FIDEL CASTRO RUZ
I was born in a territory named Biran in the eastern region of Cuba. That name is known, although it has never appeared on a map. Given its good behavior it was known by close friends and, of course, by a group of political representatives and inspectors who were around any commercial or productive activity of the countries of the neocolonized world.
I was eight or nine years when I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. He liked to talk very much when he left the house in Biran! There he was the owner of the land where sugar cane, pasture and other agricultural crops were planted. But in Pinares de Mayari, he was not the owner but the tenant, as many Spanish, who were owners of a continent under the rights granted by a Bula Papal, whose existence did not know any of the peoples and human beings of this continent. Transmitted knowledge were already treasures of humanity.
The height rises to about 500 meters, sloping and rocky hills, where vegetation is scarce and sometimes hostile. Trees and rocks obstruct traffic; suddenly, at a certain height, a large plateau that extends approximately over 200 square kilometers, with rich deposits of nickel, chromium, manganese and other minerals of great economic value starts. From that plateau, dozens of trucks with large and good pines are extracted daily. I have not mentioned gold, platinum, palladium, diamonds, copper, tin, and others that in parallel have become symbol,s of the economic values that human society, in its present stage of development requires.
A few years before the triumph of the Revolution my father died. Before, he suffered enough. Of his three sons, the second and the third were absent and distant. They fulfilled their duty in the Revolutionary activities. I had said he knew who could replace me if the opponent was successful in his elimination plans. I almost laughed at the machiavellian plans of US presidents.
On January 27th, 1953, after the treacherous coup of Batista in 1952, a page of the history of our Revolution was written: college students and youth organizations, with the people, made the first ''Marcha de las Antorchas’’ to commemorate the centenary of José Martí’s birth.
He was already convinced that no organization was prepared for the fight we were organizing. There was a total confusion from political parties that mobilized masses of citizens, from left to right and center, sickened by the politicking that reigned in the country.
At 6 years a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the public school of Biran, convinced the family that I had to travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister to enter a prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of the own teacher of Biran’s school . She, splendidly treated in Biran’s house, where he fed at the same table of the family, was convinced of the necessity of my presence. Definitely I had better health than my brother Ramón, who died in recent months, and who was for a long time a schoolmate. I will not be extensive, those years of hunger were very hard for most of the population.
After three years, I was sent to the College ‘’La Salle’’ de Santiago de Cuba, where I was registered for first grade. I spent almost three years without going to a movie.
Thus, my life began. Maybe I write, if I have time, about that. Forgive me because I have not done it so far, I just have ideas of what a child can and should be taught. I believe that the lack of education is the greatest damage that can be done.
Today, humankind faces the greatest risk of its history. Specialists in these areas are the ones that can do for the inhabitants of this planet, whose number rose from billion at the end of 1800 to seven billion at the beginning of 2016. How many inhabitants will has our planet within a few years?. The brightest scientists, whose now sum thousands, are those who can answer this question and many others of great importance.
I wish to express my deepest gratitude for the signs of respect, greetings and gifts I have received in these days, that give me strength to reciprocate through ideas that I will transmit to militants of our Party and other organizations.
The modern technology has allowed to scrutinize the universe. Great powers like China and Russia can not be subject to threats to impose the use of nuclear weapons. They are people of great courage and intelligence. I believe that the speech of the US President, when he visited Japan, lacked height and words to apologize for the killing of hundred thousands of people in Hiroshima, although they knew the effects of the bomb. The attack on Nagasaki, a city chosen at random by life’s owners, was equally criminal. That's why we have to insist on the need to preserve peace and that no power will take the right to kill millions of people.
