In half a century of challenge and learning and trial-and-error, each of us had struggled from hard times to a present lovely beyond our dreams.

The competition of suffering which occurs here is incomprehensible to outsiders. For so many years, we were on the same side as victims, faced by the same oppressors. Perhaps the positive good which has emerged from this painful experience will create a basis for dialogue with the passage of time.

Suffering brings experience.

It was a very difficult time

I've been through a lot," . "It's been a tough journey.

For thirty years the Cubans fought alone for their independence; thirty years of struggle that strengthened our love for freedom and independence.

Once the meaning of suffering had been revealed to us, we refused to minimize or alleviate the camp’s tortures by ignoring them or harboring false illusions and entertaining artificial optimism. Suffering had become a task on which we did not want to turn our backs. We had realized its hidden opportunities for achievement, the opportunities which caused the poet Rilke to write, “Wie viel ist aufzuleiden!” (How much suffering there is to get through!).

We are suffering. We have suffered, and we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause. We have suffered unnumbered ills and crimes in the name of the Law of the Land. Our men, women, and children have suffered not only the basic brutality of stoop labor, and the most obvious injustices of the system; they have also suffered the desperation of knowing that the system caters to the greed of callous men and not to our needs. Now we will suffer for the purpose of ending the poverty, the misery, and the injustice, with the hope that our children will not be exploited as we have been. They have imposed hunger on us, and now we hunger for justice. We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

I have nothing and therefore nothing to lose. I have conditioned myself for every conceivable shock and strain – physically, mentally, and emotionally. I fear nothing. No threat or prospect of danger deters me; I’ve faced them all, continuously and by choice. I am willing to suffer with those who suffer, to die with those who die, and to struggle in the most extreme manner for their liberation. I’ve lived the past decade with no pleasures, no amenities, and no entertainment. I’ve conditioned myself for every extreme. This is the level of commitment that our struggle demands, and the level of commitment that I have, and those who share this commitment have my complete loyalty.

I endured incredible trials because I could not endure myself.

The process we embarked on through the TRC was, as all real growth proves to be, astoundingly painful and profoundly beautiful.

There is so much human pain and suffering in the world. I want to honor all those difficult experiences and acknowledge their aftermath.

The hardships and sufferings to which Our nation is to be subjected hereafter will be certainly great. We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you. Our subjects. However, it is according to the dictates of time and fate that We have resolved to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.

It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach.