In Cuba, we have a democracy that represents the humble, the dispossessed, those who make up the vast majority of the population. It is for those who carry the main weight of society's load in matters of the production of goods and services. These are not the ones that live from financial speculation.

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

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.

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

When we speak of the origin of western democracy it's precisely here, in this territory that the modern definition of democracy first emerged in city/states known now as Greece. This was coming from a society in which 30 thousand citizens had rights and 300 thousand were slaves and citizens without rights that lived in this territory. So that was the concept of western democracy; some citizens had the prerogative of exerting their civil and political rights while the others had none.

When we talk about Cuban democracy we are referring to participatory democracy which is big difference with representative bourgeois democracy. Our is a democracy in which everything is consulted with the people; it is a democracy in which every aspect and important decision that has an impact in the life and society of the people, is done in consultation.

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.