BY PATRICIA O'BEIRNE
MONTREAL - Maria del Carmen Barroso, a leader of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba (UJC) and a member of the Federation of Cuban Women, and Joel Queipo, a leader of the Federation of University Students of Cuba (FEU), will arrive in Montreal October 29 to begin a three-week tour across Canada.
Barroso and Queipo will speak in public meetings on university and college campuses about how Cuban youth are defending the socialist revolution in a period of economic crisis. They will also learn firsthand about the situation facing working people and youth in an imperialist country like Canada. They will go to picket lines, and meet with workers, Native people, and others.
Barroso and Queipo will begin their speaking tour with a five-day visit in Vancouver starting October 30. Meetings are planned at several campuses in Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia. At Langara College the student union building will have displays on Cuba and activities for the Cuban youth for an entire day. The youth leaders will also visit a picket line of workers on strike against Horizon Air.
As part of fund-raising efforts for the tour, the Cuban Youth Tour committee in Vancouver is showing videos on October 19 from the International Youth Festival, which took place in Cuba last August.
The next stop will be the Toronto area November 5-12. The Cuban youth leaders will meet with workers at the Ford Electronics factory, and will speak at meetings in Toronto, Guelph, London, Etobicoke, and Hami1ton, Ontario.
Barroso and Queipo have also been invited to address the national convention of the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) to be held in Ottawa at the end of their visit. The CFS was the main organizer of a nationwide student action last January that brought together 100,000 English-speaking and Quebecois youth to protest cuts to university funding.
The Cuban youth tour will be in the Montreal area November 12-19, where Barroso and Queipo will meet with some of the 750 workers on strike at the Kenworth truck assembly plant. Workers at Stylecraft, a watchband factory, have also invited the two Cuban youth leaders to a supper meeting. Several campus meetings are also scheduled, including at one college where a group of students are planning a study trip to Cuba next year.
Activists building the tour in Montreal and Toronto have been publicizing the project at demonstrations and other political events.
In Montreal some of the 9,000 students who protested cuts to education funding on September 20 picked up information on the tour, and several volunteered to help publicize it on their campuses.
To find out more information, or to help with any aspect of this project, call the Cuban Youth Tour in Canada, at (514) 284-0436 in Montreal, (416) 536-8901 in Toronto, or (604) 439-2451 in Vancouver.