Castro: Socialist Revolution Here to Stay

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

AFP via The Times of India - June 1, 2002
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?art_ID=11690668


Castro says socialist revolution is here to stay

HOLGUIN, Cuba--Cuban President Fidel Castro on Saturday told some
400,000 Cubans at a rally here that despite calls for change from
Washington, his government's socialist path would continue unchanged.

The address was seen as a response to US President George W. Bush's
speeches of May 20, in which he called for democratic opening on the
communist-ruled island. In addresses in Washington and Miami, Bush
vowed to uphold the 41-year-old US economic embargo on Cuba unless
Havana holds "certifiably free and fair" elections and overhauls its
economic system.

Bush's assertion that he would maintain trade sanctions on the island
"multiplies the honor and glory of our people," Castro said. "Defy
the rain," Castro urged his spectators, who stood stoically under a
downpour in this city some 700 km east of Havana.

Bush's "Initiative for a New Cuba" speech was "a insult," said
Castro, calling on the US leader "to respect the intelligence of
people capable of thinking." Bush spoke "like a bully or a thug,"
Castro said. The Cuban leader dedicated the majority of his speech to
a gloomy depiction of Cuban society prior to the 1959 revolution.

"Socialism has created more property-owners in Cuba than capitalism
did over centuries," Castro said. Vowing that not even a single Cuban
cent would go to foreign wallets, Castro reassured his listeners that
neither he nor any of his colleagues had personal accounts in foreign
currencies in Cuba or elsewhere.

The gathering, the second such public demonstration organized by
Cuban authorities in response to Bush's calls for change on the
communist island, was broadcast live on Cuban radio and television.
In his May 20 speech Bush vowed to uphold the US economic embargo on
the only communist-ruled country in the Americas until Havana holds
"certifiably free and fair" elections, and overhauls its economic
system.

With elections looming in November in Florida -- home to the largest
US Cuban-American community and a state where the president's
brother, Governor Jeb Bush, is seeking re-election -- a tough
rhetorical line against Cuba was expected.

Bush's speech came on the heels of a May 12-17 visit to Cuba by
former US president Jimmy Carter, the first trip to the island by a
sitting or former US president since 1929.

Carter and a growing number of voices in the US Congress and the farm
sector advocate lifting the full US economic embargo on Havana, in
place since 1961.

 
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