Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has appeared on Cuban television for the first time in more than a year. Footage broadcast on Saturday shows the eighty-three-year-old Castro meeting with a group of Venezuelan students. Castro is heard talking to the students about Latin American independence.

Fidel Castro: “The most important thing is the fight for independence and that we are free and that no one has the right or sovereignty over the Bolivarian or Martiana homeland.”

Castro hasn’t been seen in public since undergoing intestinal surgery in July 2006.