-DATE- 19711125 -YEAR- 1971 -DOCUMENT_TYPE- SPEECH -AUTHOR- F. CASTRO -HEADLINE- EL TENIENTE STADIUM SPEECH -PLACE- CHILE -SOURCE- SANTIAGO DOMESTIC SVC -REPORT_NBR- FBIS -REPORT_DATE- 19711129 -TEXT- El Teniente Stadium Speech Santiago Chile Domestic Service in Spanish 0017 GMT 25 Nov 71 P [Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro's speech at rally held at El Teniente stadium in Rancagua on 24 November--live] [Text] Workers, peasants, and residents of Rancagua: our tour of this area, this province, has been brief, only a few hours in an attempt to gain the greatest number of impressions, to get to know the region and your efforts as much as possible. We have had the opportunity to visit El Teniente mine--well known throughout the world, well known in our country and talk with the workers. We have also had the opportunity to converse with the workers and residents of Coya, and we have attended the inauguration of the union house of the Sewell industrial union. Now we find ourselves here at this mass ceremony. Everything is an uninterrupted success of ceremonies that leaves us no time even to breathe. However, we passed by the park in Rancagua. We had an opportunity to see this historic place, the famous park where the Chilean independence fighters waged one of the most heroic battles of that time. There we were reminded of the battles of the freedom fighters and the unique feat of Bernardo's O'Higgins in combat against forces 10 times stronger, the efforts of the Chilean patriotic forces, the 2 days of fighting in October of 1814. More than 150 years have passed and a certain slogan is still remembered: "To live in honor or to die in glory." [applause] From these events [words indistinct] the history of our own fatherland, our struggles for independence, the fight by our outnumbered liberators at the end of the last century when our country had a population that barely surpassed the 1-million mark and had to face 300,000 Spanish soldiers--every last one of them a volunteer in the service of the Spanish Army such as has existed in all ages and in all countries. This was the people's vanguard. Someone here mentioned the struggle of Cespedes, the cry of Yara, the 12th of October of 1868 when our country was still a colony in Latin America, the last Spanish colony which still maintained the system of slavery. Also on that memorable day of the proclamation of independence the salves were freed, and many of the first soldiers in the independence army were former slaves. That struggle lasted more than 10 years and, at the end of this heroic feat, our fatherland experienced misfortune: a truce called the Zanton pact, by virtue of which a few concessions were made and the war ended. It was then that one of the most prestigious combatants of our independence, the black General Antonio Maceo, carried out what our history knows by the name of the protest of (Paragua). Somewhere in the Province of Oriente he said that he did not accept that truce, that he was not accepting that peace, that he did not consider himself at peace or bound by the agreement. They therefore continued their struggle, albeit interrupted at times, but always tenacious, until 1895 when the struggle for the independence of our nation was taken up once more. General Maceo was an outstanding, most brilliant man, who, together with a Dominican, Maximo Gomez, attained the rank of general in chief of the Cuban forces in the independence struggle. He achieved one of the greatest military feats: invasions of the island from east to west, fighting against the army of (Rivas) of what was then a European power of considerable strength and truly courageous and competent soldiers. They fought against hundreds and thousands of Spanish soldiers and crossed our island, which is long and narrow on the map, fighting from one end to the other. Our liberators, whom we call our manbitas--mambi was the name given by the enemy; it was a term of contempt, but that name, because of the cause it represented, became a name of pride for our fighters, who were later called the mambi army. That army also had a slogan similar to "to live in honor or to die in glory," the slogan "independence of death." [light applause] That struggle always represented the attitude of our people, but it did not end in Cuba's independence. Those 30 years of heroic efforts, of unbelievable efforts, ended in what was known as the American intervention. That is, the American intervention, for reasons that you know, because the people from the north believed that they had the right to call themselves Americans, as if America were theirs. However, not only did they deplorably adopt the name Americans, but wanted to be the real owners of America as well. We always recall Marti's words written in the field of battle. Marti landed at the beginning of the independence war of 95, grouping the liberating forces, [words indistinct] the independence party, he was the soul of the organization of that struggle. He recruited the men, the fighters from the war of 78. He collected the resources. However, when that struggle was about to begin, three ships loaded with arms were captured and confiscated in U.S. ports. The fighters had to land in Cuba practically without arms. Marti arrived by boat on the southern coast of Oriente Province accompanied by Maximo Gomez and other fighters. Maceo landed on the northern coast of the province. However, within a few months thousands had joined them. They had a difficult task in the first few days and weeks. On 19 May Marti--at a place known as Pozo Rios in a battle between Cuban and Spanish forces in the company of hid aide--this philosopher, poet, one of the most illustrious intellectuals of this continent, a man of extraordinary sensitivity, of enormous cultured, of a patriotism that could stand any test, of Latin Americanist thought--that patriot, that leader, when the hour of struggle arrived, when he witnessed the first battle, I repeat, alongside his aid, he charged the enemy lines, advanced toward them, attacked, and died heroically on 19 May. However, the day before his death he wrote a letter in which he expressed a thought that is part of the introduction to the second Havana declaration. In that letter he said: I know the monster because I have lived with him. He said in that letter on the even of his death: everything that has been done until today and will continue to be done is aimed at preventing the United States from taking over Cuba and pouncing with force on the sister nations of Latin America. He said: the sister nations of America. [applause] The war lasted 3 years. The Spanish forces were virtually exhausted. It was then, at that moment, after so many years of struggle, that the United States intervened. It claimed, of course, to be Cuba's friend; the friend of the Cuban independence fighters. The United States landed its troops, with the help of the Cubans, and attacked the city of Santiago. Then the U.S. fighting force, already incomparably more powerful on the sea than the Spanish fleet by that time, reaped and harvested the fruits--in the long run--of our people's struggle. They landed as friends and within 2 years they convoked a constituent assembly on the one hand, and on the other they discharged the Cuban Army. When the constituent assembly met and was drafting what would be Cuba's Magna Charta, the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution proving that Cuba would supply coaling bases for U.S. warships and turn over part of its territory--the area where the Guantanamo naval base is located today. In addition, it imposed an amendment to the constitution, the constitution of the republic, the Magna Charta of our fatherland, which established the U.S. right to militarily intervene in Cuba in case of disorder, in any situation in which goods and properties could not be guaranteed. It imposed the Platt amendment, which gave it the constitutional right to land in Cuba as often as it desired, and it actually did so more than once. That is how Cuba began to live its so-called independence. Among the delegates to the constituent assembly--where there were nevertheless some agents, some pro-Yankees, some proimperialists, as has occurred everywhere--there was a majority of patriots, a majority of fighters. They placed us in the following situation: discharge the liberating army. The choice was either to accept this diminished independence or resign themselves to a permanent occupation of Cuba by U.S. troops. They had no alternative but to accept that constitutional amendment. I should explain somewhat the legal scruples of the imperialists at the beginning. They were becoming a great imperial power, but they had some legal scruples. They asked for permission, or rather they demanded or imposed, a legal clause that would give them constitutional permission. Under the protection of this permission they intervened more than once in our fatherland. However, without constitutional justification of any kind they intervened in Mexico, in Panama, in Nicaragua, in Haiti, and intervened in Santo Domingo several times. Imperialism men and imperialism now; is there a difference? Without any Platt amendment, and without any constitutional amendment, when after many years of tyranny the Dominican people rebelled and fought heriocally and had virtually defeated the regime, then 40,000 Yankee Marines landed in Santo Domingo. Again there was the well-known pretext: the protect lives and property. They sent their planes, battleships, helicopters and tanks, yet the heroic story of how the Dominican revolutionaries resisted the encirclement for entire months, with exemplary courage and patriotism, is well known. There was no justification, however, for their action, on the excuse of the intervention in our fight for independence, in seizing Puerto Rico. The Cuban struggle which began in '95 was a struggle for Cuban and Puerto Rican independence because Puerto Rico was also an island under Spanish control. This war ended with the intervention in Cuba and the Platt amendment, the creation of Guantanamo and coaling stations, and the occupation of Puerto Rico, a Latin American country which for more than half a century has suffered under a deliberate plan to destroy its culture and its nationality. This little Puerto Rican island and its people have resisted for more than half a century against the greatest attempt ever known to destroy its spiritual, patriotic, and moral values. Using this interventionism of an imperialism which within 40 years was to become the most powerful and aggressive imperialist power ever known to mankind. We talk about the past wars, but everyone knows that twice as many bombs were dropped over Vietnam as were dropped in Europe during World War II. We know that our country had the experience of living beside a power that immediately seized everything: the mines, the most fertile lands, all our resources, all our public services, power, telephone, railroads, basic industries, and not only basic industries but also light industries. The owners of most of the sugar mills they established had an absolute domination over our country in a political as well as an economic sense. What country can develop under these circumstances? What country could even develop its own personality? We remember that in the U.S. texthooks Cuba did not show as a separate territory. In the texthooks for the North American children Cuba appeared on the maps in the same color as the North American territory. Moreover, throughout the world our country was considered a plantation. Besides all this, they turned our country into a pleasure resort. This means not only that they seized our natural resources, our basic industries, and that everything built on the island was at the service of their economic interests, but also that they developed prostitution in the country on an incredible scale. Suffice it to say that tens of thousands of women suffering from hunger and misery were forced to live off prostitution. Our country was full of brothels and casinos, it was a drug center, and here came the "people" to amuse themselves. Unbelievable things occurred. Navy ships visited us, and what did their sailors do? They climbed on the statue of Marti to photograph themselves and did other unmentionable things to Marti's statue. We know Chilean patriotism, and we know that you can understand the shame and humiliation this caused the Cubans. The outraged workers, students, and intellectuals protested, but of course the answer was that these were individual acts of irresponsibility and other things. But the imperialists developed prostitution in our country. Yet the reactionaries and oligarchs supported this policy, now caring about human values. They like to talk about human values, but what kind of human values did they give our people? [applause] What kind of liberty did our people know? They do not care in the least about the human being. If they can make money selling women, they do so. Of they can make money selling young girls, they do so; and our country experienced such things as seeing girls 14 and 15 years old in the brothels, corrupted by the reactionaries, the oligarchs, simply so that the yankee tourists and sailors could amuse themselves. [applause] and the city of Guantanamo experienced all this. What did they care. Where are the ethnic values? Where are the moral values of the exploiters, of the monopolists, of the imperialists? When the revolution triumphed in our country there were half a million unemployed. There were 10,000 teachers without work and 60 percent of the school-age population did not have schools. Of the other 40 percent who did go to school, only 10 percent reached the sixth grade. There were almost a million illiterates in our country These are the rights and the freedoms they give us. The workers, a pariah of society, did not even know how to sign their name. Imagine human being, poor, barefoot, with torn clothing, starving to death, without teachers, without hospitals, without work, without anything, without even knowing how to sign their names, this was the freedom they gave us. These were the human values they defended. Yes, our country lived through all these bitter experiences, and when the peasants would meet to protest the Yankee landowners' takeover of their lands or the great companies' expulsion or exploitation of them, then they were even more brutally repressed, and when the workers met to demand their rights, they were also brutally repressed. And when the students gathered to protest, they suffered brutal repression. Our country experienced 50 years abuses, violations, crimes, and industices of every kind. The system was maintained based on crime and corruption, and the politicians were at the service of the monopolies. Every day the millionaires sacked the country from end to end. The imperialists not only sacked the nation; they left a few crumbs to support a plague of politicians and corrupt officials who were totally at their service. This was the situation in our country. [applause] These are the moral and political values. These are the human rights of the oligarchs, the reactionaries, and the imperialists who, when they see that their domination is endangered, lose their heads, lose control, and lose everything. They become desperate and are capable of the most incredible treacheries and the most horrible and vile (?actions) This desperation is manifested by unlimited hyprocrisy and lies because they try to hide these facts. When the revolution triumphed in our country they still sought other methods, but the day came when the Cubans put an end to this. But this was only the beginning of a long harsh road on which the Cubans defied the powerful empire, and naturally had to pay for it, since the imperialists were not willing to lose all their privileges. There were not only material factors involved but political ones as well. They were not willing to allow a Latin American country to completely shake off their yoke; we had shaken off the imperialist yoke 100 percent, yet they were unwilling to allow that. [applause] Then began a history known to all of you. Suppression of the sugar quota, total suppression of markets, total suppression of all sales of spare parts, and 80 to 90 percent of the machinery in our country came from the United States. The automobiles, trucks, buses, factories, everything. You well know what spare parts mean. Any worker knows, especially when a country does not produce steel, when the country does not have a mechanical industry, and when a country such as ours does not have lathe operators because our mechanical industry was born after the revolution. This meant that our country [words indistinct]. Our country likewise had no coal or petroleum. All our petroleum had to come from abroad and overnight we were cut off from our supply. They did everything possible to destroy a small country, the Cuban nation. But this was not all. They immediately began the policy of draining our qualified workers. With half a million unemployed, with salaries at a starvation level, how could we compete with the richest and most developed imperialist power in the world? They opened their doors wide and looted our best brains. The Latin American nations are every year stripped, of thousands of their best engineers, doctors, and researchers. No country can develop like this. Whenever Latin American produces a good technician, he is hired away, he is contracted, or he is bought. How can Latin American develop like this? This has been possible due to the lack of patriotism of the oligarchic sectors, because oligarchy is antipatriotism and an ally of imperialism. Oligarchy destroys patriotic sentiment, and where there is no patriotism, when these values are not deeply rooted, it is easy for the imperialists to convince this new technician, this new doctor, this engineer, this researcher, and to drain thousands of Latin America's best brains. They opened their doors wide to Cuba to take all of them. This reveals the absolute lack of scruples of the imperialists, and also how far their ideological propaganda for over 50 years had weakened the patriotic spirit of Cuba. Out of 6,000 doctors in Cuba in 1959, they took 3,000. I do not think any country has ever suffered such a looting. This was followed by the prohibition on sale of any currency or medicine. It was under these circumstances that our country found itself. And this was not all. As soon as we established our agrarian reform law they began to prepare the Bay of Pigs invasion. Yet all we had done was to draft the Agragrian Reform Law. We talked with the Chilean Trade Union Confederation [CUTCh] yesterday,. I told them that prior to the Cuban revolution they could have looked in any newspaper in any library and never seen a mention of the words agrarian reform. What is more, whoever spoke about agrarian reform was considered an incorrigible Red, an infernal communist, a man who deserved the firing squad or the gallows. The United Fruit Company had hundreds of thousands of hectaries of our best land, and when we drafted the Agrarian Reform Law in Cuba, things immediately began to move in high circles and the U.S. Government began to prepare the Bay of Pigs invasion. This was immediately accompanied by sabotage. A ship loaded with rice was blown up and almost 100 workers and soldiers unloading it were killed. This is without counting the injured. Buildings and large stores were set afire, workers were burned alive in the buildings, trains were derailed, bombs exploded in chemical industries, and so forth. Thousands and thousands of counterrevolutionaries were trained in the United States. The most modern techniques were employed. The CIA developed a specially created section for subversion in Cuba. Modern sabotage equipment, high-powered explosives, and all types of mechanisms were used, and there was not a night for many years in our country when infiltrations did not occur along our coasts. They organized counterrevolutionary bands in the Cambray mountains, and at one time they had organized armed counterrevolutionary bands in the six provinces. They effected hundreds of landings of weapons and explosives. They also made hundred of arms drops by parachute. All this against Cuba, prior to Giron. Our workers, our peasants, our students, our entire nation had to be mobilized. We could not live as we had been living before. We must make clear that we did not even have a labor movement because it had been suppressed in the administrations preceding Batista and during his administration. They had created phony unions and imposed official leaders. We did not even have the Chilean's advantage in having a labor movement well organized and experienced in struggle. This is a great advantage and our people virtually had to organize themselves. You have heard of the revolutionary committees which the imperialists have talked so much about, and with due reason because these committees hurt them very much. Once, after we had returned from the United Nations, five bombs exploded at a crowded reception while I was speaking. I was talking and a bomb exploded. If the people support the revolution and the people are everywhere, how can these mercenaries operate? Let us organize the people. Then we organized the people in factories in the districts, block by block, street by street, and we created one of the most powerful mass organizations. We created the labor organizations, women's associations, student organizations--we are all organized. In our country we had to make a mass organization because we were forced to. I have told you how this organization came about, and today there are no bombs. Five months or 5 years can pass without any explosions because this struggle was hard and we won this battle against the imperialist mercenaries attacking our people. Later, these organizations accomplished great tasks such as the battle against disease, the battle against epidemics, the battle against polio, the battle against malaria. They have done in extraordinary job. I am explaining this to you here in Rancagua so you can have an idea of the struggle and conditions we had to face. We recalled this today when we passed by the plaza where O'Higgins broke the encirclement and where he uttered this famous phrase. We were also reminded of the slogan of our revolution, "fatherland or death, we will win." which has the same content as his beautiful phrase, "To live in honor or to die in glory." This means that our people are brothers in history in their heroic examples, in their struggles and traditions. We felt this very strongly today when we arrived in this city of Rancagua after talking with the workers. I was reminded of all these things about our country. There are many ties between the Chileans and the Cubans. You are carrying out your process, you have taken very important steps, and the people know this. While we were with the labor leaders inaugurating their new union building, we read a sign saying "founded 1 August 1925," that is, 46 years ago, and we imagined that in those days the powerful mine owners must have laughed at the union. How were they to know that today, 46 years later, the workers of the labor union would be inaugurating their new union building in the situation of a 100-percent Chilean copper industry. [applause] We must say the following so the reactionaries do not confuse anyone. One of the things the revolution has done is raise to the maximum the patriotic values and traditions, in contrast to the reactionaries who surrender and sell all. In our country all the dope peddlers and pimps have been eliminated by the revolution. The revolution is carrying out a task of ennobling the best values of man. It is the revolution which seeks a just society, a better way of life, a higher society in which patriotic values are glorified and which respects man's right to get an education, to go to school, to work, to live, to have a right to true happiness-- not a happiness of lies amidst misery, ignorance, hunger, humiliation, neglect, and trading with human values. The revolution has assigned the highest level to these values, and it is also raising the awareness of peoples beyond its borders. It raises patriotic and cultural values and traditions, and at the same time raises the human and moral values of its citizens. It also carried this awareness beyond its borders to show the people that we form part of a single humanity. At the same time that our revolution is enhancing patriotic values it does not promote a narrow nationalism [few words indistinct] or bourgeois nationalism, for this is the nationalism of wars of conquest, and oppression, of exploitation, of the sacking of the natural resources of other peoples. This is bourgeois nationalism which makes man the master of man. Those were people who sowed hatred and division among nations. During the past 150 years they did their best to deprive us of part of our territory so as to keep us divided and weak, and to promote hostility and hatred against the Latin American peoples. The revolution is creating an awareness beyond its borders and is overcoming this hatred, proclaiming the brotherhood of peoples, proclaiming the brotherhood of the poor and the oppressed of all countries. This is what we understand by internationalism. To us this means a spirit of solidarity such as our people showed toward Vietnam, for example, or to Algiers in its heroic struggle for independence. This spirit of solidarity of our people since the revolution has supported all just causes in the world. Our people have received this solidarity and support from revolutionary countries in the most difficult moments of our revolution, and it was this support of the peoples and workers which defended Cuba and helped it during its difficult moments. They were not reactionary countries. It was the revolutionary countries who helped us. [applause] When we preach the raising of the awareness of the people beyond our national borders, it is logical that this should be directed first toward our brothers in Latin America, and therefore we try to make our workers feel love and solidarity for the peoples and workers of Latin America. This feeling exists and anyone who visits our country understands this. We try to share our music, our literature, our traditions, and our knowledge of history. It is a policy of the revolution to instill in the new generations an awareness of the values of our peoples and an awareness that they are part of a great community, and that besides our heroes, besides their own values and duty to tradition, they have the example of our forefathers who fought for the independence of this continent, and that they develop knowledge of these traditions and the culture of the great spiritual values of the other Latin American countries. And who are those opposed to the union of our countries and to the strengthening of ties between our countries? It is those who have been in the service of the imperialists, those who have served the oligarchs and the reactionaries, those who have divisions. Their only weapons have been lies. The reactionaries do not want discussion, that is why they resort to the most vile and cowardly lies. And as we have seen here recently, they even resort to insults. Why? Because they have no arguments, because they are morally unarmed, because they have no moral values, because they have no ethics, because they have a complete lack of principles, and also because they grieve to see us talking with the people. They grieve because they see the popular victory produced in this country, a victory which has allowed a rapproachement between Cuba and Chile. They grieve to see us speaking with the people, as I am now doing. [applause] We have talked to students, peasants, and with representatives of the country's various institutions with whom we have felt a friendly, brotherly association, relating our experiences and telling them about our country. This grieves the imperialists and they have manifested their irritation, which has led them use to insults never before heard in this country. And why? Because they are irritated, because they are worried, and it is possible that the imperialist masters have told them "put pressure on them, persecute them, insult them more, and work more to prevent that communication between the people of Cuba and Chile. Try to prevent that example." They are simply afraid. They are afraid that the ties between our countries... [words drowned in applause] what does this mean, as an example to the other Latin American countries? Yesterday we were talking to the representatives of the workers and we told them what in our judgment is one fundamental goal in this phase: liberation of our countries from the imperialist yoke. Our goal must be the establishment of full independence of our people, but we will not achieve this full independence with the cooperation of reactionaries and proimperialists. This can be achieved through the union of workers and peasants and students. This can be achieved through union of all patriotic citizens, union of all humble citizens, union of intellectuals, union of all who love their country, of all... [words drowned in applause] The union of our nation does not exclude any honest Chilean, nor any honest Cuban, nor any hones Latin American. It is the union of all patriots. It is the union of all conscious men, who are in the majority. Those who oppose our nations and our peoples' interests are a small minority,m and they can never understand how our countries have written such glorious pages and have such honorable traditions. Ad we said that this is a broad union, we talked of a broad union, a broad union. We spoke of our countries' broad fronts; broad fronts without reactionaries, without fifth columnists, without traitors, including those always working for the CIA... [words drowned in applause] The Latin American countries; basic aim was to consolidate their sovereignty, to achieve the right to live freely, the right to establish ties among our kindred nations, to establish economic ties, cultural ties, political ties, and all the necessary ties so that tomorrow we may proclaim our place in the world and our rights, so that after 150 years of struggle we may some day obrain that which was sought by our forefathers-- Bolivar, San Martin, Sucre, Morelos, O'Higgins, all patriots who with their blood and sacrifice won our countries' independence, those who accomplished it like Maximo Gomez, Maceo and Marti. This is why it fills me with great satisfaction to repeat Marti's dying words: "Everything that has been done until today and will continue to be done is to prevent the United States from taking over Cuba and pouncing with force on the sister nations of America." They wrote the most glorious chapter, the most difficult and blood-soaked one. The new generations have written another chapter, and not only have we prevented the imperialists from taking over, but we have been able to recover the part which they had already taken over, and our country will not serve as a springboard in the struggle against our fellow Latin American countries. Our country will never serve as a springboard to [words lost in applause] of Latin American countries. We have fulfilled the traditions of our liberators, and we shall continue to do so. The future belongs to the people. The future is our peoples'. We believe in that future, and we are sure the day will come when there will not be a single place on our continent that could serve as a springboard for the imperialists to oppress and exploit our fellow Latin American countries. Long live Chile! [applause and cheers] Long live the friendship of Chile and Cuba! Long live the the Latin American peoples! Long live the union of Latin American peoples! Thank you. [applause and cheers] -END-