I Must Warn You Once Again That if You Fail to Tell the Truth You May Lay Yourself Open to Charge of

On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro, a lawyer and a member of the Orthodox Political party, led a group of Cuban revolutionaries on an set on of the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Republic of cuba. The activity was an attempt to secure weapons to support the movement to overthrow the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Arrested and sentenced to fifteen years in prison, Fidel Castro offered a four-hr speech in the defense of the move he led. It later was published as a manifesto of the July 26th Movement that successfully overthrew the Batista government and took power in 1959. The speech called for rather modest reforms, such as a reinstatement of the 1940 Cuban constitution, rights of industrial and sugar workers to a share of company profits, and moderate country reform. It is considered an early proclamation of the goals of the Cuban Revolution. We have significantly abridged the speech for this website.

Fidel Castro (1978)

HONORABLE JUDGES:

Never has a lawyer had to exercise his profession under such difficult weather condition; never has such a number of overwhelming irregularities been committed confronting an defendant human. In this case, counsel and accused are one and the same. Equally attorney he has not even been able to take a expect at the indictment. As defendant, for the by seventy-six days he has been locked abroad in solitary confinement, held totally and absolutely incommunicado, in violation of every human and legal right.

He who speaks to you hates vanity with all his being, nor are his temperament or frame of listen inclined towards courtroom poses or sensationalism of whatsoever kind. If I have had to assume my own defense earlier this Court it is for two reasons. First: considering I take been denied legal assist almost entirely, and 2nd: only ane who has been then securely wounded, who has seen his country so forsaken and its justice trampled and so, can speak at a moment like this with words that leap from the blood of his centre and the truth of his very gut.

[…] The defendant, who is now exercising this right to plead his own case, will under no circumstances refrain from saying what he must say. I consider it essential that I explicate, at the onset, the reason for the terrible isolation in which I have been kept; what was the purpose of keeping me silent; what was behind the plots to kill me, plots which the Court is familiar with; what grave events are beingness hidden from the people; and the truth behind all the strange things which have taken place during this trial. I propose to practise all this with utmost clarity.

You take publicly called this case the well-nigh pregnant in the history of the Democracy. If yous sincerely believed this, y'all should not accept allowed your authority to exist stained and degraded. The first court session was September 21st. Among i hundred machine guns and bayonets, scandalously invading the hall of justice, more than a hundred people were seated in the prisoner's dock. The swell bulk had zip to exercise with what had happened. They had been under preventive arrest for many days, suffering all kinds of insults and abuses in the chambers of the repressive units. But the residual of the accused, the minority, were brave and determined, prepare to proudly ostend their part in the battle for freedom, gear up to offer an example of unprecedented cocky-cede and to wrench from the jail'southward claws those who in deliberate bad organized religion had been included in the trial. Those who had met in combat confronted one some other once again. Again, with the cause of justice on our side, we would wage the terrible battle of truth against infamy! Surely the regime was non prepared for the moral catastrophe in store for it!

How to maintain all its false accusations? How to continue secret what had actually happened, when so many young men were willing to risk everything – prison, torture and death, if necessary – in social club that the truth be told before this Court?

I was called equally a witness at that first session. For two hours I was questioned by the Prosecutor equally well as past twenty defense attorneys. I was able to prove with exact facts and figures the sums of money that had been spent, the fashion this money was collected and the arms we had been able to circular upwards. I had nothing to hide, for the truth was: all this was achieved through sacrifices without precedent in the history of our Republic. I spoke of the goals that inspired us in our struggle and of the humane and generous handling that we had at all times accorded our adversaries. If I accomplished my purpose of demonstrating that those who were falsely implicated in this trial were neither directly nor indirectly involved, I owe it to the complete back up and backing of my heroic comrades. For, as I said, the consequences they might be forced to endure at no fourth dimension acquired them to apologize of their status as revolutionaries and patriots, I was never once immune to speak with these comrades of mine during the time nosotros were in prison, and yet nosotros planned to do exactly the aforementioned. The fact is, when men deport the same ideals in their hearts, zip can isolate them – neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all.

From that moment on, the structure of lies the regime had erected about the events at Moncada Billet began to collapse like a house of cards. As a event, the Prosecutor realized that keeping all those persons named every bit instigators in prison was completely absurd, and he requested their provisional release.

[…] At that point what I consider my about important mission in this trial began: to totally discredit the cowardly, miserable and treacherous lies which the regime had hurled against our fighters; to reveal with irrefutable show the horrible, repulsive crimes they had adept on the prisoners; and to show the nation and the world the space misfortune of the Cuban people who are suffering the cruelest, the about inhuman oppression of their history.

The 2nd session convened on Tuesday, September 22nd. Past that fourth dimension only 10 witnesses had testified, and they had already cleared up the murders in the Manzanillo area, specifically establishing and placing on tape the direct responsibility of the captain commanding that post. There were three hundred more witnesses to prove. What would happen if, with a staggering mass of facts and evidence, I should proceed to catechize the very Army men who were directly responsible for those crimes? Could the regime allow me to go ahead before the large audience attending the trial? Before journalists and jurists from all over the island? And earlier the party leaders of the opposition, who they had stupidly seated right in the prisoner'due south dock where they could hear so well all that might be brought out here? They would rather accept blown up the court house, with all its judges, than allow that!

And so they devised a program by which they could eliminate me from the trial, and they proceeded to do just that, manu militari. On Friday night, September 25th, on the eve of the 3rd session of the trial, two prison doctors visited me in my cell. They were visibly embarrassed. 'We accept come to examine you,' they said. I asked them, 'Who is so worried about my wellness?' Really, from the moment I saw them I realized what they had come for. They could not have treated me with greater respect, and they explained their predicament to me. That afternoon Colonel Chaviano had appeared at the prison and told them I 'was doing the Government terrible damage with this trial.' He had told them they must sign a certificate declaring that I was ill and was, therefore, unable to appear in court. The doctors told me that for their part they were prepared to resign from their posts and take a chance persecution. They put the matter in my hands, for me to decide. I found it difficult to ask those men to unhesitatingly destroy themselves. But neither could I, nether whatever circumstances, consent that those orders be carried out. Leaving the matter to their own consciences, I told them only: 'Y'all must know your duty; I certainly know mine.'

After leaving the cell they signed the certificate. I know they did then believing in adept religion that this was the only way they could save my life, which they considered to be in grave danger. I was not obliged to keep our conversation secret, for I am jump only by the truth. Telling the truth in this example may jeopardize those skillful doctors in their cloth interests, but I am removing all doubt virtually their laurels, which is worth much more than. […]. Since the scheme failed every bit a issue of timely exposure by always alert friends, and after the first affidavit was shown to be false, the regime could only keep me away from the trial by open and shameless contempt of Courtroom.

This was an incredible state of affairs, Honorable Judges: Hither was a authorities literally afraid to bring an accused man to Courtroom; a regime of blood and terror that shrank in fright of the moral conviction of a defenseless man – unarmed, slandered and isolated. Then, afterwards depriving me of everything else, they finally deprived me even of the trial in which I was the chief accused. Remember that this was during a period in which individual rights were suspended and the Public Guild Act equally well as censorship of radio and press were in total force. What unbelievable crimes this authorities must take committed to so fear the vocalism of one accused man!

[…]

As the trial went on, the roles were reversed: those who came to charge found themselves accused, and the defendant became the accusers! It was not the revolutionaries who were judged there; judged once and forever was a human being named Batista – monstruum horrendum! – and it matters piffling that these valiant and worthy young men have been condemned, if tomorrow the people volition condemn the Dictator and his henchmen! Our men were consigned to the Island of Pines Prison, in whose round galleries Castells' ghost still lingers and where the cries of endless victims still echo; there our young men have been sent to expiate their honey of liberty, in bitter confinement, banished from society, torn from their homes and exiled from their country. Is it not clear to y'all, as I have said earlier, that in such circumstances it is difficult and bellicose for this lawyer to fulfill his duty?

As a result of so many turbid and illegal machinations, due to the will of those who govern and the weakness of those who judge, I find myself here in this little room at the Noncombatant Hospital, where I take been brought to be tried in secret, and then that I may not be heard and my voice may be stifled, and and then that no one may acquire of the things I am going to say. Why, and so, exercise we need that imposing Palace of Justice which the Honorable Judges would without doubt notice much more than comfortable? I must warn you: it is unwise to administrate justice from a infirmary room, surrounded past sentinels with fixed bayonets; the citizens might suppose that our justice is ill – and that information technology is captive.

[…]

I must acknowledge that I am somewhat disappointed. I had expected that the Honorable Prosecutor would come forward with a grave accusation. I thought he would be fix to justify to the limit his contention, and his reasons why I should be condemned in the proper noun of Police and Justice – what law and what justice? — to 26 years in prison. But no. He has express himself to reading Article 148 of the Social Defence Code. On the basis of this, plus aggravating circumstances, he requests that I be imprisoned for the lengthy term of 26 years! 2 minutes seems a very short time in which to demand and justify that a man be put behind bars for more than than a quarter of a century.

[ . . . ]

Honorable Judges: Why such involvement in silencing me? Why is every type of argument foregone in lodge to avoid presenting any target whatsoever against which I might direct my own brief? Is it that they lack whatsoever legal, moral or political basis on which to put forth a serious formulation of the question? Are they that agape of the truth? Do they promise that I, too, volition speak for simply ii minutes and that I will not touch upon the points, which have caused certain people sleepless nights since July 26th? […] I shall by no ways have such a gag, for in this trial there is much more than the freedom of a single individual at stake. Central matters of principle are being debated hither, the right of men to be complimentary is on trial, the very foundations of our existence as a civilized and democratic nation are in the remainder. When this trial is over, I do non want to have to reproach myself for whatsoever principle left undefended, for any truth left unsaid, for any criminal offense not denounced.

[…] In what country is the Honorable Prosecutor living? Who has told him that we have sought to bring about an uprising confronting the Constitutional Powers of the Land? Two things are self-axiomatic. Commencement of all, the dictatorship that oppresses the nation is not a ramble power, but an unconstitutional i: it was established confronting the Constitution, over the head of the Constitution, violating the legitimate Constitution of the Democracy. The legitimate Constitution is that which emanates directly from a sovereign people. I shall demonstrate this signal fully afterwards, notwithstanding all the subterfuges contrived by cowards and traitors to justify the unjustifiable. Secondly, the article refers to Powers, in the plural, every bit in the case of a republic governed by a Legislative Power, an Executive Power, and a Judicial Ability that residuum and counterbalance ane another. Nosotros accept fomented a rebellion against one single power, an illegal 1, which has usurped and merged into a single whole both the Legislative and Executive Powers of the nation, and and so has destroyed the unabridged system that was specifically safeguarded by the Code now under our analysis. As to the independence of the Judiciary afterwards the 10th of March, I shall not allude to that for I am in no mood for joking … No thing how Article 148 may exist stretched, shrunk or amended, not a single comma applies to the events of July 26th. Permit the states go out this statute lone and await the opportunity to utilize it to those who really did foment an uprising against the Constitutional Powers of the State. Afterwards I shall come dorsum to the Code to refresh the Honorable Prosecutor'south memory about certain circumstances he has unfortunately overlooked.

[…]

From a shack in the mountains on Monday, July 27th, I listened to the dictator's phonation on the air while there were even so 18 of our men in arms against the government. Those who have never experienced similar moments will never know that kind of bitterness and indignation. While the long-cherished hopes of freeing our people lay in ruins about us nosotros heard those crushed hopes gloated over past a tyrant more vicious, more arrogant than ever. The endless stream of lies and slanders, poured forth in his rough, odious, repulsive linguistic communication, may merely be compared to the endless stream of clean immature blood which had flowed since the previous dark – with his cognition, consent, complicity and approval – existence spilled past the about inhuman gang of assassins it is possible to imagine. To have believed him for a single moment would have sufficed to make full a man of conscience with remorse and shame for the rest of his life. At that time I could non fifty-fifty hope to brand his miserable brow with the mark of truth that condemns him for the rest of his days and for all time to come. Already a circle of more than a thousand men, armed with weapons more powerful than ours and with peremptory orders to bring in our bodies, was endmost in effectually u.s.. Now that the truth is coming out, now that speaking earlier you I am conveying out the mission I set for myself, I may dice peacefully and content. Then I shall not mince my words about those savage murderers.

I must suspension to consider the facts for a moment. The authorities itself said the attack showed such precision and perfection that military strategists must have planned it. Nothing could accept been further from the truth! The plan was drawn up by a group of immature men, none of whom had any military experience at all. […] Half of them are dead, and in tribute to their memory I can say that although they were not military experts they had enough patriotism to have given, had nosotros non been at such a great disadvantage, a good chirapsia to that entire lot of generals together, those generals of the 10th of March who are neither soldiers nor patriots. Much more difficult than the planning of the set on was our organizing, training, mobilizing and arming men under this repressive authorities with its millions of dollars spent on espionage, bribery and data services. Nevertheless, all this was carried out by those men and many others similar them with incredible seriousness, discretion and discipline. Still more praiseworthy is the fact that they gave this chore everything they had; ultimately, their very lives.

The final mobilization of men who came to this province from the most remote towns of the unabridged island was accomplished with admirable precision and in absolute secrecy. It is equally true that the assault was carried out with magnificent coordination. […] Nevertheless, in the interest of truth and fifty-fifty though information technology may backbite from our merit, I am as well going to reveal for the commencement time a fact that was fatal: due to a most unfortunate fault, one-half of our forces, and the better armed half at that, went astray at the entrance to the city and were non on hand to aid us at the decisive moment. […] I must clarify the fact that I do not for a moment doubt the courage of those men; they experienced slap-up anguish and desperation when they realized they were lost. Because of the blazon of action information technology was and because the contending forces were wearing identically colored uniforms, it was non like shooting fish in a barrel for these men to re-found contact with us. Many of them, captured after on, met death with truthful heroism.

Everyone had instructions, first of all, to be humane in the struggle. Never was a group of armed men more generous to the adversary. From the get-go nosotros took numerous prisoners – nearly 20 – and there was one moment when three of our men […] managed to enter a barrack and agree well-nigh fifty soldiers prisoners for a short fourth dimension. Those soldiers testified before the Courtroom, and without exception they all acknowledged that we treated them with accented respect, that we didn't even bailiwick them to 1 scoffing remark. In line with this, I want to give my heartfelt thanks to the Prosecutor for one thing in the trial of my comrades: when he made his report he was fair enough to acknowledge as an incontestable fact that we maintained a high spirit of chivalry throughout the struggle.

Discipline among the soldiers was very poor. They finally defeated the states because of their superior numbers – fifteen to 1 – and because of the protection afforded them past the defenses of the fortress. Our men were much ameliorate marksmen, as our enemies themselves conceded. There was a high degree of courage on both sides.

[…]

When I became convinced that all efforts to accept the billet were at present useless, I began to withdraw our men in groups of eight and x. Half dozen expert marksmen under the command of Pedro Miret and Fidel Labrador covered our retreat; heroically they held off the Regular army's advance. Our losses in the battle had been insignificant; 95% of our casualties came from the Ground forces'south inhumanity after the struggle. The group at the Civilian Hospital only had i casualty; the balance of that group was trapped when the troops blocked the only exit; but our youths did not lay downwards their artillery until their very final bullet was gone. […] We shall run into the fate they met and how Batista sought to punish the heroism of our youth.

Nosotros planned to go along the struggle in the mountains in case the attack on the regiment failed. In Siboney I was able to gather a third of our forces; but many of these men were at present discouraged. About twenty of them decided to surrender; later we shall come across what became of them. The residual, 18 men, with what artillery and armament were left, followed me into the mountains. The terrain was completely unknown to us. For a calendar week we held the heights of the Gran Piedra range and the Regular army occupied the foothills. We could not come downwardly; they didn't run a risk coming up. Information technology was not forcefulness of arms, but hunger and thirst that ultimately overcame our resistance. I had to split the men into smaller groups. Some of them managed to skid through the Army lines; Monsignor Pérez Serantes surrendered others. Finally only 2 comrades remained with me – José Suárez and Oscar Alcalde. While the three of united states were totally wearied, a force led by Lieutenant Sarría surprised usa in our sleep at dawn. This was Saturday, August 1st. By that time the slaughter of prisoners had ceased as a result of the people's protest. This officer, a man of honor, saved u.s. from being murdered on the spot with our easily tied behind us.

I need not deny here the stupid statements by Ugalde Carrillo and company, who tried to stain my name in an endeavour to mask their own cowardice, incompetence, and misdeed. The facts are clear plenty.

My purpose is not to diameter the courtroom with epic narratives. All that I have said is essential for a more precise understanding of what is yet to come.

The regime has emphatically repeated that our Movement did not take popular back up. I have never heard an assertion and so naive, and at the same fourth dimension so full of bad religion. The regime seeks to show submission and cowardice on the function of the people. They all only claim that the people support the dictatorship; they do not know how offensive this is to the brave Orientales. Santiago thought our assault was only a local disturbance between 2 factions of soldiers; non until many hours later on did they realize what had actually happened. Who can doubt the valor, civic pride and limitless backbone of the rebel and patriotic people of Santiago de Cuba? If Moncada had fallen into our easily, fifty-fifty the women of Santiago de Republic of cuba would have risen in artillery. Many were the rifles loaded for our fighters by the nurses at the Civilian Hospital. They fought alongside the states. That is something we volition never forget.

It was never our intention to appoint the soldiers of the regiment in combat. Nosotros wanted to seize control of them and their weapons in a surprise assault, arouse the people and telephone call the soldiers to abandon the odious flag of the tyranny and to embrace the banner of freedom; to defend the supreme interests of the nation and not the picayune interests of a minor clique; to turn their guns around and fire on the people's enemies and non on the people, among whom are their ain sons and fathers; to unite with the people as the brothers that they are instead of opposing the people as the enemies the authorities tries to make of them; to march behind the only beautiful ideal worthy of sacrificing one's life – the greatness and happiness of one'south country. To those who doubt that many soldiers would have followed us, I ask: What Cuban does non cherish glory? What middle is not set aglow past the promise of freedom?

The Navy did not fight against us, and it would undoubtedly have come over to our side later on. It is well known that that branch of the Armed Forces is the least dominated by the Dictatorship and that there is a very intense civic conscience among its members. Merely, every bit to the remainder of the national armed forces, would they take fought confronting a people in defection? I declare that they would not! A soldier is fabricated of flesh and claret; he thinks, observes, feels. […] He is affected by exactly the same problems that bear on other citizens – subsistence, rent, the teaching of his children, their future, etc. Everything of this kind is an inevitable signal of contact betwixt him and the people and everything of this kind relates him to the present and future state of affairs of the society in which he lives. It is foolish to imagine that the salary a soldier receives from the State – a small enough salary at that – should resolve the vital problems imposed on him by his needs, duties and feelings as a fellow member of his customs.

[…]

The March 10th insurrection took place at the moment when the civil government'southward prestige had dwindled to its lowest ebb, a circumstance of which Batista and his clique took reward. Why did they not strike their accident after the first of June? But considering, had they waited for the majority of the nation to limited its will at the polls, the troops would not have responded to the conspiracy!

Consequently, a 2nd assertion can be made: the Army has never revolted against a regime with a popular bulk behind it. These are celebrated truths, and if Batista insists on remaining in power at all costs confronting the will of the bulk of Cubans, his cease will be more tragic than that of Gerardo Machado.

[…]

No weaponry, no violence tin vanquish the people once they are determined to win dorsum their rights. Both past and present are full of examples. The most recent is the defection in Republic of bolivia, where miners with dynamite sticks smashed and defeated army regiments.

Fortunately, nosotros Cubans need not look for examples abroad. No instance is as inspiring as that of our own state. During the war of 1895 there were almost half a million armed Spanish soldiers in Cuba, many more than the Dictator counts upon today to hold dorsum a population five times greater. The artillery of the Spaniards were, incomparably, both more than up to date and more powerful than those of our mambises. Often the Spaniards were equipped with field arms and the infantry used breechloaders like to those still in use by the infantry of today. The Cubans were ordinarily armed with no more than their machetes, for their cartridge belts were virtually always empty. […]

In terms of struggle, when we talk about people we're talking about the six hundred m Cubans without work, who want to earn their daily staff of life honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of a livelihood; the 5 hundred 1000 subcontract laborers who live in miserable shacks, who work iv months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their misery with their children, who don't take an inch of state 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 beingness taken away, whose homes are wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the easily of the boss to those of the moneylender, whose future is a pay reduction and dismissal, whose life is endless work and whose only residue is the tomb; the ane hundred thousand small farmers who live and die working land that is not theirs, looking at information technology with the sadness of Moses gazing at the promised land, to die without e'er 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 dearest information technology, meliorate it, adorn it nor plant a cedar or an orange tree on information technology considering they never know when a sheriff will come with the rural baby-sit to adios them from it; the xxx 1000 teachers and professors who are so devoted, dedicated and so necessary to the better destiny of hereafter generations and who are so badly treated and paid; the xx thousand pocket-sized business men weighed down by debts, ruined by the crunch and harangued by a plague of grafting and venal officials; the ten 1000 young professional people: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists, pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors, etc., who terminate school with their degrees anxious to work and full of hope, only to find themselves at a dead stop, all doors airtight to them, and where no ears hear their bedlam 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 accept been paved with the bricks of betrayal and false promises, nosotros were non going to say: 'We will requite you . . .' only rather: 'Here it is, now fight for information technology with everything you have, so that freedom and happiness may be yours!'

The 5 revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed immediately after the capture of the Moncada Barracks and would accept been broadcast to the nation past radio must exist included in the indictment. Information technology is possible that Colonel Chaviano may deliberately have destroyed these documents, but even if he has I remember them.

The first revolutionary law would have returned ability to the people and proclaimed the 1940 Constitution the Supreme Law of the State until such time as the people should decide to change or change it. And in order to result its implementation and punish those who violated it – at that place being no electoral organisation to carry this out – the revolutionary movement, as the circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty, the just source of legitimate ability, would have assumed all the faculties inherent therein, except that of modifying the Constitution itself: in other words, it would have assumed the legislative, executive and judicial powers.

This attitude could not be clearer nor more gratuitous of vacillation and sterile charlatanry. A government acclaimed by the mass of rebel people would be vested with every power, everything necessary in society to proceed with the effective implementation of popular will and real justice. From that moment, the Judicial Power – which since March 10th had placed itself against and outside the Constitution – would cease to exist and we would proceed to its immediate and total reform before information technology would again presume the power granted it past the Supreme Police of the Commonwealth. Without these previous measures, a return to legality by putting its custody dorsum into the hands that have crippled the system so dishonorably would institute a fraud, a deceit, one more betrayal.

The 2nd revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable and not-transferable buying of the state to all tenant and subtenant farmers, lessees, share croppers and squatters who concur parcels of 5 caballerías of land or less, and the State would indemnify the quondam owners on the footing of the rental which they would take received for these parcels over a menstruation of ten years.

The 3rd revolutionary law would have granted workers and employees the right to share 30% of the profits of all the big industrial, mercantile and mining enterprises, including the sugar mills. The strictly agricultural enterprises would be exempt in consideration of other agrarian laws which would be put into result.

The quaternary revolutionary law would have granted all sugar planters the correct to share 55% of saccharide production and a minimum quota of twoscore k arrobas for all small tenant farmers who take been established for 3 years or more.

The fifth revolutionary law would accept ordered the confiscation of all holdings and sick-gotten gains of those who had committed frauds during previous regimes, equally well as the holdings and ill-gotten gains of all their legates and heirs. To implement this, special courts with full powers would gain access to all records of all corporations registered or operating in this country, in society to investigate curtained funds of illegal origin, and to request that foreign governments extradite persons and attach holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban people. One-half of the property recovered would be used to subsidize retirement funds for workers and the other one-half would be used for hospitals, asylums and charitable organizations.

Furthermore, it was alleged that the Cuban policy in the Americas would be one of close solidarity with the autonomous peoples of this continent, and that all those politically persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our sis nations would find generous asylum, brotherhood and breadstuff in the land of Martí; not the persecution, hunger and treason they find today. Republic of cuba should exist the bulwark of freedom and non a shameful link in the concatenation of despotism.

These laws would have been proclaimed immediately. As presently every bit the upheaval ended and prior to a detailed and far reaching study, they would have been followed by some other series of laws and fundamental measures, such as the Agrarian Reform, the Integral Educational Reform, nationalization of the electric power trust and the phone trust, refund to the people of the illegal and repressive rates these companies have charged, and payment to the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the by.

All these laws and others would exist based on the exact compliance of two essential articles of our Constitution: one of them orders the outlawing of big estates, indicating the maximum area of country any one person or entity may own for each blazon of agricultural enterprise, by adopting measures which would tend to revert the land to the Cubans. The other categorically orders the State to use all means at its disposal to provide employment to all those who lack information technology and to ensure a decent livelihood to each manual or intellectual laborer. None of these laws can be called unconstitutional. The offset popularly elected authorities would have to respect them, not simply because of moral obligations to the nation, just considering when people achieve something they have yearned for throughout generations, no force in the world is capable of taking it away over again.

The problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the trouble of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the people'south health: these are the six bug nosotros would have immediate steps to solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy.

This exposition may seem common cold and theoretical if i does non know the shocking and tragic conditions of the country with regard to these six problems, forth with the most humiliating political oppression.

Lxxx-five per cent of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and alive nether constant threat of being evicted from the land they till. More one-half of our almost productive land is in the hands of foreigners. In the Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United Fruit Company and the W Indian Company link the northern and southern coasts. There are two hundred thousand peasant families who do non have a single acre of land to till to provide nutrient for their starving children. On the other hand, well-nigh 3 hundred thousand caballerías of cultivable land owned past powerful interests remain uncultivated. If Cuba is above all an agricultural Land, if its population is largely rural, if the city depends on these rural areas, if the people from our countryside won our war of independence, if our nation'due south greatness and prosperity depend on a healthy and vigorous rural population that loves the land and knows how to work information technology, if this population depends on a State that protects and guides information technology, then how can the present state of affairs exist immune to proceed?

Except for a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to exist primarily a producer of raw materials. Nosotros export saccharide to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, nosotros consign iron to import plows … Everyone agrees with the urgent need to industrialize the nation, that nosotros need steel industries, newspaper and chemical industries, that we must improve our cattle and grain production, the applied science and processing in our food industry in order to defend ourselves against the ruinous competition from Europe in cheese products, condensed milk, liquors and edible oils, and the U.s. in canned goods; that we need cargo ships; that tourism should be an enormous source of revenue. But the capitalists insist that the workers remain nether the yoke. The State sits back with its artillery crossed and industrialization can wait forever.

Just as serious or even worse is the housing problem. In that location are two hundred thou huts and hovels in Republic of cuba; four hundred 1000 families in the countryside and in the cities live cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary requirements; two meg two hundred thousand of our urban population pay rents which absorb between one fifth and one third of their incomes; and two million 8 hundred grand of our rural and suburban population lack electricity. We have the aforementioned situation here: if the State proposes the lowering of rents, landlords threaten to freeze all construction; if the State does not interfere, construction goes on and so long every bit landlords get high rents; otherwise they would not lay a single brick even though the rest of the population had to alive totally exposed to the elements. The utilities monopoly is no better; they extend lines equally far as it is profitable and beyond that betoken they don't care if people take to live in darkness for the residual of their lives. The State sits back with its arms crossed and the people have neither homes nor electricity.

Our educational arrangement is perfectly uniform with everything I've just mentioned. Where the peasant doesn't ain the land, what need is at that place for agricultural schools? Where there is no manufacture, what need is in that location for technical or vocational schools? Everything follows the aforementioned absurd logic; if we don't take i matter we can't take the other. In whatsoever small European country at that place are more than 200 technological and vocational schools; in Cuba simply six such schools exist, and their graduates have no jobs for their skills. The niggling rural schoolhouses are attended past a mere one-half of the school age children – barefooted, half-naked and undernourished – and frequently the teacher must buy necessary school materials from his ain bacon. Is this the way to make a nation great?

[. . . ]Society is moved to compassion when it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one child, but it is indifferent to the mass murder of then many thousands of children who die every year from lack of facilities, disturbing with pain. Their innocent eyes, death already shining in them, seem to look into some vague infinity every bit if entreating forgiveness for human selfishness, as if request God to stay His wrath. And when the head of a family works just iv months a year, with what can he buy vesture and medicine for his children? They will grow up with rickets, with not a single adept tooth in their mouths by the fourth dimension they reach thirty; they will have heard 10 one thousand thousand speeches and volition finally die of misery and charade. Public hospitals, which are always full, accept only patients recommended by some powerful politician who, in return, demands the votes of the unfortunate one and his family so that Cuba may continue forever in the same or worse condition.

With this background, is it not understandable that from May to December over a million persons are jobless and that Cuba, with a population of 5 and a half million, has a greater number of unemployed than France or Italy with a population of forty meg each?

[…]

The nation's future, the solutions to its problems, cannot go on to depend on the selfish interests of a dozen big businessmen nor on the cold calculations of profits that x or twelve magnates draw up in their air-conditioned offices. The country cannot continue begging on its knees for miracles from a few golden calves, like the Biblical one destroyed by the prophet'south fury. Golden calves cannot perform miracles of any kind. The problems of the Democracy can exist solved but if we dedicate ourselves to fight for it with the same free energy, honesty and patriotism our liberators had when they founded information technology. Statesmen like Carlos Saladrigas, whose statesmanship consists of preserving the statu quo and mouthing phrases like 'absolute freedom of enterprise,' 'guarantees to investment majuscule' and 'law of supply and demand,' volition non solve these problems. Those ministers can chat away in a 5th Avenue mansion until non even the dust of the basic of those whose problems require immediate solution remains. In this present-mean solar day world, social bug are not solved past spontaneous generation.

A revolutionary authorities backed by the people and with the respect of the nation, after cleansing the dissimilar institutions of all venal and corrupt officials, would continue immediately to the state's industrialization, mobilizing all inactive uppercase, currently estimated at virtually 1.5 billion pesos, through the National Banking concern and the Agricultural and Industrial Development Bank, and submitting this mammoth task to experts and men of absolute competence totally removed from all political machines for report, management, planning and realization.

Afterwards settling the one hundred grand minor farmers every bit owners on the land that they previously rented, a revolutionary government would immediately keep to settle the country trouble. First, every bit set up forth in the Constitution, information technology would institute the maximum corporeality of land to exist held by each blazon of agricultural enterprise and would larn the excess acreage by expropriation, recovery of swampland, planting of large nurseries, and reserving of zones for reforestation. Secondly, it would distribute the remaining land among peasant families with priority given to the larger ones, and would promote agricultural cooperatives for communal use of expensive equipment, freezing plants and unified professional technical management of farming and cattle raising. Finally, it would provide resource, equipment, protection and useful guidance to the peasants.

A revolutionary government would solve the housing problem past cutting all rents in half, by providing tax exemptions on homes inhabited by the owners; by tripling taxes on rented homes; past vehement down hovels and replacing them with modern apartment buildings; and by financing housing all over the island on a scale heretofore unheard of, with the criterion that, but equally each rural family unit should possess its ain tract of land, each metropolis family should ain its own house or apartment. […]

With these three projects and reforms, the trouble of unemployment would automatically disappear and the task of improving public health and fighting against affliction would become much less hard.

Finally, a revolutionary government would undertake the integral reform of the educational system, bringing it into line with the projects merely mentioned with the idea of educating those generations which will have the privilege of living in a happier country.

[…] No instructor should earn less than 200 pesos, no secondary instructor should make less than 350 pesos, if they are to devote themselves exclusively to their high calling without suffering desire. What is more, all rural teachers should take free use of the various systems of transportation; and, at to the lowest degree once every v years, all teachers should relish a sabbatical go out of vi months with pay so they may attend special refresher courses at domicile or away to continue beside of the latest developments in their field. In this way, the curriculum and the teaching system can exist easily improved. Where will the coin be found for all this? When at that place is an cease to the embezzlement of government funds, when public officials stop taking graft from the big companies that owe taxes to the Country, when the enormous resources of the country are brought into total use, when we no longer buy tanks, bombers and guns for this land (which has no frontiers to defend and where these instruments of war, now beingness purchased, are used against the people), when there is more interest in educating the people than in killing them in that location volition be more than than enough money.

[…]

shame, told me of the scenes they had witnessed.

[…]

Since this trial may, as you said, be the almost of import trial since we achieved our national sovereignty, what I say here will perhaps be lost in the silence which the dictatorship has tried to impose on me, merely posterity will often turn its eyes to what you do here. Recollect that today y'all are judging an accused human, but that y'all yourselves will exist judged not in one case, simply many times, as often as these days are submitted to scrutiny in the futurity. What I say hither will be so repeated many times, non because information technology comes from my lips, simply because the trouble of justice is eternal and the people have a deep sense of justice in a higher place and across the hairsplitting of jurisprudence. The people wield elementary only implacable logic, in disharmonize with all that is absurd and contradictory. Furthermore, if at that place is in this world a people that utterly abhors favoritism and inequality, it is the Cuban people. To them, justice is symbolized by a maiden with a scale and a sword in her easily. Should she cower before one grouping and furiously wield that sword against another grouping, then to the people of Republic of cuba the maiden of justice will seem nothing more than than a prostitute brandishing a dagger. My logic is the simple logic of the people.

Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of Police force. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom. […]

Poor state! One morning the citizens woke up dismayed; under the cover of dark, while the people slept, the ghost of the past had conspired and has seized the denizens past its easily, its feet, and its neck. That grip, those claws were familiar: those jaws, those death-dealing scythes, those boots. No; it was no nightmare; it was a sad and terrible reality: a homo named Fulgencio Batista had just perpetrated the appalling crime that no one had expected.

Then a humble citizen of that people, a citizen who wished to believe in the laws of the Republic, in the integrity of its judges, whom he had seen vent their fury against the underprivileged, searched through a Social Defense Lawmaking to see what punishment guild prescribed for the author of such a coup, and he discovered the following:

'Whosoever shall perpetrate any deed destined through violent means directly to modify in whole or in part the Constitution of the Country or the grade of the established authorities shall incur a sentence of vi to x years imprisonment.

'A judgement of three to ten years imprisonment will be imposed on the author of an human activity directed to promote an armed uprising confronting the Constitutional Powers of the State. The sentence increases from 5 to 20 years if the insurrection is carried out.

'Whosoever shall perpetrate an human activity with the specific purpose of preventing, in whole or in role, even temporarily, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the President, or the Supreme Courtroom from exercising their ramble functions will incur a sentence of from six to ten years imprisonment.

'Whosoever shall try to impede or tamper with the normal course of full general elections, will incur a sentence of from four to viii years imprisonment.

'Whosoever shall innovate, publish, propagate or try to enforce in Cuba instructions, orders or decrees that tend … to promote the unobservance of laws in force, will incur a sentence of from 2 to six years imprisonment.

'Whosoever shall assume command of troops, posts, fortresses, military camps, towns, warships, or military shipping, without the potency to do and so, or without limited government orders, will incur a judgement of from five to ten years imprisonment.

'A similar sentence will be passed upon anyone who usurps the exercise of a function held by the Constitution as properly belonging to the powers of State.'

Without telling anyone, Code in one hand and a deposition in the other, that citizen went to the erstwhile city building, that old building which housed the Court competent and under obligation to bring cause against and punish those responsible for this act. He presented a writ denouncing the crimes and request that Fulgencio Batista and his seventeen accomplices be sentenced to 108 years in prison as decreed by the Social Defense Lawmaking; because also aggravating circumstances of secondary crime treachery, and acting under cover of night.

Days and months passed. What a disappointment! The accused remained unmolested: he strode up and down the country similar a great lord and was chosen Honorable Sir and General: he removed and replaced judges at volition. The very solar day the Courts opened, the criminal occupied the seat of honour in the midst of our baronial and venerable patriarchs of justice.

Over again the days and the months rolled past, the people wearied of mockery and abuses. There is a limit to tolerance! The struggle began against this man who was disregarding the police, who had usurped power by the use of violence against the will of the people, who was guilty of aggression against the established club, had tortured, murdered, imprisoned and prosecuted those who had taken up the struggle to defend the law and to restore freedom to the people.

Honorable Judges: I am that apprehensive citizen who 1 day demanded in vain that the Courts punish the power-hungry men who had violated the constabulary and torn our institutions to shreds. Now that information technology is I who am accused for attempting to overthrow this illegal regime and to restore the legitimate Constitution of the Democracy, I am held incommunicado for 76 days and denied the right to speak to anyone, fifty-fifty to my son; between two heavy auto guns I am led through the city. I am transferred to this hospital to exist tried secretly with the greatest severity; and the Prosecutor with the Code in his hand solemnly demands that I be sentenced to 26 years in prison.

You will answer that on the former occasion the Courts failed to human activity because force prevented them from doing so. Well and then, confess, this fourth dimension force will compel you to condemn me. The first time y'all were unable to punish the guilty; now you will be compelled to punish the innocent. The maiden of justice twice raped.

[…]

Lacking even the most elementary revolutionary content, Batista's authorities represents in every respect a xx year regression for Cuba. Batista's regime has exacted a high cost from all of us, but primarily from the humble classes that are suffering hunger and misery. Meanwhile the dictatorship has laid waste matter the nation with commotion, ineptitude and ache, and now engages in the most loathsome forms of ruthless politics, concocting formula after formula to perpetuate itself in power, fifty-fifty if over a stack of corpses and a sea of blood.

Batista'southward government has not set in motion a single nationwide program of betterment for the people. Batista delivered himself into the hands of the swell financial interests. Little else could exist expected from a man of his mentality – utterly devoid as he is of ideals and of principles, and utterly lacking the faith, conviction and support of the masses. His government merely brought with it a change of hands and a redistribution of the loot among a new group of friends, relatives, accomplices and parasitic hangers-on that constitute the political retinue of the Dictator. What great shame the people accept been forced to endure so that a minor grouping of egoists, altogether indifferent to the needs of their homeland, may observe in public life an easy and comfortable modus vivendi.

[…]

The right to insubordinate, established in Article 40 of the Constitution, is still valid. Was it established to function while the Republic was enjoying normal conditions? No. This provision is to the Constitution what a lifeboat is to a send at body of water. The lifeboat is only launched when enemies laying await along its class have torpedoed the send. With our Constitution betrayed and the people deprived of all their prerogatives, at that place was but ane way open: one correct which no power may abolish. The right to resist oppression and injustice.

The right of rebellion against tyranny, Honorable Judges, has been recognized from the virtually ancient times to the nowadays twenty-four hour period past men of all creeds, ideas and doctrines.

[. . .]

I believe I accept sufficiently justified my point of view. I take called forth more reasons than the Honorable Prosecutor called forth to ask that I be condemned to 26 years in prison house. All these reasons back up men who struggle for the freedom and happiness of the people. None support those who oppress the people, revile them, and rob them heartlessly. […] How can anyone consider legally valid the high treason of a Court whose duty was to defend the Constitution? With what right do the Courts transport to prison citizens who take tried to redeem their state past giving their own blood, their own lives? All this is monstrous to the eyes of the nation and to the principles of truthful justice!

[…]

I come to the close of my defense force plea but I will not finish it as lawyers usually exercise, asking that the accused be freed. I cannot ask freedom for myself while my comrades are already suffering in the ignominious prison of the Isle of Pines. Send me in that location to join them and to share their fate. Information technology is understandable that honest men should be dead or in prison in a Republic where the President is a criminal and a thief.

I know that imprisonment will exist harder for me than it has always been for anyone, filled with cowardly threats and hideous cruelty. But I do not fear prison house, as I exercise not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of lxx of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

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Source: https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-4-cuba/primary-documents-w-accompanying-discussion-questions/document-no-10-history-will-absolve-me-by-fidel-castro-ruiz/

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