FERNANDO GONZALEZ LLORT’S SPEECH AT SOLIDARITY CONFERENCE
President, Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, Hero of the Revolution
Delivered May 2, 2025 at the Convention Center, Havana Cuba
Dear comrades, brothers and sisters of the peoples of the world:
Today we gather at a historic moment marked by profound contradictions. As humanity advances toward unprecedented levels of technological and cultural interdependence, it also faces threats that require our action: the resurgence of fascism, the erosion of national sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples under the weight of imperialism and cultural colonization as a tool of imperial domination and hegemony.
We firmly believe in solidarity as an antidote to the barbarism fostered by the capitalist socio economic system. In a world where neoliberal capitalism makes the lives of the working class precarious, the response must be unity and internationalism. Labor unions, peasant movements, and popular organizations have the duty to forge alliances against a common enemy: the elites who privatize rights, fragment societies, criminalize legitimate demands for justice, and murder millions with impunity around the world, whether through war and open intervention or other, more covert and equally damaging forms of aggression against our peoples.
The rise of figures like Donald Trump and the global far right is not a historical accident, but the calculated consequence of a system in crisis that refuses to allow for the transformation of the status quo. Xenophobic rhetoric, contempt for migrants, alliances with warmongering corporations, and the technological oligarchy are symptoms of a 21st-century fascism that seeks scapegoats to hide its plunder and uses technological advances to consolidate its class-based dominance on a global scale, while fostering the alienation of the working class. In the face of this, we recall the words of José Martí: “People who don’t know each other must hurry to get to know each other.” Solidarity is our shield and our defense. Today, when international financial capital tries to divide us with narratives of hate, solidarity becomes an antidote to the individualism imposed by neoliberalism.
History will judge us by what we did—or failed to do—at this crucial moment. Cuba remains standing because it knew how to unite the defense of its sovereignty with solidarity with the oppressed. Because we believe that Homeland is Humanity! And because our Revolution is driven by profound humanist sentiments and has justice as its vocation.
In this sense, the promotion of dignified peace in defense of the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples is key in our battle against imperialism. This promotion of a culture of dignified peace cannot be simply the absence of conflict, or, as our Commander in Chief Fidel Castro put it, precisely “the peace of the graves.” It necessarily requires a peace that embraces the full dignity of people based on social justice, with a harmonious relationship with the environment, and a peace that respects the inalienable right of peoples to their independence, sovereignty, and self-determination.
That is why a dignified peace also implies supporting processes and movements that legitimately fight for these aspirations. That is why Cuba stands with Palestine against the genocidal Zionist regime that for more than 75 years has been displacing, murdering, abusing, and besieging the Palestinian people… That is why we have historically stood with our Puerto Rican brothers and sisters in their struggle for independence… That is why we support the cause of the Sahrawi people… that is why we support the legitimate rights of indigenous peoples and communities to respect for their identity, self-determination, and protection of their natural habitats… that is why we support the proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace and all efforts and initiatives that foster collaboration over confrontation… that is why we oppose NATO meddling and interventionism, the presence of its military bases that affect our peoples and their sovereignty… We defend the need for a world without nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, as well as the elimination of funding for the promotion of the war industry and the arms race.
Today, the military-industrial complex promotes conflicts for economic gain and to advance imperial interests, while demonizing peoples who defend their sovereignty. Palestine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, among many others: all have been victims of a supposed “peace” imposed by bombs and unilateral coercive measures.
While they export their weapons and wars, they have the audacity to denigrate Cuban medical collaboration, which has benefited more than 5 million people worldwide, primarily in vulnerable territories and communities. While they accuse us of sponsoring terrorism, the empire finances, offers advice, and openly supports state terrorism and genocide.
And to clean up its image, to establish its matrix of opinion and ideas, it uses digital platforms and all the mass media at its disposal in its ideological apparatus. It establishes its hegemony through cultural colonization, which today operates through algorithms, media monopolies, and the imposition of a single way of thinking that makes us view what is foreign as desirable and what is ours as inferior. Therefore, resistance means creating schools, art, communication, and popular education. Alliances and articulations between popular emancipatory movements — union, Indigenous, peasant, and student movements—are necessary to confront the imperial narrative and its attempts to undermine our social fabric and our identity.
In the face of resurgent fascism, in the face of plundering imperialism, in the face of domesticating colonization, our response must be clear and resounding: Let us work in greater unity!
Thank you so much.
