Latest Alejandro Castro Espin Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• There is no one more talkative than Cubans, Cubans express their feelings, there's nobody more rebellious and revolutionary than a Cuban and I say that without chauvinism.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Feelings, Revolutionary, Rebellious

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• In building up a democratic model I think that Cuba's contribution, little by little, has contributed to getting closer to the ideals of those philosophers, of those Greeks who thought about how a society could be fairer, how a society could really represent the interests of the people. We have tried to get closer to that from a Latin-American perspective and from the Cuban perspective.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Latin, Thinking, Building Up

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• Socialism is overcoming certain difficulties, it is working in order to try to achieve social advances, to really achieve a society where everybody improves, not where just the elite improve and the others get worse.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Order, Trying, Overcoming

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Play, Rights, Perspective

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• Communism is an aspiration, an aspiration is an ideal, a dream, a longing of something that would be perfect, but hard to build because it has to clash with human nature and against the egotism of humans and the egotism of the elites which usually try to guarantee their own interests above those of their nations and of their own people. But they are the ones that prevail because they have the economic power, the political power and the military power.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Dream, Military, Perfect

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• In Cuba we are building a socialist society and we could say we are on the verge of a communist society which is hard to achieve, very hard to achieve, but is a longing worth fighting for.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Fighting, Cuba, Longing

  "The Future of Cuba". Inteview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• With the Cuban presence in Namibia it was possible to achieve the security and real freedom of that country and the end of Apartheid in South Africa, with the modest contribution of the international military presence in Africa.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Real, Military

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South African government, where a few million white people subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending Angola. These things have not been written down but they need to be told as part of the reality of history which should not be distorted the way the historians connected to the power elite tend to do.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Reality, Government, White

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• The role that Cuba played and the lives of those 2,077 Cubans, whose mothers and families mourn for having lost their children in Africa, helped achieve the true security and independence of Angola. It was a contribution because in the end the Angolan people were the ones who decided that. We also contributed in a definitive way securing the independence of Namibia after years that a United Nations resolution was being ignored by South Africa and the western powers.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Mother, Children, Years

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• The United States was the one nullifying any attempt in the Security Council of the United Nations to sanction those fascist governments, really segregationist and racist. The same thing it is doing for Israel is what it used to do for South Africa who ended up having seven nuclear weapons. Why didn't they act against them like they did against Iraq for the so called weapons of mass destruction during Bush that never existed in the first place?

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Government, Mass Destruction, Israel

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• True medicine is to defend human life in any circumstances and not for political reasons or for reasons of any other kind, it is really to help, that is true solidarity.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Medicine, Political, Helping

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• How do we explain for example the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea Conakry? Those very powers that swindled and occupied them, in the face of the serious situation of social emergency, have not even had the capacity to send doctors there. In some cases they have sent in militaries instead because that is what they are compelled to do. They have had to send military to do it because they do not even have any doctors with the willingness to risk their lives in order to help those people that are precisely paying for the consequences of years of colonization.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Military, Doctors, Epidemics

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• When we talked about going to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry how many doctors in Cuba raised their hands to go? 15 thousand. In their homes they said, "We are willing to go risk our lives to help other countries". That is true medicine; it is the true observance of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear to.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Home, Helping Others

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• In the southern countries and in the regions and continents like Africa, which is where the origin of life on earth began, there is tremendous debt on humanity, it is one of the most underdeveloped areas and where the worst pandemics exist. In many incidents the European powers that colonized them are now not even capable of helping them.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Origin Of Life, Southern

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• The classics of Marxism talked of communism as a society to which a modern society should aspire, a society truly fair, where the relations of monetary exchange were not the priority but one wher the people's needs could be satisfied, and where people would not be worth more according to how much monetary wealth they acquired. Instead their value would be based on their contribution to society as a whole. It would be a society without class that would accept people based on their capabilities and their potential to contribute to that society.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Class, People, Priorities

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• Under communism, no one would be living in marginal conditions as they do under capitalism today and where the greatest part of humanity lives.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Humanity, Today, Would Be

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Communism is something that comes from the classics of Marxism that talked of a modern society we should aspire to. One that is truly fair where relations of monetary exchange are not the priority but rather one where peoples' needs could be satisfied.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Priorities, Needs, Communism

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• In Cuba, what we do not accept is the comparison of our participatory democracy with bourgeois democracy which has not solved anything for humanity. The only thing it has done is to take humanity towards a precarious point. They have created the environmental crisis, the food crisis, the water crisis and the pandemics all over the world. The reason for that is because they have taken the majority of the resources and given it to militarism paid for by the western powers because it is a great business for them; this is the real truth.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Real, Taken, Water

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• To apply communism is an aspiration, in fact it has never been applied anywhere, it is really still a utopia.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Facts, Communism, Utopia

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• Cuba is not like bourgeois democracy the ones that imposes the blockade to make Cuba change. We have direct elections. Here they put people on a list and then tell the people supposedly what they have done so they can be elected. That is the difference and why we say our democracy is truly participatory and popular.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Differences, People, Democracy

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

• Cuba has not accepted the domain and imposition of an empire that has wanted to dominate us for over half a century [America].

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  America, Cuba, Half

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• In Cuba the elections for the powers of the State comes from the people, first it comes from meetings of the citizens at the base. In Cuba we call them blocks, the divisions of a city that is the term we use. Several blocks of neighborhoods that live in the same area gather in assemblies that are stipulated by law. In those assemblies the people choose freely among themselves who will represent them. The criteria takes into account the candidates characteristics, including if they are hardworking, If they are good people, if they have a clean past, and money has no bearing on who is nominated.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Block, Past, Law

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• It is only through popular consultation and exchange with the people about social and economic policies that we were going to define the strategic direction of Cuba in the next years. To reach prosperous and sustainable socialism, which is our aspiration, we discussed that with the entire population.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Years, People, Population

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• It is important to eliminate the stigma created by American imperialism and its allies regarding the Cuban political system. That stigma must be eliminated. You may think that there are no direct elections in Cuba. I am going to tell that they are direct and you can compare our process with any other country including the United States.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Thinking, Political

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.

• We have a complete respect for history, we respect the experiences of other countries and we have our own, but the truth is that if the Cuban revolution had not been a democracy it would not have survived.

  Alejandro Castro Espin

  Country, Democracy, Revolution

  "The Future of Cuba". Interview with Lasonas Pipinis Velasco, www.counterpunch.org. February 27, 2015.