BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND LAURA GARZA
HAVANA, Cuba - "Capitalism and social development have
been, are, and will be eternally irreconcilable," said
Cuban president Fidel Castro here August 6 at the closing
session of the "Cuba Lives" International Youth Festival.
"Capitalism and pillage, pillage inside and outside the
country, are inseparable. Capitalism and unemployment are
inseparable."
The capitalist world of the 21st century "offers no future" for youth and working people, Castro told the delegates. This world "will enter in crisis, it has to enter in crisis, and it is in this world that you will have to carry forward the ideas discussed" at the festival, Castro said. "What you've done at this international youth festival is to review the problems of today's world and draw up a program of action, of struggle."
Delegates stayed in the homes of Cuban families in Havana and seven other Cuban provinces, participated in discussions and debates in eight different workshops, and joined half a million people in an August 5 march here in support of the Cuban revolution.
At the conclusion of the festival, leaders of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) and several other delegates said the international event was an important step in beginning to bring together revolutionary youth from around the world.
"I came to learn from Cuba how to help change my country," said Victoria Fomichov, 15, of Montevideo, Uruguay. Her comment was typical among the 1,336 delegates from 67 countries who took part in the festival.
After two days in Havana, delegates piled into buses, and a few into planes, to travel to the different provinces where commissions were held over three days. The themes of the workshops includedemployment, young women, culture and national identity, democracy and participation, and education.
Referring to examples cited by delegates, Castro said that what capitalism offers today is best revealed by "the unemployment rates, which in some countries have tripled in just two years; or the great financial problems that can ruin a country overnight; or the fact that countries with immense natural and economic resources are on the verge of social explosions because of the daily battles between workers and the police and other repressive bodies, in Central America, South America, and elsewhere."
In Pinar del Río, where 140 delegates discussed employment, one participant explained that 25 percent of youth in Italy are unemployed, and in the south of that country the figure jumps to 33 percent.
Bourgeois politics shifts to right
"In my country education is in a profound crisis," said
Valdine Veronica de Lima, of the Union of Brazilian High
School Students. "Fifteen million children have no schools.
Thirty-five percent of the population is illiterate. And
many working-class youth are forced to drop out of school
to support their families." De Lima, speaking at the
opening of the commission on education in Havana province,
explained that a protest demanding funding for education
had been called for August 11.
In Colombia, said Jorge Verduro Rodríguez at the same workshop, "teachers recently went on strike for two months because they were not being paid." In response to student protests, he added, the Colombian military recently attacked a demonstration at the university, injuring six students.
Jack Willey from the United States described recent demonstrations in New York and protests in Canada that forced local governments to back down from cuts in education funding.
During the workshop on young women, which took place on the Isle of Youth, Sandra Cano, a student at the University of California in Los Angeles, talked about student mobilizations against attacks on affirmative action and government attempts to deny children of immigrant workers the right to health care and education.
In his closing speech Castro referred to such examples, and pointed to "a rightward shift in politics in certain countries, a shift toward reactionary positions...in several major countries including the United States."
"There have been struggles in the United States itself," Castro said, "which, it must be said, have resulted in a series of social gains: the struggle of the Black population for their rights, a historic battle; the struggles of national minorities, the struggles of the unemployed, the struggles of the poor, women's struggle for a series of rights. All of this is clearly jeopardized today as a result of the shift to the right in U.S. politics."
The danger that ultrarightists might take governmental power is posed again in a real way in today's world, Castro said. "This is an important factor to take into account, because the world situation may worsen and U.S. imperialism may become even more aggressive and harmful."
Cuba won't bow to imperialism
But Cuba will resist and will never again accept the
kind of imperialist superexploitation and domination by
Washington that prevails throughout the continent, the
Cuban president said.
"We know what it would mean for this country to fall again into the hands of the United States - with or without the Helms-Burton bill," Castro stated, referring to legislation under discussion in U.S. Congress that would tighten Washington's trade embargo against the island.
"What is inconceivable is that the Cubans would act like the slaves [thrown to the lions] in the Roman circus who cried: `Long live Caesar! Those who are about to die salute you!'" The Cuban people will never accept such a destiny, will never bow to imperialism, Castro stated.
"In today's world to be a revolutionary, as Che said, is the highest level of the human species," Castro added, referring to a phrase by Ernesto Che Guevara, one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution.
Many delegates responded enthusiastically to such remarks by Castro and other Cuban leaders. "Only Cuba has gained real independence," said Kai Moos, a 19-year-old student from Germany.
"I now know that with a clear perspective, with clear ideas we can create an even bigger movement to defeat U.S. policy when we return," said Leigh-Anne Yow, a student at North Carolina State University, "who comes from the state of Jesse Helms," as she put it.
Special period
Milton Chamorro was one of 26 youth from Ecuador who
were visiting Cuba for the first time. He is part of a
solidarity group at the University of Quito that goes out
to the surrounding small towns to speak about Cuba and
other international issues. He saved money for a year to be
able to come to Cuba and his group brought along $2,000
worth of medical supplies.
His group was typical of delegations from many countries that had sizable contingents. Dozens of delegates who came from France, Spain, Italy, the United States, and Brazil, for example, were not affiliated to any political organization but had been involved in some work in defense of Cuba.
A highlight of their experience at the festival, Chamorro said, was the chance to stay with Cuban families and live like many Cubans do. At least one day in every province, many delegates rode bicycles to the schools, factories, or other facilities where the workshops were held.
This is the common mode of transportation for most Cubans since the country lost trade at preferential prices with the former Soviet Union beginning in 1989 - what is referred to here as the "special period." Thrust abruptly into the world capitalist market, Cuba lost 70 percent of its import capacity and was forced to cut sharply its oil supplies, which now have to be paid for in hard currency.
On the Isle of Youth, visitors were housed in several apartment complexes. Host families and their guest delegates quickly began exchanging experiences, sometimes in broken Spanish or sign language when no translator was available. Delegates learned a little about what life is like during the special period and with Washington's unceasing economic war.
Emilia Gómez Abilludo, a laboratory technician in a fruit juice factory, explained to her guest how the family made use of the local pig pen. You pay 10 pesos per month to keep a pig there and provide your own feed to the animal, she said. This is one of many measures taken to allow individual families to grow their own food supply even if they have no access to land.
Most delegates got a look at the ration books that guarantee all children under seven a liter of milk per day, under conditions where dairy products are in very short supply. Seeing these records they also noticed the months when a family might not have received any cooking oil, a scarce commodity in the last few years.
"The main thing is that the revolution has tried to distribute the little that we have on an equitable basis," said Caridad Valdez Rodríguez, a worker at a power plant in Santa Clara, in the province of Villa Clara, who hosted another delegate. Rodríguez said the monthly rations for basic necessities like rice and beans her family receives are barely sufficient for two weeks. But since last year, she said, when the government opened agricultural markets around the country, it's a little easier to find food, "even though the prices are too high."
"I don't know if any other country in Latin America or the world could have resisted as hard a blow as Cuba suffered," Castro told the delegates in his closing speech. The conditions of the special period would have led to a major social explosion in any capitalist country. "Could Cuba have resisted without its socialist system, without its political and economic system, when this situation arose?"
Retreat to capitalism?
The Cuban president said the government has had to
introduce "elements of capitalism" in its attempt to deal
with the formidable economic difficulties. Castro was
referring to increased foreign investment in tourism and
mining, the legalization of the use of foreign currency,
and the opening of agricultural markets at unregulated
prices, among other measures. These steps have re-
introduced some social inequalities, he said.
"When I speak about the world we're living in today, don't forget that we are an island surrounded by capitalism on all sides," Castro said. The Cuban leader was referring to questions several delegates asked regarding the recent economic measures.
Isn't foreign investment, or the opening of dollar stores and other such steps, an unnecessary concession to imperialism? asked several delegates from Brazil at the workshop on democracy and participation in Villa Clara. Can measures like these lead gradually to the restoration of capitalism? Delegates in other workshops asked similar questions.
"We have to tell the truth," Castro said. "We initiated this course primarily because it was the only alternative we had to save the revolution and the conquests of socialism."
The Bolsheviks in the early years of the Russian revolution had to take similar measures when revolutionary movements in Germany and other countries in Europe were not victorious in the early 1920s, Castro said. If V.I. Lenin were alive today, "he would have told us: keep doing what you're doing," he stated.
"They too had to do this, they had to adopt the New Economic Policy, the famous NEP, during a certain historic period."
The main question, Castro continued, is who holds political power in such a period. "This is the key, because if the people, if the workers hold power, not the rich or the millionaires, then it is possible to implement policies in the interests of the people."
Democracy
"But is Cuba democratic? Are there free elections when
there is only one political party? Is there freedom of
speech when there is only one daily newspaper?" asked Kaisa
Murray from Denmark at the commission in Villa Clara.
"If democracy means participation of the people in making decisions about their lives, then we can't just talk about the right to go to the polls every four years to vote for candidates who usually must have millions of dollars to get on the ballot," Ricardo Alarcón replied during the workshop. Alarcón is the president of Cuba's National Assembly, the country's parliament.
"In order to talk about democracy you have to address the question of eliminating class exploitation, the degradation of women, racist discrimination," Alarcón said. "This is what the Cuban revolution set on the road to accomplish 36 years ago."
He pointed to the workers assemblies that involved more than three million people throughout Cuba in the last two years, where workers debated fiscal and other measures under consideration by the National Assembly before they were adopted. "This is working-class democracy," he said.
Alarcón also explained Cuba's electoral system and said that only the lack of paper during the special period has forced the cutting down of the number of daily newspapers.
Castro returned to these questions in his closing speech. Other leaders of the Communist Party and the UJC - including Abel Prieto of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina, and Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, editor of Juventud Rebelde - and many of the 200 Cuban delegates also took them up in the course of formal and informal discussions.
Before returning to Havana from the provinces, delegates visited factories, volunteer agricultural work contingents, and sports and cultural facilities, and had impromptu meetings with workers and youth as they went along. In each province delegates joined thousands of Cubans in torchlight marches or rallies to condemn the U.S. embargo against the Caribbean country.
Dances and cultural performances were also organized every day throughout the festival.
Solidarity actions
During the closing session in Havana, delegates adopted
a final declaration and several proposals for future
actions in solidarity with the Cuban revolution that came
from the workshops.
The delegates decided, among other things, to organize protests to condemn the policies of Washington and other imperialist powers against Cuba, and specifically rejecting the Helms-Burton bill. The solidarity actions would also include sponsoring speaking tours of Cuban youth in other countries and one or more international work brigades to Cuba next year. Several hundred delegates left August 7 for one- or two-week brigades to do volunteer work in agriculture.
Adriana Sánchez, who spoke at the closing session representing the U.S. delegation, encouraged the organization of further visits and tours to different countries by members of the UJC and other Cuban youth organizations. She noted that many of the nearly 300 youth from the United States attending the festival were won to the idea of participating in it during the U.S. tour of Cuban youth leaders Kenia Serrano and Rogelio Polanco earlier this year. Sánchez also explained that the young people returning will throw themselves in building demonstrations in October in opposition to U.S. policy toward Cuba.
Delegates from El Salvador, France, Portugal, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe, as well as Lulu Johnson, president of the
African National Congress Youth League of South Africa, also addressed the final session.
Most delegates reacted enthusiastically to the offer made by Castro during his speech at the August 5 march that Cuba was ready to host a world youth festival in the near future.
Castro came back to this idea at the end of his speech at the closing session. "We will not forget this meeting, and we are ready, on the orders of the youth of the world," Castro said, "to organize not just another international festival, but a worldwide youth festival. Now we have some 1,200 to 1,300 delegates. With 10,000 you have a world festival. We have the organizational capacity to do this in our country."
In consultations with other youth organizations after the festival, UJC leaders said the tentative date for the world event is the summer of 1997.
In her remarks at the conclusion of the gathering, Victoria Velázquez, first secretary of the UJC, proposed that in the spirit of proletarian internationalism the delegates pay tribute to the people of Japan, who were commemorating that weekend the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "by the empire in the North."
After thanking the participants from around the world for their presence, Velázquez concluded, "We are now more confident than ever that Cuba is not alone."