Díaz-Canel: For the year we have overcome and for the one we are preparing to overcome: Congratulations to Cuba!
Speech by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the Eighth Session of the Ninth Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the Havana Convention Center, on December 22, 2021, “Year 63 of the Revolution”.

Author: Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúde | informacion@granmai.cu
january 4, 2022 13:01:18

Photo: Juvenal Balán
Speech by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the Eighth Session of the Ninth Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, at the Havana Convention Center, on December 22, 2021, “Year 63 of the Revolution”.


(Shorthand Versions – Presidency of the Republic)

Dear Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution;

Commanders of the Revolution and of the Rebel Army who are with us;

Dear comrade Esteban Lazo, President of the National Assembly of People’s Power;

Representatives, teachers who are listening to us:

We conclude this Legislature on a day of extraordinary significance for Cuba, December 22, Educator’s Day and the 60th anniversary of the Literacy Campaign, the first step on the road to cultural emancipation that opened the doors of knowledge for all, placing our small Third World nation at the forefront of education and science in some subjects.
Happy day, teachers of Cuba, education workers at all levels! I ask for a round of applause for all those who became teachers, which is to become creators (Applause).
The richness and intensity of the analyses we have participated in during these days and the accountability reports allow me to not address some issues at the end of a period of work that cannot be summarized in words alone.

After several online sessions, we meet in person again. This act, so simple and common two years ago, is the equivalent to a victory today; a victory of effort, discipline, consecration, human talent and collective action; a victory of Science, Health, integration and the Cuban Socialist State. And one defeat for those who speak of Cuba as a failed State.
A failed State cannot withstand 62 years of a blockade intensified in the midst of a pandemic; neither can a dictatorship withstand such blows. We categorically reject those terms with which they try to label a Revolution which, in successive acts of heroic creation, has become an example of real dissidence to the global hegemony imposed by the dictatorship of capital.

The use of algorithms in social network to build and accentuate matrixes of opinion in diverse audiences, with emphasis on young people as protagonists of social change; the deployment of manipulation, disinformation and fake news campaigns developed by the large media groups seek to demonize the Cuban political system by presenting it as a dictatorial, arbitrary, tyrannical and despotic regime that operates outside of the Constitution and the laws and in opposition to the liberal democracy they exhibit as the democratic ideal.

With political and ideological intention, they try to hide the transcendence in all areas of society of the approval in popular referendum of the Constitution of the Republic of 2019, supreme law that contains the values, principles and rules of major relevance.

It establishes that “Cuba is a socialist State of law and social justice; it is democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with all and for the good of all as a unitary and indivisible republic, founded on work, dignity, humanism and the ethics of its citizens for the enjoyment of liberty, equity, equality, solidarity, wellbeing and individual and collective prosperity.” Returning to this constitutional precept again and again allows us to understand the essence of the Cuban State.
The socialist state of law and social justice comprises constitutional supremacy, socialist legality, control of constitutionality, comprehensive protection of the rights enshrined in the Constitution, treaties and laws, fulfillment of duties, responsibility and co-responsibility, due transparency, environmental sustainability and, above all, the realization of popular sovereignty, from which all its power derives.
In Cuba, the real one – not the one constructed with labels, epithets and appellatives -, we are all obliged to comply with the Constitution.
Socialist democracy is expressed and realized through the participation of citizens in the formation, exercise and control of state power and the permanent linkage of all actors in the political system with the people.
The obligation to respect, attend to and solve their demands and submit to their control at all times, in the forms established constitutionally and legally, is only possible and viable in socialism.
What kind of democracy are those who privilege one group of rights to the detriment of others talking about? What morals do they use to describe this country as undemocratic? Why do they insist on ostracizing us? Is it perhaps because we do not submit to the imperial power?

The political model they are trying to standardize, the one based on neoliberalism they want to impose on Cuba, is incapable of guaranteeing all rights for all people; it promotes inequality, selfishness, poverty, hatred, insecurity, discrimination, violence, arbitrariness, injustice and the unlimited power of the economic elites.

The Cuba of the 21st century, which they denigrate and block, is the Cuba that makes progress in the improvement of its legal system, fulfilling the constitutional mandates and reaffirming the political will to strictly comply with the socialist legality. It is the one that advances in the effective judicial protection, which guarantees from the access to the courts of justice to the execution of judicial resolutions.

We are called a tyranny or a dictatorship, but Cuba is where a bill of the magnitude and scope of the Family Code is being submitted to popular consultation and referendum for approval, with binding force, an inclusive bill that recognizes the plurality of families and protects the rights of everyone in the family environment, a code possible in democracy and that strengthens our will to promote, recognize and protect human rights and diversity.
This country, which they try to break by using ways and methods contrary to International Law, is the one that creates, loves and founds; Cuba travelled to various parts of the world to bring the light of teaching and the balm of health when it was most needed, offering its friendship and solidarity because it knows, and proves it every day, that “only love begets wonder”.
This government, which is labeled as incapable, has been capable of creating and producing three vaccines and two vaccine candidates. We are one of the most advanced countries in the process of vaccinating its population and the first to begin immunizing children and adolescents from 2 to 18 years of age. In Cuba, the right to life, as the right that allows the exercise of the rest of the rights, is a priority, and public health is not a commodity, it is a right of all and a responsibility of the State.
This imperfect island, always dissatisfied with what has been done because it is still little for what we can achieve, is working every day to deepen its democracy and the mechanisms and ways to ensure, with popular participation, that we get to enshrine in practice Marti’s promise to conquer “all justice”.

Comrades:

The Cuban economy has gone through an exceptional period, marked by the tightening of the blockade and the impact of the pandemic, with direct consequences on the country’s foreign exchange income, which has had an impact on a marked deficit of offers, exacerbating the inflation that so much affects and hinders any progress.
But we do not stand idly by and watch the imponderables of the circumstances or the attacks of the enemy, which becomes more hostile the more we resist the siege. This has also been a year of profound transformations, with the approval of measures for the strengthening of the socialist state enterprise; the increase of agricultural productions; the improvement of the economic actors with the constitution of micro, small and medium enterprises; the regulation of non-agricultural cooperatives and the expansion of self-employment; the creation of the Government Management System based on science and innovation; as well as the work in the neighborhoods and the attention to people and communities in vulnerable situations.
It is estimated that the country’s economic activity will gradually begin to recover by the end of this year.
It is now urgent to solve the problems in the state-owned enterprises with losses; to correct the deviations of the partial dollarization, which are not in accordance with its design, and to concentrate the main effort in increasing the supply of goods and services to the population, mainly food and medicines.

The Plan for the Economy and the State Budget for 2022 define objectives that are of vital importance to face the problems we are going through, as well as to continue advancing in the creation of capacities and institutional environments that promote the development of the country in the medium and long term.

Furthermore, the distortions that undermine relations between state entities and the non-state sector must be corrected.

By continuing to improve domestic trade, combining different forms of ownership and management, progress must be made in the decentralization of competencies to the municipalities, as well as in the strengthening of local productive systems, productive chains and territorial development.

In the State Budget, it is necessary to ensure the expected revenues and guarantee the control of expenditures at all budgetary levels and promote savings.

During the course of the year, there is an issue that has been present in all the debates, inside and outside this plenary, inside the country and abroad: inflation.

As it has been explained in these days and we must reiterate: this is not a problem exclusive to Cuba, it is a world trend. The inflation we are suffering is the result of an existing imbalance between production and demand, which we have reached for various reasons, the pandemic combined with the effects of the tightening of the blockade and its consequences for the economy, are some of them. This imbalance has caused a continuous rise in the prices of most products and services, and a loss of the value of money to be able to acquire them.

However, we have managed to keep the prices of electricity, water, fuel, the family basket, medicines, investments in Health and Education, just to mention a few examples, stable for several months; something that does not happen in other parts of the world after the passage of COVID-19, where neoliberal recipes and shock therapies that result in the reduction of social spending are applied.

The design and implementation of the Restructuring Task is not the only cause of the high levels of inflation. There is a supply deficit because we do not produce enough; because freight prices and import operations costs have increased; because the blockade and COVID-19 have not allowed us to have sufficient financial resources to allocate to other productive fronts.

One of the main objectives is to advance in the recovery of the role of the Cuban peso as the center of the financial system within the limits set by the availability of resources, and in the rationality of prices, prioritizing those that are more sensitive for the population. In this direction, we are adopting measures that we will be closely evaluating.
The discussions on these issues and the management of local budgets have brought the municipality back to an essential leading role as a decisive scenario in the conformation and execution of budgets. It is vital to understand and develop the exercise of government from its smallest structure, favoring the autonomy of the municipality in decision-making and taking actions. That is where we must make popular power strong first.
The generation of electricity has been another one of this year’s challenges. It was particularly affected at the most critical moments of the pandemic peak, as a consequence of the complex financial limitations imposed by the blockade in pandemic conditions. Failure to carry out timely maintenance of the power generation units and not having been able to acquire the necessary resources to guarantee the electric service caused the undesirable blackouts that became frequent in the middle of this year. Although the limitations have not disappeared, power generation capacities are being restored.
In September it was possible to allocate, under very difficult conditions, a level of financing for the gradual recovery of power generation availability.
The service of a new floating power plant was contracted in addition to the three already in the country, which will contribute to the mitigation of possible service disruptions.
Additionally, the maintenance of the thermoelectric power plants continues as part of the process of recovering the availability of power generation, which will be maintained in the coming year.
It has been an arduous and complex tax to maintain a stable electric service under the economic conditions faced by the country; but it is not a miracle, it is the result of the talent, effort and dedication of the workers of the electric power sector together with the support of friends and governments in solidarity with our resistance.

Representatives:

Contrary to the desire initially shared by many, the global experience of COVID-19 has not led us to a more supportive, compassionate, humble and austere world.
Threats to international peace and security and to the ecological environment, on which life on the planet depends, remain as present, if not more so, than before the pandemic. Selfishness, wealth concentration, increasing inequality and the growing political power of transnational capital over the governments of many countries are visible and increasingly dangerous features.
In this convulsive international scenario, our national development and foreign policy must develop, without abandoning our commitments to peace and against armament, our duties in the common effort to protect the environment and climate balance, as well as the values of solidarity and friendship with other peoples and the defense of just causes.
We will continue to promote the integration of the Latin American and Caribbean region, the defense of the true and definitive sovereignty of the nations in this region, and the safeguarding of the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace.
During the course of this year, the electoral processes in Peru, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, Chile and in sister Caribbean nations continued to shape a correlation of forces more favorable to the defense of sovereignty, social justice and regional integration.
The challenges are big, but we watch with hope, respect and solidarity the efforts to recover the social advances that neoliberalism have ruined, and the processes of integration and cooperation that are genuinely Latin American.
We are a country of peace, with ties of friendship and respect in all corners of the planet, with vast and mutually beneficial cooperative relations with numerous nations.
The significant presence of students from various nations in Cuba and the enriching practice of tens of thousands of Cuban professionals in almost all continents have resulted, after several decades, in close cultural ties that bring us closer to other peoples in a special way.
We will continue to work actively within the framework of the United Nations and in defense of multilate
One year after our entry as Observer to the Eurasian Economic Union, significant progress has been made in the ties we foster with this
The Government of the United States has determined to turn its official policy towards Cuba into aggression after unsuccessfully trying to suffocate the country with the tightening of the blockade in the midst of the pandemic, in an attempt to alter the peace and tranquility of our citizens. This vile and genocidal policy, incredibly opportunistic, has received the rejection of the international community.
On this subject we have said enough and the people are well informed. In spite of this, we do not renounce to develop, under conditions of equality and mutual respect, a constructive relationship with the Government of the United States. In the meantime, we facilitate and promote ties with the people of that country, in all possible fields and with special emphasis on the community of Cuban origin residing there.
We are convinced that the great problems facing humanity today and those that it will face in the future can only be solved through cooperation and not confrontation.
In recent months, we have received from many parts of the world, extraordinary expressions of solidarity, of identification with the cause of Cuba in favor of justice, of respect for the contribution of our people to the neediest, of rejection of the destabilizing plans of the Government of the United States and the criminal economic blockade, as well as admiration for our capacity to rise up after facing the most serious challenges.
We are deeply grateful for the international campaign promoted by Cubans living abroad and by friends in solidarity around the world, especially in the United States, in defense of Cuba, against the blockade and the rest of the measures that hinder the development of the country and in favor of the natural bond that should exist between our fellow countrymen abroad and their families and relatives in Cuba.
We reiterate the invariable decision to continue strengthening and diversifying the links with our nationals abroad, on the basis of unrestricted respect for the sovereignty and independence of the Homeland.

Comrades:

In the complex international scenario we have described, economic relations with foreign countries have been sensibly affected. That is why I would like to reiterate my gratitude to the foreign companies that have stood firm in these circumstances and to those who, despite threats and pressures, continue to be by Cuba’s side.
Regardless of blockades and other objective external factors, we are not unaware of the persistence of internal problems that limit the potential for attracting foreign investment; eliminating them will continue to be a priority in the work of the Government, which ratifies the will to increase the participation of foreign direct investment as an important element for the economic and social development of the country.
Without disregarding the transformations that have taken place, it is necessary to retake the call made more than once by Army General Raúl Castro Ruz to get rid of prejudices and false fears against foreign investment. The recent adjustments made to the policies of this sector, which recognize the participation of foreign investment in the development of non-state economic actors constituted as legal entities, are an expression of this determination.
We must add to this the decisions we have been making to expand and make more flexible the possibilities of foreign capital participation in various sectors of the economy, the increasingly leading role we are giving to local governments in this objective, the design of new opportunities with smaller investment amounts and the determination to let Cubans living abroad invest in the country.
In an open economy such as Cuba’s, the efficiency of foreign trade is fundamental. It is essential to continue making progress in aspects such as the effective substitution of imports and the adequate use of consignments in order to have timely access to inputs, raw materials and equipment, which have a decisive impact on the functioning of the economy.
Likewise, the measures adopted to stimulate exports, applying economic levers that directly benefit producers, and the actions for the promotion of exportable items from the territories, allow us to foresee more positive results in this activity.
We consider it urgent to take better advantage of cooperation projects, seeking greater impact and productive results and avoiding expenses and imports that are superfluous or secondary to the main objective.

Representatives:

During these days of intense legislative schedule, we have passed important legislations such as the Law of the Military Courts, the Law of the Military Criminal Process and the Law of Territorial and Urban Planning and Land Management. Likewise, as part of the agenda of this session, the accountability of the Prime Minister, in a critical and comprehensive report, and of the Provincial Government of Sancti Spiritus took place, thus complying with the constitutional obligation that represents a distinctive feature of our socialist democracy.
Special mention should be made of the draft Family Code, which will be submitted to popular consultation to enrich it with the contribution of all the Cuban people. We hope to come up with a legal provision adapted to these times that reflects the socio-cultural reality and the different problems that manifest in our daily lives.
The content of this code is another expression of the sensitivity that characterizes and defines the Cuban Revolution. It exalts human dignity as the supreme value that sustains the recognition and exercise of the rights and duties endorsed in the Constitution. It does not impose models or types of families, but recognizes a reality that must be legally regulated and protected.
It is a regulation with deep scientific roots, based on advanced research in areas such as psychology, sociology, pedagogy and law. The most outstanding Cuban professionals in these specialties, with admirable rigor, have been able to summarize in a law the rights and duties of the diverse and valuable lives of the Cuban population. To them our recognition and admiration (Applause).
Undoubtedly, we are before a text that projects the present and the future of our society and in whose essence beats, beyond words, the sensitive, human and deeply revolutionary spirit of a vanguard woman like Vilma Espín (Applause).
She, together with Raul and Fidel, each one from their respective responsibilities, promoted the understanding and progress of our family laws, which always involve complex problems at different moments of the Revolution. Dr. Mariela Castro Espín also has an indisputable merit in the impulse in the battle afterwards in which she has been able to participate with the tenderness and firmness of her mother, which we remember so much today (Applause).

For all these reasons I make my own the invitation of our dear friend Miguel Barnet to join what he, with the words of a poet, has defined as a song for the human rights of all men and women (Applause).

Fellow countrymen and women:
In a few days we will be reaching the 63rd anniversary of the Revolution. We can already feel the airs of celebration and it is just and necessary that we celebrate having overcome a tremendous year. However, let us not forget for a moment the lessons learned during the hardest period of the 365 days that are coming to an end. We are all called to make the results in the containment of COVID-19 sustainable in time, which awaken so many hopes in the people due to the signs of recovery that are being noticed.
It will be necessary to complete the vaccination schedules and continue with the booster doses, while the researchers evaluate when to reapply them; as well as to maintain strong epidemiological surveillance measures and care for convalescents.
Scientists evaluate the behavior of each new strain such as Omicron, follow international experience and plan new protocols. Science and innovation, as a function of health, are already focusing on the new problems that we must face and overcome.
In the United States and Europe, the tensions of the pandemic peaks are once again being experienced and the affection and hugs that the family longs for are already arriving from both sides. It would be a mistake to believe that the good numbers the pandemic shows now will last forever if we do not act responsibly and rationally enough. Our scientists and doctors have warned us. In honor of them, out of respect and consideration, let us show wisdom and prudence. Let not too much enthusiasm rob us of the joy of the coming year.
In taking stock of what we have lived through, an Olympic and world record stands out: the country’s response to the many problems and challenges we have faced. That merit belongs to the people! (Applause.) From the courage and talent of the people, from which emerge all those who have contributed to the creative resistance of this year of trials.
As Fidel once said, one day we will have to raise a monument to the Cuban people (Applause). He laid the first stone in that monument as the conductor and maximum leader of the liberation process, and he magnified it by materializing dreams that generate other dreams such as the Literacy Campaign we are commemorating today. Fidel, Raul and their comrades of the Centennial Generation faced and overcame colossal challenges that magnify this monument (Applause).

The Continuity that we are honored to represent has a duty and we will fulfill t! (Applause). Not by imitating, not by copying, not by waiting for solutions to spring from history; because what history has to give us is an accumulation of originality, of daring solutions and heroic creation.

It is up to us to complete this monument by jumping over the blockade, over our limitations, difficulties and obstacles.

The year 2021 was a great school of what we can no longer and should no longer do, and what we can and should do.

I call upon you to think and act. To live up to our people and their historic leaders. To work with the utmost efficiency, intensely, but without letting it overwhelm us. With the intelligence of our scientists, with the consecrated dedication of our health personnel, with the courage and discipline of our armed institutions, with the optimism and faith of our sports champions, with the boldness and creativity of our young people, with the thrilling passion of our artists! (Applause.)

In this Cuba, even the impossible will always be possible!

May each work be a hymn to the Homeland and the Revolution, with a critical and self-critical eye, but always committed, as our troubadour, Vicente Feliú, did until his last breath: “Believe me, I am happy opening a trench” (Applause).

For the year we have overcome and for the one we are preparing to overcome:

Congratulations to Cuba! (Applause.)

Homeland or Death!

We shall overcome!

(Applause.)