We have come to this, our glorious Staircase, to celebrate the 15 years of ALBA-TCP, because this alliance has its roots in the first meeting of two giants of Our America: the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, and the then (young) leader of the Bolivarian Movement 200, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. That meeting, which changed the history of Latin America and the Caribbean and impacted the world, occurred between December 13 and 15, 1994. As it happens today, we lived complex and uncertain days for the region and the world. And it was near here, in the Aula Magna of the University of Havana, where the premonitory analyzes and proposals of what, over time, concerted efforts and the progress of progressive governments, would crystallize in the year were heard for the first time 2004 as this paradigm of solidarity integration that we know as ALBA-TCP.
We firmly believe that universities cannot be disconnected from our world and its pressing problems. Here Fidel became a revolutionary, here he spoke to his Latin American contemporaries Hugo Chavez, here he studies and thinks for the best possible world that we have set out to conquer the revolutionaries.