Secretary's Speech

Secretary of Commerce Carlos M. Gutierrez
Remarks to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts

Video

Thank you very much, what a pleasure to be here in this great institution. Dean Ellwood, thank you for the introduction, thank you for the invitation. It’s a unique privilege for me to be able to talk about Cuba and to get in the subject of Cuba. You’ll find very quickly that I have a clear point of view about Cuba. But that of course isn’t to say that I can’t learn about Cuba and I’m looking forward to the Q and A. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. To having a good discussion, about our thoughts and this tremendous experience that has taken place 90 miles from our shores. We were just saying a little while ago that while Cuba hasn’t been at the front of foreign policy for many decades, it will soon be. During many of your generations it will be, because of events, because of changes, because there’s clearly a changing of the guard coming in Cuba and that will impact events in Cuba and events in Cuba 90 miles from our country, it will impact us. And we will have a role to play, I hope. So, let me get started and I’m looking forward to hearing from you but I thought I would set the stage and maybe provoke some discussions and questions.

Interestingly, in April of 1959, Fidel Castro came to Harvard. This was four months after he had toppled the Batista government—the Batista dictatorship—and he came to the U.S. in a kind of a “friendship, goodwill mission” and I brought a quote from that, sort of a quote that has made the rounds and I thought I would just start with the specific quote from his speech here and also from his speech in Washington. So it was clearly something in his talking points he wanted to get through. [From] April 1959 [it] says: “There is not communism or Marxism in our ideas, only representative democracy and social justice.” This was very much his message at that time and what he was getting across when he came to the U.S.

Later on as books had been published and as more had been written about Cuba and Castro’s life, an interesting quote of Castro’s, [from] June 1958, was published not long ago, it was actually a letter that he wrote to a very close friend of his, it was part of his movement. June 1958, and it says … and I’ll put these quotes together because I think they shed a lot of light on Castro and Cuba. 1958, the quote says: “When this war is over,” this war being the war to topple Batista, “I will begin a much longer and a much larger war for me. The war that I will wage is against the U.S. I realize that that is my true destiny.” So, interesting the juxtaposition of those two statements in 1961, in June of ‘61, about two years after he came to the U.s., after he was here at Harvard, he made this quote which I will use and then get on with some of the points. 1961 speaking in Havana in front of hundreds of thousands of people, it says “I am a Marxist-Leninist and I will be for the rest of my life.”

So, we have these three quotes, one is “I stand for democracy.” Two is six months before, “My real purpose in life is to wage war against the U.S.” And then three, “I will be a Marxist-Leninist for the rest of my life.” Those three quotes I believe if you’re trying to figure out Cuba, if you’re trying to figure out the last 50 years or trying to think about, “How does this individual think?” You will find that most actions that have come out of Cuba in the last 50 years somehow you can trace back to one of these quotes. Especially the one about the U.S. and of course, especially the one about communism.

What I will tell you and what I will convey to you today in my discussion is that I believe that Fidel Castro is first and foremost anti-America.