Cuba was used by the U.S. as a haven for gambling, alcohol,
prostitution, and corruption. Much of
it was run by the Mafia with the aide of the puppet president Batista. Fidel Castro led an uprising of Cuban people
to try to overthrow Batista with an attack on a military base called the
Moncada, but that initial effort was unsuccessful.
In 1953, Fidel Castro was
put on trial and convicted. He gave his
own closing statement at the end of the trial, what is now called "History
Will Absolve Me," a speech as famous in the world as the Martin Luther
King, Jr. speech "I Have A Dream."
Today, December 17, 2014, the U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban
President Raul Castro announced that the U.S. and Cuba will renew diplomatic
relations, and try to move forward as friendly neighbors.
What were the revolutionary proposals of Castro? Turn control of much of the land over to
peasant and tenant farmers. Give every
single worker 30% of the profits of any large business in which they work. Confiscate the wealth of those who have
acquired their wealth through crime and fraud.
Use the money taken from the rich to fund retirement programs for all
Cubans, hospitals, and other charitable organizations.
Excerpts from "History Will Absolve Me":
In terms of struggle, when we talk
about people we're talking about the six hundred thousand Cubans without work,
who want to earn their daily bread honestly without having to emigrate from
their homeland in search of a livelihood; the five hundred thousand farm
laborers who live in miserable shacks, who work four months of the year and
starve the rest, sharing their misery with their children, who don't have an
inch of land to till and whose existence would move any heart not made of
stone; the four hundred thousand industrial workers and laborers whose
retirement funds have been embezzled, whose benefits are being taken away,
whose homes are wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the hands of the
boss to those of the moneylender, whose future is a pay reduction and
dismissal, whose life is endless work and whose only rest is the tomb;
....
"... the one hundred thousand
small farmers who live and die working land that is not theirs, looking at it
with the sadness of Moses gazing at the promised land, to die without ever
owning it, who like feudal serfs have to pay for the use of their parcel of
land by giving up a portion of its produce, who cannot love it, improve it,
beautify it nor plant a cedar or an orange tree on it because they never know when
a sheriff will come with the rural guard to evict them from it; the thirty
thousand teachers and professors who are so devoted, dedicated and so necessary
to the better destiny of future generations and who are so badly treated and
paid; the twenty thousand small business men weighed down by debts, ruined by
the crisis and harangued by a plague of grafting and venal officials; the ten
thousand young professional people: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians,
school teachers, dentists, pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors,
etc., who finish school with their degrees anxious to work and full of hope,
only to find themselves at a dead end, all doors closed to them, and where no
ears hear their clamor or supplication."
These are the people, the ones who know
misfortune and, therefore, are capable of fighting with limitless courage! To
these people whose desperate roads through life have been paved with the bricks
of betrayal and false promises, we were not going to say: 'We will give you
...' but rather: 'Here it is, now fight for it with everything you have, so
that liberty and happiness may be yours!'
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