Fidel at 100: A Legacy That Continues to Shape Cuba and the World

Aug 14, 2026 at 09:39 AM

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Lanka Leader

As Cuba marks the centenary of the birth of Fidel Castro Ruz, President Miguel Díaz-Canel has called for his legacy to be understood not as a chapter of the past, but as a living guide for confronting the challenges of the present and shaping the future. In his keynote address at the inaugural International Colloquium “Fidel: Legacy and Future,” Díaz-Canel reflects on Fidel’s revolutionary thought, Cuba’s social achievements, internationalist commitments, and the country’s continuing struggle under economic pressure and blockade. He argues that Fidel’s greatest legacy was not a set of fixed answers, but a method of thinking and acting—one rooted in study, political conviction, popular participation, international solidarity and creative resistance.

The following feature presents the central themes of President Díaz-Canel’s address, examining how Cuba’s leadership interprets Fidel’s legacy and its relevance to the challenges facing Cuba and the wider world in the 21st century.

'Keynote Address by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, at the Inauguration of the I International Colloquium Fidel: Legacy and Future

August 10, 2026

Dear sisters and brothers;

Distinguished academics and scholars, intellectuals, artists, social and political leaders, young students, comrades who have come from all five continents to share this week of deep reflection on the man who marked the 20th century and whose thought illuminates the 21st century:

On behalf of the Cuban people and their Communist Party, receive the most sincere embrace that an island that does not forget its friends can offer.

We thank you for making the effort to be here, defying distances, disinformation campaigns, and, in many cases, pressure from your own governments.

Your presence in Cuba is an act of courage and coherence, because coming to Cuba today, amid the intensification of the blockade and imperial hostility, is a gesture of militant solidarity that honors Fidel's legacy.

Congratulations, comrades, Fidelistas from Cuba and the world, gathered here to celebrate one hundred years of a life consecrated to the defense of all just causes!

My words are not intended to be a keynote address. I do not propose to lecture, nor could I, on the life and work of a leader of the moral and ethical stature of the Commander in Chief of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz, the man who refused to be honored with monuments and statues, but could not prevent millions of Cuban compatriots, compatriots of Our America, and compatriots of the world from honoring his memory and his legacy every day by embracing and multiplying his ideas.

There is no better or more solid monument than the one you have erected with your courageous presence here, in Fidel's Cuba, on his Centenary!

What I intend to share with you are only ideas that flow without more order than that imposed by feelings, emotion, and revolutionary commitment to the privilege of speaking of Fidel.

Studying and embracing with conviction the immense work of the Commander in Chief, both in thought and action, is an imperative necessity for all of us committed to promoting economic and social transformations that halt the process of suffocation to which the Cuban Revolution is being subjected, as part of a criminal war that has lasted for more than six decades.

Saving the Cuban Revolution from one of the gravest threats it has faced in 67 years, under aggressions of all kinds, is the greatest challenge of our generation, and we are honored to take it on, convinced that we will overcome. This is not a baseless certainty. We have a history pregnant with heroism, a people trained in resistance, and the legacy of a leader who, always at the forefront of that people, turned setbacks into victories.

Preserving the conquests that the Revolution and socialism gave to this heroic people, breaking all the sieges that seek to annihilate the nation as collective punishment for its dignity, its resistance, and its decision not to surrender to the most powerful empire in history, is the first tribute we owe Fidel, born 100 years ago in a country marked by injustice, inequality, and dependence—a painful reality he promised to change since his years as a rebellious and eloquent university student.

From the Aula Magna, he descended, turned into a revolutionary, to light the torches of the Centenary of the Apostle, he who later, and still very young, would become the leader of the July 26 Movement of 1953, which launched itself against the barracks of a bloody, pro-imperialist dictatorship to begin another Necessary War.

The brilliant lawyer who turned his self-defense into the political Program of his Movement, the tenacious prisoner who defeated his jailers by transforming the Model Prison into a school for combatants, the founder of a people's army that defeated in two years a professional army several times its size, the Commander in Chief who put Cuba on the world map and filled the peoples of the continent with hope, already had a place in history when, at only 34 years old, he shook the General Assembly of the United Nations with the longest and most significant speech ever delivered there until then.

In that passionate explanation of our history, Fidel presented to the world the panorama that the triumphant Revolution found in Cuba, which the laboratory propaganda of the current media war attempts to describe to the new generations as the prosperous and dazzling Cuba before 1959:

Six hundred thousand Cubans fit for work were unemployed.

Three million people, out of a total population of just over 6 million, did not have electric light or any of the benefits and comforts of electricity.

Three million five hundred thousand people lived in huts, shacks, and hovels without the most minimal conditions of habitability.

In the cities, rents absorbed up to a third of family income.

Thirty-seven and a half percent of the population was illiterate.

Seventy percent of children in rural areas had no teachers, and 95 percent suffered from parasitism.

Two percent of the population suffered from tuberculosis.

Infant mortality, therefore, was very high, and the average life expectancy of the population was very low.

Eighty-five percent of small farmers paid rent for the possession of their land, amounting to up to 30 percent of their gross income, while 1.5 percent of the total landowners controlled 46 percent of the nation's total area.

Public services, electric companies, telephone companies, a large part of banking, a large part of the import trade, oil refineries, most of sugar production, the best lands in Cuba, and the most important industries of all kinds were the property of U.S. companies and monopolies.

Neither the Cuban Revolution nor Fidel can ever be discussed without acknowledging that reality, that starting point, that state of affairs that demanded the most radical transformation of the 20th century on this side of the world.

It is enough to review the country's current statistics, even under the terrible restrictions imposed by over six decades of economic, financial, and commercial blockade and seven months of energy siege, even amid harsh blackouts, water shortages, high prices, and other problems that damage the essentials: health, education, science, culture, and sports indicators remain better than in other countries of similar development.

To mention just three: we are the country with the highest rate of doctors per capita, more than 9 per thousand inhabitants; one of the ten with the highest life expectancy in the Americas, at 77.7 years; and the one that has contributed the most to the health and education of its own population and other nations, according to criteria from the World Health Organization and UNESCO.

The great social and humanistic work of the Revolution led by Fidel Castro, always under blockade and siege, so radically changed that panorama he described at the United Nations in September 1960 that the return of Cuba to its colonial and neocolonial past will forever be impossible.

It was there that Fidel stated one of the most exact ideas about the world's problems, which, instead of being resolved, have worsened with the disappearance of the socialist camp and the imposition of unipolarity. I quote his historic 1960 UN speech:

"Wars, from the beginning of humanity, have arisen fundamentally for one reason: the desire of some to dispossess others of their wealth. Let the philosophy of plunder disappear, and the philosophy of war will have disappeared! Let colonies disappear, let the exploitation of countries by monopolies disappear, and then humanity will have reached a true stage of progress!"

Fidel's legacy interpellates us today with greater force than ever. I share with you some ideas I consider fundamental.

What did the Commander in Chief bequeath to us? He bequeathed us the certainty that dreams are conquered by defending ideas; he left us the lesson that internationalism is an attitude that should distinguish us; he taught us the conviction that socialism is the only path to save humanity from the abyss.

Fidel was the first to denounce neoliberal globalization as the empire of death, and also the first to raise his voice for a better world for all.

He taught us that the fight for the preservation of the environment and the human species is also a socialist battle, that science must be at the service of the people, that the unity of revolutionaries is more important than any tactical difference.

In Fidel, we find not only a historic leader but a perennial school of revolutionary work: study, analyze, foresee, listen to the people, and act with audacity and honesty.

Fidel led the destinies of Cuba with a coherence that has no parallel in contemporary history. But he was not just a leader and a guide; Fidel was a tireless worker, a permanent student, an orator who moved multitudes, a strategist who anticipated the future.

Fidel bequeathed us a way of thinking and acting. He left no recipes; he left a method. And that method was born of praxis, not just from libraries.

When Fidel formulated the five revolutionary laws in his defense plea of October 16, 1953—agrarian reform, labor rights, urban reform, confiscation of ill-gotten wealth, and industrial participation—he was not drafting a doctrinaire program imported from any manual; he was diagnosing the structural diseases of an underdeveloped and dependent economy.

That method—rigorous diagnosis, programmatic proposal, and decisive action—was repeated at every crossroads. In the Sierra Maestra, the principle of not waiting for the war to end to start producing articulated the armed struggle with economic construction. In 1960, with the nationalization of the subsoil, he converted sovereignty into collective property. In 1961, at Playa Girón, he demonstrated that an armed and conscious people can defeat imperialism.

Fidel understood something that many theorists failed to see: that the economy is not an autonomous sphere separate from politics, but its material expression, synthesized in his formulation: "There is no economy without politics, nor politics without economy."

This idea constitutes a methodological legacy: to think of the economy as the expression of a political project and politics as an instrument of economic transformation. Not to separate them, not to oppose them, but, on the contrary, to articulate them.

I would like to elaborate on other legacies as well.

The legacy of coherence and ethics: Fidel practiced what he preached. He accumulated no riches, he did not betray his principles; he lived as he thought and died as he lived. In a world where politics has become a spectacle of hypocrisy, that is a permanent challenge to conscience.

The legacy of intellectual audacity: Fidel was a tireless reader, a man who dialogued with scientists, economists, artists, athletes, and farmers. He taught us that socialism is not a dogma, but a science in construction, which must adapt to concrete realities without renouncing principles. Today, when digital capitalism imposes new forms of alienation upon us, his call to "study, study, study!" resonates as a warning: there is no revolution without knowledge!

The legacy of internationalism: Fidel did not understand the Cuban Revolution as an isolated event. For him, homeland was humanity. That is why he supported the causes for the liberation of African peoples, of Palestine; he denounced apartheid and genocide; he raised his voice against the war in Iraq and against the blockade and colonial appropriation of any people in the world.

The legacy of revolutionary optimism: Fidel was never a pessimist. In the darkest days, when the socialist camp was collapsing and the blockade was intensifying, he maintained his faith in human beings and in history. He taught us that revolutionary optimism is not naivety, but an unshakeable conviction in victory.

Fidel's military strategic thought and practice occupy an important place in his legacy.

In brief synthesis, we can point out that he was a master of guerrilla warfare who led us to the triumph of January 1, 1959. A profound student of contemporary military art who made true contributions to the conception of the most important military campaigns carried out in our internationalist missions. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, personally directed by the Commander in Chief, demonstrated his qualities as a military strategist. He conceived the doctrine of the War of the Entire People.

Fidel saw sovereignty not as a state attained, but as a process conquered and defended on multiple simultaneous fronts: the defense and security of the country, the economic front, the ideological-cultural front, the internationalist and solidarity front, the scientific front, and the foreign policy and international relations front.

His work system was based, in our opinion, on four principles:

The priority of the political. Every economic decision is a political decision.

The tactical-strategic sequence. Tactics change, principles do not: sovereignty, social justice, anti-imperialism, internationalism, solidarity.

Popular mobilization as a strategic resource. Discipline and participation imposed from above are fragile; discipline and popular participation collectively assumed are indestructible.

Innovation under restriction. Scarcity is not just a deficiency; it is a stimulus for creativity.

Fidel led a generation, the so-called Centenary Generation of José Martí, a determined troop of women and men who cannot be separated from history, who, from the assault on the Moncada, the Granma landing, and the Sierra Maestra, shared with him the leadership of the transformative processes of the Revolution. And that generation, composed of young people with already historic names—Fidel, Raúl, Che, Almeida, Ramiro, Guillermo, Vilma, Celia, Haydée, Melba, and so many others—connected with the needs and demands of an entire people willing to give their lives for the dignity conquered.

Fidel understood, like few others, the need to articulate ideological firmness with tactical flexibility. He taught us that "Marxism-Leninism is not a dead doctrine; it is not a catechism, but a method, a guide, an instrument to concretely solve the problems of life."

Regarding his qualities as a strategist who anticipated the future, there is no doubt, but neither is there mysticism in the statement. A profound student of national and international reality, which he followed in detail through all possible means, he was also a keen observer of human behavior, thanks not only to his remarkable intelligence but to his insatiable search for knowledge and the progress of science and technology. He also possessed a vast culture, nourished throughout his life by fundamental readings of all genres.

A revealing fragment from a letter Fidel wrote to his sister Lidia from prison on the Isle of Pines: "My greatest struggle since I have been here has been to insist and never tire of insisting that I need absolutely nothing: books are all I have needed, and books I consider spiritual goods."

That thirst for knowledge, along with a passion for the history and destiny of the human species, accompanied him until the end of his physical life. He left evidence of this in his Reflections: 484 texts on the most diverse subjects, published between March 28, 2007, and October 9, 2016.

Ten years after his physical departure, it is moving to reread what he intended with them, as he wrote in one of the first, dated June 22, 2007: "I did not begin this work as part of a previously elaborated plan, but out of a strong desire to communicate with the main protagonist of our resistance as I observe the stupid actions of the empire."

Here there are three components: his need to communicate in the masterful way he did, his respect for the people as the fundamental protagonist, and his criticism of the empire.

Under Fidel's direction, Cuba achieved the eradication of illiteracy in 1961, with a campaign that mobilized over 250,000 volunteers.

Barely two years after the triumph, it defeated at Playa Girón an invasion financed, trained, and escorted by the neighboring empire, dealing it the first major defeat in Latin America.

Cuba built the most advanced universal healthcare system in the Third World.

Cuba sent over 600,000 health professionals to 165 countries through the International Medical Cooperation Program.

Cuba developed a free education system from daycare to university.

Fidel designed the principles of Cuban foreign policy and built a solid cultural and sports system, making them a global reference.

One of the fundamental chapters of his legacy at the continental level took place during the most hopeful period in the history of Our America when, together with Hugo Chávez, he led the rebirth of the integration project of Simón Bolívar, which was also the great dream of José Martí.

Of course, we are not speaking only of ideas. The deeds that transformed the relations between the governments and peoples of the most unequal region on the planet in a very short time have definitively entered the history of the 21st century as determining moments in its subsequent evolution.

In 1998, the Comprehensive Health Program was created, through which Cuba confronted the tragedy of peoples ravaged by hurricanes in Central America and the Caribbean. In 1999, the Latin American School of Medicine was founded, both ideas of Fidel, which demonstrated in practice the universal value of cooperation and solidarity—an unexplored path of emancipation then, later crowned by ALBA-Petrocaribe, the medical and educational missions, Operation Miracle with its more than 3 million ophthalmological surgeries, the "Yes, I Can" Literacy Program, and the Henry Reeve Contingent, whose extraordinary work in confronting catastrophes has earned its nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As you can appreciate, the programs of clear social justice orientation mentioned above are related to everything the new regional far-right, articulated and led by Washington, would like to erase from the history of Our America, with the same viciousness with which the empire attempts to separate Cuba once again from its regional environment.

We meet here today, just hours from August 13th, the date our Commander in Chief would have turned 100 years old, not to celebrate a ritual commemoration, but to fulfill a duty: the duty to think of Fidel not as the past, but as a strategist beyond his time. To think of his legacy not as a deposit of quotes to evoke on anniversaries, but as a guide to overcome the challenges we face today, in the real Cuba, in 2026.

We cannot speak of Fidel without looking at the world he studied so deeply and which we inherit; and the world, as he used to say, is a whirlwind of contradictions. The systemic crisis of capitalism has reached its sharpest point: regional wars that threaten to expand, a climate crisis that is no longer a forecast but a daily catastrophe, famines provoked by financial speculation, forced migrations that turn seas into cemeteries, and a social fracture where the wealth of the few accumulates on the misery of the many.

The international order is in dispute. Unilateral imperialism seeks to impose its law by force, but the multipolar world has arrived to stay. However, the empire redoubles its attacks, seeks new pretexts, fabricates enemies, and destabilizes governments that do not bow down.

On this global chessboard, Cuba remains one of the favorite targets of imperial fury. It is no coincidence that in the year of Fidel's Centenary, Washington has intensified its offensive: reinforcement of the blockade with extraterritorial measures that persecute commercial and financial relations; arbitrary inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, a historical irony for a country that has been the victim of state terrorism for decades; massive media campaigns that try to portray Cuba as a "failed regime" while silencing our achievements in health, education, culture, science, and sports; and, to top it off, they have invented the ridiculous accusation of being a "spying power" or a focus of subversion for the so-called "radical terrorist left"—to which it seems all of us gathered here belong—a pathetic and fantastical name, only credible in their twisted minds, but which they use to confuse, justify more punishment, and legitimize their aggressions.

Alongside economic and political aggression, they implement ideological and cultural warfare, digital subversion, and financing for internal mercenaries who, with funds from U.S. agencies, seek to fracture our unity. It is no secret that the United States has allocated millions of dollars to promote "regime change" through social networks, NGOs, and platforms disguised as "human rights defenders," but which actually serve the geopolitical interests of the empire.

We are not at all surprised by recent revelations in major U.S. media about an increase in CIA operations in Cuba to subvert the internal order. These are not random leaks, as they are presented, but part of the deliberate U.S. regime plan of psychological warfare against Cuba.

In the height of cynicism and perversity, the Secretary of State recently declared that U.S. sanctions against the Cuban regime will only become harsher. "What we are trying to teach them," he said, "is that there are no escape valves."

This is an unashamed recognition that a difficult situation exists in Cuba as a consequence of an unprecedented economic war. This statement constitutes the open threat of genocidal extermination of an entire people if they do not submit to the designs of the empire.

On this matter, UN experts stressed that the illegal unilateral coercive measures of the United States against Cuba contravene Article 2 of the United Nations Charter and form part of a broader strategy of regime change encompassing decades of embargo against Cuba.

"The Government of the United States must end all threats and hostile acts against the sovereignty of Cuba and revoke all measures it has imposed on the country that are contrary to International Law," the experts said.

And they further added: "The Security Council and the General Assembly must urgently address these threats as a matter of international peace and security."

There can be no greater act of cynicism than the fact that the victimizer wishes to pass as the victim, when its misdeeds have been public and notorious over decades. The United States has no moral authority whatsoever, nor any right, to point fingers at Cuba, which has been possibly the nation most spied upon by them and with the largest funds destined for economic and ideological subversion.

The blockade intensified in recent years is not just an economic measure; it is an undeclared act of war against a people who decided to be free. It is a systematic attempt to subdue by hunger and hopelessness a nation that has demonstrated, for more than six decades, that dignity is not negotiable.

I do not exaggerate in saying that this colloquium is being held at one of the most difficult moments the Revolution has experienced, but we are not here to administer nostalgia. We are here because the thought of Fidel Castro continues to be the most precise compass we have to navigate the storm the Cuban people are living through! (Applause.) And the storm is real; our people live it every day: in the blackouts that interrupt family life, the workday, and the learning of our children and youth; in inflation that erodes the purchasing power of salaries; in the fuel shortage that paralyzes the economy and transportation; in the difficulties in completing the basic food basket; in the emigration that tears away our young people. We are not here to deny that reality, but to understand it in its just dimension and to find in Fidel's thought the keys to transform it.

I will give you some data on the impacts of the blockade on Cuban society.

Particularly in the energy sector: in recent years, with enormous effort, we had recovered more than 1,400 megawatts of power for electricity generation in a group of distributed generation plants. These plants are offline, lacking fuel; they run on diesel and fuel oil. If we had those 1,400 megawatts available every day, the bothersome blackouts in Cuba would last only three hours, not twenty or more hours as our people suffer today.

In health, such a sensitive area whose potential you all know regarding our universal and free system, with opportunities for all, with things we know how to do: there are 98,500 patients on surgical waiting lists, and among them, 12,000 children—surgeries we can perform in Cuba, but we lack the resources, we lack the energy to power operating rooms.

There are 34,000 pregnant women on whom we cannot perform sufficient prenatal ultrasounds during their pregnancy.

There are 67,000 children under one year of age born in recent months without an updated immunization schedule, when Cuba's vaccination and immunization system was always up to date.

There are 117,000 adults and 1,200 children who are cancer patients lacking adequate primary treatments, and we must resort to secondary or tertiary formulas.

There are 16,000 patients who have difficulty with the radiotherapy services they need, 12,400 with chemotherapy, and 3,000 with hemodialysis.

Only 30 percent of the basic medication formulary is available, even though we are capable of producing the necessary medicines.

The technical availability coefficient of ambulances reaches only 22 percent due to lack of spare parts.

There is an inability to purchase cobalt-60 sources for oncological treatments, and there are delays in licenses to release medical goods at ports, also due to the refusal of international shipping companies that have been pressured by U.S. imperialism not to bring the goods we need to Cuba.

And as if this were not enough, we had always maintained infant mortality rates between 4 and 5, which are rates typical of developed countries; however, in these years, the rate has doubled for us and is currently over 9.8, which means deaths of children who could have been saved.

Wherever a glimpse of relief is discerned or sought in this meticulously calculated genocide, there will be the henchmen of this ignominious policy, to tighten the noose of suffocation one more turn.

What has Cuba done in the face of this storm? We have responded with what Fidel taught us: resistance is not passive, it is creative. Amid the harassment, we have developed our own vaccines that allowed us to confront the pandemic with sovereignty; we have boosted agriculture—urban and suburban agriculture with agroecology—to guarantee food despite the scarcity of fuel and fertilizers; we have strengthened our defense systems with a popular militia that needs no tanks or planes to defend its land, because it defends it with its heart and the cohesion of its forces.

We have known how to turn adversity into opportunity; the crisis forces us to be more efficient, more innovative, more participatory. Our scientists, our teachers, our doctors, our farmers, and workers have demonstrated that collective intelligence can achieve more than the empire's money. And, above all, we have not renounced internationalism; we continue to send medical brigades to the poorest places in the world, sharing our educational and scientific methods; we continue to be the island that builds bridges of brotherhood.

Yes, we have many shortages. Blackouts, water shortages, inflation, and queues overwhelm us; but no material shortage has extinguished the flame of solidarity in which Fidel educated us (Applause).

One fact confirming this is that in the final days of the past school year, as tense and difficult as never before, 30,185 young professionals graduated from Cuban universities, including 735 from 62 countries who have been trained in Cuba (Applause). And a fact we are honored to show: more than twenty new Palestinian doctors and five North American doctors (Applause).

The people's response, under the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba, has been firm and creative resistance, unity, defense of their conquests, and the updating of the economic and social model, without ever renouncing the principles of socialism and without yielding to pressure or blackmail. To achieve this, we are implementing a set of economic and social transformations. That capacity to resist and transform has its firmest roots, more than ever, in the thought and action of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz.

It is about continuing socialist construction on a small island threatened by the greatest imperialism in the history of humanity and completely blockaded, whose State is cut off from all sources of resources, financing, and trade.

Faced with this dilemma, it is necessary to produce and generate wealth to redistribute it with all possible social justice and to preserve historic and essential conquests of the Revolution in strategic areas such as health, education, culture, science, energy, and communications.

Doing so will be the task of everyone: the state enterprise and the non-state sector, together with other forms of economic management that, as a whole, make up the Cuban business fabric, focused on a single goal: building the prosperous and sustainable socialism that the heroic people of Cuba deserve.

I want to emphasize that this is a process to revitalize the economy, not to establish capitalism; there will be no all-out privatization. The fundamental means of production remain in the hands of the people, and sovereignty and national independence are preserved above all.

For such a complex process, the Communist Party of Cuba, as the leading force of the State and society, stands as the main responsible for its conduction, coordination, and control, and as the jealous guardian of the interests of the people, the working class, the social conquests, and the social justice that has moved the Revolution since its beginnings.

Comrades:

Fidel is not the exclusive patrimony of Cubans. Fidel belongs to all who fight for a better world. And you, participants in this Colloquium, intellectuals and activists who have made his thought your own, have a decisive role to play.

We call on you to spread the truth about Cuba and all peoples in resistance. In a world where the major media fabricate lies and convenient narratives, you have the responsibility to be spokespersons for the reality that we Cubans live: a reality of shortages, yes, but also of conquests, of solidarity, and of hope.

Every book you write, every article you publish, every conference you give in your countries is a trench against disinformation. The battle of ideas today is waged in the digital terrain, against technological illiteracy and new forms of cultural colonization.

You must articulate effective solidarity networks. It is not enough to pronounce speeches of support. Solidarity must be translated into concrete actions: campaigns for the lifting of the blockade, proposals for scientific and cultural cooperation, fair trade projects, denunciations before international bodies.

You must deepen critical thinking on 21st-century socialism. Fidel left us open questions, not finished answers. How to build popular power in the digital age? How to make centralized planning compatible with territorial autonomy? How to confront climate change from a socialist perspective? You, from your disciplines, have the mission to provide creative and realistic answers, and you must strengthen the unity of progressive movements.

Fidel was a master in the art of adding wills, of building bridges between diverse sectors, of seeking coincidences without renouncing differences.

I call on all followers and scholars of his legacy to work for unity, to overcome secondary divisions to concentrate on the essential: the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

The Revolution has devoted its maximum effort to young people and has placed its greatest hopes in them. Fidel always trusted in the role of young people in the revolutionary process.

"Believing in young people," he said, "is to see in them, besides enthusiasm, capacity; besides energy, responsibility; besides youth, purity, heroism, character, will, love for the homeland, faith in the homeland. It is to have the deep conviction that youth can, that youth is capable, that great tasks can be placed upon the shoulders of youth" (Applause).

It was the youth who surrounded Fidel to conceive achievable dreams when the homeland needed it. From his long meetings with young people, great social achievements were formed: the drive for the development of art instructors, comprehensive teachers, and social workers. It was the youth who took up arms in the Sierra, who taught literacy in the mountains, who were the protagonists in the glorious internationalist missions, who built the contingents, who drove science and technology.

Today, in the year of his Centenary, Cuban youth are called to forge themselves with the same historical stature. The challenges we have ahead are immense: the economy battered by the blockade, the structural transformations we must implement, the need to produce more food, to achieve the energy transition, to substitute imports, to build a society with greater well-being for all. There is no challenge that youth cannot face if they set their minds to it.

Comrades:

Allow me to close with a certainty that Fidel bequeathed to us: the future is not written; we have the power to write it.

Yes, the empire is powerful, but history is on the side of the peoples. Every child learning to read today in a Cuban school when there is no electricity, every farmer cultivating with agroecology, every scientist researching without patents, every young person active in a social movement, every mother defending her children from violence, is a victory in advance.

Fidel's Centenary is a starting point. It is the moment to assume that his legacy is not in the past, but in the present and in the future we are building. It is not enough to remember him; we must study him! It is not enough to admire him; we must emulate him! (Applause.)

I would like to thank you again, from the bottom of my heart, for your presence. You are the ambassadors of truth, the witnesses that Cuba does not surrender, the traveling companions of a revolution that transcends borders.

In my words, I have avoided referring to my personal experiences with him; however, I do want to express that from Fidel's school, I have been profoundly marked by his loyalty and his decision to confront imperialism as his life's destiny, his vision of unity, the example of always being present in the most adverse scenarios without allowing himself to be defeated by pessimism, his sensitivity toward the most needy, his concept of social justice, and the value encompassed in his complete concept of Revolution.

I wish to place on record, at the start of the celebration of these 100 years that we share, the enormous commitment of the Party and Government leadership to the immeasurable work of Fidel, which we have the responsibility to save from the threatening winds blowing everywhere, fueled by the thirst for conquest and punishment that the empire reserves for us.

Allow me to finish as Fidel said more than once: "We are willing to resist the imperialist blockade with dignity and self-sacrifice for as many years as necessary. If others compromise, if others allow themselves to be bribed, if others betray, Cuba will know how to remain an example of a revolution that does not surrender" (Applause and shouts of: "I am Fidel!").

I repeat: "Cuba will know how to remain an example of a revolution that does not surrender, that does not sell out, that does not give up, that does not kneel!" (Applause and shouts of: "Viva!")

Fidel is a country, Fidel is Cuba! (Applause.)

For Cuba, with Fidel, until victory always!

Long live Fidel forever! (Shouts of: "Viva!")

Socialism or Death!

Homeland or Death!

We Shall Overcome! (Shouts of: "Venceremos!")