Dear participants in this Meeting:
The celebration of International Workers' Day takes place at a time of emergency for humanity and a systemic crisis imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The emergency is not only sanitary. It is also economic, political and social. It demonstrates the injustices of the international economic order, in which selfish political decisions prevail, which favor the obtaining of profits over the preservation of human lives.
There is a new division of humanity: those who have access to vaccines, doctors, artificial respirators, oxygen, diagnostic tests, hospitalization; and on the other hand, those who die forgotten, without medical assistance and do not even know if or when they will be immunized against the virus.
In this scenario, the Latin American and Caribbean region registered alarming levels of poverty growth. Unemployment increased, even more among women, increasing gender inequality.
The reduction in budget allocations assigned to the health and education systems weakened the capacity to face the pandemic. The looting of natural resources by transnational companies protected by corrupt political systems did not stop.
In the last decade, US imperialism accelerated its attempts to exercise its domination and hegemony over Our America, with the exacerbation of the application of the Monroe Doctrine and the worst practices of McCarthyism.
Wherever they could, imperialism and the allied oligarchies reversed the social and political advances made by progressive governments. They supported governments without legitimacy and far-right fascist and populist political candidates, very much in tune with the polarization, dirty politics, the promotion of division and hatred, and the incitement to insurrection, which took place in the USA. .
They used the judicial systems, the control of the hegemonic media and new digital technologies, the monopolistic and private technological platforms, and the dictatorship of the algorithm and the iron control of digital networks, to persecute, imprison and weaken progressive figures and left.
They even resorted to murder, massacres and the most brutal repression and banning of social protest. The young, as well as the elderly, women and indigenous people were assassinated, mutilated, detained and tortured, with the complicity of the instruments of imperialism such as the Organization of American States (OAS).
The resistance and the struggle of the peoples, however, did not stop. The articulation in search of the greatest possible unity between progressive forces, leftist governments, social and popular movements, union organizations, women, peasants, native peoples, youth, students and sectors of the intelligentsia and art, revitalized the protest and social struggle in the streets, at the polls and on digital networks, where new forms of mobilization of citizens were developed and conscious citizens for the claim, for emancipation, and also, for political power.
In this context, it becomes even more important to work for unity.
Popular victories were achieved such as the return of the Movement to Socialism (MAS) to the government in the Plurinational State of Bolivia and also what was achieved in Chile. The political processes in Mexico and Argentina against the neoliberal model were notable advances. The resistance of the peoples prevented imperialism from fulfilling its objectives of overthrowing the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
Brutally blocked by successive US governments, including the current one, Cuba shows that an alternative model to capitalism is possible. With great effort, but with unwavering political will, no Cubans are left to their fate, least of all in the difficult circumstances imposed by the pandemic.
Each patient, without distinction, is a priority for the Cuban health system and the Cuban State. Each deceased is a cause of pain for our people and Government. Each life saved is the result of solidarity, social justice and science in the hands of the power of the working people.
Imperialism wants to destroy this model. For this, it has severely affected the Cuban economy. The persecution, sanctions and threats, and the damage to our international economic relations, which causes deficiencies, deprivations and daily suffering to our families, has not stopped. It has even resorted to the application of extreme measures and acts of unconventional warfare to suffocate our country.
More than 240 unilateral coercive measures against Cuba were put into effect by the United States, which cruelly reinforced the economic, commercial and financial blockade, even opportunistically during the pandemic. All of them are in force today and threaten the livelihood of our people.
Even so, and despite the campaign of pressure and slander against the Cuban medical collaboration orchestrated and directed from Washington, our country sent 57 medical brigades to 40 countries and territories. Before, our collaborators already worked in 59 nations.
I wish to thank you deeply for the support and solidarity of you and of millions of people in the world who demand the end of this genocidal policy.
Companions and companions:
In the recently completed Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, we ratify the will to continue the construction of a socialist society founded on principles of social justice and human solidarity, and of a sovereign, independent, socialist, democratic, prosperous and sustainable Nation, as dictates the Constitution approved in a universal and sovereign referendum by our people.
We ratify the commitment of the Cuban Revolution to the unity of "Our America", Bolivarian and Martian, to fight for all just causes throughout the world and for regional cooperation and integration.
As the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, said in this historic Congress, our Socialist Revolution, in the midst of the most ferocious siege, is alive, active and firm.
This is how we Cubans feel. Encouraged by solidarity and support, in the face of the challenging reality that is imposed, aware as Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz said, that VICTORY IS IN THE FIGHT.
Ever onward to victory!
Homeland or Death!
We will win!
CubaMINREX