I Would Rather Die Standing Up To

One Has To Grow Hard But Without Ever Losing Tenderness.

Each Spilt Drop Of Blood, In Any Country Under Whose Flag One Has Not Been Born, Is An Experience Passed On To Those Who Survive, To Be Added Later To The Liberation Struggle Of His Own Country. And Each Nation Liberated Is A Phase Won In The Battle For The Liberation Of One's Own Country.

Direct Aggression Against Cuba Would Mean Nuclear War. The Americans Speak About Such Aggression As If They Did Not Know Or Did Not Want To Accept This Fact. I Have No Doubt They Would Lose Such A War.

I Am Being Bombed By Questions Of All Kinds. I Will Try To Be Very Concise And Try To Explain To The American People. We Had A Great Number Of Mistakes In The Economic Fleld, Naturally. I Am Not The Critic. It Is Fidel Castro, The One Who Has Criticized Repeatedly The Mistakes We Have Made, And He Explained Why We Have Made Them. We Did Not Have A Previous Preparation. We Made Mistakes In Agriculture. We Made Mistakes In Industry. All These Mistakes Are Being Settled Now.

This Is Not A Story Of Heroic Feats, Or Merely The Narrative Of A Cynic; At Least I Do Not Mean It To Be. It Is A Glimpse Of Two Lives Running Parallel For A Time, With Similar Hopes And Convergent Dreams.