The following are major excerpts of a speech by Pedro Ross, general secretary of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), opening the plenary sessions of the CTC's 17th congress April 28. Cuba's trade union federation held its national convention April 27-30 in Havana. Nearly 2,300 delegates and guests from Cuba and 1,400 international observers participated. BY PEDRO ROSS

We dedicate our opening remarks and our congress to the millions of Cuban woman and men who, despite all the difficulties, have risen each day for the past few years to work for Cuba and its future, and to those who have led our homeland through the greatest risks and perils in its history. Let us dedicate our first words to all those who have made possible the apparent miracle in which a small country - engaged in a tenacious struggle against underdevelopment and subjected to U.S. hostility and harassment -successfully resisted the devastating impact of the disappearance of its main socialist allies and the intensified imperialist blockade, then halted a drop in production, and now is beginning the long, difficult, but viable road to economic recovery.

The powerful neighboring enemy from the savage and brutal north has gambled, and continues to gamble, on the prospect that Cuba will not survive the tightened noose they are attempting to strangle us with, or their extraordinary campaign of confusion and ideological subversion.

We are, and always will be, confident in the patriotism and dignity of Cubans, in their revolutionary consciousness, in their unity around this effort and cause, which has earned us the respect and solidarity of the peoples of the world.

This is above all a political congress, meeting at a time when a rabidly annexationist bill, dictated by the Yankee ultra-right and Miami's counterrevolutionary mafia, has been approved.(1) This law confirms that our only alternatives are to be free or be slaves; to be a nation proud of its sovereignty or a colony carved up among capitalists from the United States, whether by birth or by choice; to be a nation of workers in power building socialism or to return to times worse than Batista's tyranny....

Union movement greatly strengthened
This is what has guided our activity over the last few years, and led us to issue the call for the Workers Parliaments and to organize the initial Efficiency Assemblies, one after another.(2)

Above all, this has guided us since May 1, 1995, when we issued our call and began the hard work over the year-long march toward this congress. It is a congress that has been at the heart of every workplace, where open discussions and freely expressed opinions on the theses have taken place.

This congress has been based on the participation of 169 municipalities and 14 provincial conferences. It has drawn on the experience not only of our cadres but of thousands of specialists and technicians organized in work groups, commissions, and workshops, who enriched our efforts from the locals and union bureaus on up. We arrive at these final sessions with a greatly strengthened union movement.

These are not just methods of unionism but a policy of the revolution from which we can never deviate: constant communication and dialogue to discuss and analyze together with workers every important step the country must take. We have always acted with the consensus of the masses....

The workers' opinions are reflected throughout the theses, collectively drawn up by the union leadership and serving as the basis for this 17th Congress. They present in a clear and cogent manner the situation Cuba is passing through and the role of the union movement in confronting the new approaches and adjustments we have been adopting in the economic field in order to maintain workers power, national independence, and socialism....

While it may seem obvious after five years of the special period,(3) we must never forget that the previous economic situation will no longer return. Now we must confront unequal trade, rising prices for many goods we must import, including fuel and foodstuffs, as well as falling prices for many of our leading exports. All this takes place amid a true economic war being waged against this country, which raises the cost of our trade and financial operations, if not halting them altogether....

We need to grasp the full implication of the Cuban economy's number one limitation today. It is the lack of hard currency, the shortfall in investment capital to restore the productive cycle in industry and agriculture. We are forced to legalize the use of foreign currencies alongside ours, to open chains of stores to obtain hard currency, to allow foreign investment and accreditation of foreign companies, and the development of tourism, with its many advantages and resulting problems and deformations, which create social differentiation and certain attitudes, lifestyles, and attitudes against which we cannot slack up in our struggle to preserve the moral values of the revolution and socialism....

Workers understand that everything we do from our position of power, even that which is not purely socialist, is done under the current conditions to advance along a socialist course.

We will not tolerate corruption, theft
Workers can understand the fact that there are greater social inequalities than we have been accustomed to, if they are necessary to revitalize the economy, assimilate changes, and stimulate sectors that are playing a vanguard role in the country's recovery. What we will not tolerate, and will decisively combat, is the development of cronyism, nepotism, privilege, corruption, and theft....

There is nothing more politically important than the successful culmination of the sugar harvest. It is my great pleasure to report to you that following the May Day celebration, within a few weeks, we will be able to tell our people, the whole country and the world that we exceeded the production plan set for this harvest. This represents at least a 30 percent increase over the previous harvest. The workers in our main industry achieved this triumph step by step, together with the cane cutters, who mobilized in response to the call made by the leadership of the revolution....

We are speaking of a victory that will have a bearing on this year's economic growth, on maintaining and expanding the international credits needed to continue to revive the sugar industry, and on our people's morale and spirit. Furthermore, it is one of the sharpest blows we can inflict on the sponsors of the infamous Helms-Burton law....

The discussions on the theses provided a broad framework for analyzing how to strengthen the work in the Basic Units of Cooperative Production [UBPC] and the state agricultural farms, the role of the union in the struggle to make these units profitable and efficient, and the weight they should bring to bear to increase production, to supply the basic needs of the population through state markets and food services at official prices. They must exert greater pressure to lower today's excessively high prices on the agricultural markets, which result from the limited presence of state and cooperative producers and the pressure exerted by middlemen and speculators to search for excessive profit margins at the expense of those who honestly live off their wages or pensions. Many have pointed out the importance of strengthening the historic alliance of the working class and working farmers, as well as united action to find answers to these difficulties. These problems directly affect urban workers' families, and they require solutions that undoubtedly must be found within the framework in which these agricultural markets were created.

In discussing these theses, workers understand that organizational formulas can play a certain role such as exerting greater control over the agricultural markets and getting the state distribution agency to serve as intermediaries. However, these problems will be thoroughly solved only by increasing production, by fully developing the country's various forms of agricultural production - state, cooperative, and private. Many of these lands still suffer from low yields, inadequate use of scientific and technical methods, and a shortage of labor.

Another central priority that is fundamentally in the workers' interests is the need to make state enterprises more efficient and competitive. Our power is based on socialist property, and our hard-won independence, sovereignty, progress, and social justice will be consolidated to the degree we are capable of demonstrating that efficiency is not exclusively the product of commercialism and its alienation, or of capitalist property, or of exploitation of man by man....

The enemy's permanent aggressiveness, the tightening of the blockade through the new slavery law, as Raśl [Castro] calls the Helms-Burton monster, are aimed at trying to strangle us, behead the party and the socialist state, take power away from the workers, and restore neocolonial capitalism under the rule of the transnationals and the annexationist mafia of Miami.

Behind this policy is the goal - never given up - of creating a conflict or provoking a situation that in some way could justify a Yankee military intervention....

Gap between income and needs
We know that today there is a wide gap between the income and the necessities of most workers, but we also know that the gap will not be bridged by wages that are not backed by production of goods and services.

Gradually, and in line with the beginning of economic recovery, incentives have been offered to provide greater possibilities of income for more than one million workers in jobs related to exports, import substitution, or other activities that provide hard currency....

The efforts to provide jobs for young people and the protection of women workers - two topics that were extensively discussed - will also be among the main political and social objectives of the union movement.

Cuban workers will never allow ourselves to be dragged down to the selfish and individualistic mentality that capitalist ideology seeks to portray as inherent to human nature. Collectivity and solidarity are among our most cherished values and they constitute the marrow of national unity and the unity of all workers around the principles of the Cuban socialist revolution....

We would also like to address our visitors and class brothers and sisters from around the world. You can rest assured that Cuban workers and their union movement will firmly uphold and never give up the banners of independence, revolution, and socialism.

Defending Cuba's cause today in the face of imperialism's brutal aggression is undoubtedly the best contribution we can make today to internationalism and solidarity with the workers and peoples. We will not use our difficulties to shut ourselves in like a snail inside its shell. We are not just fighting for ourselves. Our voice and our fighting spirit are and will be on the side of workers in any corner of the world, of all sister organizations that defend their just demands....

Workers around the world confront enemies whose ideas aim to deny them their rights and aspirations. In essence they are the same ones who are trying to enslave Cubans as a Yankee colonial possession. Our struggle is one and the same. Today it may be centered here, but tomorrow imperialism's main blows may be directed elsewhere. We must all unite today, as never before, so that Cuba's victory will be the victory and stronghold of all the workers of the world.

Forty-four years ago, when Batista's tyranny was imposed on our people through a traitorous blow, Fidel Castro proclaimed, "I don't know what demented pleasure our oppressors feel when they lash their whips across human backs, but I do know there is an infinite joy in fighting them, in raising one's arm and declaring, `I will not be a slave!' "

Through the revolution and thanks to the revolution we ceased being slaves forever, and we will never go back to being slaves. May Fidel's words at the Moncada trial(4) be heard once again, "We were born in a free country that our parents bequeathed to us, and the island will sink into the sea before we consent to be anyone's slaves."

Let us join that idea with Antonio Maceo's(5) immortal cry on the 100th anniversary of his fall in battle at Punta Brava: "Whoever attempts to seize Cuba, will grasp only her blood-soaked soil, if they do not first perish in the attempt." Notes

1. The "Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act," also referred to as the Helms-Burton law, was signed by U.S. president William Clinton March 12. The measure significantly tightens Washington's embargo and travel restrictions against Cuba.

2. The CTC initiated assemblies in every worksite, called the Workers Parliaments, in January 1994. The meetings considered fiscal and other proposals discussed in the National Assembly the month before, aimed at reviving industrial and agricultural production. The Efficiency Assemblies were subsequent workplace meetings organized by the unions.

3. "Special period" is the term used by Cubans to describe the economic crisis triggered by the post-1989 disruption of aid and trade with the former Soviet bloc countries.

4. On July 26, 1953, 160 combatants led by Fidel Castro attacked Moncada, the main Cuban army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, as well as the Bayamo barracks. The attacks failed and over 50 revolutionaries were captured and murdered; 28 were imprisoned and amnestied in 1955. During his October 1953 trial, Castro laid out the program of the revolutionary armed struggle against Batista's dictatorship in a speech known as "History Will Absolve Me."

5. Antonio Maceo was a leader of the Cuban wars for independence from Spain in the late 1800s.  
 
 
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