BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS AND MARTÍN KOPPEL
HAVANA, Cuba - "The world has changed greatly in the last 36 years, but the pledge we made on April 16, 1961, stands intact: Socialism will remain on this land, defended by the rifles of the people," said Raúl Castro, minister of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

Castro was addressing tens of thousands of working people, students, members of the Territorial Troop Militias, the army reserves, and the FAR who filled the Ernesto Che Guevara square in Santa Clara April 16. The rally was organized on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist character of the Cuban revolution. It was also the main national event, celebrating the triumph of Cuban workers and peasants against the U.S.- organized mercenary invasion of the island at the Bay of Pigs 36 years ago.

At this gathering, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba made public the call for the fifth party congress, which will take place October 8-10. The convention will open on the day marking the 30th anniversary of the fall in combat of Ernesto Che Guevara, one of the central leaders of the Cuban revolution.

Guevara, an Argentinian by birth, was heading a guerrilla front in Bolivia at the time seeking to forge a revolutionary movement of workers and peasants capable of eventually taking power and opening the road to socialist revolution in South America. He was wounded and captured by Bolivian military forces on Oct. 8, 1967. Bolivian army officers murdered him in cold blood the following day after consultation with Washington.

Choosing Santa Clara as the site for this celebration was a fitting tribute to this communist leader of world stature, three decades after his death. It was an integral part of the multitude of activities being organized across the island throughout 1997 to honor and encourage emulation of the proletarian and internationalist example Guevara set.

Che, as he was known to all, commanded Column no. 8 of the Rebel Army, headed by Fidel Castro, which defeated the forces of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in Santa Clara in the final days of 1958. The decisive battle for the capital of Las Villas province in central Cuba sealed the fate of the U.S.-backed regime. Batista fled the country in the early morning hours of New Year's Day, 1959, as Santa Clara, the country's third-largest city, fell in rebel hands and the local army garrison surrendered to Guevara.

`Socialism wasn't born in silk diapers'
"Our socialism did not come into this world in silk diapers, but in the rough cotton uniforms of the worker, peasant, and student militias; of the fighters of the Rebel Army and the Revolutionary National Police," stated Raúl Castro, who is also the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

On April 17, 1961, about 1,500 Cuban-born mercenaries hailing from U.S. shores invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of the Caribbean island, which is today part of Matanzas province. The landing, organized by Washington, was aimed at establishing the fig leaf of a "provisional government" that would then appeal to the administration of U.S. president John Kennedy for direct military intervention. U.S. warships had been simultaneously deployed in international waters nearby. But the invaders were held off by the Cuban militias and then crushed within 72 hours by the combined action of the militias and the Revolutionary Armed Forces. The last mercenaries surrendered on April 19 at Playa Giron, the name Cubans use to refer to this historic battle.

Two days before the invasion, U.S. planes painted with the insignia of the Cuban air force bombed the country's air bases and other sites in preparation for the mercenary landing. Seven Cubans were killed and 53 wounded in that attack. On April 16, 1961, at a funeral rally for the victims of the U.S. air raids, Cuban president Fidel Castro gave a speech confirming the socialist character of the revolution. He addressed tens of thousands of militia members and other Cubans who poured into the streets of Havana with their rifles on their shoulders and marched to the cemetery in tight formation to pay tribute to their fallen comrades and show their determination to defend the revolution. While that mobilization was going on, the ships carrying the mercenaries were steaming toward Cuba.

"Our homeland was in mortal danger," Raúl Castro noted in his Santa Clara speech, referring to these events. "This is how our socialism was born." (See full text of Castro's speech on facing page.)

Call for fifth party congress
"In order to continue defending our socialism, which was born in the uniform of our mambises, our rebels, our militia fighters, our internationalists ... and to safeguard our free and sovereign homeland, the Fifth Congress of the party has been called," Raúl Castro stated. The Mambises were the 19th century armies of Cuban independence fighters against Spanish colonial rule, made up in large part of newly freed Black slaves.

Prior to Castro's speech, José Ramón Machado Ventura, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party, read the call for the party congress. The call was issued by the party's Central Committee at its sixth plenum, which took place April 11.

Fidel Castro, who is also first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, other members of the party's Political Bureau, government ministers, generals of the FAR, members of the National Executive Committee of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), and leaders of other mass organizations took part in the Santa Clara event.

"The fifth congress will begin its sessions on October 8 of this year, on the 30th anniversary of the fall in combat of the Heroic Guerrilla," the convention call states. "It will conclude on October 10, the day when our country was born with the ringing of the Demajagua bell by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who initiated the war for national independence." Demajagua was the plantation where Céspedes, one of the country's national heroes, proclaimed Cuba as an independent republic in 1868, launching the first war for national liberation against the Spanish colonialists.

In addition to preconvention discussion by party members, the call says, a much broader discussion will be organized among millions of Cubans at workplaces and meetings of mass organizations across the country over the next five months. Discussion will be based on pre-congress documents that will be published by the party's Central Committee.

The congress will be "guided by the results of the broad popular debate that the party will promote through discussions involving the entire people," the call states. "We will focus our attention on economic efficiency, social justice, and defense - inseparable parts of and prerequisites for victory in the political battle and the struggle over ideas."

Declaration of `Mambises'
Victoria Velázquez, first secretary of the Union of Young Communists (UJC), opened the Santa Clara rally with brief remarks. The UJC leader and Carlos Valenciaga, president of the Federation of University Students, presented Fidel Castro with albums containing the signatures of hundreds of thousands of Cuban youth on the Declaration of the Mambises of the 20th Century.

This document was drawn up and signed by 250,000 officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and Interior Ministry. It was presented to the Cuban president on March 15 at a rally in Havana. [The text of the declaration was published in the April 28 issue of the Militant; Fidel Castro's speech at the March 15 gathering was run in the April 14 Militant.]

The Declaration of the Mambises affirms the determination of Cuba's working people to defend their sovereignty and socialist revolution. It is a concrete response to Washington's escalation of the economic war against the Cuban revolution, registered in the misnamed Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996, also referred to as the Helms-Burton act.

The call for the fifth party congress describes this law, signed by U.S. president William Clinton in March of last year, as the "Slavery Law" - a popular term in Cuba now.

The Helms-Burton act specifically calls for the removal of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro from the government, and the dissolution of Cuba's Interior Ministry, as preconditions for the U.S. Congress to consider lifting the 35-year-old trade and economic embargo against the Cuban people.

Millions of working people here have reacted with outrage at this imperial law, which many Cubans have dubbed the "Helms-Clinton law." Cuban workers and farmers are also indignant at a January 28 report by Clinton in which the U.S. president offered "aid" of $4-8 billion if the Cuban people got rid of the two most prominent leaders of their revolutionary government.

The military officers took the initiative with the Declaration of the Mambises in a demonstrative rejection of Washington's effort to split Cuba's armed forces. The attempted bribery by the U.S. government has also drawn the contempt of a large majority of the population.

I'd rather die fighting for dignity'
"I'd rather die fighting for dignity than be bought off with 30 pieces of silver," said Magali Díaz, a sewing machine operator at the Luis Fernández Rodríguez underwear factory in Guanabacoa, 15 miles east of Havana, which is organized by the National Union of Light Industry Workers (SNTIL). "That's how most of us in this factory, in this barrio, in this municipality feel." Díaz was responding to a question on Clinton's "offer" to the Cuban people by Militant reporters who interviewed her in the plant April 17.

Díaz explained that the factory is named after a member of the local militia who was killed at age 16 fighting the counterrevolutionary invaders at the Bay of Pigs. His mother is now retired from that plant and is still a member of the SNTIL union local there. "Workers renamed the plant in honor of Luis, after expropriating it from Viti, the owner," Díaz stated. The Viti family fled to Miami after the triumph of the revolution in 1959, several workers said. "Luis didn't die in vain," Díaz stated. "Since then we've had our own government. And despite the tremendous difficulties of the special period we have stood up to the imperialist monster. We won't allow the Yankees to come and take back our plant."

The "special period" is the term Cubans use to describe the economic crisis triggered by the abrupt end of aid and trade on favorable terms with the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries at the opening of the 1990s.

Militant reporters spoke to Díaz after a ceremony where a delegation of CTC leaders awarded a red-and-black flag with Che Guevara's image to workers at this plant. The flag carried the slogan "To be like him." Similar meetings took place in 300 garment factories throughout the country that day. Each plant gets to keep or return the flag next year depending on whether workers fulfill goals they have adopted for productivity improvements, reduction of waste, voluntary labor, and other targets. Militant reporters participated in these events in five garment factories.

Díaz and most other workers interviewed said they had already signed the Declaration of the Mambises. Meetings to discuss this document, along with the Law for the Reaffirmation of Dignity and National Sovereignty passed by Cuba's National Assembly as a counter to the Helms-Burton Act, had taken place in these factories.

These meetings are part of a broader movement being organized around the country by trade unions, student groups, Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and other mass organizations to involve the overwhelming majority of the population in discussing and signing the Mambises proclamation. The campaign resembles the signing of the Second Declaration of Havana -Cuba's internationalist manifesto of revolutionary struggle - by millions of Cuban workers and farmers in 1962.

CTC leaders say up to 500,000 Cuban workers have signed the Declaration of the Mambises so far. More than 120,000 residents of Villa Clara province had signed by April 16. Their signatures were presented at the Santa Clara rally.

The call for the fifth congress describes this movement as "our second Baraguá protest."

The Baraguá protest was issued in March 1878 by Antonio Maceo, a central military leader and strategist in Cuba's wars for independence. In that declaration, Maceo condemned the terms of the accord that ended the first war for national liberation and vowed to continue the struggle. Most of the other generals of the army fighting for independence had signed that pact. Maceo, a symbol of revolutionary intransigence in Cuba, rejected surrendering to the Spanish rulers. He was killed in battle on Dec. 7, 1896, during the second war for independence.

"We will be marching in Havana on May Day," said Clara Ester Fonseca Tavares, another worker at the Guanabacoa underwear plant, "where we'll present our signatures." Hundreds of thousands of workers are expected to turn out here on May 1, the international day of the working class, which the CTC has dedicated to Che Guevara this year. The workers and farmers planning to fill the streets and squares of the capital and other cities and towns on that day will get their chance to express the response of Cuba's toilers to the offer for "aid" from the imperialists to the north.

Workers interviewed at the Guanabacoa factory were looking forward to joining the May Day celebration with their own banners. As Ana Rosa Doris put it, "If the U.S. government doesn't already know they can't defeat us, we're going to let them know."  
 
 
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