Cuba Will Not Bend, We Live and Work for its Present and Future

By Ulises Guilarte De Nacimiento on May 1, 2022

Ulises Guilarte De Nacimiento

Ulises Guilarte De Nacimiento
photo: Yaimi Ravelo

Speech by Ulises Guilarte de Nacimiento, general secretary of the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC), at the José Martí Revolution Square in Havana.

Comrade Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution:

Comrade Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and president of the Republic:

Comrades of our internationalist friends accompanying us:

Dear workers:

In this historic Revolution Square, scene of so many patriotic struggles, and throughout the country, we celebrate today the International Workers’ Day in a Cuba that lives and works from creative resistance, advancing in the construction of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable nation.

The international context in which we construct this event of the proletariat is complex and challenging. Hostility is growing and the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on us by the Government of the United States, the main obstacle to our development programs, is intensifying to the extreme, together with a pandemic that maintains negative impacts in the economic, social and labor fields with the loss of millions of lives, and the precariousness of lost jobs and the absence of social benefits.

All this influences the shortage of goods in the retail trade and the promotion of inflation, generating speculative prices with the consequent impact on the purchasing power of wages and pensions, a situation that with double standards and perverse media campaigns is used by Yankee imperialism to articulate from the social networks a matrix of opinion aimed at fracturing the unity of our people around their Revolution and its leaders.

Faced with this panorama, Cuba does not stop. It is implementing policies to strengthen its economic industries and primary sectors of its productive base, the integral transformation of its neighborhoods and the reduction of people in situations of vulnerability. At the same time, the popular consultation on the new Family Code is in the conclusive phase to submit it to popular referendum, and progress is being made in the actions of the Program for the Advancement of Women and Attention to Children and Youth.

Workers:

Extraordinary has been the effort in these years of confronting the COVID-19 pandemic. We have a country that has developed five vaccine candidates, three of which have been converted into vaccines, which has allowed us to achieve protection rates for our population of over 90% fully vaccinated. This is the result of the high professional preparation and humanistic sense of our scientists, health personnel and the Cuban biopharmaceutical industry.

Our gratitude and eternal recognition for having saved our country. To them a strong applause.

We welcome the presence of friends representing various trade union organizations and social movements of the world. Their presence here today is another proof that Cuba is not alone, now that imperialism intends to exclude us once again from the Summit of the Americas. Our America has long since changed. It belongs to all, without exceptions, without exclusions.

With you we will march today flying the flags of socialism, friendship and solidarity with the workers who in other latitudes suffer the impact of neoliberal policies and brutal repression in the face of their claims to transform the unjust and unequal prevailing international economic order.

Compatriots:

This May Day commemoration day, with the firm, compact, enthusiastic and colorful step of millions of Cubans, will once again become a forceful and unequivocal demonstration of the unity in support and the majority commitment of the people to the social project that we ourselves have decided to build.

We will not give up. Cuba lives and works for its present and its future. We will defend our socialism as we did 61 years ago on the sands of Playa Giron. For our heroes and martyrs, for Fidel and Raúl, for continuity, for the younger generations, for the Homeland, we will go all out.

Long live International Workers’ Day!

To victory always!

Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English

http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2022/05/01/cuba-no-se-doblegara-vive-y-trabaja-por-su-presente-y-futuro/