favourable to exports, the economic growth-rate of Latin America has dropped back to the stagnation level of 1960-1962.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

31. “That is to say, the Latin-American revolution is rooted deeply in a specific historical situation imposed by imperialist domination. This we are going to prove beyond appeal by the figures. 95. Seven per cent of the world's population (250 million people) live in Latin America. Of these, 140 million work almost as slaves, 70 million live on the fringe of the money economy, about 100 million are illiterate, 100 million suffer from endemic disease, and over 130 million are undernourished. Yet, paradoxically, the continent is rich. It contains 12 per cent of the world's known petroleum reserves, 33 per cent of the iron, copper and nickel, 20 per cent of the manganese, 50 per cent of the aluminium and 16 per cent of the tin. It has also 13 per cent of the world's farmland.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

32. “Today the Pentagon strategists have had to add the Latin-American peoples' struggle for liberation to their list of insoluble problems, along with the Viet-Namese war and the uprising of the black people of the United States. 94. There is no need to be very clairvoyant to realize that for some time now a profound revolution has been taking place within Latin America. The impoverished downtrodden masses of the continent, who for centuries had been pitilessly exploited, have decided that under the leadership of their revolutionary vanguards they will take up arms until they have wiped out oppression, servitude, hunger, illiteracy, sickness and unemployment — or, in other words, underdevelopment and colonialism.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

33. “Do the Charters signed at San Francisco, or at Bogotá setting up the OAS, grant the imperialist Government of Washington a pirate's licence legalizing what for other governments is intervention, aggression, provocation and subversion? It is quite unnecessary to ask such questions. By their deeds you shall know them; here are the deeds. 93. Hardly ten years ago the Yankee Government looked on Latin America as its pleasant, peaceful and sunny back garden just across the Rio Bravo. The only worries which upset the digestion of the Government in office were whether or not to decorate this officer or overthrow that president; whether to dump the tin' now or to wait and see first how things went.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

34. “It should be made quite clear that imperialist activity against Cuba not only includes provocation from the Guantanamo naval base, infiltration of espionage groups and violation of our air space by U-2 aircraft, which have made twenty-eight incursions this year, but more recently has included the use of a more modern technique. RC-130 and EC-121 aircraft have up to now carried out 230 missions to obtain information on our air force and anti-aircraft defence, and have on many occasions landed quite openly on the Guantanamo naval base on completion of their espionage activities. 92. Do international laws exempt the Government of the United States from complying with them?”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

35. “The shot was fired by personnel of the United States post five kilometres west of the main entrance to the base. 89. In 1966, at 19.00 hours on 21 May, provocation from the naval base of Guantánamo took the form of a rifle shot which killed Luis Ramirez López. He was a soldier from our post approximately 500 metres from the eastern perimeter of the base and three kilometres from the main entrance. 90. So far this year the Yankee Government has committed in all ninety-five acts of provocation. These include the landing of helicopters on our territory, violations of our territorial waters and air space by their planes and warships, and rifle fire against our soldiers. 91.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

36. “In 1964, at 23.18 hours on 9 June, a soldier by the name of José Ramírez Reyes was shot in the left leg by personnel of the United States post six kilometres from the south coast on the eastern perimeter. At 19.15 hours on 25 June a soldier called Andrés Noel Larduet was shot in the left side of the chest by personnel of the United States post five kilometres from the main gate on the eastern perimeter. At 19.07 hours on 19 July shots were fired on our posts from the United States post three and a half kilometres along the north-eastern perimeter, killing a soldier by the name of Ramón López Pena. A few minutes later two United States officers arrived at the scene and took notes. 88. In 1965, at 12.25 hours on 23 February, a military photographer named Bernardo Belén Ramírez was shot in the right hand.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

37. “Lastly, I challenge specifically the delegations of Guatemala and Nicaragua to deny their Government's participation in that typical act of international piracy. They stand challenged, and I await their reply. 86. The acts of aggression against Cuba have been countless. The Guantanamo naval base is the constant setting for provocation and attacks which have already cost the lives of courageous Cuban fighters. There have been hundreds of acts of provocation. Denunciations of them are inscribed in the records of the Security Council's and the General Assembly's debates. However, now that we are yet again accusing the imperialist Government of the United States of its acts of aggression, provocation and subversion against Cuba, it is fitting to recall some of these crimes. 87.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

38. “I formally challenge the United States delegation to deny the testimony of President Kennedy's assistant Theodore C. Sorensen and of his adviser Arthur Schlesinger in the books I have quoted, and the comments of the journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross on the part played by the CIA in the Cuban invasion, and to tell the General Assembly whether or not those acts amount to intervention, aggression and subversion. I also challenge the Latin-American delegations to explain their conspiratorial silence in the OAS when those events took place, although Cuba was still a member of that organization; and 1 call on them to show on what moral, reasonable or legal grounds their Governments can accuse Cuba of intervention and subversion.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

39. “The invasion was deeply rooted in the struggle for power in the United States itself. In the Book The Invisible Government, by the journalists David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, we read on page 338: "Unknown to the American people, the Bay of Pigs invasion plan played a crucial role in the 1960 campaign. "Despite the fact that millions of persons watched the four televised debates between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy, the voters went to the polls without knowing the secret reasons for the public positions the candidates took on Cuba. Behind the scenes, on both sides, there was deep concern over the pending CIA invasion." 84. The puppets of Guatemala and Nicaragua would later hasten to declare their pleasure in their infamous support of the ill-fated operation. 85.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

40. “Clearly the preparations for the invasion and the invasion itself were examples not only of artful crime but also of unparalleled cynicism. The direct responsibility of the United States has been set out in abundant detail. Can anyone still entertain any doubts? On page 267 of Schlesinger's book we read: "Events were rushing toward climax. D-day had originally been proposed for April 5; at the end of March the President postponed it to April 10; now it was set for April 17. In Guatemala the Cuban brigade, now grown to almost 1,400 men, waited with growing impatience. A veteran Marine colonel arrived to make a final inspection as the force prepared to leave its base." 83. There is no need for me to go on producing irrefutable evidence of the imperialist guilt of the invasion at Playa Girón.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

41. “Bissell, Jr., as the originators of the project to make the main arguments for action." 81. Schlesinger, incidentally, was the draftsman of the so-called White Book on Cuba which was published on 3 April 1961 by the State Department to condition world public opinion to the forthcoming invasion. On page 243 of his book on Kennedy he says that Thomas Mann, at that time Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America, was not in favour of any highly spectacular move, "stressing the probability of anti-American reactions in Latin America and the United Nations if the American hand were not well concealed". He was especially worried about air strikes "unless they could seem plausibly to come from bases on Cuban soil; and the Trinidad air strip could not take B-26s". 82.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

42. “The idea sounded plausible enough, the memo- random suggested, if one excluded everything but Cuba itself; but, as soon as the focus was enlarged to include the rest of the hemisphere and the rest of the world, arguments against the decision gained strength. Above all, 'this would he your first dramatic foreign policy initiative. At one stroke you would dissipate all the extraordinary goodwill which has been rising toward the new Administration through the world. It would fix a malevolent image of the new Administration in the minds of millions'. "It was apparent now a month later that matters were still very much in flux. No final decision had yet been taken on whether the invasion should go forward at all and, if so, whether Trinidad should be the landing point. It fell to Allen Dulles and Richard M.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

43. “Kennedy in the White House, states on page 240: "On March 11, about a week after my return from Latin America, I was summoned to a meeting with the President in the Cabinet Room. An intimidating group sat around the table—the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, three Joint Chiefs resplendent in uniforms and decorations, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, the chairman of the Latin American Task Force and appropriate assistants and bottle-washers. I shrank into a chair at the far end of the table and listened in silence," He goes on to say: "I had first heard of the Cuban operation in early February; indeed, the day before leaving for Buenos Aires I had sent the President a memorandum about it.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

44. “On 17 April 1961 the Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, referring to the invasion, said that the fight in Cuba was a fight by Cubans for their own freedom, and that there was not and would not be any intervention by United States forces in that country. One week later, on 24 April, the White House issued the following note: "President Kennedy has stated from the beginning that as President he bears full responsibility for the events of past days. He has stated this on all occasions and he restates it now so that it will be understood by all. The President is strongly opposed to anyone within or without the Administration attempting to shift the responsibility." 80. Another of the assassinated President's close collaborators, Arthur M. Schlesinger, in his book entitled A Thousand Days, John F.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

45. “No one would have believed that the second strike, scheduled for dawn Monday after the landing party was ashore, was anything other than an overt, unprovoked attack by the United States on a tiny neighbor." And on page 302: "The CIA even dictated battle communiqués to a Madison Avenue public relations firm representing the exiles' political front. After all the military limitations accepted in order to keep this nation's role covert, that role was not only obvious but exaggerated." And on page 307: "On Wednesday ... (Kennedy) gave orders for American Navy and Air Force to rescue as many as possible" of the Cuban anti-Castro forces. 79. The duplicity of the imperialist policy is without equal.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

46. “Two pages further on, the indiscreet Sorensen says: "....President Kennedy, having obtained the written endorsement of General Lemnitzer and Admiral Burke representing the Joint Chiefs and the verbal assent of Secretaries Rusk and McNamara, gave the final go-ahead signal, ... Cancellation of the plan at that stage, he feared, would be interpreted as an admission that Castro ruled with popular support and would be around to harass Latin America for many years to come." And again on page 301: "The world was aroused by this country's deliberate deception.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

47. “Sorensen, Special Assistant at the White House, in his book Kennedy, writes eloquently and dispassionately of the preparations for the crime and of the crime itself. On page 295 he states: "The Eisenhower administration authorized early In 1960 the training and arming of a Cuban exile army of liberation under the direction of the CIA. Shortly before the Presidential election of 1960, it was decided... that this should be a conventional war force, not a guerrilla band, and its numbers were sharply increased." He goes on to say: "On January 20, 1961, John Kennedy inherited the plan, the planners and, most troubling of all, the Cuban exile brigade — an armed force, flying another flag, highly trained in secret Guatemalan bases, eager for one mission only".”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

48. “That criminal attack, which not only cost many Cuban lives but also represented the first defeat for imperialism in Latin America, took place before the astonished eyes of the world and the closed eyes of the United Nations and the Organization of American States. The responsibility for that attack lies with the Government of the United States, by the formal declaration of its highest officer. And what did the OAS do? What did the United Nations do except laugh at the United States delegate's lies and turn a deaf ear to my own statements backed by ample evidence? And are this guilty Government and its puppet accomplices those who now have the impudence to accuse Cuba of intervention and subversion? I will leave the guilty to speak for themselves. 78. Theodore C.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

49. “Eight times it has failed, just as all the other measures taken in all parts of the world against the Cuban people have failed. 76. Yankee imperialism is the convicted felon, pleading guilty of its crimes against the Cuban people. When it supplied arms to groups of counter-revolutionary bandits in the Escambray Mountains in Central Cuba, it shamelessly denied the evidence. When saboteurs infiltrated our coast, it denied that. When the Cuban delegation in this forum, denounced the preparations for the invasion launched in 1961, the imperialists denied those. They have denied everything; but everything has come to light. 77. In this aggressive policy of escalation, the mercenary invasion of Playa Girón was the high-water mark of the military aggression.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)

50. “President, you and the representatives should, insofar as you are concerned, ponder on the reasons why it is now desired to debate here a matter which the United Nations has hitherto been precluded from considering. At any rate, the Government which I represent has always been and will remain prepared to deal with this matter at length. Cuba has denounced, denounces today and will continue to denounce the criminal policy of United States imperialism. It has now had the imperialists in the dock for nine years. 75. During those nine years there has been not a moment of truce. Since 1959 Yankee imperialism has eight times called together the American foreign Ministries in special meetings to strengthen its diplomatic, political, economic and military ring round our indomitable island.”

    1967-09-24 · UN General Assembly · General Debate, Session 22 (1967)