To: RRojas Databank 
    Posted at 7:40 p.m. EST Wednesday, January 21, 1998
    Translation of Castro's speech

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 The official translation of Cuban President Fidel Castro's statement of 
 welcome to Pope John Paul II:

  Holy Father,

The land you have just kissed is honored by your presence. You will not
find here the peaceful and generous native people who inhabited this
island when the first Europeans arrived. Most of the men were annihilated
by the exploitation and the enslaved work they could not resist and the
women turned into pleasure objects or domestic slaves. ...

There were also those who died by the homicidal swords or victims of
unknown diseases brought by the conquerors. Some priests have left
tearing testimonies of their protests against such crimes.

In the course of centuries, over a million Africans ruthlessly uprooted
from their distant lands took the place of the enslaved natives already
exterminated. They made a remarkable contribution to the ethnic
composition and the origins of our country's present population where
the cultures, the beliefs and the blood of all participants in the
dramatic history have been mixed.

It has been estimated that the conquest and colonization of this
hemisphere resulted in the death of 70 million natives and the
enslavement of 12 million Africans. Much blood was shed and many
injustices perpetrated, a large part of which still remain after
centuries of struggle and sacrifices under new forms of domination
and exploitation.

Under extremely difficult conditions, Cuba was able to constitute a
nation. It had to fight alone for its independence with unsurmountable
heroism and, exactly 100 years ago, it suffered a real holocaust in the
concentration camps where a large part of its population perished, mostly
old men, women and children; a crime whose monstruosity is not diminished
by the fact that it has been forgotten by humanity's conscience. As a son
of Poland and a witness of Oswiecim, you can understand this better than
anyone.

Today, Holy Father, genocide is attempted again when by hunger, illness
and total economic suffocation some try to subdue this people that
refuses to accept the dictates and the rule of the mightiest economic,
political and military power in history; much more powerful than the old
Rome that for centuries had the beasts devour those who refused to
abdicate their faith. Like those Christians horribly slandered to justify
the crimes, we who are as slandered as they were, we choose a thousand
times death rather than abdicate our convictions. The revolution, like
the Church, also has many martyrs.

Holy Father, we feel the same way you do about many important issues of
today's world and we are pleased it is so; in other matters our views
are different but we are most respectful of your strong convictions
about the ideas you defend.

In your long pilgrimage around the world, you have been able to see with
your own eyes many injustices, inequalities and poverty; uncultivated
lands and landless hungry farmers; unemployment, hunger, illness; lives
that could be saved with little money being lost for lack of it;
illiteracy, child prostitution, 6-year old children working or begging
for alms to survive; shanty towns where hundreds of millions live in
unworthy conditions; race and sex discrimination; complete ethnic groups
evicted from their lands and abandoned to their fate; xenophobia,
contempt for other peoples; cultures which have been, or are currently
being, destroyed; underdevelopment and usurious loans, unpayable and
uncollectable debts, unfair exchange, outrageous and unproductive
financial speculations; an environment being ruthlessly and perhaps
helplessly destroyed; an unscrupulous weapons trade with disgusting
lucrative intents; wars, violence, massacres; generalized corruption,
narcotics, vices and an alienating consumerism imposed on peoples as
an ideal model.

Mankind has seen its population increase almost fourfold just in this
century. There are billions of people suffering hunger and thirst for
justice; the list of man's economic and social calamities is endless.
I am aware that many of them are cause of permanent and growing concern
to the Holy Father.

I have been through personal experiences which allow me to appreciate
other features of his thinking. I was a student in Catholic schools
until I obtained my bachelor's degree. There, I was taught that to be
a Jew, a Muslim, a Hinduist, a Buddhist, an animist or a participant of
any other religious belief was a terrible evil deserving severe and
unmitigated punishment. More than once, even in some of those schools
for the wealthy and privileged -- where I was one of them -- I came up
with the question of why there were no black children there; until this
day, I have not forgotten the unconvincing answers I was given.

In later years, the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII
undertook the analysis of some of these sensitive issues. We are aware
of efforts by the Holy Father to preach and practice sentiments of
respect for the faithful of other important and influential religions
which have expanded through the world. Respect for believers and
non-believers alike is a basic principle revolutionary Cubans try to
impress upon their fellow citizens. Such principles have been defined
and consecrated by our Constitution and our laws. If there have ever
been difficulties, the Revolution is not to blame.

We entertain the hope that never again, in no school of whatever religion
nowhere in the world, an adolescent need ask why there are no black,
native, yellow or white children there.

Holy Father, I sincerely admire your courageous statements on the events
concerning Galileo and the Inquisition's known errors; on the Crusades'
bloody episodes and the crimes committed during the conquest of the
Americas; also on certain scientific discoveries that today are not
contested by anybody but which, in their times, were the target of so
many prejudices and anathemas. That certainly required the immense
authority you have come to attain within your church.

What can we offer you in Cuba? People exposed to less inequalities and
a lower number of helpless citizens; less children without schools, less
patients without hospitals, and more teachers and physicians per capita
than any other country in the world visited by the Holy Father; educated
people you can talk to in perfect freedom with the certainty of their
talent and their high political culture, their strong convictions and
absolute confidence in their ideas; people that will show all due respect
and consciousness in listening to you. Another country will not be found
better disposed to understand your felicitous idea -- as we understand it
and so similar to what we preach -- that the equitable distribution of
wealth and solidarity among men and peoples should be globalized.

Welcome to Cuba!
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January 21 1998                   RRojas Research Unit

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