“…work, organize and put into action the spirit of creation, the enthusiasm of Cuban women, so that Cuban women, in this stage of the revolutions, will see to the disappearance of the last shred of discrimination;  and so that Cuban women, because of their virtues and merits, will take the place corresponding them in the country’s history.”

“The peoples think that the only thing incompatible with the destiny of Latin America is misery, feudal exploitation, illiteracy, starvation wages, unemployment, the policy of repression against the masses of workers, peasants and students, discrimination against women, blacks, indigenous people and mestizos, the oppression of the oligarchies, the plundering of their wealth by the US monopolies, the moral suffocation of their intellectuals and artists, the ruin of their small producers by foreign competition, the economic underdevelopment, the peoples without roads, without hospitals, without housing, without schools, without industries, the submission to imperialism, the renunciation of national sovereignty and the betrayal of the homeland”.

“Along with the Revolution, one of the most unjust forms of discrimination that has existed has been disappearing: discrimination against women, of the kind that was not talked about but which lay there, continued to exist and weighed heavily upon the women of our country.” 

Speech given at the closing ceremony for the Third National Plenary Meeting of the Federation of Cuban Women on the Isle of Pines. February 19, 1965