Chronology

22/09/1960
  • Takes part in the UN General Assembly session.
  • Makes press statements ridiculing the American government decision to not invite him to the banquet being hosted by President Eisenhower.  
  • He eats lunch with the employees and the owner of the Theresa Hotel and with several American journalists.  He presents a bust of José Martí to the hotel’s owner.  
  • He speaks at a dinner given in his honour by the American Cuban Committee for Fair Treatment of Cuba and is given a bust of Abraham Lincoln by Richard Wilson, President of the Committee. He states: “We know how capable you are in making propaganda.  But we also know that in spite of that propaganda, we have many friends in the United States.  The more propaganda there is against us, the stronger we are.”  And he concludes by saying: “Whatever the difficulties, there will always be love for the people of the United States”. 
23/09/1960
  • Attends a dinner given by Premier Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR at that country’s UN embassy in New York.  Fidel states to journalists: “We have come to this house belonging to the Soviet nation where we have been welcomed with great hospitality and with the manners of a very well-educated people.” 
25/09/1960
  • In the room he occupies at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, New York City, he is visited by President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt.  He later says: “The visit of President Nasser is greatly motivating and encouraging for our delegation that is practically confined and surrounded by the hostility of an imperialist power such as the United States.” 
26/09/1960
  • Gives his historic 4-hour and 20 minute speech before the Fifteenth UN General Assembly in which he expresses the positions of the Cuban Revolution in the face of imperialist aggression and condemns the inequalities, injustice and subjection predominating in the world: “Make the philosophy of plunder disappear and the philosophy of war shall disappear!”  
  • Attends a dinner given by President Antonin Novotny of Czechoslovakia at Czech UN headquarters.
27/09/1960
  • In the morning he meets with Prime Minister Wladyslaw Gomulka of Poland.  
  • At 10 a.m., he attends the UN General Assembly discussion where he hears the speech made by Egyptian President Gamal Adbel Nasser.
  • In the afternoon, he meets with President Nkrumah of Ghana.  
  • He has a one-hour conversation with Jawaharlal Nehru at the Theresa Hotel and gives the Indian leader a bust of Jose Marti, a collection of INRA magazines and a crocodile-skin purse as a present for his daughter, Indira Gandhi.  
  • At 6 p.m. he attends a reception given by the Uruguayan delegation for the Cuban delegation at the Hotel Pierre on Fifth Avenue, in front of New York City`s Central Park.  
  • A t 8 o`clock that evening, he attends a banquet given for Heads of State by Premier Sri Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru of India.    
  • He meets with the Bulgarian leader, Todor Zhivkov, at the Theresa Hotel.
28/09/1960
  • He has a second meeting with Gamal Adbel Nasser, President of the United Arab Republic.  
  • He makes press statements where he declares that he is a friend of the American people, but not a friend of the trust companies and monopolies controlling the economy, and of the Latin American press, and he adds: "Cuba is going to vote in the UN for the independence of Algeria, for the preservation of the independence of the Congo and in support of the Lumumba government, as well as for the entry into this body of the Peoples Republic of China."
  • He departs from New York to return to Havana.  When he arrives in the Cuban capital, he is received with a great welcome by the people.  In the vicinity of the Presidential Palace, a huge welcome ceremony is organized.  He makes his historic speech in which he proposes the creation of the CDRs (Committees for the Defence of the Revolution) while firecrackers go off around him throughout the ceremony.
29/09/1960
  • During a round table on CMQTV, he reports on his recent appearance at the Fifteenth UN General Assembly.  He points out, among other things: "We must not lose our calm.  We know that this is a long struggle.  We must have our hearts and our minds prepared for the fight against a powerful enemy."
02/10/1960
  • Visit to the Peasant Housing Department of INRA at Parcelación Zayas, on the Wajay highway.  
  • Visit to the Menelao Moraí agricultural cooperative on the Santa Fe highway in Mariel.  He urges the workers to increase production, defend the Homeland and read the works of the National Press.
03/10/1960
  • Attends the reception given at the Havana Libre Hotel by the directors of the Sinjuan news agency and the Chinese trade delegation on the occasion of the eleventh anniversary of the proclamation of the Peoples Republic of China.
10/10/1960
  • Closing ceremony at the theatre of the Workers` Palace of the First National Congress for Municipal Boards of Education; in his speech he proposes:  "Every day we are more aware of the fact that a revolution is not just the work of creating, but that a revolution, while it is creating, must defend what it has created and has to fight at the same time as it is creating".   
  • Attends a reception at the Embassy of the United Arab Republic given by the ambassador of that country and its minister of economy, Adbel Mounen Kaissouni, who was visiting Cuba at the time.