6. U.S.A.-THE MAIN TARGET

Cuban President Osvaldo Dorticos set the tone for the extreme anti-Americanism that characterized the Conference in his speech of January 4, 1966. Dorticos said:

It is certain, however, that imperialism, especially North American imperialism, which has assumed the sad role of international gendarme, is sharpening the violence and is intensifying the taking advantage of all vile instruments of aggressions against peoples, from bribery and blackmail up to the most barefaced forms of violence and armed intervention. * * * There is no better place than this conference to proclaim without vacillations the right of peoples to oppose imperialist violence with revolutionary violence.

Dr. Guido Gil, head of the Dominican Republic's delegation to the Tricontinental Conference, joined the chorus in these terms, in a speech delivered on January 9, 1966:

It is in Asia, Africa, and Latin America where the hardest blows are being dealt imperialism, and principally its leading ai-id prime force, Yankee imperialism.

In accordance with this viewpoint, the conference adopted a resolution which said-

That the imperialist government of the United States is condemned as an aggressor and violator of the sovereignty of the Dominican people

That the OAS (Organization of American States) be condemned as the main political instrument of U.S. imperialism in the neocolonial dominating of Latin America.

On January 14, 1966, Virgilio Shuverer, a Panamanian diplomat, was interviewed in the Panamanian Legislative Palace as to his estimate of the Conference. He said:

The Tricontinental Conference, in my opinion, will have an important effect on the lives of people who are today subjected to imperialism * * * I believe that it will be a stimulus, a joint effort among the revolutionaries of the world, for carrying forward the methods and tactics being employed at present against imperialism, particularly U.S. imperialism.

On January 4, 1966, Norman Pietri Castellon, chairman of the Puerto Rican delegation to the Tricontinental Conference broadcast his views. He called Puerto Rico "the most important military fortress of U.S. imperialism," and added that "The independence movement is continuously organizing the Puerto Rican people so that we may resolutely confront U.S. imperialism." He further declared that "The Puerto Rican Independence Movement expects effective solidarity from the Tricontinental Conference of the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America."

Renato Bitossi, chairman of the Communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and a member of the Italian Communist Party's Central Committee, was interviewed on January 8, 1966, at the Hotel Havana Libre, headquarters of the Tricontinental Conference, as to the significance of the conference. Before the conference had closed its session, he assured the interviewer that the WFTU accept the resolutions adopted by this conference."

Asked how the WFTU is likely to show its solidarity, he pointed out that-

The WFTU carried out mass demonstrations during the Suez Canal crisis against the Korean war, * * * It intervened mainly with supporting demonstrations all over the world in order to assist the Cuban revolution against U.S. imperialism. * * * The WFTLU is an observer at the Tricontinental Conference.