Читать книгу Che Guevara Talks to Young People - Ernesto Che Guevara - Страница 7

(To opening session of First Latin American Youth Congress, 28 July 1960)

Inspired by the example of the Cuban Revolution, which had brought down the US-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista a year and a half earlier and established a government that defended the interests of Cuba’s workers and peasants, some nine hundred young people converged in Havana during the summer of 1960 to take part in the First Latin American Youth Congress. Delegates and observers attended from youth, labour, political, and solidarity organisations from every Latin American nation, as well as a number from the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, China, and many other countries.

The formal opening of the congress in the Sierra Maestra mountains on 26 July was part of the national celebration of the seventh anniversary of the attack led by Fidel Castro on the dictatorship’s Moncada and Bayamo garrisons. That audacious action in 1953 marked the beginning of the revolutionary struggle against the Batista regime. Participants in the two-week-long youth gathering reconvened in Havana on 28 July and Ernesto Che Guevara addressed its first plenary session.

The congress took place at a decisive turning point for the revolution.

Washington’s hostility towards the actions taken by the workers and peasants of Cuba had been mounting sharply since May 1959, when the revolutionary government enacted one of the central planks of the programme put forward by Fidel Castro during his trial for the Moncada attack: agrarian reform.

The law, implemented by the peasants and agricultural workers, who mobilised in support of the government decree, expropriated the vast plantations owned by US corporations and big Cuban landlords. It gave title to the land, free of charge, to 100,000 tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and squatters, and created cooperative farms that provided stable year-round employment to hundreds of thousands of agricultural workers.

Although Washington showed no interest in discussing with Cuba any formula for payment, the law also provided for the indemnification of US landowners by Cuban state bonds, payable in twenty years out of proceeds from the sale of Cuban sugar in the United States.

In June 1960, three major imperialist-owned oil trusts in Cuba announced their refusal to refine petroleum bought from the Soviet Union. The Cuban government responded by taking control of refineries owned by Texaco, Standard Oil, and Shell. US president Dwight D. Eisenhower then ordered a drastic, 95 per cent reduction in the quota of sugar Washington had earlier agreed to purchase from Cuba. Across the island, Cubans responded by proclaiming “Sin cuota pero sin bota” – without a quota but without the boot.

Youth congress participants were among those who took part in a mass rally in the wee hours of the morning 7 August where Fidel Castro read the revolutionary government’s just-adopted decree expropriating the “assets and enterprises located on national territory … that are the property of US legal entities”. The following days and nights became known in Cuba as the Week of National Jubilation. Tens of thousands of Cubans, joined by many youth attending the congress, celebrated by marching through the streets of Havana bearing coffins containing the symbolic remains of US enterprises, such as the United Fruit Company, International Telephone and Telegraph, and Standard Oil, and tossing them into the sea.

Over the next three months, Cuban workers and peasants mobilised in the millions, supported and organised by their new government, to defend their revolution. They occupied factories and fields and strengthened their volunteer militias. By late October virtually all imperialist-owned banks and industry, as well as the largest holdings of Cuba’s capitalist class, had been expropriated by the workers and farmers government. They had become the property of Cuba. This transformation of property relations in city and countryside opened the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

Delegates to the Latin American Youth Congress worked in three commissions through 8 August. They discussed and adopted resolutions, among others, extending their support to revolutionary Cuba, calling for international solidarity against Yankee imperialism, backing admission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations, and demanding an end to racist discrimination and the creation of jobs and economic opportunities for youth throughout the Americas.

Compañeros of the Americas and the entire world:

It would take a long time to extend individual greetings on behalf of our country to each of you, and to each of the countries represented here. We nevertheless want to draw attention to some of those who are representing countries afflicted by natural catastrophes or catastrophes caused by imperialism.

We would like to extend special greetings tonight to the representative of the people of Chile, Clotario Blest, [Applause] whose youthful voice you heard a moment ago. Nevertheless, his maturity can serve as an example and a guide to our fellow working people from that unfortunate land, which has been devastated by one of the most terrible earthquakes in history.1

We would also like to extend special greetings to Jacobo Arbenz, [Applause] president of the first Latin American nation [Guatemala] to fearlessly raise its voice against colonialism, and to express the cherished desires of its peasant masses through a deep-going and courageous agrarian reform. We would like to express our gratitude to him and to the democracy that fell in that country for the example it gave us, and for enabling us to make a correct appreciation of all the weaknesses that government was unable to overcome. Doing so has made it possible for us to get to the root of the matter, and to decapitate in one blow those who held power, and the henchmen serving them.

We would also like to greet two of the delegations representing the countries that have perhaps suffered the most in the Americas. First of all, Puerto Rico, [Applause] which even today, 150 years after freedom was proclaimed for the first time in the Americas, continues fighting to take the first – and perhaps most difficult – step of achieving, at least formally, a free government. And I would like the delegates of Puerto Rico to convey my greetings, and those of all Cuba, to Pedro Albizu Campos. [Applause] We would like you to convey to Pedro Albizu Campos our deep-felt respect, our recognition of the example he has shown with his valour, and our fraternal feelings as free men towards a man who is free, despite being in the dungeons of the so-called US democracy. [Shouts of “Get rid of it!”]

Although it may seem paradoxical, I would also like to greet today the delegation representing the purest of the North American people. [Ovation] I would like to salute them not only because the North American people are not to blame for the barbarity and injustice of their rulers, but also because they are innocent victims of the rage of all the peoples of the world, who sometimes confuse a social system with a people.

I therefore extend my personal greetings to the distinguished individuals I’ve named, and to the delegations of the fraternal peoples I’ve named. All of Cuba, myself included, open our arms to receive you and to show you what is good here and what is bad, what has been achieved and what has yet to be achieved, the road travelled and the road ahead. Because even though all of you come to deliberate at this Latin American Youth Congress on behalf of your respective countries, I’m sure each one of you came here full of curiosity to find out exactly what is this phenomenon born on a Caribbean island that is called the Cuban Revolution.

Many of you, from diverse political tendencies, will ask yourselves, as you did yesterday and as perhaps you will also do tomorrow: What is the Cuban Revolution? What is its ideology? And immediately a question will arise, as it always does in these cases, among both adherents and adversaries: Is the Cuban Revolution communist? Some say yes, hoping the answer is yes, or that it is heading in that direction. Others, disappointed perhaps, will also think the answer is yes. There will be those disappointed people who think the answer is no, as well as those who hope the answer is no.

I might be asked whether this revolution before your eyes is a communist revolution. After the usual explanations as to what communism is (I leave aside the hackneyed accusations by imperialism and the colonial powers, who confuse everything), I would answer that if this revolution is Marxist – and listen well that I say “Marxist” – it is because it discovered, by its own methods, the road pointed out by Marx. [Applause]

Recently, in toasting the Cuban Revolution, one of the leading figures of the Soviet Union, Vice Premier [Anastas] Mikoyan, [Applause] a lifelong Marxist, said that it was a phenomenon Marx had not foreseen. [Applause] He then noted that life teaches more than the wisest books and the most profound thinkers. [Applause]

The Cuban Revolution was moving forward, not worrying about labels, not checking what others said about it, but constantly scrutinising what the Cuban people wanted of it. And it quickly found that not only had it achieved, or was on the way to achieving, the happiness of its people; it had also become the object of inquisitive looks from friend and foe alike – hopeful looks from an entire continent, and furious looks from the king of monopolies.

But all this did not come about overnight. Permit me to relate some of my own experience – an experience that can help many people in similar circumstances get an understanding of how our current revolutionary thinking arose. Because even though there is certainly continuity, the Cuban Revolution you see today is not the Cuban Revolution of yesterday, even after the victory. Much less is it the Cuban insurrection prior to the victory, at the time when those eighty-two youths made the difficult crossing of the Gulf of Mexico in a leaky boat, to reach the shores of the Sierra Maestra. Between those youths and the representatives of Cuba today there is a distance that cannot be measured in years – or at least not accurately measured in years, with twenty-four-hour days and sixty-minute hours.

All the members of the Cuban government – young in age, young in character, and young in the illusions they held – have nevertheless matured in the extraordinary school of experience; in living contact with the people, with their needs and aspirations.

The hope all of us had was to arrive one day somewhere in Cuba, and after a few shouts, a few heroic actions, a few deaths, and a few radio broadcasts, to take power and drive out the dictator Batista. History showed us it was much more difficult to overthrow a whole government backed by an army of murderers – murderers who were partners of that government and were backed by the greatest colonial power on earth.

That was how, little by little, all our ideas changed. We, the children of the cities, learned to respect the peasant. We learned to respect his sense of independence, his loyalty; to recognise his age-old yearning for the land that had been snatched from him; and to recognise his experience in the thousand paths through the hills. And from us, the peasants learned how valuable a man is when he has a rifle in his hand, and when he is prepared to fire that rifle at another man, regardless of how many rifles the other man has. The peasants taught us their know-how and we taught the peasants our sense of rebellion. And from that moment until today, and forever, the peasants of Cuba and the rebel forces of Cuba – today the Cuban revolutionary government – have marched united as one.

The revolution continued progressing, and we drove the troops of the dictatorship from the steep slopes of the Sierra Maestra. We then came face-to-face with another reality of Cuba: the worker – both agricultural and in the industrial centres. We learned from him too, while we taught him that at the right moment, a well-aimed shot fired at the right person is much more powerful and effective than the most powerful and effective peaceful demonstration. [Applause] We learned the value of organisation, while again we taught the value of rebellion. And out of this, organised rebellion arose throughout the entire territory of Cuba.

By then much time had passed. Many deaths marked the road of our victory – many in combat, others innocent victims. The imperialist forces began to see there was something more than a group of bandits in the heights of the Sierra Maestra, something more than a group of ambitious assailants arrayed against the ruling power. The imperialists generously offered their bombs, their bullets, their planes, and their tanks to the dictatorship. And with those tanks in the lead, the government’s forces again attempted, for the last time, to ascend the Sierra Maestra.

By then, columns of our forces had already left the Sierra to invade other regions of Cuba and had formed the “Frank Pais” Second Eastern Front under Commander Raúl Castro.2 [Applause] By then, our strength was growing within public opinion – we were now headline material in the international sections of newspapers in every corner of the world. Yet despite all this, the Cuban Revolution at that time possessed only 200 rifles – not 200 men, but 200 rifles – to stop the regime’s last offensive, in which the dictatorship amassed 10,000 soldiers and every type of instrument of death.3 The history of each one of those 200 rifles is a history of sacrifice and blood; they were rifles of imperialism that the blood and determination of our martyrs had dignified and transformed into rifles of the people. This was how the last stage of the army’s great offensive unfolded, under the name of “encirclement and annihilation”.

What I am saying to you, young people from throughout the Americas who are diligent and eager to learn, is that if today we are putting into practice what is called Marxism, it is because we discovered it here. In those days, after defeating the dictatorship’s troops and inflicting 1,000 casualties on their ranks – that is, five times as many casualties as the sum total of our combat forces – and after seizing more than 600 weapons, a small pamphlet written by Mao Zedong fell into our hands. [Applause] That pamphlet, which dealt with the strategic problems of the revolutionary war in China, described the campaigns that Chiang Kai-shek carried out against the popular forces, which the dictator, just like here, called “campaigns of encirclement and annihilation”.

Not only had the same words been used on opposite sides of the globe to designate their campaigns, but both dictators resorted to the same type of campaign to try to destroy the popular forces. And the popular forces here, without knowing the manuals that had already been written about the strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare, used the same methods as those used on the opposite side of the world to combat the dictatorship’s forces. Because naturally, whenever somebody goes through an experience, it can be utilised by somebody else. But it is also possible to go through the same experience without knowing of the earlier one.

We were unaware of the experiences the Chinese troops accumulated during twenty years of struggle in their territory. But we knew our own territory, we knew our enemy, and we used something every man has on his shoulders – which, if he knows how to use it, is worth a lot – we used our heads to guide our fight against the enemy. As a result, we defeated him.

Later came the westward invasions,4 the breaking of Batista’s communication lines, and the crushing fall of the dictatorship when no one expected it. Then came 1 January and the revolution – again without thinking about what it had read, but hearing what it needed to from the lips of the people – decided first and foremost to punish the guilty ones, and it did so.5

The colonial powers immediately splashed the story all over the front pages, calling it murder, and they immediately tried to do what the imperialists always try to do: sow division. “Communist murderers are killing people,” they said, “but there is a naive patriot named Fidel Castro who had nothing to do with it and can be saved.” [Applause] Using pretexts and trivial arguments, they tried to sow divisions among men who had fought for the same cause. They maintained this hope for some time.

But one day they came upon the fact that the Agrarian Reform Law approved here was much more violent and deep-going than the one their very brainy, self-appointed advisers had counselled.6 All of them, by the way, are today in Miami or some other US city. Pepin Rivero of Diario de la Marina, or Medrano of Prensa Libre. [Shouts and hisses] And there were others, including a prime minister in our government, who counselled great moderation, because “one must handle such things with moderation”.7

“Moderation” is another one of the words colonial agents like to use. All those who are afraid, or who think of betraying in one way or another are moderates. [Applause] As for the people, in no sense are they moderates.

The advice given was to divide up marabú land – marabú is a wild shrub that plagues our fields – and have the peasants cut marabú with machetes, or settle in some swamp, or grab a piece of public land that somehow might have escaped the voraciousness of the large landowners. But to touch the holdings of the large landowners – that was a sin greater than anything they ever imagined to be possible. But it was possible.

I recall a conversation I had in those days with a gentleman who told me he had no problems at all with the revolutionary government, because he owned no more than nine hundred caballerias. Nine hundred caballerias comes to more than ten thousand hectares [25,000 acres].8

Of course, this gentleman did have problems with the revolutionary government; his lands were seized, divided up, and turned over to individual peasants. In addition, cooperatives were created on lands that agricultural workers were already becoming accustomed to working in common for a wage.

Here lies one of the peculiar features of the Cuban Revolution that must be studied. For the first time in Latin America, this revolution carried out an agrarian reform that attacked property relations other than feudal ones. There were feudal remnants in tobacco and coffee, and in these areas land was turned over to individuals who had been working small plots and wanted their land. But given how sugarcane, rice, and cattle were worked in Cuba, the land involved was seized as a unit and worked as a unit by workers who were given joint ownership. They are not owners of a single parcel of land, but of the whole great joint enterprise called a cooperative. This has enabled our deep-going agrarian reform to move rapidly. Each of you should let it sink in, as an incontrovertible truth, that no government here in Latin America can call itself revolutionary unless its first measure is an agrarian reform. [Applause]

Furthermore, a government that says it’s going to implement a timid agrarian reform cannot call itself revolutionary. A revolutionary government is one that carries out an agrarian reform that transforms the system of property relations on the land – not just giving the peasants land that was not in use, but primarily giving the peasants land that was in use, land that belonged to the large landowners, the best land, with the greatest yield, land that moreover had been stolen from the peasants in past epochs. [Applause]

That is agrarian reform, and that is how all revolutionary governments must begin. On the basis of an agrarian reform the great battle for the industrialisation of a country can be waged, a battle that is not so simple, that is very complicated, and where one must fight against very big things. We could very easily fail, as in the past, if it weren’t for the existence today of very great forces in the world that are friends of small nations like ours. [Applause]

One must note here for the benefit of everyone – both those who like it and those who hate it – that at the present time countries such as Cuba, revolutionary countries, nonmoderate countries, cannot give a half-hearted answer to whether the Soviet Union or People’s China is our friend. With all their might they must respond that the Soviet Union, China, and all the socialist countries, and many colonial or semicolonial countries that have freed themselves, are our friends. [Applause]

This friendship, the friendship with these governments throughout the world, is what makes it possible to carry out a revolution in Latin America. Because when they carried out aggression against us using sugar and petroleum, the Soviet Union was there to give us petroleum and buy sugar from us. Had it not been for that, we would have needed all our strength, all our faith, and all the devotion of this people – which is enormous – to withstand the blow this would have signified.9 The forces of disunity would then have done their work, playing on the effects these measures taken by the “US democracy” against this “threat to the free world” would have had on the living standards of the Cuban people. [Applause] They went after us viciously.

There are government leaders here in Latin America who still advise us to lick the hand that wants to hit us, and spit on the one that wants to help us. [Applause] We answer these government leaders who, in the middle of the twentieth century, recommend bowing our heads. We say, first of all, that Cuba does not bow down before anyone. And secondly, that Cuba, from its own experience, knows the weaknesses and defects of the governments that advise this approach – and the rulers of these countries know it too; they know it very well. Nevertheless, Cuba until now has not deigned or allowed itself, nor thought it permissible, to advise the rulers of these countries to shoot every traitorous official and nationalise all the monopoly holdings in their countries. [Applause]

The people of Cuba shot their murderers and dissolved the army of the dictatorship. Yet it has not been telling any government in Latin America to put the murderers of the people before the firing squad or to stop propping up dictatorships. But Cuba knows well there are murderers in each one of these nations. We can attest to that fact on the basis of a Cuban belonging to our own movement, who was killed in a friendly country by henchmen left over from the previous dictatorship.10 [Applause and shouts of “To the wall!”]

We do not ask that they put the person who assassinated one of our members before a firing squad, although we would have done so in this country. [Applause] What we ask, simply, is that if it is not possible to act with solidarity in the Americas, at least don’t be a traitor to the Americas. Let no one in the Americas parrot the notion that we are bound to a continental alliance that includes our great enslaver, because that is the most cowardly and denigrating lie a ruler in Latin America can utter. [Applause and shouts of: “Cuba sí, Yanquis no!”]

We, who belong to the Cuban Revolution – who are the entire people of Cuba – call our friends friends, and our enemies enemies. We don’t allow halfway terms: someone’s either a friend or an enemy. [Applause] We, the people of Cuba, don’t tell any nation on earth what they should do with the International Monetary Fund, for example. But we will not tolerate them coming to tell us what to do. We know what has to be done. If they want to do what we’d do, good; if not, that’s up to them. But we will not tolerate anyone telling us what to do. Because we were here on our own up to the last moment, awaiting the direct aggression of the mightiest power in the capitalist world, and we did not ask help from anyone. We were prepared, together with our people, to resist up to the final consequences of our rebel spirit.

That is why we can speak with our head held high, and with a very clear voice, in all the congresses and councils where our brothers of the world meet. When the Cuban Revolution speaks, it may make a mistake, but it will never tell a lie. From every tribune from which it speaks, the Cuban Revolution expresses the truth that its sons and daughters have learned, and it always does so openly to its friends and its enemies alike. It never throws stones from around a corner, nor gives advice that contains within it a dagger cloaked in velvet.

We are subject to attacks. We are attacked a great deal because of what we are. But we are attacked much, much more because we show to each nation of the Americas what it’s possible to be. What’s important for imperialism – much more than Cuba’s nickel mines or sugar mills, or Venezuela’s oil, or Mexico’s cotton, or Chile’s copper, or Argentina’s cattle, or Paraguay’s grasslands, or Brazil’s coffee – is the totality of these raw materials upon which the monopolies feed.

That’s why they put obstacles in our path every chance they get. And when they themselves are unable to erect obstacles, others in Latin America, unfortunately, are willing to do so. [Shouts] Names are not important, because no single individual is to blame. We cannot say that [Venezuelan] President Betancourt is to blame for the death of our compatriot and co-thinker. President Betancourt is not to blame; President Betancourt is simply a prisoner of a regime that calls itself democratic. [Shouts and applause] That democratic regime, a regime that could have set another example in Latin America, nevertheless committed the great blunder of not using the firing squad in a timely way. So today the democratic government of Venezuela is a prisoner of the henchmen Venezuela was familiar with until a short while ago – and with whom Cuba was familiar, and the majority of Latin America remains familiar.

We cannot blame President Betancourt for this death. We can only say the following, backed by our record as revolutionaries, and by our conviction as revolutionaries: the day President Betancourt, elected by his people, feels himself a prisoner to such a degree that he cannot go forward and decides to ask the help of a fraternal people, Cuba is here to show Venezuela some of our experiences in the field of revolution. [Applause]

President Betancourt should know that it was not – and could not have been – our diplomatic representative who started this whole affair that ended in a death. It was they – the North Americans or the North American government in the final analysis; a bit closer, it was Batista’s men. Closer still, it was all those dressed up in anti-Batista clothing who were the reserve forces of the US government in this country – those who wanted to defeat Batista and maintain the system: people like [José] Miró Cardona, [Miguel Angel] Quevedo, [Pedro Luis] Diaz Lanz, and Huber Matos. [Shouts] And in direct line of sight, it was the forces of reaction operating in Venezuela. It is very sad to say, but the leader of Venezuela is at the mercy of his own troops, who may try to assassinate him, as happened a while ago with a car packed with dynamite.11 The Venezuelan president, at this moment, is a prisoner of his repressive forces.

And this hurts. It hurts, because the Cuban people received from Venezuela the greatest amount of solidarity and support when we were in the Sierra Maestra. It hurts, because much earlier than us, Venezuela was at least able to rid itself of the hateful system of oppression represented by [Marcos] Pérez Jiménez.

And it hurts, because when our delegation was in Venezuela – first Fidel Castro, and later our president Dorticós [Applause] – they received the greatest demonstrations of support and affection.

A people who have achieved the high degree of political consciousness, who have the high fighting spirit of the Venezuelan people, will not long remain prisoners of a few bayonets or a few bullets. Because bullets and bayonets can change hands, and the murderers themselves can wind up dead.

But it is not my mission here to list all the stabs in the back we’ve received from Latin American governments in recent days and to add fuel to the fire of rebellion. That is not my task because, in the first place, Cuba is still not free of danger, and today it is still the focus of the imperialists’ attention in this part of the world. Cuba needs the solidarity of all of you, the solidarity of those from the Democratic Action party in Venezuela, the URD [Democratic Republican Union], or the Communists, or COPEI [Independent Political Electoral Committee], or any other party. It needs the solidarity of all the people of Mexico, all the people of Colombia, Brazil, and each of the nations of Latin America.

It’s true the colonialists are scared. They too, like everyone else, are afraid of missiles, they too are afraid of bombs. [Applause] And today they see, for the first time in their history, that these bombs of destruction can fall on their wives and children, on everything they had built with so much love – insofar as anyone can love wealth and riches. They began to make estimates; they put their electronic calculators to work, and they saw this set-up would be self-defeating.

But this does not mean at all that they have renounced the suppression of Cuban democracy. They are again making laborious estimates on their calculating machines as to which of the alternative methods is best for attacking the Cuban Revolution. They have the Ydigoras method, the Nicaraguan method, the Haitian method. For the moment, they no longer have the Dominican method.12 They also have the method of the mercenaries in Florida, the method of the OAS [Organisation of American States]; they have many methods. And they have power; they have power to continue improving these methods.

President Arbenz and his people know they have many methods, and a great deal of might. Unfortunately for Guatemala, President Arbenz had an army of the old style, and was not fully aware of the solidarity of the peoples and their capacity to repel aggression of any type.

That is one of our greatest strengths: the strength being exerted throughout the world – regardless of partisan differences in any country – to defend the Cuban Revolution at any given moment. And permit me to say this is a duty of the youth of Latin America. Because what we have here in Cuba is something new, and it’s something worth studying. I do not want to tell you what is good here; you will have to assess that yourselves.

There are many bad things, I know. There is much disorganisation, I know. If you have been to the Sierra Maestra, then you already know this. We still use guerrilla methods, I know. We lack technicians in fabulous quantities commensurate to our aspirations, I know. Our army has still not reached the necessary degree of maturity nor have the militia members achieved sufficient coordination to constitute themselves as an army, I know.

But what I also know – and what I want all of you to know – is that this revolution has always acted with the will of the entire people of Cuba. Every peasant and every worker, if they handle a rifle poorly, are working to handle it better every day, to defend their revolution. And if right now they can’t understand the complicated workings of a machine whose technician fled to the United States, then they are studying every day to learn it, so their factory runs better. And the peasants will study their tractor, to fix its mechanical problems, so the fields of their cooperative yield more.

All Cubans, from both city and countryside, sharing the same sentiments, are marching towards the future, totally united in their thinking, led by a leader in whom they have absolute confidence, because he has shown in a thousand battles [Applause] and on a thousand different occasions his capacity for sacrifice, and the power and foresight of his thought.

The nation before you today might disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic conflict may be unleashed on its account, and we might be the first target. Even if this entire island were to disappear along with its inhabitants, its people would consider themselves completely satisfied and fulfilled if each of you, upon returning to your countries, would say:

“Here we are. Our words come from the humid air of the Cuban forests. We have climbed the Sierra Maestra and seen the dawn, and our minds and our hands are filled with the seeds of that dawn. We are prepared to plant them in this land, and defend them so they can grow.”

From all the brother countries of the Americas, and from our own land – if it should still remain standing as an example – from that moment on and forever, the voice of the peoples will answer: “Thus it shall be: Let freedom triumph in every corner of the Americas!” [Ovation]