BUREAUCRACY IS ALWAYS ON THE PROWL" [CONCLUSION OF CASTRO SPEECH]
[In our January 6 issue we published the first part of a speech given by Fidel Castro December 9. After the opening part of his speech, Castro took up in specific detail a number of developments in agriculture in Cuba, reporting what was being done to solve concrete problems and the achievements up to now as illustrated in various parts of the country. In the part below, he has reached the question of sugar, the country's most important industry.]
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This coming year we're going to have an excellent sugarcane harvest, in the harvest that. is already underway. As you_know, there are now 48 mills grinding approximately 25 million cwt. of cane. (APPLAUSE) Being able to start the sugar harvest in December has been of great importance. Because to complete the sugar plan, it will be necessary ‘for the mills to operate five or six months; to reach the sugar goal it is not only necessary to enlarge the sugar mills, which is being done. It will also be necessary to extend the duration of the sugarcane harvests. And now, this year, for the first time in the history of our country, no less than half a hundred sugar mills are in operation and have ground nearly 25 million’cwt. of cane in the first 10 days of December. That achievement is an excellent, a magnificent omen. It means that pursuing this path, we will be able to fulfill our sugar goal for 1970; it means that even though we have an imposing, arduous goal, we can fulfill it. Next year we plan to apply 400,000 tons of fertilizer to cane alone. This year, between September and June, we will apply 105,000 tons of fertilizer to coffee. To get an idea of how much fertilizer 105,000 tons is, it is enough to say that before the Revolution the fertilizer used in agriculture throughout the entire country did not come to much over 100,000 tons; and nevertheless, only for coffee -- for coffee. alone -- during the period between September and next June, 105,000 tons of fertilizer will be used.
The coffee plantations here formerly produced 30 cwt. for every 13.5 hectares, perhaps 40 or 50. On some occasions, a new coffee plantation produced 100, or slightly more, cwt. for every 14.5 hectares. We must commit ourselves to elevating the production of coffee to no less than 200 cwt. for every 13.5 hectares; that is, we have to practically triple or quadruple the production for every 13.5 hectares that existed under capitalisn.
In other words, in only two areas, coffee and sugarcane, half a million tons of fertilizer will be employed. To this figure must be added the fertilizer that will be applied to vegetables in general, to fruits in general, and to all crops in general. That is, our country is entering the stage of employing fertilizer, machines, and technology. on an extensive scale.
If, for example, fertilizer were not applied to those hectares of onions of Banao that are going to produce 5,000 cwt. in the first year, they would produce only 2,000 or 3,000 cwt. and the second, they would produce only 1,000 cwt. Employing fertilizer, agricultural production in our country can practically be tripled, because technology, except in a few crops -- such as potatoes and in some tobacco areas -- was not used in the past. Only in very rare cases under capitalism was fertilizer applied to sugarcane in the capitalist era and it was practically never applied to coffee. The major part of our agriculture lacked fertilizer. But, naturally, under capitalism, if 13.5 hectares produced only 50 cwt. we had not only sufficient coffee but excess coffee. But under the present conditions in our country, if 13.5 hectares produced 100 cwt., there would still be a shortage of coffee. But we shall cultivate to meet the maximum consumption of coffee, since we estimate that we will one day consume a million and a half cwt. in our country. Before the triumph of the Revolution, some 600,000 or 700,000 cwt. of coffee were consumed. We estimate that the consumption of coffee -- once it is no longer rationed ~~ will reach a million and a half cwt.
Some 150,000 tons of sugar were formerly consumed in our country. Presently, approximately half a million tons are consumed.
And this is the picture in every area of agriculture.
For that reason, we all must work; for that reason, all society must work. But not simply with physical effort, but with technology, with machines, with all the means that man can employ to increase production, to increase the wealth, to satisfy his needs.
In our notion not only will society as a whole be incorporated into productive work, but, in addition, technology and mechanization will be the handmaidens of produc-— tion. The enemies of the Revolution, the imperialists and the members of the bourgeoisie,
pelieved that the Cuban people could not progress; that without the landowners and technicians of the capitalist era, and suffering the imperialists' economic blockade, our nation would collapse. However, it is not turning out as they believed. Much to the contrary, our nation will achieve extraordinary success; our country will attain production figures that will surprise the entire world.
In the production of cattle, for example, there are at present 1,200,000 cows included in the artificial insemination plan. We can state that today we are among the top-ranking nations in the world in artificial insemination of cattle. (APPLAUSE)
By the end of next year more than two million cows will have been artificially inseminated. And by that date, with that percentage, we may be the leading country in this field.
A great many persons ask what this means exactly. They wish to know what artificial insemination means in practice. Take the Zebu cow -- I think that everyone around here has seen a Zebu at least once in his life -- which produces about a liter and a half of milk daily. The offspring of such a cow, produced by genetics and artificial insemination, may produce eight and ten liters of milk daily. Of course these changes do not come about from one year. to the next.
What is the significance of such a program? Could we have had even a million cows inseminated artificially in 1960? No. Because at the time of the triumph of the Revolution I believe there were just one or two experts in artificial insemination in the. entire country. And how many technicians are there in this field today? ‘Two thousand. (APPLAUSE)
Why have we been able to reach the million mark in artificial insemination, and even surpass it? Because in spite of the long backwardness in this field, we have two thousand technicians today. And it is not enough to speak only of the number of experts in artificial insemination, for their productivity has increased five-fold since that time when we first organized them by. group and they received motorcycles with sidecars to ride out to their jobs. We are able to "motorize" these technicians, and today you can see them constantly going back and. forth on the country roads.
What does all this mean? That several years have been required to train these two thousand experts; to arrive at the figure of a million cows inseminated artificially. These cows will give birth in 1967, the heifers will be ready for artificial insemination in 1969, and by 1970, hundreds of thousands of offspring of the original million cows will be producing milk.
Let us extrapolate even further. While by 1970 there will be approximately 400,- 000 such dairy cows producing, by 1971 there will be close to a million more; approximately a million more cows.
We have had to wait some years for this; we have had to work at this for some time. But the time is not far off when we will be reaping the benefits of these efforts.
In fact it is already of benefit to us simply to have two thousand trained specialists in an important field. By 1970 we will have five thousand such specialists. And does anyone know how many specialists in artificial insemination we will have by 1975? Twelve thousand!
Perhaps you are asking yourselves, “Why so many specialists in this field?" The answer is that we plan to have some eight million cows and heifers by that date. Moreover, we know from experience that certain underdeveloped countries may very well need specialized assistance and ask us for much aid.
But why twelve thousand experts? Wouldn't nine or ten thousand do? There are two good reasons why we are planning to train more specialists than we need.
These two reasons are: one, some nations may ask us for technical aid in the future; and two, if we have two or three thousand more than our immediate needs demand, this means two or three thousand technicians studying, advancing. For instance if we need nine thousand technicians and we have ten thousand, we can take a thousand off the job for a full year of higher studies.
On December 18, several hundred technicians will be the first graduates, of the Technological Institutes. Are you aware how many students there are in those schools at present? Sixteen thousand five hundred. And ‘how many will be studying there by January, 1967? Twenty-five thousand. And how many agricultural experts will have graduated by 1970? Twelve thousand. And by 1975, forty thousand. (APPLAUSE)
We can have an idea of what our country will be like when these tens of thousands of students graduate...thousands are studying for the fishing fleet, thousands for the merchant marine, and more than twenty thousand are studying for a career in teaching. Close to thirty thousand students are enrolled in the universities of Havana, Las Villas, and Oriente. What does this mean? I was explaining to some of the comrades here that in order to have an idea of a society where there are hundreds of thousands of technicians, all we had to.do. was to look at what Acosta has done here in Banao, or what Eliseo, an agronomist specializing in sugarcane, has done in Camaguey. Suffice it to see what an enthusiastic, capable, revolutionary technician can do, what two or three of them can do, to realize what a society that can boast hundreds of thousands of technicians can be like and what-it can accomplish.
In an effort to crush the Revolution, the imperialists did their utmost to make our technicians leave the country. They carried on all sorts of campaigns. Naturally, Yankee imperialism does not limit its efforts simply to taking technicians away from Cuba. We had very few technicians, and our technical level in many fields of science was quite poor. The imperialists lure technicians from England and from all of Europe as well. Every industrialized country is faced by the same problem: by offering higher wages -- sometimes two or three times as much -- the Yankees manage to entice technicians away from England and many countries in Europe. They take technicians away from their own allies. Many physicians and engineers who graduate in Latin America emigrate to the United States because the United. States tries to entice away technicians from everywhere. As I said before, they even take technicians away from their own allies.
They did not do this in Cuba simply because Cuba had good or many technicians. They did it in order to crush us. They are not interested in those technicians. I can tell you that all the technicians they took away, put together, are worth less than one good revolutionary technician. (APPLAUSE)
I am sure that the technicians they took from us will never help the imperialists reach the moon or discover anything, for they were mostly a conglomeration of incompetents, parasites, reactionaries, and scoundrels. (APPLAUSE)
One cannot think of a specialist in a technical field who is not first of all a real human being, and it is impossible to think of a human being who is an egoist. An egoist cannot be called a human being. One cannot think of a technician without human feelings. And only a technician who loves others, who feels a passion for work, who is stimulated by the ideal of serving his country, of being of service to his fellowman, can be a good technician.
The imperialists tried to take away all those miserable specimens. Did this cause any harm? Some, perhaps, but what does it matter? What do the few miserable specimens they took away mean? What does this trash they took away mean when compared with the technicians, the tens of thousands of revolutionary technicians the Revolution is now training? (APPLAUSE)
We are happy to say that notwithstanding the imperialists' campaign to lure away technicians, in coming years our country will be among those with the largest number of technicians -- in the underdeveloped sector of the world -- and on a level with many of the developed countries.
Speaking of a certain modern technique, I was explaining the case of artificial insemination, aimed at the development of our cattle industry. We are close to being in first place in the world in use of this technique. Undoubtedly, by next year we will be in first place. This is one type of technique; tomorrow it will be another, then still another, and so on. Take sports, for instance. You all know about the development of sports in our country; you know the place our country occupies in sports; we have just had the Chess Olympiad, and all the visitors, many of whom had become accustomed to the lies and vilifications that the imperialists print. about our Revolution, were amazed at the attention they received, at the organization of the event, at the people's interest in chess. They were amazed at their mass participation in such an activity that in many countries, especially capitalist countries, has always been reserved for a privileged minority. This very stadium, for example, can hold over 10,000 people. You know very well that when the baseball season begins it will be filled to capacity. We have estimated that over 10 percent of the population of Santa Clara has come to this stadium, and not all of those interested in coming have done so.
This means that mass participation of the people in cultural and educational activities, in sports, in production, in national defense, in building the nation's future, is a real, powerful, irrefutable fact, that has prevailed over the wrath of our imperialist eneny, over their blockades, aggressions, attempts to crush our country.
. And as each day goes by, as each month goes by, as each year goes by, it becomes more evident that they will never be able to destroy our Revolution. Each day it becomes more impossible to crush our Revolution! (APPLAUSE) Our Revolution becomes more power~ ful, more .solid every day.
_ What will they have to say about this? What will they say about the tens of thousands of women who have gone into production, who have begun working, who have enrolled in the Schools of Technology, Medicine and Humanities at our universities. What will they say about the thousands and thousands of women working in medical services?
What will they say about the tens of thousands of women who entered’ the field of education, and who have gone to work in day nurseries and schools? What will: they say. about the women who have gone into the field of production? What can they say?
What future could our women look forward to under capitalism and imperialism? To work at the worst tasks. What future awaited the daughters of workers and peasants? An honest job, by any chance? No, only a brothel. But brothels no longer await women in this country! (APPLAUSE)
ATL that our women could expect from capitalism and imperialism | were the worst jobs, the most humiliating jobs, discrimination, underestimation.
Today, this all appears to be a nightmare from the past. No worker , no father, has to send his daughter away to work as a maid for wealthy families, or to work ina bar or brothel. The past, that nightmare, that odious future which that society offered Cuban women has. been eradicated forever.
In order. to realize what the Revolution has done for the Cuban women and ‘in turn, what the Cuban women have done for the Revolution, one must go to Banao, ‘Ban Andrés, to Pinares de Mayarf, La Caoba and Palenquito. (APPLAUSE) a
One must visit the hundreds of avicultural centers in the country, the dozens of rabbit farms that are being developed through the country, to see our women employed at a decent, worthy, liberating job. And one of these places -- because it tts the one that has. impressed me the most, because it.is where woman's revolutionary spirit and fervor were most evident -- was precisely one that I mentioned before: ‘Banao. -’
Let the skeptics, those who did not believe -- or do not believe -- go to Banao; let those who underestimate women, those who cannot conceive of their capability and potentiality, come to Banao’™ and ‘visit many other places as well. (APPLAUSE)
This does not mean that the Revolution is trying to solve the problem of woman's work by means of bureaucracy, by means of some unimportant job in some office.
And when I say this I repeat that it should be understood that we do not believe that working in an office is undignified, or useless. No, office work is something we cannot do without, it is a necessary thing. What we can do without is bureaucracy, what we can do without, is the accumulation of bureaucrats in offices. (APPLAUSE)
Those who do not seem to understand what bureaucracy means; those who do not seem to understand that bureaucracy does not make anybody happy, that bureaucracy does not make any worker or any woman happy, should go to an office full of women employees and afterwards they should go to Banao. Let them try, let them see for thémselves, let them make a comparison. Let them verify the different ‘kind of enthusiasm ‘and happiness resulting from creative, productive work.
The result of knowing that they are serving their children, their husbands, their parents, their country, and the Revolution (APPLAUSE) , by struggling, creating useful things, and contributing to the general welfare. ;
Let a minimum number of employees remain in the offices. Let us be relentless in our attack on bureaucracy. This is an ill requiring years of permanent struggle because once we let down our guard, bureaucracy will take the offensive.
We have explained the whole process in one sentence : the Commissions ‘of the Fight Against Butveacuracy have become bureaucratized. In other words, they have let down their - guard and tried to solve problems by bureaucratic means. Some organizations have added to their personnel without consulting the Commissions; many offices, many administrators have increased their personnel without previous consultation. But we remain alert, without Lowering our guard. The next step is to de-bureéaucratize the Commissions of the _ Fight Against Bureaucracy and invest them once again with the revolutionary spirit and method. (APPLAUSE)
_ We did gain some ground in the fight against bureaucracy; an antibureaucratic awareness was created. But bureaucracy is always on the prowl. The vices of bureaucracy become manifest under various forms: there are certain government officials who hire students even though they know very well that it is forbidden to hire students -- that is, if a student is in financial trouble we prefer to grant him a scholarship, or a loan, instead of a job which will turn him into a bad worker and a bad student -- some organizations hire ‘students at will; some offices and departments have violated the laws of the. struggle against bureaucracy by hiring additional | ‘personnel.
Finally, I take this opportunity to sound the alarm, to tell the bureaucrats that we are-on the alert; to tell the revolutionary comrades in the Commissions for the Fight Against Bureaucracy that these Commissions have shown signs of bureaucracy and therefore they must be de-bureaucratized.
We can count upon the people's énthusiasm, with the enthusiasm of all the women in this. country, with the enthusiasm of every one of us, to promote plans, to promote woman's creative work, and to develop the country's economy.
By the same token, we would never do this while on the one hand we call upon the women to work in our fields, to send their children to nurseries, to get up at dawn, and to go to work and create material goods, and on the other hand we allow bureaucrats who have not the slightest idea of what productive or creative work means, free spenders of the people's money, free spenders of money they have not earned by the sweat of their brow, to go around wasting money.
And it is not only money that they waste. They do something worse than just wast-
ing money: they are wasting intelligence and. human beings. Because if one of those bureaucrats who could do his job with the help of twenty people goes round inventing organograms, and creating positions to be occupied by eighty additional people, without turning out any paperwork, or worse yet, producing papers that become veritable stumbling blocks, bottlenecks, this bureaucrat, this antisocial entity, this enemy of the Revolution, is doing something worse than just spending one hundred thousand, or one hundred and. fifty thousand, or two hundred thousand pesos. What does it take to produce one hundred thousand pesos' worth of onions, tomatoes, strawberries, milk, beef, grapes, sugar, or what have you? How much does it take? How much work, how much sweat, how many acres of land, how many hours, how much sacrifice? And what does it take for a bureaucrat to waste 100,000 pesos, to pay 100,000 pesos, to pay 100,000 pesos in unnecessary salaries in payment for abstract work? Gan anyone call himself a revolutionary, a socialist, a communist, or a participant in a proletarian revolution if he is ignorant of the work involved in producing one liter of milk, or a tomato, or a grain of coffee, ora pound of malanga?
When I want to find out who is a revolutionary and who is not a revolutionary, I am guided by the following criterion: Does this man know how much it costs to produce any of these things? Does he know that in order to produce a liter of milk a man has to get up at 2.a.m. and work until dawn in the milking of cows, or run around the pastures day and night, taking care of the animals, in order to produce one or ten or one hundred liters of milk? Does he know the value of that effort? Can he appreciate the product of work, and does he know how to appreciate human beings?
I would say that such a bureaucrat not only wastes 100,000 pesos -- and perhaps it would take 100 women an entire year of work to produce 100, "000 pesos -—- an amount he wastes on a single payroll; he not only squanders the 100,000 pesos; even worse, ‘he wastes 80 people; he misuses the work of 80 persons, wasting both their intelligence and their energy.
Can we say that there is no more bureaucracy? Yes, there has been a campaign against bureaucracy, but nonetheless, bureaucracy exists. Does this mean that there are no more bureaucrats? There are still bureaucrats, and many of them, most of them, do not know what a peso represents; many who have no. conception of what it means to produce a peso's worth of milk, meat, vegetables or fish; and that is really what they throw away, what they waste. This is hardly revolutionary; this helps absolutely nobody. I believe that the greatest harm one can do another person is to make him do work that is useless, to make a person do a job where the uselessness of his efforts are all too Clear. to him. And this explains why a woman can feel useful and happy cultivating a tomato plant, planting a coffee bush in a nursery. She can feel happy at such tasks.
There are still a lot of people with petty-bourgeois mentalities. Can one have proletarian awareness and yet be blind to these things? No! To act so is to retain ~ petty-bourgeois viewpoints, habits and ideas. This petty-bourgeois mentality still infests our socialist administration but the proletarian spirit advances more rapidly every day throughout the entire nation. In contraposition to that spirit, to reaction-
ary, conservative, and petty-bourgeois tendencies, the proletarian spirit which we see from one end of the nation to the other, is advancing. The people enthusiastically enroll in productive tasks; the people constantly develop awareness. And the pace at which we develop our awareness -~ I repeat -- determines the ground we gain in the battle against the petty-bourgeois mentality, and our freedom to proceed full steam ahead in our proletarian Revolution, of our socialist Revolution, of our communist Revolution. (APPLAUSE)
And I only wish to add, enthusiastically:
Long live the women of Cuba! (APPLAUSE)
Long live the revolutionary spirit, the revolutionary discipline and the revolutionary dedication of Cuban women! (APPLAUSE)
Long Live the feminine Revolution within the socialist Revolution! (APPLAUSE)
Patria fo) Muerte! . .
Venceremos! (OVATION)