I have a lot of faith and confidence in Cuban democracy.

To apply communism is an aspiration, in fact it has never been applied anywhere, it is really still a utopia.

When we talked about going to help Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea Conakry how many doctors in Cuba raised their hands to go? 15 thousand. In their homes they said, "We are willing to go risk our lives to help other countries". That is true medicine; it is the true observance of the Hippocratic Oath that doctors swear to.

Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".

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.

When the nuclear weapons were sent to the racist South African government, where a few million white people subjugated more than 13 million black people, it was so they could use them against the Cuban forces that were defending Angola. These things have not been written down but they need to be told as part of the reality of history which should not be distorted the way the historians connected to the power elite tend to do.

There is no one more talkative than Cubans, Cubans express their feelings, there's nobody more rebellious and revolutionary than a Cuban and I say that without chauvinism.