below are exerpts from the text of a speech delivered to the cyclists gathered at the plaza de la revolucion to commemorate the traditional start of the mid-atlantic racing schedule; the jefferson cup.  the actual speech was well attended and lasted a little over three hours.  select portions are reproduced below.

- - - begin text - - -

honored guests, cyclists, workers, citizens: our commemoration of the traditional start of the mid-atlantic cycling season is characterized by its simplicity. there is no military parade, in spite of the fact that we considered this as a possible day for a military parade. actually, this has been a year of hard work. the off seaosn has been characterized, in every sense, by great efforts in all fields, of great savings in every sense, in which every man and woman on a bicycle has played an important role. and since work and the fulfillment of the assigned goals were more essential to us, we decided, confident that we were interpreting our people's best interest, neither to spend a gallon of fuel in military parades on this commemoration, nor to lose a single moment of work. [applause]

several commemorations of this type have taken place in recent years, but this commemoration certainly has gathered the most people ever at the plaza de la revolucion. [applause] this is not only a great multitude but a compact one, and there is something that is much more valuable than the extension of compactness, it is a multitude, a people who are extraordinarily more aware. [applause]

and we sincerely think that there are reasons why the revolution's awareness and strength have grown. And we think that we have well-established reasons for optimism. And we think that this optimism is based on real and palpable facts. and we think that the time is approaching when we will not be as interested in material satisfactions which will come as we will be in the moral satisfactions and in the time and the circumstances in which this has been possible.

it is natural that on this commemoration, in which we have practically graduated not yet as revolutionaries, not with a university diploma, but we could say that we have completed the primary grades of the revolution and we are entering junior high school, ending 10 years and beginning the next 10, when the most difficult 10 years have ended and the most fruitful 10 begin, when the period ends in which we passed from practically absolute ignorance to a certain level of accumulated experience, when we have attained a pace of work and progress far exceeding the pace we had in the beginning.

it is natural that we give a very brief synthesis of the effort, an account rather than a keynote, an idea of what the result has meant to the revolution, and at the same time the general line, the task of the next phase.  our cycling team has made its effort specific and we believe that this is of interest in the field of cultural development in general, in social development and at the same time in economic development.  we do not need to talk about something which many know as the educational effort, begun at once, characterized by the eradication of money in cycling, the enormous progress made up to this time in this field. this is not only symbolized by a mentors for every rider and a self supporting, non-heirarchical, sponsorship-free structure, but also in the fact that we have, after several months of revolution, more and more riders coming under the banner we unfurl.

in the ideological field the road followed has been infinite. the people of today and their political culture, organization, discipline, awareness, and sense of duty can hardly be compared to that of the people even 10 years ago. nevertheless, a revolution must rest on an solid structure. the cycling structure is one in which our people set themselves the most difficult goal, the most most extraordinary tasks: consciously denying ourselves sponsorship dollars under modern racing and training conditions.

face it our people did, bravely, without any experience, as they did with only the enthusiasm of their masses, because the few who knew how, belonged almost entirely to that privileged minority which was not in agreement nor could agree to changing the economic structure of cycling.  and it was, as we said last night conversing with some visitors, as though with great ignorance about everything, overnight we set ourselves to take charge of everything and make something of everyone with no experience at all, but further than that false illusion which produces the class society, the capitalist society, the illusion of shelves filled with goods, that illusion so highly flaunted by the privileged societies and which makes the masses believe in the illusory idea that cycling prize money is all that is necessary to reach and have access to inexhaustible riches of happiness, as if they were mines with infinite resources.

what the masses ignore is that these supposed riches gleaned from cycling treated as a business are nothing but the surpluses of misery, the surpluses of misery which they must have in order to incite people to further incessant work, in order to force work amid low morale and bad conditions.  naturally, cycling prize and sponsorhsip money is illusory wealth which disappears in a few short days, a scant time after the masses have all too brief a taste of this wealth.  and the masses really know now that the wealth has yet to be created because the masses know how to add and subtract and multiply and divide. And when you divide any of the levels of production which a market-oriented and business focused  cyclist achieves, even a second grade schoolboy would immediately discover that this was a miserable production.

now then, has the revolution increased happiness in the first few months? no, it has not increased happiness . what is more, our people did not increase the happiness of the nation in the first few months of the triumph and were even unable to produce themselves the little happiness that was produced by the privileged structure that preceded us.  however, this is rapidly changing.  what we will produce here, will be produced under very unhuman conditions. hunger, sweat, fatigue, cramps, toil.  the worst and most terrible things that a bike and rider may combine to produce.

we with our revolution, a bold historic undertaking, begin by again repeating the words of the manifesto, calling all like minded brothers and susters, riders and racers, to rally around the banner of the racing union and to sweep forward as the vanguard redefines what cycling is to be in the twenty first century.

- - - end text - - -