Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel sent congratulations on International Students' Day and recommended learning from Fidel Castro's message delivered exactly 20 years ago. The speech, given at the University of Havana's Aula Magna, covers 20 essential topics on the revolution and the current world. This commemoration highlights Cuba's student tradition of struggle.
In Havana, on November 17, 2025, President Miguel Díaz-Canel conveyed congratulations to students on International Students' Day, recalling Fidel Castro's message from November 17, 2005. According to Prensa Latina, Díaz-Canel urged young people to draw inspiration from that historic speech.
Castro's address, titled 'Fidel in the Aula Magna: 20 essential topics', was delivered to students at the University of Havana. It covered themes like global injustice: 'It is not a world full of goodness; it is a world full of selfishness... a world full of exploitation, abuse, and plunder'. He criticized the US empire and its military bases, including the occupation in Cuba: 'More than a century has passed and it still occupies that piece of territory by force'.
Castro recalled student martyrs, such as the eight shot in 1871 and the nine killed in Prague in 1939. He spoke of unity through ideas: 'It is ideas that unite us, it is ideas that make us a fighting people'. He addressed threats to Iran, the Palestinian holocaust, and terrorist acts against Cuba: 'Has the empire changed?'. He emphasized criticism and self-criticism: 'The first duty of a revolutionary is to be extremely severe with himself'.
He stressed human capital as a key resource: 'Human capital is... the country's most important resource'. He questioned the revolution's irreversibility: 'Can this revolutionary, socialist process collapse or not?'. He concluded with determination: 'Either we defeat all these deviations... or we could say: either we radically overcome these problems or we will die'. The message underscores the fight for a just world and the preservation of the human species: 'It is worth being born! It is worth living!'.
This remembrance, published by Granma, links student history with current challenges.