Working people around the world should celebrate the agreement to release the Cubans detained at Washington's naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba. The U.S. rulers failed in their attempts to provoke Cuba and deal a blow to the revolution by locking up thousands of Cubans at the Yankee military installation on Cuban soil. They also failed in their attempt to keep this injustice quietly hidden from the rest of the world.Washington couldn't politically afford 20,000 people prisoner in a stolen corner of their own country. In negotiating the accord, theU.S.government had to take a small step toward treating Cuba as the sovereign nation that it is.

Washington's policies for more than three decades have been responsible for forcing Cubans who wish to go to the United States to take to the seas under dangerous conditions. Successive U.S. administrations have tightly limited visas to migrate legally, while offering a hero's welcome to those who leave illegally. Just two weeks before the May 2 immigration accord, Washington granted political asylum to Leonel Macías González, who had hijacked a government boat and killed a Cuban naval officer. A 1984 immigration agreement with Havana was never fulfilled, and since last September's agreement to issue 20,000 visas a year to Cubans wishing to emigrate to the United States, only 800 people have actually been allowed in to the country.

The hatred of the U.S. capitalists toward the Cuban revolution remains unabated. They cannot forgive the workers and farmers of Cuba for ending in 1959 the "normal" relations of subservience and exploitation that Washington demands from governments throughout Latin America, Africa, and Asia. That's why nine U.S. presidents over the last 36 years have used any weapon they thought they could get away with - from mercenary forces to a criminal embargo, to travel bans and immigration policy - to try to break the resolve of the Cuban people to maintain their dignity and sovereignty.

All these attempts have failed. A statement issued by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee when Washington stepped up its campaign against the Cuban revolution last summer pointed to the massive demonstrations in early August of up to half a million workers and youth in Cuba in response to a series of hijackings, the killings of a navy lieutenant and a police officer, and other provocations by people encouraged by U.S. government policies. "Above all, revolutionary-minded workers and youth in Cuba are determined not to return to the dog-eat-dog individualism of capitalism," the statement said. U.S. imperialism wants to crush the example this determination sets for the rest of the world.

But they couldn't even crush the spirits of the thousands who decided to leave Cuba under the economic pressures brought on by the crisis of the world capitalist system and the U.S. embargo. The U.S. government was sitting on a powder keg in Guantánamo; the prisoners wouldn't quietly submit to the indignities and abuse that they were not accustomed to. The internment policy divided Cuban-Americans as well. Many of those who don't support the Cuban revolution were outraged at the glimpse they got of how Washington treats most immigrants as a matter of course.

Working people should oppose Washington having the authority or the right to simply throw refugees attempting to enter the United States back to their country of origin, be it China, Cuba, Haiti, Ireland, Mexico, or anywhere else. For the capitalists, borders are becoming increasingly important in maintaining and protecting their economic interests. At the same time the frontiers are becoming more porous, as workers travel from one country to another looking for jobs or to escape repression. The working class internationally should demand that every migrant be given medical attention , fair and dignified treatment, and their due rights based on humane international standards.

There is a real political change in the United States and elsewhere, with a small but growing layer of young people becoming attracted to the Cuban revolution and the fight to defend it. Demonstrations in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco October 14 against U.S. government policy toward Cuba; the August 1-7 youth festival in Cuba; and speaking tours by Cuban youth leaders around the world all provide important opportunities for workers and youth to throw as much weight as possible into the scales on the side of Cuban working people fighting to defend their sovereignty, their dignity, and their socialist revolution.  
 
 
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