INTERNATIONAL Women’s Day brought good news for women and all Cubans in general, announced by President Fidel Castro in his closing remarks at the main event honoring March 8.

Fidel announced the implementation of measures ranging from public transportation to the rapid recovery of electric energy services to other strategies that directly benefit domestic chores and health, of genuine benefit to all.

Now we may say: We’re doing well, Camilo, Che, and comrades who fell during the attack on Moncada and the Granma expedition, in the Sierra and in the underground movement in the cities (el Llano), in the struggle against the dictatorship, during the Bay of Pigs, in the fight against bandits in the Escambray, in the internationalist struggle, men and women who died as a result of terrorist acts and the crimes of imperialism, internationalist comrades who covered themselves with glory freeing the peoples, contributing to their liberation and defending them against imperialist attempts to re-conquer them, the Revolution’s leader stated.

The President emphasized that our people are now beginning to rise up on the map of this chaotic and hopeless world, with a truly extraordinary model, and that it is advancing in every aspect, but that it is always necessary to advance in struggle.

We are going to solve problems, he said, by struggling against errors and against the diversions, confusions and effects left on us by specific eras, like the extremely difficult Special Period, which we are leaving behind.

He recalled the extraordinary role that women have played in the Revolution, and noted that while it has indeed dignified them, so have women dignified the Revolution, which they have taken to the highest planes that any process has reached.

Fidel related important news regarding solutions to some of the problems that affect women, including electricity shortages. He also announced that pressure and rice cookers, as well as gaskets and overpressure plugs, will be supplied to families beginning in April.

He reported other measures that will directly benefit the people, such as the construction of 100,000 homes; the completion of top-quality health services at the primary care level; timely wage increases in this latter sector and in general; the national railroad recovery project, and the incorporation of equipment to improve bus transportation between provinces.

He made broad reference to other issues, such as individualized attention to workers’ conditions; the relation between prices in the markets and the national currency’s financial balance; measures taken to protect the country’s income from bandit-like actions generated in the United States; the need to increase economic efficiency and production, and the increase in Cuban exports.

He explained the financial security that the country currently possesses; the support given to the convertible peso, independent of the dollar; the guarantee provided by relations with China and Venezuela, and, in summary, the economic independence that we are achieving.

We are marching towards economic invulnerability without having set that as a goal for ourselves. These things that we are doing and those we are forced to do by the blockades, threats and aggression have led us to approach economic invulnerability and the fact that our country does not depend on anyone else but itself.

The President predicted that the cost in lives would be too much for the U.S. to pay if Washington were to decide to carry out aggression against Cuba, and he affirmed that it would be impossible for the Cuban capital to be occupied.

The advances, tactics and methods developed by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) are impressive, he said, referring to the country’s armed institution, in which millions of citizens are integrated.

Thousands of Cuban women are not only part of the regular troops, but also the militias and other forms of organization that will occupy diverse trenches in defending the country in the case of attack or invasion.

"We are not afraid," the Revolution’s leader noted, in reference to new threats by the current U.S. administration against Cuba, which has suffered more than four decades of economic, financial and diplomatic blockade, that has been redoubled today.

The United States could not pay the cost in lives that an act of aggression against Cuba would signify, he emphasized. In that respect, he recalled that in Vietnam, more than 50,000 people from the U.S. died, a figure that he predicted would be small compared to what it would be here.

He regretted the fact that it is African-Americans and Hispanics who hand over their lives in the name of the Pentagon, and called them victims due to the lack of opportunity for access to jobs and universities in the most powerful country in the world.

In the case of an attempted invasion of Cuba, hundreds of lives would be lost every day among U.S. troops, predicted the president, who received numerous ovations from the audience of hundreds of Cuban women.

The Cuban women ratified their commitment to Fidel and to the homeland. They especially remembered Gladys Marín, leader of the Communist Party of Chile who recently died.

Others presiding over the event included the FMC’s National Secretariat and its National Committee, headed by its president, Vilma Espín; Heroine of the Republic Melba Hernández, a special guest; the mothers and wives of the Five Cuban patriots unjustly imprisoned by the empire; and leaders of the Communist Party, the government, the Young Communist League and mass and student organizations.

(Granma)  March 9, 2005