The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.32           September 22, 1997 
 
 
Socialists: Protest Terrorist Bombings Against Cuba!  
The statement below was issued by Janet Post, Socialist Workers candidate for Mayor of Miami, and Rollande Girard, Socialist Workers candidate for Miami Commissioner, District 1.

The Socialist Workers candidates join defenders of democratic rights and those who support the sovereignty of nations in condemning the September 4 bombings of three hotels and a restaurant in Cuba, in which an Italian man visiting the country was killed by shrapnel. These attacks follow several other such bombings since April.

We urge those who oppose these cowardly and deadly attacks to join us at the September 16 picket line called by the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba, the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and the Alliance of Workers of the Cuban Community.

The labor movement, working farmers, and youth involved in social protest actions have a direct interest in defending Cuba against these assaults and in exposing the U.S. government's complicity in them. We face a common enemy: the U.S. capitalist class. At home the bosses are pushing for lower wages, more speed-up, and harsher working conditions, while their government is chipping away at hard- won social benefits. It's these same employers who have been striving to overturn the socialist revolution in Cuba for nearly four decades.

Washington has a well-known record of organizing, encouraging, and covering up terrorist acts against Cuba ever since working people there made a revolution and took their destiny in their own hands.

Since the Cuban people made a mighty popular revolution in 1959 that overturned the U.S.-backed regime of Fulgencio Batista, Washington has used every means at its disposal to turn back the course of history: armed invasion, threat of nuclear annihilation, assassination attempts against leaders of the revolution, a 35-year economic embargo, diplomatic isolation, economic sabotage, slander campaigns, and the list could go on. The fact that Cuban workers and peasants pushed forward their revolution, overturned capitalism, threw out the imperialist exploiters, and set on a course to advance the struggle of working people worldwide has been greeted with incessant hostility from the largest economic and military power on the face of the earth.

Having failed in these attempts, Washington is ratcheting up the pressure on Cuba's economy, hoping to force workers and peasants to cry "Uncle!" They are tightening the screws on the embargo through the cynically titled Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act, or Helms-Burton law, seeking every avenue possible to force an end to any country trading or establishing commercial relations with Cuba. Now the U.S. Congress is considering a raft of additional legislation aimed at further tightening the Helms-Burton noose.

Washington acts against Cuba because the wealthy rulers of the United States view Cuban working people and their leadership as the front line in the struggle against exploitation and oppression, against the devastating impact of the world capitalist economic crisis. The imperialists also see big battalions of working people entering into wider struggle from Brazil to France to the United States, and know that Cuba's example can and will spread. They know that Cuban workers and peasants will give everything they can- as they did in the Congo, Angola, Vietnam, the Mideast, and across Latin America - to help advance battles for national liberation and against imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation.

Standing together with our brothers and sisters in Cuba will strengthen the struggles of workers and unionists here, and advance the fighting power of those taking a stand against exploitation and oppression. Such actions can maximize the political price the U.S. rulers pay for these attacks.

The socialist candidates encourage all to join the Cuban people as they stand up to demand from Washington:Stop the bombings against Cuba!

Apprehend and prosecute all those responsible for these cowardly attacks!

End Washington's economic war!

Normalize relations with Havana now!  
 
 
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