Fighting for Cuba! Fighting for Socialism! And other speeches
by Miguel Díaz-Canel
On the 19th September 2023 in New York, Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel addressed the United Nations on behalf of all the countries of the ‘Global South’. He cleverly echoed Che’s speech 60 years before in the same place as “the voice of the South, the voice for the exploited and vilified”. For the first time Cuba was holding the presidency of the ‘Group of 77 and China,’ (which is actually 134 countries, representing over 80% of the world’s population) and Díaz-Canel praised it as “the most representative, broad and diverse grouping of nations in the multinational sphere.”
There are five short speeches in this book. One of them entitled “What is urgently needed is the political will to truly ‘leave no one behind’” allows Díaz-Canel to highlight that none of 17 sustainable development goals for 2030 are likely to be met and more than half of 169 agreed targets would be missed. He stressed the Group of 77 and China were not asking for handouts or begging for favours but they are demanding rights and will continue to demand a “profound transformation of the current international financial architecture because it is profoundly unjust, anachronistic and dysfunctional.” He lambasted the fact that most G-77 nations are forced to allocate more resources to debt service than to investments in health or education.
He powerfully identifies that alongside all the problems and challenges faced by the Global South, has to be added the use of unilateral coercive measures, euphemistically called ‘sanctions’ in which powerful states act as universal judges “to weaken and destroy economies and isolate and subjugate sovereign states.” Cuba has endured such measures irrespective of UN condemnation for over 63 years and things are still getting worse, especially with the disgraceful slur, reinstated again by Trump calling them ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ . The Global South has the right to identify and reject the sanctions and pressure that they try and force on countries and not only Cuba. It was as if Díaz-Canel anticipated that Trump would be elected and new forms of colonisation, warmongering, denial of social justice, selfishness and inhumanity would become the norm. He stressed that people around the world have the right to determine their own destiny without foreign interference or impositions from the USA.
Speeches given in these types of forums are all time limited and the skill is to speak powerfully, concisely and clearly. It is true that less can mean more and powerful understanding can come in small surprises. This 50 page booklet is a superb example. Díaz-Canel excels for Cuba throughout but he also makes it clear his objective is “to fight for a just and sustainable system that preserves the lives and dignity of people in the Global South.”
Bob Oram for CubaSi magazine April 2025
