cuba

"If an apple, severed by the tempest from its native tree, cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its unnatural connexion with Spain, and incapable of self-support, can only gravitate towards the North American Union."

"In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it’s because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?"

"I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years."

"If I could just — if we could just be like Cuba. Let me give you the last piece of evidence that there is a revolution going on, and it is coming. It is — there is a revolution, and they think they can get away with it quietly. They think they — and they — they — you know what? At this point, gang, I'm not sure, they may be able to because they are so far ahead of us. They know what they're dealing against; most of America does not yet. Most of America doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the — the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time. Some of us knew! Some of us we're shouting out, you were: "this guy's a Marxist!" "No, no, no, no, no, no." And they're gonna say, "we did it democratically," and they are going to grab power every way they can. And God help us in an emergency."

"That is not the dream. That is a perversion of the dream. We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights. Equal rights. Justice. Equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice, but equal justice. We are the inheritors and the protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it. They're perverting it, and they're doing it intentionally. And they're selling us a line of global nonsense. There's equal stuff in Venezuela. There's equal stuff in Cuba. It's a lie. It's a lie. Only God can equalize. Only God, and I got news for you, gang, he's about to. And we are gonna be first on the receiving end."

"Did you know that of the nearly 1200 health professional Cubans involved in fighting COVID-19 around the world, more than half are women? Join the campaign to award them the Nobel Prize. https://cubanobel.org #CubaNobel"

"Fidel Castro said that instead of investing so much in the development of increasingly sophisticated weapons, those with the resources should promote medical research and put science at the service of humanity, creating instruments of health and life, not death. #cubanobel"

"Fantastic article by Cuba’s Ambassador to Canada, @JosefinaVidalF, about the 2 pandemics facing Cuba: COVID and the US embargo. #CubaNobel"

"Cuban doctors arrive in Martinique to fight coronavirus. "The only thing that motivates us is to save lives, that's the most important thing in the eyes of a Cuban doctor.” That’s why they could get the Nobel Prize. (27 June 2020)"

"Maybe Sen. @marcorubio should stop sabotaging Cuba’s international health brigades fighting Covid around the world, and instead invite them to help stop the spread in his own state of Florida!"

"We reaffirm our support for the people of Western Sahara under the leadership of the Polisario Front in their struggle for independence and self determination. We call upon the people of Korea to continue the just struggle for the reunification of their homeland. We express our firm support for government and the heroic people of Kampuchea - a Government which we recognised on the 20th of August last. We support the struggles of the government and people of Belize for independence with full territorial integrity. We also wish to express our strongest solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico in their struggle for independence. We fully support the ongoing and determined struggle of the government and people of Cuba in their fight to gain control over Guantanamo Bay. Our profound solidarity also goes to the government and people of Panama in their just struggle to recover the Panama Canal. We support fully the struggles of all the people of the Caribbean who are fighting for an end to colonialism."

"We can say that the United States runs the world like the Taliban ran Afghanistan. Cuba is dealt with like a woman caught outside not wearing her burkha. Horrific sanctions are imposed on Iraq in the manner of banning music, dancing, and kite-flying in Kabul. Jean-Bertrand Aristide is banished from Haiti like the religious police whipping a man whose beard is not the right length."

"When I was a little girl, my parents would say Puerto Rico can't be free because we would be poor like Cuba and poor like Haiti. Out of the fear of becoming poor we didn't dare to become free. Then a hurricane comes, devastates everything, and maybe we are as poor as Cuba and Haiti, but we are not free."

"In 2013, an agreement between the Workers Party government and the Cuban dictatorship brought to Brazil 10 thousand physicians with no professional registration. They were prevented from bringing their spouses and children, had 75% of their wages confiscated by the regime and were denied basic freedoms, such as that of coming and going. True slave work, believe it... With the support of human rights agencies from both Brazil and the UN! Even before I took over, almost 90% of these physicians left Brazil due to unilateral action by the Cuban regime. Those that stayed on will undergo medical qualification in order to able to practice their profession. This is how our country stopped supporting the Cuban dictatorship, no longer sending Havana 300 million dollars every year. History shows that as early as the 1960s, Cuban agents were sent to several countries to help establish dictatorships."

"The Cubans are not in Africa out of love."

"There will be more foreign policy challenges like Kuwait in the next 4 years, terrorists and aggressors to stand up to, dangerous weapons to be controlled and destroyed. Freedom's fight is not finished. I look forward to being the first President to visit a free, democratic Cuba. Who will lead the world in the face of these challenges? Not my opponent. In his acceptance speech he devoted just 65 seconds to telling us about the world."

"No, we stand here today to declare loud and clear to the entire world: Cuba must not only be independent, Cuba must be free. One hundred years ago Cuba declared her independence. And nearly 50 years ago, nearly a half-century ago, Cuba's independence and the hopes for democracy were hijacked by a brutal dictator who cares everything for his own power and nada for the Cuban people. In an era where markets have brought prosperity and empowerment, this leader clings to a bankrupt ideology that has brought Cuba's workers and farmers and families nothing -- nothing -- but isolation and misery. I was amazed to read in this modern era, the Cuban regime banned the sale of computers to the public. What does that tell you? In an era where every other nation in our hemisphere has chosen the path to democracy -- every nation in our hemisphere has chosen the path to democracy -- this leader instead chooses to jail, to torture and exile Cuban people for speaking their minds. But the amazing thing is, through all the pains, through all the pains, the Cuban people's aspirations for freedom are undiminished. We see this today in Havana, where more than 11,000 brave citizens have petitioned their government for a referendum on basic freedoms. If that referendum is allowed, it can be a prelude to real change in Cuba."

"I helped make Mexico and especially safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

"What is that policy? That now that we had got the men we had been fighting against down, we should punish them as severely as possible, devastate their country, burn their homes, break up their very instruments of agriculture... It is that we should sweep – as the Spaniards did in Cuba; and how we denounced the Spaniards! – the women and children into camps...in some of which the death-rate has risen so high as 430 in the thousand. I do not say for a moment, because I do not think for a moment, that this is the deliberate and intentional policy of His Majesty's Government...at all events, it is the thing which is being done at this moment in the name and by the authority of this most humane and Christian nation. Yesterday I asked the leader of the House of Commons when the information would be afforded, of which we are so sadly in want. My request was refused. Mr. Balfour treated us with a short disquisition on the nature of war. A phrase often used is that "war is war", but when one comes to ask about it one is told that no war is going on, that it is not war. When is a war not a war? When it is carried on by methods of barbarism in South Africa."

"We'd be Cuba if there were no Fox News."

"After a long and agonizing struggle, Cuba achieved its independence a century ago, and a complex relationship soon developed between our two countries. The great powers in Europe and Asia viewed "imperialism" as the natural order of the time and they expected the United States to colonize Cuba as the Europeans had done in Africa. The United States chose instead to help Cuba become independent, but not completely. The Platt Amendment gave my country the right to intervene in Cuba's internal affairs until President Franklin Roosevelt had the wisdom to repeal this claim in May 1934. The dictator Fulgencio Batista was overthrown more than 43 years ago, and a few years later the Cuban revolution aligned with the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Since then, our nations have followed different philosophical and political paths. The hard truth is that neither the United States nor Cuba has managed to define a positive and beneficial relationship. Will this new century find our neighboring people living in harmony and friendship? I have come here in search of an answer to that question."

"Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution. The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!"

"This country … abounds in that Cuba is a heaven in the spiritual sense of the word, and we prefer to die in heaven than serve in hell."

"There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away. We hold different concepts on many subjects, such as political systems, democracy, the exercise of human rights, social justice, international relations, and world peace and stability. We defend human rights. In our view, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights are indivisible, interdependent, and universal. We find it inconceivable that a government does not defend and ensure the right to healthcare, education, social security, food provision, development, equal pay, and the rights of children. We oppose political manipulation and double standards in the approach to human rights."

"Despite assassination attempts and international isolation - especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union - Castro has clung on to power and remains the world's longest surviving head of state. Meanwhile his people will risk almost anything to flee, and the country continues to decay. In 2003 seventy-five dissidents were imprisoned for up to eight years for daring to speak out against the regime. They have concrete slabs for a bed, eat food that would 'make a pig vomit,' and use lavatories that 'regurgitate their fetid contents around the clock.' On the other hand, Cuba has an efficient and generous welfare state and health system."

"All I gotta say about Elian is, thank God he's Cuban. 'Cause if he had been Haitian, you'd have never heard about his ass. If Elian Gonzalez was Elian Mumoombo from Haiti, they'd have pushed that little rubber tube back into the water. "Sorry, fella. All full.""

"But Cuba doesn’t have a dictatorship — it’s a revolutionary democracy."

"If we're leaving our fate to sociopathic buffoons, we're finished... you don't see that when the U.S. imposes sanctions, murders, devastating sanctions, that's the only country that can do that, but everyone has to follow... Now Cuba has been suffering from it from the moment where it gained independence, but it's astonishing that they survived but they stayed resilient and one of the most ironic elements of today's virus crisis, is that Cuba is helping Europe. I mean this is so shocking, that you don't know how to describe it. That Germany can't help Greece, but Cuba can help the European countries. If you stop to think about what that means, all words fail, just as when you see thousands of people dying in the Mediterranean, fleeing from a region that has been devastated... and being sent to the deaths in the Mediterranean, you don't know what words to use... The Crisis, the civilizational crisis of the West at this point is devastating... it does bring up childhood memories of listening to Hitler raving on the radio to raucous crowds... it makes you wonder if this species is even viable."

"A twenty-year war of terrorism was waged against Cuba. Cuba has probably been the target of more international terrorism than the rest of the world combined and, therefore, in the American ideological system it is regarded as the source of international terrorism, exactly as Orwell would have predicted. And now there’s a war against Nicaragua. The impact of all of this has been absolutely horrendous. There’s vast starvation throughout the region while crop lands are devoted to exports to the United States. There’s slave labor, crushing poverty, torture, mass murder, every horror you can think of. In El Salvador alone, from October 1979 (a date to which I’ll return) until December 1981 — approximately two years — about 30,000 people were murdered and about 600,000 refugees created. Those figures have about doubled since. Most of the murders were carried out by U.S.-backed military forces, including so-called death squads. The efficiency of the massacre in El Salvador has recently increased with direct participation of American military forces. American planes based in Honduran and Panamanian sanctuaries, military aircraft, now coordinate bombing raids over El Salvador, which means that the Salvadoran air force can more effectively kill fleeing peasants and destroy villages, and, in fact, the kill rate has gone up corresponding to that."

"The Cuban superpower was once again ready to help with doctors and equipment. Meanwhile, its U.S. neighbor was cutting back health aid to Yemen, where it had helped create the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, and was using the opportunity of the devastating health crisis to tighten its cruel sanctions to ensure maximal suffering among its chosen enemies. Cuba is the most longstanding victim, back to the days of Kennedy's terrorist wars and economic strangulation, but miraculously has survived."

"While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment for homosexuals and forced labor"

"We are seeing on the island of Cuba people fighting against a communist dictatorship. A free Cuba is a noble cause. It is a cause that many people have dedicated their lives to. We have to stand with the people of Cuba against the communist dictatorship, and one of the most effective things we can do as a country is getting internet back on the island, but we need the Biden Administration to step up to make this happen. The one thing that communist regimes fear the most is the truth, and if we are able to help Cubans communicate with one another and with the outside world, that truth is going to matter. That truth will be decisive. Mr. President, now is the time to stand up and be counted with the people of Cuba who are seeking an end to a brutal 62 year reign of communist oppression"

"Resolved, That the Democratic party are in favor of the acquisition of the island of Cuba, on such terms as shall be honorable to ourselves and just to Spain, at the earliest practicable moment."

"Smallpox is believed to have arrived in the Americas in 1520 on a Spanish ship sailing from Cuba, carried by an infected African slave. As soon as the party landed in Mexico, the infection began its deadly voyage through the continent. Even before the arrival of Pizarro, smallpox had already devastated the , killing the Emperor and unleashing a bitter civil war that distracted and weakened his successor, Atahuallpa. In the era of global conquest which followed, European colonizers were assisted around the world by the germs which they carried. A 1713 smallpox epidemic in the Cape of Good Hope decimated the South African Khoi San people, rendering them incapable of resisting the process of colonization. European germs also wreaked devastation on the aboriginal communities of Australia and New Zealand."

"I'm liberal up to a degree, I think everybody should be free, but if you think I'll let Barry Goldwater move in next door and marry my daughter, you must think I'm crazy. I wouldn't let him do it for all the farms in Cuba."

"There are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world reaches its perfection; when the air, the heavenly bodies and the earth, make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil thoughts."

"Aggression, pressure, conditions, impositions do not work with Cuba. This is not the way to attempt to have even a minimally civilised relationship with Cuba... There are also other functionaries, businessmen, that Trump has named, including in government roles, who are in favour of business with Cuba, people who think that the US will benefit from cooperation with Cuba, on issues linked to the national security of the US... These last two years show that many good things have been done not only for Cubans and for the Americans, but for others... Because when Cuba and the US cooperate in confronting drug trafficking, this is an important contribution to the region; or when Cuba and the US cooperate in confronting [viruses such as] zika, dengue and chikungunya, as we have been doing recently, we are making an important contribution to humanity. When Cuba and the US cooperated in Africa to fight Ebola, they made an important contribution to the health of the world."

"This is a policy which is condemned to be defeated again... They want Cuba to surrender. They want Cuba to abandon what Cuba is, to abandon its principles, and to submit Cuba again to the desires of the U.S. But that won’t happen.... These people are saying we control Venezuela? No... It’s very frustrating that once again they have chosen hostility instead of co-operation"

"As soon as the first cases of COVID-19 were detected in Cuba, our country mobilised all its resources to contain the spread of the virus.... Cuba has a long history and tradition of international solidarity with other countries in the health sector that dates back to the 1960s, when we started sending healthcare workers to help other countries... In response to the current pandemic, Cuba has dispatched 28 contingents of the Henry Reeve Brigade to help 26 countries... in addition to the more than 28,000 Cuban doctors, nurses and health professionals who were already overseas before the pandemic. The United States government has been trying to discredit Cuba's international assistance, including using pressure and threats against countries to force them to cancel these medical cooperation agreements. They have even tried to pressure governments to reject Cuba's help during the coronavirus pandemic. They claim the Cuban government is exploiting these doctors because in the case of countries that can afford to provide monetary compensation, a portion of it is kept by the Cuban government.... However, working overseas is completely voluntary, and the portion the Cuban government keeps goes to pay for Cuba's universal health system. It goes to purchasing medical supplies, equipment and medication for Cuba's 11 million people, including for the families of the doctors who are providing their services abroad. This is how we are able to provide free, high-quality healthcare for the Cuban people."

"Instead of exacerbating conflict during a pandemic, our countries need to work together to find solutions... unfortunately, the Trump administration is wasting this opportunity by dismantling the limited progress made by Cuba and the US during the Obama administration... President Trump strengthened the 60-year US blockade against my country, implementing 90 economic measures against Cuba between January 2019 and March 2020 alone. These measures have targeted the main sectors of the Cuban economy, including our financial transactions, tourism industry, energy sector, foreign investments - which are key for the development of the Cuban economy - and the medical cooperation programmes with other countries... These unilateral coercive measures are unprecedented in their level of aggression and scope... In April, the Alibaba Foundation of China tried to donate masks, rapid diagnostic kits and ventilators to Cuba, but the airline contracted by Alibaba to transport those items to Cuba refused to take the goods because they were afraid the US would sanction them... A ship... decided not to unload because... of fear it would be sanctioned by the US government.... It is so important that people of goodwill around the world continue to raise the demand to end the blockade of Cuba and to forcefully assert that these are times for solidarity and cooperation, not sanctions and blockades."

"The most significant thing of... Fidel's words before the largest body of the UN was ...his attack against the brutal philosophy of war. The denunciation of many actions by the U.S. government against the Cuban Revolution and the use of force through the growing arms race were the central arguments of the speech that provoked repeated ovations and applauses. Fidel criticized how war was used to monopolize underdeveloped countries and steal their resources, and attacked U.S. policy toward Cuba and other nations in Latin America, Asia and Africa. "From the beginning of human history, wars have arisen, fundamentally, for one reason: some people's desire to deprive others of their riches. Let the philosophy of plunder disappear, and the philosophy of war will have disappeared,' he said. He also showed how the arms race has always been a big business for monopolies, which like the crows 'feed on the corpses brought by wars." The hostility of the U.S. authorities towards the Cuban delegation was sustained until the last moment, when they confiscated the aircraft in which Fidel had to return to Havana, and Nikita Khrushchev offered a plane. In January 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower's administration cut off diplomatic relations with Cuba and in April of the same year, shortly after assuming as President, John F. Kennedy ordered to invade the Bay of Pigs. The attempt failed and it turned out to be for Cuba the victory of Playa Giron."

"The fact that much of the West, especially the baleful neighbour to the north, will see nothing to celebrate in another 99 per cent turnout in an election without opposition, is not lost on the people here; it's just that things look different from Cuba, and Cubans are used to being misunderstood."

"My father had served with great honor and courage in the Second World War. He fought for a country that was not only great, but good. It had its flaws and had some imperfections. It was the original sin of slavery which you know which we hadn't completed extirpated because we still had racial injustice in the 50s and 60s and 70s. We had only recently abolished, formally abolished segregation. So I was aware that uh, America had its flaws and defects in its history. But I also believed in the country and believed in its principles. That's the way I was brought up and so I was shocked when I found people who were just openly, vociferously anti-American, condemning not only America's sins but America itself, condemning its principles and pointing in some cases to communist regimes like Cuba as being superior."

"This is the first time the roads of life have brought me to Cuba. All the greater, therefore, is the impression I have of everything. I have seen and heard here, my impressions of the people of Havana--openhearted and friendly; my impressions of various aspects of your life--industrial, political, social. In the Soviet Union we know why the Cuban people rose to make their Revolution, what enabled them to repulse the armed intervention, survive the economic blockade, cope with the persistent and exhausting pressure of their imperialist neighbor. The island of freedom was able to stand its ground thanks to its proud and courageous people, determined to fight for their independence, for their right to live as they see fit. They were able to do so because the Revolution brought to the country's helm a party committed to achieving lofty humanist ideals, ideals of socialism, of serving the people. And, finally, they were able to do this because history had placed at their head one of the outstanding revolutionaries of the 20th century, the legendary Comrade Fidel Castro. This year, the communists and all the working people of Cuba, and with them their friends throughout the world, celebrated the 30th anniversary of the day when festively attired Havana welcomed the young heroes who had descended from the mountains and brought their people the freedom they had yearned for."

"To me, as glaring as the evidence of this in the pictures themselves was the revelation that it was established practice for prisoners to be moved around during ICRC visits so that they would not be available for visits. That, no one can claim, was the act of individuals. That was policy set from above with the direct intention to violate US values it was to be upholding. It was the kind of policy we see — and criticize in places like China and Cuba."

"Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony."

"The victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster."

"It is with regret that I have again to announce a continuance of the disturbed condition of the island of Cuba. No advance toward the pacification of the discontented part of the population has been made. While the insurrection has gained no advantages and exhibits no more of the elements of power or of the prospects of ultimate success than were exhibited a year ago, Spain, on the other hand, has not succeeded in its repression, and the parties stand apparently in the same relative attitude which they have occupied for a long time past. This contest has lasted now for more than four years. Were its scene at a distance from our neighborhood, we might be indifferent to its result, although humanity could not be unmoved by many of its incidents wherever they might occur. It is, however, at our door. I can not doubt that the continued maintenance of slavery in Cuba is among the strongest inducements to the continuance of this strife. A terrible wrong is the natural cause of a terrible evil."

"The existence of African slavery in Cuba is a principal cause of the lamentable condition of the island."

"Cuba treats Venezuela as a colony -- shipping food, medicine, diesel, and gasoline from Venezuela to Cuba even as the Venezuelan people suffer shortages of all of them. Cuban security personnel surround Maduro. Cuban intelligence officers are embedded in the military."