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Original article: «Me limito a decir la verdad»: Fidel sigue respondiendo a la humanidad

By Matías Bosch Carcuro

On September 26, 1960, when Fidel Castro delivered his inaugural speech at the United Nations, the United States, under the Eisenhower administration, had already backed armed counter-revolution and terrorist attacks. Additionally, it had prohibited exports to Cuba and eliminated its sugar quota in international trade.

The blockade, siege, and aggression that have persisted for 66 years had begun. The pressure on Fidel was so intense that he ended up staying at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, welcomed by Malcolm X, the African-American community, Puerto Rican exiles, and many from the working class.

In his address, Fidel outlined revolutionary measures that seemed to provoke such hostility from the American power: agrarian reform to distribute land “in accordance with the needs of Cuban development,” lowering electricity rates, and cutting rental prices by 50%.

These fundamental achievements would be a dream for any average citizen today, even in the United States.

Fidel’s message to the Assembly remains remarkably relevant. The voice of Cuba needed to be heard by the world while the American government sought to silence it, labeling it as an enemy of civilization, similar to the rhetoric used today by Marco Rubio in his “reports” and the dictates of the “Monroe Doctrine”.

Fidel stated: “I limit myself to speaking the truth. It was also time for us to have the opportunity to speak. They have been talking about us for many days, the newspapers have been discussing us, while we remained silent. We cannot defend ourselves against the attacks here, in this country. This is our opportunity to tell the truth, and we will not stop doing so.”

What a strange notion it is, then and now, to bring democracy and success to nations by subjecting or sabotaging them? Are these not the same ones who justified intervening, sanctioning, and boycotting countries in the name of freedom and economic prosperity?

During that assembly, Fidel responded in a way that he could still do today: “There is proof that revolutions do not ruin countries, and that proof has just been given by the government of the United States. They have tried many things, but among those things, they have shown that revolutions do not ruin countries and that imperialist governments are indeed capable of trying to ruin countries!”

“Cuba was not ruined; it had to be ruined. Cuba needed new markets for its products (…) We wanted our exports to increase. That is what all countries want; that should be a universal law (…) Only selfish interest can oppose the universal interest of trade exchange, which is one of humanity’s oldest aspirations and needs.”

Today, Cuba faces over six decades of continuation, deepening, and intensification of those initial measures denounced by Fidel. They have shifted from a unilateral blockade based on executive orders to laws that harm both citizens and businesses in the United States and worldwide.

Currently, they consist of policies resembling a true global regime, which practice what International Law defines as collective punishment and genocide.

For Cuba, these are not new occurrences. It is a re-edition, 130 years later, of the infamous reconcentrations ordered by Valeriano Weyler, who became the Spanish Captain General in Cuba in early 1896.

Weyler chose as his method to defeat the Liberation Army a decree issued on October 21 of that year, with provisions eerily similar to the present:

“1. All inhabitants of rural areas or outside the lines of fortified cities will be concentrated within the cities occupied by the troops within eight days. Anyone who disobeys this order or is found outside the prescribed areas will be considered a rebel and judged as such.

2. It is absolutely forbidden, without permission from the military authority of the point of departure, to take food products out of the cities and transport them to others by land or sea. Violators of these rules will be judged and convicted as collaborators of the rebels.

3. Owners of livestock are ordered to drive them into the cities or their surroundings, where they can receive appropriate protection.”

Fidel would be born 30 years after these atrocities, which would also include the Coup d’État and the tyranny of Batista, the neocolonial character of a republic lacking credentials, and the constant plundering by North American monopolistic capital of Cuba’s wealth and labor.

It is estimated that 500,000 Cubans were forcibly removed by Weyler from their homes and separated from their lands and livestock, to be taken to cities where they would encounter deplorable conditions. Academic consensus indicates that these experiences, along with those in South Africa and the Philippines, were the dawn of concentration camps.

Academic Mariano Nagy, from the University of Buenos Aires, noted that from the first Ten Years’ War for independence, Cuba was where the empire (then Spanish) incorporated strategies such as “scorched earth, destruction of livelihoods and production means, burning huts and banana plantations (…)”

“They applied the maximum penalty as punishment, deported rebel leaders, imposed curfews, compiled lists of guerrilla families, forced them to carry ID cards labeling them as insurgents, built trenches and fortification systems, established a wide reorganization and creation of towns based on military detachments or armed forces grouped for that purpose, and, of course, implemented the policy of reconcentrating large populations. In those places, due to living conditions, diseases broke out and thousands had to be rationed.”

Evidently, the entire Cuban struggle for social and national freedom faced collective punishment and genocide as plausible decisions.

That’s why, when Fidel spoke at the United Nations that September of 1960, he was acutely aware of Cuba’s struggles against colonialism and the “Spanish yoke”—apologizing to the Spanish representative in the hall—and the looting and extermination practices that characterize today’s so-called “imperialist wars”.

In this regard, his famous words were etched in history when he asserted: “To give more thought to the matter (…) Wars, since the dawn of humanity, have fundamentally arisen for one reason: the desire of some to strip others of their wealth. The philosophy of dispossession must disappear, and the philosophy of war will have disappeared! May colonies disappear, may the exploitation of countries by monopolies vanish, and then humanity will have reached a true stage of progress!”

In the city where Fidel spoke, Cuba had a piece of its national history. There, Martí spent his last fifteen years of existence fighting for freedom, founding the Cuban Revolutionary Party and the newspaper Patria in 1892.

Then, as Martí predicted in his letter to his friend Manuel Mercado in 1895, the independentist achievement was compromised from the United States, which led Tomás Estrada Palma to the presidency to dissolve the party, undermine Martí’s efforts, and destroy the patriotic feat.

The fateful Platt Amendment established in 1902, in the republic that Marco Rubio celebrated on May 20, sealed Cuba’s fate to be directed and occupied whenever deemed appropriate.

From his platform then, Fidel reminds us of what today embodies the alliance between Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Netanyahu, and the far-right groups in Cuba and internationally, pushing the limits of the “philosophy of dispossession.”

It is the fusion of colonial power, predatory transnational oligarchies, the radicalization of class struggle in favor of increasingly wealthy and concentrated elites, and those who have, for all time, served interventionist interests in Cuba and Latin America.

It seemed as if Fidel was reading Rubio’s “report” on Cuba as the “capital of world communism” when he said: “We know, of course, what they will say today and tomorrow and always about us to the American people to deceive them. But it doesn’t matter. We fulfill our duty by expressing these sentiments in this historic Assembly. We proclaim the right of peoples to their integrity, the right of peoples to their nationality, and they conspire against nationalism, those who know that nationalism means a desire to reclaim what is theirs, their wealth, their natural resources.”

As in his first speech at the UN, a hundred years after his birth, amid the imperialist saga that intersects with Weyler’s reconcentrations, Cuba’s siege, and the destruction of Palestine, Fidel continues to respond.

While the philosophy of dispossession and war expands across Latin America and the world, Fidel continues to chart a path of unwavering truth-telling, emphasizing our rights, integrity, and wealth, asserting that it is selfish interest and colonialism that ruin nations, not revolutions.

After all, in the same New York City where Martí lived and where Fidel was embraced by the people of Harlem, limiting himself “to speak the truth”, it is evident that still, in 2026, it remains revolutionary to elevate wages, democratize land and housing, reduce rates, and cut rents.

Fidel continues to remind us that changing reality is still possible and necessary, and “humanity will have reached a true stage of progress.”

Matías Bosch Carcuro

La entrada Fidel Castro’s Enduring Legacy: A Call to Truth and Justice Amidst Historical Aggression se publicó primero en El Ciudadano.