Your Excellencies:
Cuba is a founding member of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and has attended all its Summits with the aim of promoting and strengthening integration among our nations and inclusive dialogue and political consensus among our states and governments.
We have exchanged ideas based on broad and profound common ground and respect for our differences. We have placed our modest efforts at the service of the peoples of the region and, when necessary, have sacrificed national interests for the sake of integration. Without hesitation or conditions, we have unwaveringly defended sovereign equality and collective independence and promoted the principle of unity in diversity within our Community of States.
Cuba has always been loyal to the shared objectives, alliances, and values, and to the interests of the peoples of Our America, always consistent in its statements and actions, always committed to truth, justice, reason, and solidarity. We detest betrayal of values, opportunism, and submission. We have never remained silent in the face of abuse and the suffering of a people.
Cuba has not wavered, nor will it waver, in its commitment to preserve and defend its total independence and absolute sovereignty, despite the illegal and cruel policy of war and economic persecution waged by the United States government against our country, sustained uninterruptedly for more than 60 years, and now materialized in a blockade intensified to extreme levels, the most recent expression of which has been the Executive Order of January 29th and the imposition of a brutal energy embargo with grave humanitarian consequences for our population.
We have been able to mitigate its worst impacts thanks to the participation, awareness, unity, and selflessness of our people, the effective efforts of the State and Government, the support of popular and social organizations, and the leadership of the Revolution's leader, Raúl Castro Ruz, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez.
This is also a result of social programs, infrastructure, the resilience of our economy, our own resources, and the creativity and tenacity of the Cuban people. It is also a product of the economic transformation program we are implementing, the most visible element of which has been an effective investment in photovoltaic energy.
It is common knowledge that Cuba is not a threat to the national security of the United States. History demonstrates, until very recently, that Cuba is the victim of acts of terrorism financed and organized from U.S. soil. The powerful, toxic platforms of media aggression against our country slander and incite violence from the North.
Now, the United States declares almost daily and publicly its intentions to militarily attack Cuba or to achieve, through coercion, the overthrow of the Cuban government. It presents this as imminent. To justify its intentions, it simply uses the pretext that Cuba's political and economic model has failed, as if such an argument were sufficient reason to subject the entire population of a country to collective punishment or to attack it militarily.
If that were the case, what then explains the ruthless economic war waged precisely to bring about the country's downfall? Why is it necessary to deprive Cuba of access to financing, markets, technology, and fuel?
Who could defend the conduct of a superpower that inflicts terrible collective punishment on an entire people simply because it dislikes the political, economic, and social system they have established?
Incredibly, Under Secretary Mallory's infamous and highly secretive 1960 memorandum has now become official and public policy. They constantly boast of being the direct cause of the harm they deliberately inflict on Cuban families.
Despite everything, true to our tradition, we maintain talks with the U.S. government based on sovereign equality, mutual respect, reciprocal benefit, and international law, without interference in internal affairs or political systems. We do so seriously and responsibly, without media campaigns, with due discretion, goodwill, and the utmost realism.
We are aware of the immense pressure the U.S. government exerts on many of the governments represented here, including those with whom we share fraternal and long-standing ties of cooperation and solidarity. Some low-income populations in remote areas have been deprived of the almost exclusive medical services they received due to the ruthless U.S. persecution of Cuban international cooperation. In a few, but regrettable, cases, this has caused harm, but in none has it been able to alter the deep bonds between our peoples.
Beyond ideological stances, political contradictions, historical differences, and narrow interests, what we must change in our hemisphere is the aggressive behavior of domination, dispossession, and conquest by the United States, its adherence to the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries, and its supremacist and racist notion that Latin America and the Caribbean are its backyard.
With absolute clarity and firmness, we denounce before this Summit that, just as our National Hero, José Martí, warned, today the United States threatens our peoples of the Americas, and this danger can only be confronted if we rise up united in defense of the sovereignty and independence of our nations.
To realize the dream of our independence heroes, CELAC was created, and we have dedicated our efforts and commitment to its defense and strengthening.
It has been and remains our alternative to elitist agendas subservient to foreign interests of neocolonial domination. From within CELAC, we defend International Law against attempts to impose arbitrary, discriminatory, and tyrannical rules upon us. We protect and preserve CELAC and the United Nations from ideological and dictatorial constructs, such as the so-called “Shield of the Americas,” designed to impose subordination and spurious objectives on us in hemispheric defense and security.
Let us defend ourselves together against military aggression and the kidnapping of heads of state, as in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; against invasions and preemptive bombings like those in Iran that are setting the Middle East ablaze and undermining the global economy; and against genocides like that in Palestine. If a powerful and democratic international alliance does not decisively stop these acts, they will be directed against our peoples in the future.
History will not forgive those who attempt to ignore or evade the complexity and danger of the current regional context, nor the threats that loom over Our America and Cuba.
Nor will we renounce the resolute implementation of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, a historic achievement of our Community and the foundation of relations among our countries, and of these with the rest of the world, including our powerful neighbor. Let us defend our dignity.
On behalf of the Cuban government and people, I extend my deepest gratitude to those who have extended a helping hand and have shown and acted in solidarity with Cuba.
We firmly believe that CELAC will regain its capacity to act as the voice and body of Our America and to gain momentum in defending the right of Latin America and the Caribbean to maintain the sovereignty and independence won through centuries of struggle against colonialism; to not yield to the threats and designs of a power that despises us; and to proclaim unity, cooperation, and mutual respect among our countries as a fundamental premise for advancing the aspirations of the peoples of our region toward a future of peace, justice, and development.
Thank you very much.
