In no other people has the spirit of international solidarity become so deeply rooted.

            Our country supported the Algerian patriots in their struggle against French colonialism, at the cost of damaging
political and economic relations with such an important European country as France.

            We sent weapons and troops to defend Algeria from Moroccan expansionism, when the king of this country sought
to take control of the iron mines of Gara Djebilet, near the city of Tindouf, in southwest Algeria.

            At the request of the Arab nation of Syria, a full tank brigade stood guard between 1973 and 1975 alongside the
Golan Heights, when this territory was unjustly seized from that country.

            The leader of the Republic of Congo when it first achieved independence, Patrice Lumumba, who was harassed
from abroad, received our political support. When he was assassinated by the colonial powers in January of 1961, we lent
assistance to his followers.

            Four years later, in 1965, Cuban blood was shed in the western region of Lake Tanganyika, where Che Guevara and
more than 100 Cuban instructors supported the Congolese rebels who were fighting against white mercenaries in the
service of the man supported by the West, that is, Mobutu whose 40 billion dollars, the same that he stole, nobody knows
what European banks they are kept in, or in whose power.

            The blood of Cuban instructors was shed while training and supporting the combatants of the African Party for
the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde, who fought under the command of Amilcar Cabral for the liberation of these
former Portuguese colonies.

            The same was true during the ten years that Cuba supported Agostinho Neto's MPLA in the struggle for the
independence of Angola. After independence was achieved, and over the course of 15 years, hundreds of thousands of
Cuban volunteers participated in defending Angola from the attacks of racist South African troops that in complicity with
the United States, and using dirty war tactics, planted millions of mines, wiped out entire villages, and murdered more than half a million Angolan men, women and children.

            In Cuito Cuanavale and on the Namibian border, to the southwest of Angola, Angolan and Namibian forces together
with 40,000 Cuban troops dealt the final blow to the South African troops. This resulted in the immediate liberation of
Namibia and speeded up the end of apartheid by perhaps 20 to 25 years. At the time, the South Africans had seven
nuclear warheads that Israel had supplied to them or helped them to produce, with the full knowledge and complicity of the
U.S. government.

            Throughout the course of almost 15 years, Cuba had a place of honor in its solidarity with the heroic people of
Viet Nam, caught up in a barbaric and brutal war with the United States. That war killed four million Vietnamese, in addition to all those left wounded and mutilated, not to mention the fact that the country was inundated with chemical compounds that continue to cause incalculable damage. The pretext: Viet Nam, a poor and underdeveloped country located 20,000 kilometers away, constituted a threat to the national security of the United States.

            Cuban blood was shed together with that of citizens of numerous Latin American countries, and together with the
Cuban and Latin American blood of Che Guevara, murdered on instructions from U.S. agents in Bolivia, when he was
wounded and being held prisoner after his weapon had been rendered useless by a shot received in battle.

            The blood of Cuban construction workers, that were nearing completion of an international airport vital for the
economy of a tiny island fully dependent on tourism, was shed fighting in defense of Grenada, invaded by the United States under cynical pretexts.

            Cuban blood was shed in Nicaragua, when instructors from our Armed Forces were training the brave Nicaraguan
soldiers confronting the dirty war organized and armed by the United States against the Sandinista revolution.

            And there are even more examples.

            Over 2000 heroic Cuban internationalist combatants gave their lives fulfilling the sacred duty of supporting the
liberation struggles for the independence of other sister nations. However, there is not one single Cuban property in any of those countries.   No other country in our era has exhibited such sincere and selfless solidarity.