President Miguel Díaz-Canel stated today that saving the Cuban revolution from the U.S. economic blockade and threats is the greatest challenge facing the current generation.

The president made these remarks during the opening of the First International Colloquium "Fidel: Legacy and Future," held at the Havana Convention Center, where he thanked delegates from various nations who, he said, defied distances, disinformation campaigns, and pressure from their own governments to be in Cuba.

"This is not a baseless certainty. We have a history rich in achievements, a people devoted to resistance, and the legacy of a leader who, always at the head of that people, turned promises into victories," Díaz-Canel affirmed.

The Cuban president recalled the state of Cuba before 1959, when 37.5 percent of the population was illiterate, 70 percent of children in rural areas had no teachers, and 95 percent suffered from parasitic diseases.

Faced with that reality, he asserted, the revolution radically transformed the country.

"One need only look at today's statistics, even under the terrible restrictions imposed by more than six decades of economic blockade and seven months of energy siege," Díaz-Canel noted.

"Cuba is the country with the highest rate of doctors per capita, more than nine for every thousand residents; one of the ten countries with the highest life expectancy on the continent, at 77.7 years; and the one that has contributed the most to the health and education of its own population and of other nations."

The head of state emphasized that the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution left behind not recipes, but a method.

"When Fidel delivered his October 16, 1953 defense speech outlining the five revolutionary laws—agrarian reform, labor rights, urban reform, confiscation of ill-gotten assets, and worker participation in profits—he had already drawn up a program that diagnosed the structural ailments of an underdeveloped and dependent economy," he recalled.

Díaz-Canel highlighted that Fidel was the first to denounce neoliberal globalization and to speak out on behalf of the peoples of the Global South.

"He taught us that the fight to preserve the environment and the human species is also an anti-imperialist battle. That science must serve the people. That unity among revolutionaries matters more than any differences," he added.

Díaz-Canel concluded that Fidel's legacy resonates today with more force than ever.

"Fidel guided Cuba's destiny with a consistency unmatched in contemporary history. But he was not only a leader and a statesman. He was a tireless worker, a lifelong student, an orator who moved crowds, a strategist who anticipated the future," he declared.