The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.9           March 9, 1998 
 
 
N.Y. Event Celebrates 100 Years Of Struggle Against Yankee Imperialism  

BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
NEW YORK - The theme of "100 Years of Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism: Africa, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines" drew a crowd of nearly 200 students and others here February 19. A range of student groups and political organizations sponsored the meeting, which was held at City College of New York (CCNY).

Rafael Cancel Miranda, a well-known leader of the fight for Puerto Rico's independence and former political prisoner, traveled from the island to address the youthful audience, which included many Puerto Rican students. The meeting also featured Félix Wilson, first secretary of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, D.C. Other speakers included Mary-Alice Waters, editor of The Bolivian Diary of Ernesto Che Guevara, Rossand Fabunan of the Makabayan-Philippine Forum, and Rosemari Mealy, WBAI radio journalist and author of Fidel and Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting.

Saulo Colón Zavala, a member of the Puerto Rico Collective, one of the sponsoring student organizations, chaired the event and spoke on behalf of that group. He noted that since Washington declared war on Spain in 1898 and made Puerto Rico its own colony, the U.S. government has used the island as a springboard for military interventions against other nations, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Today, Colón added, "the war against Iraq is the continuation of these imperialist policies."

Other sponsors of the meeting included Areíto, CCNY Coalition, PODER, ROOTS, Graduate Student Council, Unión de Jo'venes Dominicanos, Black Studies Department, Casa de las Américas, Young Socialists, Bronx ProLibertad, and Comité Nacional Puertorriqueño 98. Colón recognized Luis Miranda, director of Casa de las Américas, in the audience. Silvio Torres, head of the Institute of Dominican Studies at CCNY, welcomed people to the event.

Fight to free Puerto Rican prisoners
Colón underscored the importance of the campaign to free 14 Puerto Rican independence fighters who are in U.S. prisons. He urged those present to build and join a March 27 protest in Washington, D.C., and one on July 25 at the United Nations, which will demand the freeing of the Puerto Rican fighters.

Félix Wilson explained that the war of 1898 was actually the Spanish-Cuban-American War, and that after the defeat of the Spanish colonialists, the invading U.S. forces snatched victory away from Cuba's plebeian liberation army, known as the mambises, whom they blocked from entering the city of Santiago de Cuba.

Today, Wilson said, the rulers of the United States "can't forgive us for the fact we made a revolution and came to power in 1959," winning freedom from U.S. domination. He highlighted some of the revolutionary gains the Cuban people have made, despite the current economic crisis and Washington's efforts to strangle Cuba through an embargo. Wilson added that one of the most important strengths of the revolution is the number of Cubans who have volunteered to aid other nations, particularly the 300,000 Cubans who served in Angola and were decisive in defeating the South African apartheid army's invasion in 1988.

Rossand Fabunan outlined the Filipino people's struggle for independence - first from Spain, then from the United States, and now from U.S. imperialist domination. Rosemari Mealy talked about the political and economic changes that the Cuban revolution made possible. She urged support for a bill in Congress that would exempt food and medicine from the U.S. embargo as one of the actions that can be taken to oppose U.S. policy toward Cuba. Commenting on the Pope's recent visit to Cuba, she said the welcome extended to him by the Cuban government and people showed that "building socialism is not contradictory with the practice of religion."

Mary-Alice Waters, who had recently returned from a Militant reporting trip to Cuba, began her remarks by quoting Cuban leader Fidel Castro when he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on behalf of the Movement of Non- Aligned Countries in 1979. I come here to warn, said Castro, "that if we do not peacefully and wisely solve and eliminate the present injustices and inequalities, the future will be apocalyptic."

"That's a good place to begin tonight," Waters said, "as Washington is marching working people in the United States and the rest of the world into a war, that is not our war, against the people of Iraq."

Iraq, NATO: initial shots of WWIII
What is happening today, Waters noted, is directly linked to what happened 100 years ago when Washington launched the first war of the imperialist epoch.

She quoted U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright's arrogant declaration the day before, that the United States, "the greatest country in the world," is merely playing its role as "the indispensable nation" to make the world safe for "those people around the world who follow the rules."

"This war is not about weapons proliferation or United Nations Security Council decisions," Waters noted. "Nor is it primarily about teaching the Iraqi rulers a lesson. It has much more to do with the conditions that are being prepared for the coming confrontation with the former Soviet Union, with Russia above all. With the working people of the former Soviet Union. With the expansion of NATO and the goal - through this assault on Iraq - of integrating Poland, especially, and the Czech Republic more deeply as military components of NATO in preparation for the confrontation with Russia."

If the Gulf War of 1990 - 91 registered the opening guns of World War III, and the imperialist military intervention in Bosnia over the last several years marked the second round, "the third round is being prepared for Iraq today. And one thing we can be sure of, it will not be the last," she emphasized. "There will be further rounds as their imperialist system pushes them inexorably toward the next interimperialist slaughter on a world scale, unless we are capable of stopping them" as the class struggle heats up. "And that is the challenge before us."

The 20th century has been the epoch of imperialism, Waters said. But "it has also been the century of revolution - starting with the two great Russian revolutions of 1917, all the way through to Cuba and the opening of the socialist revolution in our hemisphere."

Waters noted that "the example of the Cuban revolution points the way forward" in the fight to free Puerto Rico from colonial rule. But the road taken by Cuban workers and farmers, she continued, "is every bit as important for working people here inside the United States, within the body of the imperialist power itself."

Waters pointed to the responsibility of those inside the United States, working together with those struggling for national independence and socialism around the world, to lead a fight against imperialism. She underscored this point with a quote from Che Guevara's call to revolutionaries around the world in his 1967 "Message to the Tricontinental." "Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism," Che said, as he called for unity against "the great enemy of the human race: the United States of North America."

Puerto Rican independence fighter Rafael Cancel Miranda, who spent 28 years in U.S. prisons, one of the longest-held political prisoners in the Western hemisphere until his release in 1979, closed the evening program with a scathing indictment of Washington's wars abroad, from Nicaragua at the turn of the century to Panama in 1989. "In 1898 the imperialists invaded Puerto Rico and saved us from ourselves - because they always come to save you from yourself," he said to laughter and applause.

The head of the invading force, Gen. Nelson Miles, "who supposedly brought us democracy and freedom, was also the one who was responsible for the massacre of Native Americans at Wounded Knee" in 1890, Cancel Miranda pointed out.

He added that the U.S. imperialist rulers "have always used Puerto Rican youth as cannon fodder in their wars, to fight and die for them. They used our youth in Korea against the Koreans, and in Vietnam against the Vietnamese."

In 1949, when he was just out of high school, Cancel Miranda said, "they put me in jail for refusing to go kill Koreans." Later, in 1954, he was arrested as part of a group of Puerto Rican independence fighters who carried out an armed attack on U.S. Congress to help bring world attention to Puerto Ricós situation. "The first time they gave me two years in prison because I refused to shoot. The second time, they gave me 80 years in prison for shooting. I guess it depends who you shoot at," he said.

`Cuba is a real democracy'
"They commit crimes in the name of democracy. But imperialism is not a democracy. It's Cuba where there is a real democracy," the Puerto Rican leader stated. Pointing to Cuban representative Wilson, Cancel Miranda said, "Do you want to see a free man? He is a free man!"

Asked by a Puerto Rican student from Hostos College during the discussion period what advice he had for young people, Cancel Miranda said, "Think for yourself. Don't just accept everything older people tell you.

"And never let them make you ashamed of being a Puerto Rican. Never let them take your dignity, your Puerto Rican- ness away from you," he added to applause and shouts of approval.

"This country is controlled by a 1 percent minority that exploits the majority," he explained. U.S. officials like Madeleine Albright speak for that minority when they say that Washington will unleash force against those who don't "follow the rules," Cancel Miranda said, echoing the point made by Waters.

"There are people here in the audience who identify with our struggle. But to those who don't know what I'm talking about, my message to you is: find out. Otherwise you'll pay a high price for being ignorant. Because you have to find out the truth about yourself." Drawing applause, Cancel Miranda said, "I'm looking for people who want to fight. If I came all the way from warm Puerto Rico to speak here in cold New York, it's for that. And if there's even one of you here who wants to fight, it was worth it."  
 
 
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