(Shorthand Versions - Presidency of the Republic)
Dear participants;
Dear Prime Minister and brother Ralph Gonsalves:
Thank you, your dear people and the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for your generous hospitality and for the excellent leadership of CELAC during the mandate that concludes today, the first of a small English-speaking Caribbean nation leading such a large and diverse group of States.
The successful results of the work during this period, plagued by political challenges at the regional and global levels, confirm that the size of a country does not matter if there is political will and commitment to Latin American and Caribbean integration.
As we meet again, the mere sight of the whole encourages and excites us. Everything seems to be starting anew, until the hard certainty emerges about how much we owe each other since that first meeting in Caracas in 2011, when we bet on moving forward together towards integration, defining unity as the urgent task.
Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, passionate promoter of Latin American and Caribbean integration, said about the decision to create CELAC, in Cancun in 2010, that "no other institutional fact of our hemisphere during the last century reflects similar transcendence". And he also raised questions that remain unanswered: "In the face of the large groups that today dominate the world economy, is there any place in the future for our peoples without an integrated and united Latin America?
According to ECLAC, in 2024 the economies of Latin America and the Caribbean will continue on the path of low growth, and all sub-regions will grow less than in 2023. We will continue to be the most unequal region on the planet.
There are 183 million people in this region who qualify as poor. That is equivalent to 29% of the population; of these, 72 million live in extreme poverty. It is deeply distressing that half of these figures correspond to children and adolescents.
Job creation between 2014 and 2023 was the lowest in the region since the 1950s.
Of the 292 million people in employment, one in two are in informal jobs, and four out of ten have incomes below the minimum wage. The gender gap in employment and income is widening.
Four out of every five children under the age of ten in Latin America and the Caribbean cannot read or write.
Without being an exception, in the post-pandemic, insecure and impoverished world in which we live, the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean will not be able to meet the vast majority of the goals of the 2030 Agenda.
Brothers of the Great Homeland:
Despite the unfair panorama described and the debts of integrationist actions that we accumulate, this unity in diversity that CELAC has managed to sustain, is consolidated, but much remains to be done. In this regard, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz expressed at the Caracas Summit: "The unity and political, economic, social and cultural integration of Latin America and the Caribbean is a necessity to successfully face the challenges we face as a region".
Summits and their declarations, whose practical effects are difficult to appreciate, are not enough for CELAC to fulfill its founding objectives. The protagonists of integration and its main beneficiaries must be our peoples.
We want an integration that privileges the unrestricted defense of peace, sovereignty, solidarity and humanism; an integration that allows Latin America and the Caribbean to reposition itself in the international scenario. An integration that recognizes the right of our brother Caribbean countries to a fair, special and differentiated treatment that contributes to claim in unity the just compensation for 500 years of plundering and slavery.
We aspire to an integration that ensures full dignity and social justice for all.
Dear friends:
For Cuba it is unavoidable to reiterate the strongest condemnation of the genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people.
Remaining silent in the face of the massacre of almost 30,000 civilians in the Gaza Strip in the last five months, mostly women and children, is not only unacceptable, it is incompatible with human dignity!
We will never be accomplices of the barbarism that will guarantee to the indifferent, at the very least, a condemnation of their consciences and of history, as happened to those who looked the other way when fascism was advancing and ended up being its victims.
It is impossible to ignore the complicity of the United States government, which with its vetoes paralyzes the United Nations Security Council, supplies arms to the illegal occupiers and allows Israel to act with total impunity.
Ten years ago, in Havana, we took the historic decision to proclaim Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, and to banish the use of force from the region forever.
This will to promote friendship and cooperation, above and beyond any differences, must be endorsed in relations within and outside the region.
Two centuries have passed since the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, with which the United States warned the world that its hegemony in the region would be untouchable. Time passed, but ambition did not cease. In the 21st century, threats, pressures and unilateral coercive measures against legitimate governments that they refuse to recognize as such persist.
However, the peoples have not ceased their desire for liberty and the irrevocable decision to defend national and regional sovereignty to the last consequences.
We ratify our firm support for the Bolivarian Revolution and the civil-military union of its people, led by its president, comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros.
We reiterate our support to the land of Sandino and to President Daniel Ortega, in the face of the attempts to break the constitutional order in that nation.
We favor a stable peace in Haiti, which urgently requires greater assistance and cooperation for its sustainable development.
We are committed to peace efforts in Colombia, to which Cuba will continue to contribute in every possible way.
We have supported and will continue to support the talks and compromise efforts between the sister nations of Venezuela and Guyana, and we will resolutely oppose attempts by the U.S. Government and any other actor to interfere.
We maintain unalterable support for the self-determination and independence of Puerto Rico, and we support the legitimate right of Argentina over the Malvinas, South Sandwich and South Georgia Islands and the surrounding maritime areas.
Compatriots of Our America:
I owe a grateful word, on behalf of the Cuban people, to all the nations represented here who have demanded that the criminal, illegal and sexagenarian blockade against Cuba be lifted.
The extremely serious damage caused by this inhumane policy has intensified to extreme levels following the country's inclusion on the one-sided list of alleged state sponsors of terrorism.
I deeply appreciate the sister nations of Latin America and the Caribbean for their firm demand that Cuba be excluded from that spurious list.
The powerful neighbor to the North allocates millions of dollars and a sophisticated machinery of Unconventional Warfare in its multidimensional war against Cuba. It manipulates such universally sensitive issues as human rights and democracy, in the never-abandoned attempt to force a political change, with a mixture of discredit campaign and economic asphyxiation in search of a social explosion.
Finally, I would like to offer to Honduras, to its president, dear sister Xiomara Castro, all my support to her leadership at the head of CELAC.
Cuba will always be at the forefront of efforts to forge the unitary project from the Rio Bravo to Patagonia for which the heroes of Latin American independence offered their lives.
It is time to make real, in practice, the concept of "Our America", so beautifully described by José Martí. It is time to build "a single homeland", as Simón Bolívar dreamed.
Unity, that dream of centuries, nailed as utopia on the horizon of Our America, has once again shaken us. Let us not rest in the will to achieve it, for a better future for our peoples!
Thank you very much (Applause).
