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.

The great financial capital is not in one country, it is transnational, that is why it answers to power elites and that is why when I talk about the imperial power of United States I am in no way referring to the American people, who are a noble people that have always been moved by humane concerns.

Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua have made a tremendous leap just by rejecting the neoliberal adjustment policies, they are making a statement from the social perspective. Capital in these cases has not been protected in any way which along with non - interference of the state is what neo liberalism stands for. It has gone the other way around; they have looked for social policies from the political movements and then when they have acquired the power of those political movements they have become in charge of the State.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador lived through times of cruel and ruthless capitalism where the workers, the masses of the population, saw themselves living in a precarious state of employment and subsistence conditions. The impact of this reality took hold and impacted the evolution of the social situation of those countries and even though that produced movements that were not exactly political movements but social movements.

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.

Basically with the financing of the war economy America emerged as the great power that developed logically into a superpower. I am not going to explain to you the history of the Cold War because you certainly know it but what we see now is China as the rising economic superpower, one that is certainly moving forward.

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.