The following speech was made on behalf of the Communist Party of Cuba by the party’s head of international relations Emilio Lozada Garcia at the 23rd International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Turkey on 20 October 2023.
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Dear Kemal Okuyan, general secretary of the Communist Party of Türkiye,
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters:
I convey to you the warmest greetings on behalf of the Communist Party of Cuba and the most sincere wishes that this 23rd International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties will be a success in terms of articulation, coordination and effective work of our parties.
A year has passed since the last meeting in Havana, and the situation faced by the great majorities that we represent and defend has not improved. On the contrary, it is getting worse and worse.
The outlook is discouraging. The world is facing a multidimensional crisis. The cyclical imbalances in trade and finance, the abusive unequal exchange, the scientific and technological gap, the effects of climate change and the depletion and progressive destruction of natural resources continue to claim the same victims.
The unjust and unsustainable international economic order perpetuates conditions of privilege for the developed countries and relegates the majority of humanity to conditions of underdevelopment.
Fascism, xenophobia, hate speech, exclusion, violence and wars are the response of the powerful to alleviate this global and multidimensional crisis that capitalist greed has provoked.
The United States, with a society in deep crisis, accentuated by the social impact of the pandemic, and with a dangerous rise of xenophobic, racist and fascist ideas, is trying to halt the decline of its global hegemony.
It continues to choose threats and war adventurism as its instruments. The danger stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Never before has world peace been so threatened.
Today in the middle east, the escalation of violence of the genocidal Israeli regime against the Palestinian people seems out of control.
We reiterate our firm rejection of the indiscriminate bombardment of the population in Gaza, the destruction of homes, hospitals and civilian infrastructure, as well as the deprivation of water, electricity, fuel and food services to the population of that territory, all of which constitutes a grave violation of international humanitarian law.
The impunity with which the Israeli regime acts can only be explained by its full reliance on the support of the USA government and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.
We denounce the historical complicity of the United States with the government of Israel, permanently obstructing the action of the United Nations security council and undermining peace and stability in the middle east.
The Communist Party of Cuba reiterates its firm position of support for a comprehensive, just and lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, based on the creation of two states that would allow the Palestinian people to exercise their right to self-determination and to have an independent and sovereign state within the pre-1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
In this regard, we call on this international meeting of communist and workers’ parties to steadily increase solidarity with Palestine until this brotherly people achieves full self-determination. Palestinian brothers and sisters, we are with you in these difficult times. Palestine, free now!
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters all:
The region of Latin America and the Caribbean is going through a moment of important political transformations, which constitute a clear opportunity to advance in an emancipatory, Latin-Americanist and unitary direction, in the face of the renewed effort of US imperialism, seconded by the Latin-American fascist oligarchy, to deepen the Monroe doctrine, division, dependence and domination.
Cuba today faces a complex economic situation, mainly due to the unprecedented tightening of the economic, commercial and financial blockade that the United States has been applying to my country for almost 65 years, and which constitutes the main obstacle to our development.
The previous government of the United States, headed by the fascist Donald Trump, applied 243 measures, many of them executed in an opportunistic and criminal manner during the Covid-19 pandemic, to economically asphyxiate Cuba and erase the example that our small country represents for the most just causes of our continent and of humanity in general.
The current administration of President Joe Biden, following this same strategy, has kept each of these measures intact.
Particularly cruel and unjust has been the inclusion of Cuba on the spurious list of ‘countries sponsoring terrorism’, which has an intimidating and dissuasive purpose from a banking and financial point of view.
In spite of all this, Cuba continues to resist in a creative way, as our first secretary of the central committee of our party, Comrade Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, has guided us, betting on development, for which there is a well-defined economic and social strategy.
Since its eighth congress, our Communist party has defined as priorities the economic battle, the struggle for peace and unity, and ideological firmness.
The permanent task of our party organisation remains unity. The party has the mission to maintain unity and social consensus, all of which has allowed us to confront the imperialist intention to divide and defeat us.
Thanks to the perseverance of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, and to the profoundly Martí-an basis of the revolution, we Cubans have clearly understood that unity is our strategic weapon.
As we have done within our country, we aspire to establish a scenario of collective action that consolidates the unity of the international communist and workers’ movement and allows us to contribute effectively to the struggle for a world of peace and social justice, with socialism on the horizon, without losing sight of the historical contexts and the particularities of each of our countries.
Let us respect the different forms of organisation for the class struggle that each country and each party has defined, according to its concrete reality.
Let us learn from the experiences of histories of resistance. Let us bet on consensus, articulation and collective construction.
We salute and support the experiences in the construction of socialism of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam, as well as the Lao People’s Revolutionary party and the Workers’ Party of Korea.
The successful experiences of the Communist parties of China and Vietnam in the construction of socialism are an important reference for all our workers’ and communist organisations.
We support the One China principle and reiterate our support for the initiatives of the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Xi Jinping, for global development, security and civilisation.
We express our strongest solidarity with the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and especially with the Bolivarian revolution, led by the civil-military union headed by President Nicolás Maduro Moros.
We congratulate the brotherly Venezuelan government for the successful conduct of the dialogue that culminated in the signing of agreements and the partial and limited lifting of coercive measures applied by the government of the United States.
We reiterate our support for the progressive forces that today lead governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, especially in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia, who are also facing attacks by the ruthless fascists of extreme right-wing movements in their countries, with the complicity of the United States.
The Communist Party of Cuba reiterates its firm opposition to the western policy of sanctions against the Russian Federation and to the expansion of Nato towards the borders of this country, which has been the main cause of the war being waged today on the European continent.
We support the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in its fight against fascism. This meeting should adopt a resolution on this important issue.
We reject unilateral coercive measures imposed on developing countries, whose peoples suffer the negative impact of these measures. We support the right to self-determination of the Saharawi people. We recognise and demand the right of all peoples in the struggle to defend and build an inclusive, emancipatory and socially just future.
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters all:
Division and sectarianism will always favour the interests of the forces representing international finance capital, counter-revolution, imperialism and more recently fascism, which is gaining unusual strength in many of our societies, especially in Europe and Latin America.
Without adequately articulating the work of the communist forces within the social, revolutionary and popular movements that oppose imperialist domination, we will not be able to face the colossal challenges that capitalism imposes today. We must promote actions that include diverse sectors of society such as workers, students, youth, peasants, women and excluded minorities, increasingly diverse in their composition and heterogeneous in their needs and demands. Only with the effort and work of all, can we achieve true revolutionary transformation and victory.
The founding objectives of the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties have been aimed at generating a space for reflection, exchange and collaboration; for the agreement of common positions and actions; and for international solidarity. To achieve this, we must develop relations of trust and collaboration, respecting differences and strengthening what unites us.
For this, you can always count on the Communist Party of Cuba.
