The Declaration of Havana

by Fidel Castro

Close to the monument and to the memory of José Martí in Cuba, free territory of America, the people, in the full exercise of the inalienable powers that proceed from the true exercise of the sovereignty expressed in the direct, universal and public suffrage, has constituted itself into a National General Assembly.

Acting on its own behalf and echoing the true sentiments of the people of our America, the National General Assembly of the People of Cuba:

1. Condemns in all its terms the so-called "Declaration of San José," a document dictated by North American imperialism that is detrimental to the national self-determination, the sovereignty and the dignity of the sister nations of the Continent.

2. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba energetically condemns the overt and criminal intervention exerted by North American imperialism for more than a century over all the nations of Latin America, which have seen their lands invaded more than once in Mexico, Nicaragua, Haiti, Santo Domingo and Cuba; have lost, through the voracity of Yankee imperialism, huge and rich areas, whole countries, such as Puerto Rico, which has been converted into an occupied territory; and have suffered, moreover, the outrageous treatment dealt by the Marines to our wives and daughters, as well as to the most exalted symbols of our history, such as the statue of Jose Marti.

This intervention, based upon military superiority, inequitable treaties and the miserable submission of treacherous rulers throughout one hundred years has converted our America - the America that Bolivar, Hidalgo, Juarez, San Martin, O'Higgens, Sucre and Marti wanted free - into an area of exploitation, the backyard of the political and financial Yankee empire, a reserve of votes for the international organization in which the Latin America countries have figured only as the herds driven by the "restless and brutal North that despises us."

The National General Assembly of the People declares that the acceptance by the governments that officially represent the countries of Latin America of that continued and historically irrefutable intervention betrays the ideals of independence of its peoples, negates tits sovereignty and prevents true solidarity among our nations, all of which obliges this assembly to repudiate it in the name of the people of Cuba with a voice that echoes the hope and determination of the Latin American people and liberating accent of immortal patriots of our America.

3. The National General Assembly of the People of Cuba rejects likewise the intention of preserving the Monroe Doctrine, used until now , as forseen [sic] by Jose Marti, "to extend the dominance in America" of the voracious imperialists, to better inject the poison also denounced in his time by Jose Marti, "the poison of the loans, the canals, the railroads..." Therefore, in the presents of the hypocritical Pan-Americanism which is only the dominance of Yankee monopolies over the interests of people and Yankee manipulation of governments prostrated before Washington, the Assembly of the People of Cuba proclaims the liberating Latin-Americanism that throbs in Marti and Benito Juarez. And, upon exteniding its friendship to the North American people - a country where Negroes are lynched, intellectuals are persecuted and workers are foreced to accept the leadership of gangsters - reaffirms its will to march "with all the worlds and not with just a part of it."

4. The National General Assembly of the People declares that the help spontaneously offered by the Soviet Union to Cuba in the event our country is attacked by the military forces of the imperialists could nver be considere as an act of intrusion, but that it constitutes an evident act o solidarity, and that such help, ofereed to Cuba in the face of an imminent attack by the Petagon, honors the Government of the Soviet Union that offered it, as much as the cowardly and criminal aggressions against Cuba dishonor the Government of the United States.

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