Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, delivered the following address at the main event marking the 73rd anniversary of the July 26, 1953, assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks — National Rebellion Day. The ceremony was held in Pinar del Río. Translation by the Cuban News Agency (ACN).
Comrades of the Presidency;
Dear residents of Pinar del Río;
Friends of Solidarity:
In the early hours of today, I received a call from Army General Raúl Castro Ruz, leader of our Revolution, who asked me to convey the following message to you:
“Dear people of Pinar del Río, please accept my affection and recognition this July 26th for having earned, through your effort, dedication to the revolutionary cause, and creative work, the great honor of hosting the main event commemorating the 73rd anniversary of the attacks on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks, National Rebellion Day.”
A warm embrace to all,
Raúl Castro Ruz
Compatriots:
Cuba is waging a historic battle today: A new Moncada! Like the Centennial Generation who charged with simple rifles against the walls of two barracks of the Batista dictatorship 73 years ago, we, the current generations, are rising up against the walls of a genocidal policy that seeks to suffocate the entire population in order to seize control of the country. They will say that the assault on the Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes barracks in 1953 failed. We will remind them that that action ignited the small engine that set in motion the great engine of the Cuban Revolution.
These are the words of Fidel, who taught us, from then on, to seek victory, even from the greatest setbacks. And in his historic self-defense plea, he explained why, stating: “There is one reason that supports us more powerful than all others: we are Cubans, and being Cuban implies a duty; failing to fulfill it is a crime and treason.”
For that reason, we are fighting fiercely and stubbornly in defense of our sovereignty and our right to freely choose how to govern ourselves, with the same passion with which José Martí set out to achieve complete justice.
In memory of all, I would like to point out that this is the first July 26th since the triumph of 1959 that we are not joined by Commander of the Revolution Ramiro Valdés Menéndez (Applause), hero of that feat and of all those waged by the Cuban people since then.
Eternal glory to the Moncada veteran! (Exclamations of: “Glory!”), to the expeditionary, the invader, the forger of combatants for the security of the homeland, the advisor and guide, the one committed to the poor of the Earth, who worked until his last breath, convinced, like his Commander-in-Chief, that all the glory in the world fits in a grain of corn!
Comrades:
We celebrate National Rebellion Day in Pinar del Río for the results that have already been noted and recognized, but I would say that, in times like these, these are not just achievements, they are proofs of everyday heroism.
A single statistic would suffice to illustrate what I mean: the infant mortality rate of 4.8 per 1,000 live births and the zero maternal death rate, amid blackouts and shortages of all kinds, that is called heroism!
As acknowledged by the Political Bureau, Pinar del Río is demonstrating results in fulfilling its main tasks in the political, economic, and social spheres, thanks to the active participation of production and service workers, farmers, intellectuals, youth, and other sectors of society.
The province prioritizes compliance with the Government’s Economic and Social Program, the Economic Plan, and the State Budget, which has a positive impact on foreign exchange earnings from exports. It is a territory with a trade surplus, and the number of loss-making companies is decreasing.
I would also highlight, as an example for other provinces, the consistent work that has allowed it to boost food production, in close collaboration with producers, and the efficiency in the process of granting land for usufruct, a matter of vital priority today.
Of course, it is essential to mention tobacco production, a symbol of the territory and an export commodity of extraordinary value, and the food industry’s production, which has seen new integration with non-state management models.
Through science and innovation, the Hermanos Saíz Montes de Oca University of Pinar del Río prioritizes territorial development, setting a benchmark for the rest of the country.
Overcoming all imaginable adversities, in this region of rich literary and artistic traditions, birthplace of Luis and Sergio Saíz Montes de Oca, Pedro Junco, and Nersys Felipe, the flame of culture has remained alive and well.
The commendable work in protecting heritage, the sustained cultural outreach in communities, and the results achieved last year in arts education speak eloquently to the joint effort of Pinar del Río’s institutions and artists to defend their culture and identity and maintain cultural services for the people.
The province, together with its municipalities and entities, has established a working system that has fostered a stronger connection between Party and Government structures and communities, especially those in the most vulnerable situations. We have witnessed this firsthand during our frequent visits to this noble land.
Congratulations, Pinar del Río, for your heroism and results!
We also salute Villa Clara and Matanzas, outstanding provinces, and acknowledge the achievements of Guantánamo and Sancti Spíritus.
We urge them to remain at the forefront and continue to be an example of all that can be done and changed to improve the current and very difficult living conditions.
Compatriots:
The historical adversaries of the Cuban nation, intoxicated by the advance of the right and far right in the region and blind believers in the power of money to buy consciences and subdue wills, launch a threat against the Revolution every day, and every week announce new sanctions against Cuban companies and officials, and even against those, whether Cuban or foreign, who dare to send an oil tanker or invest in Cuba.
The latest sanctions break the record for infamy by targeting Public Health officials and Cuban medical services. I wonder under what absurd argument one can single out professionals whose performance in remote locations, facing dangerous situations, natural disasters, and contagious diseases, is recognized as excellent by governments of the most diverse political persuasions.
State Department officials, experts in drafting sanctions, compiling lists, and inventing pretexts, are a modern version of the drafters of edicts and military proclamations who were so feared and hated in the dark times of the Middle Ages or during the Nazi occupations in World War II. As if the rest of the world were their colony, they dictate how things must be done under threats of punishment or aggression.
They have declared a world war against the left and have designated Cuba as the capital of communism in the 21st century. Under the philosophy of this new mandate, in the land of supposed freedoms, it is forbidden to protest against state policies that impoverish the majority, while the power elites become obscenely wealthy.
By accusing Cuba, they are not only looking for a scapegoat, an external agent; they are looking for someone to blame for the protests of the sectors hardest hit by an economy that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer to unsustainable levels.
They are criminalizing the protests without analyzing their causes and, opportunistically, are looking for a new excuse to sustain their genocidal policy against Cuba, which the world condemns.
Let Cuba live in peace! And also let the noblest of the American people live in peace, those who have historically fought for the human rights of other peoples, without expecting recognition and often facing persecution, imprisonment, and risks to their lives.
Cuba is not a threat, neither to the United States nor to any other country on Earth! We are a noble people, who save lives where others destroy, who send doctors and teachers where others send bombs, who train highly qualified professionals from various nations in cooperation projects sustained amidst the greatest shortages!
In these final days of the academic year, tense and difficult as only this nation knows, Cuban universities have graduated 30,185 young professionals, 735 of them from 62 countries. And a fact we are proud to share: 23 new Palestinian doctors and five from the United States. Is this what they call terrorism? Is this what they call a threat?!
Everything Cuba does, everything the Cuban Revolution can demonstrate in its programs and actions, is a solid 67-year history of tireless defense of its sovereignty, solidarity, and international cooperation in favor of life, health, education, and science.
The only threat to security in the region, the true and real threat to world peace and human life, is the policy of aggression that causes famine, impoverishment, disorderly migrations, chaos, instability, and tens of thousands of deaths worldwide.
Cuba is not the first, nor will it be the last, victim of this type of warfare that blocks, suffocates, and seeks to provoke social unrest with the sole purpose of imposing governments aligned with imperial interests.
Therefore, from this platform, I denounce that Cuba is the victim of a coldly calculated genocide!
The United States government has consciously designed and implemented a policy of maximum economic strangulation against the Cuban people. It has intensified its six-decade-long blockade policy, imposing an energy and financial embargo, provoking a profound crisis in the electrical grid, resulting in blackouts lasting more than a day, the paralysis of industries, and affecting tens of thousands of workers.
The immense suffering of Cuban families is confirmed by statistics: deaths caused by the lack of medicines that for decades the country produced and distributed free of charge or at subsidized prices, and which it can no longer guarantee; more than 100,000 surgeries cannot be planned or performed because hospitals cannot be protected from the unforeseen power outages caused by the already frequent failures of the National Power System and the lack of fuel for backup generators; more than 118,000 cancer patients, including 1,200 children, cannot receive primary treatments and are forced to resort to second- and third-line alternatives; and, equally or even more painfully, the infant mortality rate has risen to 9.3 per 1,000 live births, compared to the 4 or 5 recorded in previous years. These numbers represent the faces of children who did not live as a direct consequence of the blockade and its genocidal nature!
Unilateral coercive measures — “sanctions,” as the United States calls them, a government that believes it has the right to sanction the rest of the world — are condemned every year by the United Nations General Assembly as being contrary to international law. It is illegal and criminal to torture a people simply to provoke them into rebelling against their government; it cannot even be called a tool of foreign policy.
The blockade is a weapon of war and causes deaths. Faced with international condemnation and the honorable and growing solidarity of the peoples we host, the new hawks at the head of the United States State Department have disseminated a slanderous report on Cuba’s supposed subversive influence against that country. As our Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Declaration states, this is a mediocre propaganda pamphlet that seeks, through the construction of accusatory narratives, to fabricate support for a possible military aggression.
We denounce that those who designed this policy of suffocation, those who implement it, and those who sustain it are responsible for the suffering of the Cuban people! They are responsible for the deaths caused by the lack of access to essential goods! They are responsible for the famine they intend to impose, and history will not forgive them!
We also denounce those who remain silent and tolerate the excesses of the emboldened American fascist far right, which lies, steals, kills, and pretends to be the arbiter of all destinies.
The US blockade only works because of the complicity of those who fear Washington’s power more than the judgment of history.
This is a new call to the conscience of the world: Do not become complicit in another genocide.
Every time a part of the world remains silent in the face of aggression against Cuba, international law is weakened. Every time a government accepts the illegitimate sanctions imposed by the United States, the principle of non-intervention is eroded. Every time a company is pressured to abandon its investments in Cuba, and others hesitate to invest for fear of reprisals, the economic dictatorship of a single power is strengthened.
Before it was Gaza, Lebanon, Iran; today it is Cuba. Tomorrow it could be any other nation.
Let us not forget that the solidarity finally rising up for Gaza around the world came too late for more than 70,000 Palestinians, some 21,000 of them children, whose ashes now form part of the horrific mountains of rubble into which the Zionist genocidal forces have transformed that martyred strip of land.
That is why I say today that defending Cuba from the cruelty of its executioners is not something that can wait!
Defending Cuba forcefully and urgently means halting the advance of supremacist, racist, xenophobic, elitist, and exclusionary ideas, enemies of true freedom and human emancipation!
Defending Cuba means fighting against 21st-century colonialism, against hegemony, against the pretense that a single country should decide the fate of all! There are no superior or inferior nations. The world divided between emperors and subjects was defeated after centuries of struggle and cannot return.
Against the attempts to return humanity to the darkest chapters of its past, forces and voices are rising up around the world.
Cuba knows, recognizes, and embraces the peoples and governments, including the representatives of the noblest of the American people, who risk everything to bring their cargo of solidarity and support to the island.
To the women and men like those of the Open Arms flotilla and the Nuestra América convoy, to the social movements of Latin America and the Caribbean that have maintained solidarity with Cuba despite pressure from Washington.
To the human rights organizations that denounce the crimes of the blockade before international forums.
To the parliamentary groups and legislators of various countries who work tenaciously to condemn the illegitimate sanctions.
To the European civil society organizations that have maintained ties with Cuba despite the threats.
To the social, pacifist and anti-imperialist movements around the world, who understand that the struggle against hegemonism is the struggle for peace, and to the groups of countries of the Global South who share the conviction that sovereignty is not negotiable.
Special thanks to all the governments that voted in favor of the Cuban resolution against the blockade and energy embargo in the United Nations General Assembly, despite the insulting pressure from the United States government.
Special thanks to the solidarity groups with Cuba who are visiting us and present at this event: Pastors for Peace; Carlota’s Warriors of New York; the Australian Cuba Solidarity Association; the José Martí Cultural Association of Miami; and the Marcapasos project. (Applause) Your presence is living proof that we are not alone.
Your presence here today is an act of courage, because defending Cuba in times of maximum pressure means taking risks, facing criticism, and exposing the hypocrisy of those who preach human rights but remain silent in the face of genocide.
We thank you for your solidarity! We thank you for your courage! We thank you for your commitment to justice!
Rest assured that we will not surrender!
Like that early morning of July 26th, every day we take on the harsh realities of daily life by storm to write the history of this era.
In the midst of such great difficulties, what are we doing? We are working, we are creating, we are innovating. In every productive sector, workers, farmers, scientists, intellectuals, artists, and students are innovating, contributing, and modifying technologies to continue producing and to keep us illuminated, even if only minimally; while our adversaries surpass their own perversity by trying to leave us without light, without water, without energy, and without hope.
Our response to suffocation is inventiveness, creativity, and, though it may bother them, also the joy of the Cuban people! (Applause).
The response to the blockade is intelligent and efficient effort. The response to the attempts, never abandoned, to isolate and divide us, is unity.
“Unity is our main strategic weapon,” Army General Raúl Castro Ruz told us on the anniversary of the Revolution in January 2024, and he asked us to cherish it more than the apple of our eye.
Unity does not mean uniformity. It means that despite differences in style, dynamics, and approaches to facing challenges, we all share the same objective: for Cuba to be a socialist, sovereign, independent, dignified, and ultimately prosperous country, leaving no one behind. Anything that threatens this purpose would strip the Revolution of its meaning, because every time unity has fractured in the long history of our struggles as a people, the Revolution has gone astray.
Compatriots:
Creativity and effort alone, however heroic, are not enough to dismantle the structures of the siege. This conviction makes the implementation of the ongoing economic and social transformations a strategic priority. These are profound and necessary changes that have been proposed and debated for several years.
We have embarked on a process of macroeconomic stabilization and are strengthening all forms of management, stimulating workers and farmers, and opening spaces for responsible investment, always under the sacred principle that change cannot be divorced from social justice. This is the economic and social battle of this generation.
The mission is very complex and fraught with risks, which we have a responsibility to minimize for those facing vulnerable situations.
The audacity bequeathed to us by the Moncada attack demands that we not be afraid of change, but in the name of the supreme ideal of those who fell then and of those who gave everything throughout these years, economic transformations must be guided by a fundamental principle: the greatest degree of social justice.
We reaffirm that Cuba is and will be a sovereign country, that no one under any circumstances has the right to decide for us, that economic, political, and social decisions are and will be ours!
This year, 2026, holds special significance, and not only for Cubans. The Centennial Year of Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro Ruz resonates universally.
Very soon, revolutionary friends from all five continents will begin to arrive. With their own resources and a willingness to share the complex and challenging reality we face, they have chosen to participate in the Colloquium and other events and activities celebrating Fidel’s 100th birthday.
These will be days to analyze and debate the ideas of his extraordinary legacy, to evaluate the international and national situation, and the role and place of the Cuban Revolution in one of the most difficult moments of its history. It will also be a time to test ourselves in the study and practice of the revolutionary principles bequeathed to us by the Commander-in-Chief.
In this centennial year, we Cubans are called to honor his memory with words, but also with deeds: with work, with unity, with dignity, and with sufficient clarity and determination to implement, as quickly as possible, the transformations that the moment and the nation demand of us.
I want to address the young Cubans in particular now. You are the present and the future. Consider yourselves heirs to the courage of Abel Santamaría, Melba, Haydée, and that entire generation: the generation of Martí’s Centennial. You are the youth of Fidel’s Centennial! You are called to lead this moment from every neighborhood and every corner of this island. Participate and transform for the good of all, as was done one day with your good in mind. (Applause)
José Martí, the intellectual author of the actions we commemorate today, said: “A people needs only one strength: to never doubt its own strength.”
Fellow Cubans:
The call now is to action, to not wait, to not lament, to not be complacent, to think as a nation, to boldly and creatively seek alternatives, to care for every resource as if it were the last, to produce, to substitute imports, to develop our potential. To trust in our own strength! May every Cuban, in their workplace, in their field, in their workshop, in their school, in their neighborhood, be and feel like a protagonist in the transformation we owe ourselves to overcome this moment.
Today’s call is to hope!
Like that morning of Santa Ana, we face enormous challenges with the same fortitude, the same optimism, and the same unwavering conviction of victory.
We Cubans of today are also conquerors of the impossible, and on this July 26th, we reaffirm our commitment to the homeland, to the Revolution, to the achievements of socialism, and to the task of rebuilding an economy mercilessly battered by four centuries of colonialism, six decades of neocolonialism, and another six decades of a blockade reinforced to the point of becoming a genocidal plan.
May each dawn find us standing firm in the struggle!
Long live July 26th!
Long live National Rebellion!
Long live sovereign and independent Cuba!
Long live international solidarity with Cuba!
¡Socialismo o Muerte! Socialism or Death!
¡Patria o Muerte! Homeland or Death!
Source: Agencia Cubana de Noticias
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