PRAGOTI

Excerpt from Fidel Castro's speech at Havana's May Day celebrations on May 2, 1961 - Less than two weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Two weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Fidel Castro, addressed the working people of Cuba after parades that lasted more than fourteen hours on May 1, 1961.  To thuderous applause, Fidel said:

Those who paraded today were the working people who will never resign themselves to work for the parasite. The motherland of today where we have won the right to direct our destiny, where we have learned to decide our destiny, a motherland which will be now and forever-as Marti wanted it-for the well-being of everyone and not a motherland for few!

What kind of morality and what reason and what right do they have to make a Negro die to defend the monopolies, the factories, and the mines of the dominating classes? What right have they to send the Puerto Rican of Latin blood, of Latin tradition, to the battlefields to defend the policy of large capitalists and monopolies? This concept of motherland and this danger to their security to which they refer is the danger of the monopolies. You can understand what concept they have of morality, law, and rights, to send the Negroes of the South and the Puerto Ricans to the battlefields to fight for them. This is their concept of motherland only when the interests of the privileged classes are liquidated, and when a nation with its wealth becomes a nation for everyone, the wealth for everyone, and opportunity and happiness for everybody.

Taking on the 'fascist language of force' of Kennedy which he equated to Hitler and Mussolini, Fidel told the people:

The U.S. government says that a socialist regime here threatens U.S. security. But what threatens the security of the North American people is the aggressive policy of the warmongers of the United States. What threatens the security of the North American family and people is the violence, that aggressive policy, that policy that ignores the sovereignty and the rights of other peoples. The one who is threatening the security of the United States is Kennedy, with that aggressive policy. That aggressive policy can give rise to a world war; and that world war can cost the lives of tens of millions of North Americans. Therefore, the one who threatens the security of the United States is not the Cuban Revolutionary Government but the aggressor and aggressive government of the United States.

We do not endanger the security of a single North American. We do not endanger the life or security of a single North American family. We, making cooperatives, agrarian reform, people's ranches, houses, schools, literacy campaigns, and sending thousands and thousands of teachers to the interior, building hospitals, sending doctors, giving scholarships, building factories, increasing the productive capacity of our country, creating public beaches, converting fortresses into schools, and give the people the right to a better future-we do not endanger a single U.S. family or a single U.S. citizen.

The full excerpt of the speech can be read here.