On December 31, 2022, a Cuban Medical Brigade in Gambia greeted the New Year.
We are sixty-four long years defending our conquests, resisting the cruel and merciless blockade imposed by our northern neighbors, using our boundless creativity and our fertile intellect to overcome every crisis and every difficult period.
Here we are with our feet in the stirrups, displaying our altruistic formation and our human and solidarity values. We are sharing with the needy of the world what little we have, not merely what we can spare. We offer health, love and much dedication. We heal the body and the soul.
Yes, it is true we are going through difficult times, but we also reap gratitude and the sweet satisfaction of doing what is right, of saving many lives with professionalism and abundant affection.
On this new anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution, we affirm our commitment to our homeland and to the Commander in Chief, Fidel Castro. We will continue flying the flags of internationalism and offering health, humanity and altruism.
The Cuban Medical Brigade in Gambia performs beautiful and valuable health work. Our debt and gratitude to Africa is eternal. We will always be at the side of our African brothers and sisters and together, surely, we will achieve a better world for all.
Dear Commander in Chief, you live among us eternally, in every humanitarian action, with every life saved and with every grateful heart.
For all this and much more we are faithful to your legacy, Fidel. Thank you, we live eternally proud to be Cubans and to have been formed under your guidance and your brilliant ideas. You live forever in the hearts of all your compatriots, and of all the worthy and brave of this world.
Congratulations from African lands to the Cuban people, to General of the Army, Raul Castro, and to our president, Miguel Diaz-Canel for this new January 1st of victories. We will continue in combat.
Secondly, we recall Fidel Castro’s speech on May Day, 2000. He refers to Cuba’s struggle to have the child Elián González returned to Cuba from Florida. Fidel Castro explains what a revolution is:
Compatriots:
We are living through days of intense and crucial battle. For five months we have been fighting restlessly. Millions of our compatriots, almost without exception, have participated in this fight. Our consciousness and the ideas sown by the Revolution throughout more than four decades have been our weapons. … This time the struggle has taken on a particularly critical character, as a consequence of the kidnapping of a child.
[What is a revolution?]
Revolution means having a sense of history; it is changing everything that must be changed; it is full equality and freedom; it is being treated and treating others like human beings; it is achieving emancipation by ourselves and through our own efforts; it is challenging powerful dominant forces from within and without the social and national milieu; it is defending the values in which we believe at the cost of any sacrifice; it is modesty, selflessness, altruism, solidarity and heroism; it is fighting with courage, intelligence and realism; it is never lying or violating ethical principles; it is a profound conviction that there is no power in the world that can crush the power of truth and ideas. Revolution means unity; it is independence, it is fighting for our dreams of justice for Cuba and for the world, which is the foundation of our patriotism, our socialism and our internationalism.
