S P E E C H

Dear brothers and sisters, students, workers, and I would almost go so far as to say, fellow Argentinians: (Applause)

I have lived a number of years, but I could have never even imagined an event as hazardous and unbelievably emotional as this one. (Applause and shouts)

I want you to know that at this very moment, millions of Cubans are also witnessing this spectacle. (Applause and shouts of: "Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, the people salute you!") On behalf of our people, I am infinitely grateful, because the strength that comes from ideas, from the truth and from a just cause is what makes the peoples invincible. (Applause)

According to what the students and university authorities told me, they had planned to hold some kind of meeting here in this law school, something modest. It would begin at 7:00 p.m., and it would be attended by a number of students sitting in a theater, and in case more happened to come, they would set up a screen outside, so that they could watch as well.

I could make a criticism –not aimed at you, but at our own comrades. I could tell them: "You underestimated the Argentine people." (Applause) We were getting reports that the theater had filled up, that there were twice as many people as could be seated there, that there was no more room in the aisles, and the hallway was full, and the steps were filling up. They said there were 1000 people, 2000, 3000. At one point the television stations began reporting what was happening here, and then, I saw some footage – we have a certain habit of estimating the number of people in a crowd – and what we saw here looked like Revolution Square in Cuba. (Applause)

All communications and routes of access were cut off; luckily those little devices that are such a nuisance and make so much noise – I mean cellular phones – can be useful at times like these, in order to communicate and stay informed of the situation.

Our ambassador, who is one of the guilty parties in this underestimation (Laughter) – I know that you will defend him, because he is very fond of the people of Argentina (Shouts) – was communicating with his family, who were inside the hall where the meeting would be held. There were even a few children there, because they believed that this was going to be the most peaceful of public events. And it is, isn’t? No one could have imagined how well this crowd could be organized. But at that point, no one could move, everyone was stuck where they were, communicating by cell phone. There was no way to get in. They had declared that it was impossible to get in, but I could not resign myself to going back on my commitment. I could not allow the physical conditions of the place and the obstruction resulting from the huge crowds to deprive me of the honor and the pride of meeting with you.

It had been said that it was impossible, but I continued to insist that nothing is impossible. (Applause) This was simply a problem that had to be solved, and I could not accept staying back there, waiting for news. All my life I have been accustomed to moving around, to going wherever there may be difficulties, and I could not accept the idea of getting on that plane, at whatever time, without coming to this university.

Of course, I am a visitor here, and above all else, I must respect law and order. I have no right to do anything whatsoever that violates in the slightest the rules and orders of this country’s authorities.

And I must say that, truly, the authorities cooperated to the fullest in helping to find a solution.

I continued to receive reports from the law school, and they continued to tell us, "No one is leaving the hall." They were advancing a bit along the sides, at one point something or other was broken somewhere. This is something else we are going to have to assume, either by sharing the cost or paying ourselves for the damage that may have resulted from a broken window, a breach made by this patriotic and revolutionary army of Argentines. (Applause)

So we talked to a young member of our delegation, the foreign minister, you saw and listened to him. I told him: "You go over there, get inside anyway you can, and speak with the people in that theater. You explain the situation to them, the fact that we might not be able to hold our meeting there." Because there was a justified fear that if the event took place there, and there were screens outside, some of the people who had voluntarily left the room might try to get back in. So, they had to be persuaded of the genuine need to move out to the steps, and hold the event out there.

We were waiting impatiently, listening to our envoy through two means: by television, since some of the networks were broadcasting his words, and by cell phone. We watched and listened as he tried to persuade the people inside the hall to move out here.

Once again we saw proof of the people’s capacity to understand, to cooperate, to react, because just a few minutes later, he told me, "They’re moving out towards the steps."

But there was another obstacle to overcome, that of the television cameras and microphones. (Shouts) Listen, don’t fight with the cameras now, and leave it until tomorrow, if you want. (He is told something.) Yes, I know, I know, I was listening, but they really wanted to report on what was happening here, so I cannot complain. They have to be here, because otherwise, you would be the only ones to know what is being said here.

For example, without the cameras, without all the equipment, our people would not be watching what is happening here at this moment, and that is what caused the hour of delay. Do you know how long an hour of impatience is? All of you and ourselves have endured this long, endless and infinite hour of impatience, because all of this had to be set up, the microphones and loudspeakers, the equipment used by the press. Everything had been set up for the event to be held inside, but they really did manage to get everything moved out in record time.

We asked what was happening. It was 8:40 p.m., and they told us, "Everything is ready; it would be best if you got here quickly." Because it’s cold, as well. But the cold is nothing compared to the warmth of all of you here. (Applause)

They made me put this on, but I do not really need it. I am going to take it off, because I am ashamed to have this on here. (He takes off his coat.)

We left right away to be able to get here at more or less the time estimated. But the organizational feat achieved by the masses here was a miracle. (Applause) I will never forget what all of you did tonight, which will allow us to leave here happy and eternally grateful.

Some may think that this is perhaps vanity on our part, for the immense honors you have granted us. No, that is not what I am thinking about. When I speak of eternal gratitude, it is because the people of Buenos Aires are sending a message to those who dream of bombing our country, our cities. (Applause and shouts of "Cuba, Cuba, Cuba, the people salute you!" and "Bush, you fascist, you are the terrorist!") You are sending a message to those who dream of destroying not only the Revolution, but also the people that carried out that Revolution, and that have succeeded in withstanding more than 40 years of blockade, aggressions and threats against our country. (Applause)

In such circumstances, you cannot calculate only the children who die, or the mothers who die, or the elderly people who die, or the young people and adults who die. There are times when the survivors are so mutilated and so devastated that you wonder, under those circumstances, if it would not be 100 times more preferable to die than to continue living that way, as a consequence of something that was undertaken for no real reason whatsoever, with no right or justification, something that violated international standards, the international laws that we believed governed this world. Although many of us already suspected that this was a world in which the law was little respected, and that the principle was being established whereby force was the sole justification to commit any crime, to subjugate our peoples, to conquer our natural resources, to impose what you spoke of, a worldwide Nazi-fascist dictatorship. (Booing)

This is not an exaggeration or an overstatement, as we all heard it said one day that 60 or more countries could be the targets of preemptive attacks. Never before in history had anyone, any empire, made such a threat. (Booing)

When there was talk of a readiness to strike against any dark corner of the world, I do not recall ever having heard such words before.

When it was said that any weapon of war could be used, whether nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, aside from the highly-sophisticated weapons that are no longer conventional by any standard, because they can cause all manner of destruction, we thought to ourselves, What right does anyone have to threaten the peoples of the world?

I wonder if here, too, at this gathering, since there is not much light, we might need to turn on a lot more lights, so that we are not ‘a dark corner of the world’ to be attacked preemptively. (Applause)

Of course, this square, this stairway that we see here, is not a dark corner; it is a corner full of light, full of millions of lights. This square and this stairway are like a sun, like the sun that we saw when we arrived here and that we saw when we visited the statue of José Martí, to lay a wreath there. (Applause) (Someone in the audience says something to him.) Yes, but when we went to the statue of San Martín, it was a bit earlier, although the sun was already very strong. I thought, damn! Our sun is strong, and it is hot. And I thought, this sun is not as hot, I mean, the weather is cold, but the sun was super-radiant.

The sun looked very powerful. But here there are two suns at this moment: the sun we saw this morning and upon our arrival in this country, and the sun we are seeing now here on this stairway and this square. It is ideas that light up the world (Applause), it is ideas, and when I say ideas, I mean ideas that are just, ideas that can bring peace to the world, and put an end to the grave danger of war, or put an end to violence. That is why we talk about the battle of ideas.

I believe –because I am an optimist– that this world can be saved, in spite of the mistakes that have been made, in spite of the immense and unilateral powers that have been created, because I believe that ideas can prevail over force, (Applause) and this is what we are witnessing here.

I did not come here tonight with the intent of delivering a harangue. I rather felt it was my duty to be careful with every word. Of course, I was planning to speak primarily about our country and the world, and that is what I am doing, but I cannot do it without seeing all of you here, without feeling your presence here.

Now, initially, I was imagining that I would be in a quiet room, with everyone seated nicely, and I asked myself, what should I speak about to the Argentines? Giving a speech anywhere is always complicated, it is not easy, you need to avoid saying anything that can hurt someone’s feelings or that might appear to be some sort of interference. And I do believe I have not said a single word that can be interpreted in any way as interference in the internal affairs of this hospitable country. But I asked myself, what should I talk about? I realized something: most speakers tend to impose a subject on their audience; they plan ahead of time to speak about this issue or that. And so I had an idea: not to choose any subject, but rather to ask the students, whom I pictured sitting before me, to tell me what subjects they were interested in hearing about. I had planned for you to ask me about the subjects you were interested in, for you to impose the subject on me, instead of me choosing to talk about whatever I wanted. I thought this would be more democratic and fair.

That was what I was thinking before this earthquake, this tidal wave, this hurricane that has alighted here, at this university, as the sun was setting. When I got here, I looked around to see if that strategy still might work, but I realized it was no longer possible. However, I think that somebody over there said... I heard a voice that told me, ‘Talk about something...’ (He is asked to talk about Che) About the life of Che. (Applause)

I cannot speak at length here, it would not make sense under these circumstances, but I can say a few things. I have been asked to speak about Che. (Shouts) I spoke about him this morning in front of the statue of San Martín, because I will remember him always as one of the most extraordinary personalities I have ever met.

Che did not join up with our troop as a soldier; he was a doctor. He was in Mexico by chance. He had been to Guatemala, and had traveled through many places in the Americas. He had been in mining areas, where the work is very hard. He had even been in the Amazon, working as a doctor in a leper hospital.

But I will discuss one of Che’s characteristics, one of those that I admired the most, of the many that I much admired. Every weekend, he tried to climb to the top of Popocatépetl, a volcano on the outskirts of Mexico City. He would get his gear together – it is a very high mountain, cap in snow year-round – start climbing, make a colossal effort, and never reach the top. His asthma always kept him from making it. The following week he would once again try to climb to the top of "Popo", as he called it, and would not make it. But he would keep going back to try again, and he would have spent his entire life trying to climb the Popocatépetl, even if he never reached the peak. (Applause and shouts) This gives you an idea of his determination, his spiritual strength, his perseverance, which was one of the characteristics I most admired in him.

What was the other? The other was that whenever a volunteer was needed, back when we were still a very small group, to carry out a certain task, Che was always the first person to step forward. (Applause)

As a doctor, he stayed with the sick and wounded, because under certain circumstances, in the outdoors, when we were in forested mountain areas and being pursued from different directions, the main force would have to keep moving, leaving a visible trail so that the doctor could stay behind with the people he was caring for somewhere nearby. There was a time when he was the only doctor, until other doctors came forward to join us, so there he was.

Since you are asking for anecdotes, I remember an action that was extremely hazardous for everyone. News had reached the spot where we were gathered in the mountains of a landing on the north coast of the province. We recalled the ordeals and the suffering we went through in the first days after our own landing, and as an act of solidarity with those who had landed now, we decided to undertake a rather daring action. From a military point of view, it was not a wise decision: to attack a unit that was well entrenched on the coast.

I will not go into the details. As a result of that battle, which lasted three hours, and we were really quite lucky, because we had managed to cut off communications, but after three hours, at the end of that battle where, as usually, he had shown exemplary conduct, a third of the participants in the fighting were either dead or wounded. This was highly unusual. And so he, as a doctor, attended to the enemy’s wounded. There were enemy soldiers who were not wounded, but there were also a large number who were wounded and he attended to them, along with our own comrades. (Applause)

You cannot imagine the sensitivity of that man! (Applause) There is something I remember: one of our comrades was fatally wounded, and he knew it. We had to get out of the area quickly, immediately, because we did not know when the first planes would start to arrive. Miraculously, none had showed during the battle because the first ones usually arrived within 20 minutes, but luckily we had managed to wipe out their communications with a few well-aimed shots. We had gained some extra time, but we needed to attend to the wounded and withdraw right away. And I will never forget – he told me about it later – when one of our comrades was inevitably going to die... he could not be moved. Sometimes when men are seriously wounded, they cannot be moved, and you simply have to trust – since you have treated the enemy’s wounded, and have taken a number of prisoners, prisoners whom we always treated with respect; there was never a single case, ever, of a prisoner taken in combat being mistreated or executed. (Applause) We sometimes even gave them our own medicines, which were extremely scarce.

This policy, truly, contributed a great deal to our success in the war, because in any struggle, you must earn the respect of the enemy. (Applause) In any struggle – I will repeat it again – those who defend a good cause must behave in such a way as would allow them to earn the respect of the enemy.

On that occasion, we had to leave behind a number of wounded comrades who could not be evacuated, and some were very seriously wounded. But what was most striking for me was when he told me later, with great sorrow, was at the moment when he realized that this one comrade had no hope of surviving, and he bent down and kissed him on the forehead, this wounded comrade whom he knew would inevitably die. (Applause)

These are some of the things I can tell you about Che as a man, as an extraordinary human being.

He was, as well, an extraordinarily cultured man, a man of great talent. I have already spoken of his persistence, his determination. Any task assigned to him, after the triumph of the Revolution, he was more than willing to accept. He was the director of the National Bank of Cuba, where a revolutionary was needed at that moment; and at any other moment, of course, but the Revolution had just triumphed, and its resources were very scant, since the country’s reserves had been stolen.

Our enemies joked about it; they always make jokes, and we make jokes as well. According to this particular joke, which had a political intent, I announced one day, "We need an economist," and Che raised his hand, but it turned out that he had been confused, he thought I had said that we needed a communist, and that is why he ended up being chosen. (Applause) Well, Che was a revolutionary, a communist, and an excellent economist. (Applause) Because being an excellent economist depends on the idea of what should be done by the person in charge of this sphere of the country’s economy, the National Bank of Cuba, and he did it as both a communist and an economist. It is not that he had a degree, but rather that he had read a lot and observed a lot.

It was Che who promoted the idea of voluntary work in our country, because he himself went out to do voluntary work every Sunday. One day he would do farm work, another day he would test out new machinery, another day he would do construction work. He left us this legacy of a practice that millions of Cubans came to adopt, following his example.

He left us so many memories, and that is why I say that he is one of the most noble, most extraordinary, and most selfless people I have ever met. And this would be of no significance if I did not believe that there are millions and millions and millions of people like him among the masses. (Applause)

A man who is uniquely outstanding would not be able to achieve anything if there were not many millions of others like him, capable of developing these same qualities. That is why our Revolution has made such concerted efforts to fight illiteracy and promote education. (Applause)

While I said earlier that ideas are more powerful than weapons, education is the ultimate instrument through which these beings known as humans, who are powerfully governed by instincts or natural laws, and have evolved, as Darwin demonstrated, and nobody denies this today... I am referring to the theory of evolution, and I said that nobody denies it, because I remember the moment when Pope John Paul II stated that the theory of evolution was not incompatible with the doctrine of creation. And I truly feel great appreciation for actions like this, because this put an end to a contradiction between a scientific theory and a religious belief. But these human beings can be like animals in the jungle, if they are left in the jungle. They are intelligent beings, we know what is inside the human skull, and we even know that humans are the only living beings whose brains continue to grow two and a half years after birth. You know this, you are university students, and you must have read it somewhere. This has a tremendous influence on the development of intelligence.

If children are not provided with all of the required nutrients up until two and a half years of age, they will reach the age of six and begin school with a diminished intelligence in comparison with children who receive adequate nutrition. (Applause) And I must say that one of the most essential things, if we advocate equality, is the right to reach the age of six with the mental capacity with which a child is born. We know that those who do not receive adequate nutrition at this early age – and they number in the hundreds of millions around the world – reach school age – if there are schools, if there are teachers able to educate them – with less possibilities for learning. Although there are also cases where they receive adequate nutrition during this stage, but then there are no schools or teachers for them later. (Applause)

But, what happens in the poorest sectors of the planet, basically concentrated in the Third World countries, where four-fifths of the human species live? It is in these regions that the poor are concentrated and the hungry, those who cannot achieve this level of installed capacity – not developed capacity – those who do not even have schools.

If they tell you that there are 860 million illiterate adults in the world, they immediately explain that almost 90% of those 860 million illiterate adults live in the Third World. It should be added that there is also illiteracy in highly developed countries. Our great neighbor to the north has millions of illiterates (Whistling and booing), totally illiterate people, but also tens of millions of functionally illiterates. And nobody takes this... (Shouts of: "A doctor.") What’s that, a doctor, what about a doctor? (He is told something.)

I said tens of millions, but there are actually hundreds of millions. Well, no, not in the developed countries, I mean the countries of the Third World.

(He is told that they are asking for a doctor, for someone in the audience.) A doctor? There is a doctor here. Where do they need a doctor? Get the person out, quickly; we will have a doctor, right away.

I was telling you – and I am talking longer than I had wished – about two very important issues, which are very closely linked. They are education and healthcare. We were talking about an Argentine doctor who became a soldier without ceasing to be a doctor for a single minute, which was what led us to address these things. And then I was saying that it is education that transforms the little animal into a human being. Do not ever forget this. (Applause) It is education that makes it possible to overcome natural instincts.

Furthermore, it is education that could empty out the jails filled with those who never received an education, those who did not receive adequate nutrition. Because even in our own country, we took a long time to realize that no matter how many laws are adopted, no matter how many schools are built, no matter how many teachers are trained, there will always be, for one reason or another, a great deal more to do for the education of human beings. In our society, because there are hundreds of thousands of university-educated professionals and intellectuals, the influence of the family unit is decisive.

If you go to a prison and study the young people between the ages of 20 and 30 who are incarcerated, you will find that they come from the most humble and poorest sectors of the population. (Applause) They come from what we could call marginal areas. On the other hand, when you look at the social make-up of the schools that are highly competitive, where enrollment is determined by performance and grades, you will find the opposite: that the vast majority are children of intellectuals or artists.

Note that I am not talking about class differences from an economic point of view. The problem of building a new society is much more difficult than it may seem, because there are many things that you discover along the way. If you begin by fighting against an illiteracy rate of 30%, or a combined total and functional illiteracy rate of 90%, you focus your attention on these tasks, and when the years have passed, and you get into more in-depth studies of society, that is when you begin to realize the influence of education.

I can tell you that in the poorest sectors, in the marginal areas, where the breakup of the family unit is more frequent, this breakup has a significantly adverse influence. For instance, you can see that 70% are from broken homes, and up to 19% live with neither their mother nor their father, but with some other relative responsible for taking care of them. And when this same phenomenon occurs in a family of intellectuals, you do not see the same impact on children, even though they come from a broken home. Normally, they stay with the father or the mother; in our country, traditionally, they stay with the mother, and women make up 65% of the trained workforce in Cuba. (Applause) It is just like I am saying; a little bit more than 65%, and you see these phenomena. What could explain this, if not education? In other words, the educational level of parents, even when a revolution has taken place, continues to have a tremendous influence on the ultimate fate of their children.

It is also quite possible, under certain circumstances, in which the children of the most humble sectors, or with the least knowledge, and I am not talking here about the economic situation of the household, but rather the educational level, which tends to be perpetuated throughout decades, and one could say then, as we have sometimes said: These people who are doing this job or providing these services, their children will never be presidents of a company, or managers, or take up senior positions; they will end up, mostly, in prison.

We have studied this, and quite a few more things, but this is not the time to go into them. I am saying this only to point out that without an educational revolution, a truly profound educational revolution, injustice and inequality will continue to prevail, even when all of the material needs of the country’s citizens have been satisfied. (Applause)

In our country, we guarantee a liter of milk a day for every child up until the age of seven. (Applause) For those who are older, due to limited resources, we guarantee the supply of another dairy product, because fortunately it is possible to do so.

Now, we guarantee this milk for every child at a cost of less than one cent of a U.S. dollar. (Applause) One dollar sent by someone living in the North to a friend in Cuba can purchase 104 days’ worth of milk. (Applause)

In our country, we were forced by the blockade to adopt a ration system, a blockade that has now lasted 44 years (Whistling); but in our country, you will not find a single child without a school, not a single one. (Applause)

In our country, in fact, children who are born with some sort of mental disability – and this is something we are studying in depth: the causes that lead to different types of mental retardation, whether slight, moderate, severe or profound, each with its own characteristics; fortunately, the slight and moderate cases are more numerous – at this moment, we have every case recorded, and not only the children, but also the slightly more than 140,000 people with some form of mental incapacity. All children with some type of physical or mental disability, or who are blind, or deaf-mute, or something even more terrible, blind and deaf-mute at the same time, they are all registered.

There are all sorts of human tragedies, and in order to learn more about them they must be studied and researched. We did not know anything about them at the beginning. It was throughout the years of practice and of fighting for education, as we have fought, that we gradually discovered these things.

They have special schools; there are 55,000 children enrolled in special education schools.

We have said that it is not enough for a child to simply attend a special education school from sixth to ninth grade. We think that if there are children who cannot move on to senior high school up to 12th grade, or to a technological school for vocational training, then they should complete the ninth grade, even if it takes a year or two longer, and leave prepared to carry out the kind of work they can do, and also be provided with a job. (Applause)

We must not underestimate the kids who have these kinds of problems; they have aptitudes for many different things. And we no longer simply resign ourselves, because we would be remiss in our duties if we limited ourselves to teaching them what can be taught to a child with these kinds of limitations, slight and moderate, for the most part.

They are all attended to, no matter what kind of disability they have. We have the satisfaction of knowing that, despite the blockade dating back 44 years, there is not a single child in Cuba in need of special education that does not have a school. (Applause)

I want to add something, and I do not want anyone to take it as a sign of vanity on the part of our people, because whenever I talk about we have done for education and healthcare, we actually feel ashamed as we discover more and more new possibilities, ashamed that we did not discover them before. Let no one think that Cuba boasts of its success. There are things that even we were not aware of.

We were comparing the statistics from a UNESCO study on education, and in our country, students in fourth and fifth grade of grammar school have almost twice the knowledge in language skills and mathematics as children of the same age in the rest of Latin America, and not jus Latin America but the United States as well. (Applause)

I know that I am speaking in a country with high levels of education and culture; I know what the Argentine people are like, and their knowledge. Our country has the highest levels today, but Argentina is among the other four or five countries that come close to our country’s levels, although at a relatively long distance. But what really struck us was when we discovered that our grammar school children, and their command of language and mathematics, are above even the most developed countries in the world. (Applause)

And so today, our country occupies this position. At the same time, the infant mortality rate in our country is below seven per 1000 live births during the first year of life; last year it was 6.5, the year before it was 6.2, and we plan to lower it even further. We did not even know if it was possible to reduce infant mortality to these levels in a tropical country, because there are many factors involved: the climate has an influence, and even the genetic potential of each population has an influence, all of these elements in addition to others like healthcare, nutrition, etc. We did not know if it could be lowered to less than 10, and so we were very much encouraged when we achieved this.

You should not think that the best rates are found in the capital. There are entire provinces with infant mortality rates of less than five, and the rate is more or less even across the country. It is not like what happens in our Northern neighbor, where some areas, inhabited by people with more resources, better medical care and better nutrition, etc., etc., many have rates of four or five, while in other areas, like the capital of the United States itself, where there are a lot of poor people and ethnic groups like African Americans who do not have access to adequate medical care, where infant mortality rates can be three times, four times, even five times higher than in places where all the necessary services are provided. (Applause)

We are familiar with the situation of Hispanic Americans and African Americans, and those from other parts of the world, their infant mortality rates, their life expectancy rates, their health indicators, just as we know that there are more than 40 million people in the United States who have no medical insurance.

When I speak of the people of the United States, I do not speak of them with hatred, because our Revolution has not taught hatred; it is based on ideas, and not on fanaticism or chauvinism. (Applause and shouts.) We have had the privilege of learning that we are all brothers and sisters, and our people are educated in the sentiments of friendship and solidarity, which we qualify as internationalist sentiments. (Applause and shouts)

Hundreds of thousands of our fellow Cubans have been through this school, and that is why I can say that it is not so easy to liquidate the Revolution, it is not so easy to crush the will of these people, by virtue of the ideas, concepts and sentiments that have been cultivated, because both ideas and sentiments must be cultivated, and this truth is the basis for everything we do. And a people that has attained certain levels of knowledge, a certain capacity to understand issues and a capacity for unity and discipline, is not so easy to wipe off the face of the Earth. (Applause and shouts) That is why, despite those Nazi-fascist theories, we have the conviction that an attack on our country would carry a very high price, as I have said, because this is a people that will never surrender, that will never give up the fight. (Applause and shouts) And as long as there is still a single man or woman capable of fighting, that man or woman will continue to fight.

II PART