Delegates had gathered into five Commissions to discuss a number of issues.  And, of course, I also took advantage of the session breaks to breath with calm and indulge in the intake of some energy-generating produce.  Most certainly they must have felt more appetite, given their work and age.

I was amazed to see how well prepared this new generation is, with such high educational level, so different from the generation that began to learn how to read and write precisely in 1961, when the Yankee bombers piloted by the mercenaries attacked our homeland.  Most of the delegates to the Party Congress today were small kids back then or had not been born yet.

I did not care as much about what they said as I did about the way they said it.  They were so well prepared and their vocabulary was so rich that I could hardly understand them.  They discussed every word, even the addition or deletion of a comma in the paragraph under discussion.

Their task is far more difficult than the one taken up by our generation when socialism was proclaimed in Cuba, only 90 miles away from the United States.

Thus, upholding our revolutionary principles is, in my opinion, the main legacy we could pass on to them. There can be no margin for error at this moment in human history.  This is a reality that no one should deny.

The Party leadership should be the sum total of the best political talents of our people, capable of confronting the policy of the empire that jeopardizes the human species and generates gangsters such as those in NATO, who have launched in only 29 days, since the beginning of the inglorious “Odyssey Dawn” operation, more than four thousand air raids against an African nation.

The duty of this new generation of revolutionary men and women is becoming an example of modest leaders, studious and tireless fighters for socialism.  In the barbaric era of consumer societies, to overcome the capitalist production system that fosters and promotes selfish interests among human beings is, no doubt, a difficult challenge.

The new generation is called upon to rectify and change, without hesitation, everything that needs to be rectified or changed and continue proving that socialism is also the art of the impossible: to build and carry on with the Revolution of the people, by the people and for the people and defend it, during half a century, from the mightiest power that has ever existed.

 

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 17, 2011

8:33 p.m.