Castro Vows Firm Stance Against Urgings to Change

Fidel Castro, on the eve of a trip to Brazil that he said will show Cuba is not isolated despite the changes sweeping his Communist allies, vowed that foreign leaders will never sway him to make concessions.

Castro told a rally of thousands of students in Havana late Tuesday that he knows that while he is in Brazil Thursday for the presidential inauguration of Fernando Collor de Mello, other foreign leaders will have plenty of advice for him.

“I know what it will be in advance, I know it by heart,” he said.

Castro, who has led Cuba for 31 years, said he expects that some other leaders will tell him that he should “behave himself, be a good boy, make concessions.”

“Should we make concessions?” he asked the crowd, estimated by organizers at more than 40,000.

“No,” they roared.

“Never, that’s the word, never,” Castro said. “No revolution that ever makes concessions can save itself.”

Castro said his trip to Brazil would show that Cuba is not becoming internationally isolated despite the changes sweeping out communism in Eastern Europe.

“We have to show the imperialists that we’re not in the least bit frightened of them,” he said.

Castro has defiantly rejected the Western-leaning reforms being embraced in Eastern Europe and insists Cuba will never abandon its one-party Communist system.

“We know what a revolution is, what a revolution does,” said Castro, who has ruled the Caribbean island since leading the 1959 popular revolution that toppled right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The Cuban leader added he will discuss with the other leaders in Brazil issues such as the problem of Latin American debt and what he called the unequal economic relations between rich and poor nations.

The Havana rally was held to celebrate the 33rd anniversary of an attempt in 1957 by a group of revolutionary students to kill Batista at his presidential palace.