Chile is a country that sells cheap and buys expensive, because we have to pay for manufactured goods from countries at much higher levels of development.

I can't spend my whole day talking to people.

I have experience and I am employing it in the service of a Chilean road for Chile's problems. We always take advantage of experience wherever it comes from, but adapting it to our reality. I am putting it to use in a Chilean way, for the problems of Chile. We are not anyone's mental colonists.

I have been to Cuba many times. I have spoken many times with Fidel Castro and got to know Commander Ernesto Guevara well enough. I know Cuba's leaders and their struggle. It has been difficult to overcome the blockade. But the reality in Cuba is very different from that in Chile. Cuba came from a dictatorship, and I arrived at the presidency after being senator for 25 years.

Every country has its own reality and its own leaders, and the leaders act in accordance with their reality.

I believe that every president wants to give everyone work but they can't; they want everyone to eat but they can't make it happen. The same happens with education. So we have to ask ourselves, "Why can't we do anything?"

I have often said that it doesn't matter to me if a student tells me he is a leader of the left, unless he is a good student. We need good students.