Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, Together We Shall Win
[1 May 1980]

Esteemed Comrade Daniel Ortega

Beloved revolutionary comrades of free and revolutionary Cuba.

I bring you today warm revolutionary greetings from the people of Free Grenada.

This morning, Comrades, I was addressing a rally in my own country to honour International Workers Day, and I left my country some time after eleven o’clock this morning to travel more than 1,000 miles to come to your country. But even if the distance was 10,000 miles, no force on earth could have stopped me from being here today.

The unity, the militant solidarity which unified our countries, our people’s struggles—it is this unity and this solidarity which is today making imperialism tremble, because we recognise in Grenada, just as imperialists recognise, that without the Cuban Revolution of 1959, there could have been no Grenadian Revolution, nor Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979.

They, therefore, have good reason to tremble when they hear the masses of Cubans saying:

“Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, together we shall win.”

It is the Cuban Revolution that has taught the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean how to face blockades, how to defeat criminal invasions of their territories.

The people of this region have looked at Girón they have looked at La Coubre, they have looked at Escambray, they have looked at assassination attempts on their leadership; they remember the October 1976 destruction of their Cubana airliner, they have seen your struggles; they have been inspired by your victories; and they have observed that even in the face of these difficulties, revolutionary Cuba was able to wipe out illiteracy, prostitution, drug-taking, and unemployment.

They were able to see you build socialism in our small country. They have seen your strides and achievements in health and education. They have seen that today, twenty-one years after your revolution, your country is able to assist more than thirty countries around the world.

And countries like Grenada and Nicaragua will always feel grateful to the people of Cuba and to the Cuban Revolution for their assistance with their doctors, with their teachers, and with their selfless workers.

Certainly, we in Grenada will never forget that it was the military assistance of Cuba in the first weeks of our revolution that provided us with the basis to defend our own revolution.

And when imperialism and reaction kept saying to us in Grenada, why do we need arms, where are the arms coming from, why should such a small country need so much arms, we always give them the answer our people have given.

Whenever mercenaries or foreign aggressors land in our country, they will discover how much arms we have, whether we can use the arms, and where the arms came from as we shed their blood on our soil.

Your Revolution, Comrades, has also provided the region and the world with a living legend with your great and indomitable leader, Fidel Castro. Fidel has taught us not only how to fight, but also how to work, how to build socialism, and how to lead our country in a spirit of humility, sincerity, commitment, and firm revolutionary leadership.

It is important to be in revolutionary Cuba at this period in world history. Today, we can see another crisis in international capitalism. Today, we can see them complaining that their superprofits are falling. We can see their interest rate running towards 20 percent.

The school lunches they have been providing for their children, even that, they have had to reduce by over $500 million.

The workers are daily finding that jobs are disappearing. But their more than $33 billion profit on investments around the world demand that they create new tension in the world, so that their economy, which is based on war and armaments, would once again flourish.

They are also terrified by the victories of the national liberation movements in Africa, in Asia, in the Middle East, and right here in Latin America.

They have looked around and they see that today the struggles of the people of the region are continuing to reach new heights.

They look at El Salvador and they recognise that while yesterday it was Cuba, Nicaragua and Grenada, tomorrow it will undoubtedly be El Salvador.

So they have decided to step up on their arms supply and their arms race. They have decided to scuttle SALT II and détente. They have decided to spend this year more than $142 billion on arms.

At the same time, the invasions which have characterised their relations with our region over the years, starting with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823, they are shaping now to create new doctrines, to plan new manoeuvres, to obtain new bases to strengthen and deepen their military presence in the hope that this will crush the rising wave of national liberation consciousness that is sweeping our region and the world.

Their interventions in Mexico, in Nicaragua, in Colombia, in Panama, in the Dominican Republic, in Haiti, in Honduras, all of these invasions which they have had over the years—they are now preparing once again to embark on a new campaign of terror and intimidation of the people of our region.

But sometimes it is no longer by direct intervention, sometimes they rely more on control and manipulation, on the use of threat of force, on the techniques of destabilisation, on the use of diplomatic pressure, on the use of propaganda and destabilisation, on the policy of economic isolation.

But in each case, all of this is meant to lay the basis for a United States-organised or -backed  coup d’etat.

In 1954, they succeeded in overthrowing Arbenz in Guatemala. In 1973, they succeeded in overthrowing Allende in Chile. But the one lesson that they have never forgotten and will never forget is that in 1961 they failed when they tried at Girón right here in revolutionary Cuba.

Today we can hear them setting up their cries against the revolutionary processes in Nicaragua and Cuba. You can hear them talking about human rights, you can hear them calling for elections even though they don’t understand that our revolutions are popular revolutions.

You can see them encouraging the ultraleftists in our countries to take violent action against our peoples. Their propaganda has reached the point where our countries have become electoral issues in the presidential campaign in that country.

And at the same time, as usual, the threats against revolutionary Cuba, the continuation of the criminal economic blockade against revolutionary Cuba, the creation of artificial crisis after artificial crisis.

First the question of the Soviet troops in October last year, and now the question of so-called refugees at this point in time.

All of this is part and parcel of the imperialist campaign to try to defame the Cuban Revolution, to try to isolate the Cuban people, to try to lay the basis for an armed invasion or other form of intervention of your beloved country.

But in Grenada, we have been using a slogan and that slogan has been saying that “If they touch Cuba or if they touch Nicaragua, then they touch Grenada too.”

Comrades, as the people who own this region, as the people who belong to these countries, it is for us to decide what we want to do with our lives in our countries. It is for us, the people of the region to demand whether or not we want to have military bases on our territory.

It is for us to decide whether or not we want other peoples’ planes to fly over our countries. And one of the most contemptuous and arrogant acts of imperialism is today to presume that in 1980 not only do they have the right to have a base in Guantánamo but that they also have a right to operate military manoeuvres on the very soil of free and revolutionary Cuba.

That is an insult and a piece of contempt that the people of the region will never forgive or forget. And the people of this region are going to continue in our demand calling for an end to military bases in Guantánamo, in Puerto Rico, and in all other countries in the region where these bases exist.

We, the people of this region, demand that our region is recognised and respected as a Zone of Peace. We demand an end to all military task forces and air and sea patrols of our region.

We demand that the people of the region must be free from aggressive military harassment of any military power. We demand an end to the Monroe Doctrine and to the Carter Doctrine and all other doctrines which are aimed at perpetuating interventionism or backyardism in the region.

There must be an end to all attempts to use the so-called peacekeeping apparatus of the Organization of American States to militarily intervene in the region, to hold back progressive and patriotic movements.

We also call today that the right to self-determination for all peoples in the region must be recognised and accepted.

We today renew our call for the independence of the sister people of Puerto Rico.

We today insist that all of the people of the region in the twenty-five colonial countries which still exist—English, Dutch, French, or American territories—we demand the right to independence for the peoples of those countries.

We demand that a principle of ideological pluralism must be respected and practised by imperialist powers.

We must have the right to build our processes on our own way, free from outside interference, free from all forms of threats or attempts to force us to accept other peoples’ processes.

Today we insist that there must be an end to the invasions, an end to the landing by Marines, an end to the gunboats, an end to the Playa Giróns, an end to the slaughters and massacres of our Sandinos, our Ches, and our Allendes.

We call also for an end to the arming and financing of counter-revolutionary and anti-popular, anti-democratic or anti-progressive regimes.

There must be an end to the manipulation of regional and world tension for electoral purposes. The future of the region and the future of the world, the question of world peace cannot be compromised because of any election, no matter whose election.

There must therefore be respect for the sovereignty, legal equality, and territorial integrity of the countries of our region.

It is clear today, comrades, that the desperate plans of imperialism can be defeated once again, once we remain organised, vigilant, united, and demonstrate firm and militant anti-imperialist solidarity.

We look to the people of Cuba, we look to your revolution and your leadership to ensure that the revolutionary process in the Caribbean and Central American region continues to do forward with strength.

We salute you, the freedom-loving people of revolutionary Cuba. We salute your great and revolutionary leader, Comrade Fidel Castro.

Long live the freedom-loving people of revolutionary Cuba!

Long live the Communist Party of Cuba!

Long live Comrade Fidel Castro!

Long live the Nicaraguan revolution!

Long live the Sandinista Liberation Front!

Long live the national liberation movements!

Long live the socialist world!

Long live the the Grenadian revolution!

Long live the military unity and solidarity of workers internationally!

Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, together we shall win!

Adelante siempre, atrás nunca! [Forward ever, backward never!]