BY LAURA GARZA
HAVANA - "For Cuba, it is important to have you here
today, not only for the ties of friendship, not only
because you will talk about the reality of what you have
seen," said Alejandro García González, "but because you
are extending your hands to us and saying, `Keep going,
you are on the right road.' " García González, president
of the Federation of University Students, was welcoming
people to the Cuba Lives International Youth Festival,
which opened here August 1.
Close to 1,200 delegates had registered after the first day, with more arriving all the time. The largest delegation is from the United States, with some 250 participating so far. "This is a political triumph for the Cuban people," said Victoria Velásquez, president of the Union of Young Communists of Cuba, one of several youth groups hosting the event.
The second largest delegation, about 125, comes from France. Nearly 100 have come from Spain and delegations of 30-45 people are here from Brazil, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Chile, and the United Kingdom.
About 60 countries are represented at the festival, with many youth from throughout Latin America. Delegations of 10-25 young people made the trip from Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Colombia, Paraguay and Ecuador. Six delegates from Vietnam arrived for the festival, and as many as 15 more are on their way; 7 came from Poland; and 2 from China. A range of African countries have one or two delegates present, including one from the African National Congress Youth League in South Africa.
Delegates who had arrived by July 31 spent most of the day on visits to factories, hospitals, cultural and sports facilities throughout Havana and outlying areas. Cuban translators and guides joined the busloads of delegates who headed out to different areas to ask questions of workers and youth here and exchange experiences from their countries.
Each bus headed to a different site: a ship repair yard, a sheet metal factory, a hospital, a dairy plant.
Some delegates visited a sports center, others a sanitarium for patients with AIDS. Workers at a flour mill, a sugar mill, and a glass factory hosted other delegates.
Delegates from the United States, Brazil, and Canada were part of a visit to the tory. U.S. delegates described the strike in their country by auto workers against the Caterpillar company's union-busting drive, and the involvement of youth in California in the fight to oppose anti-immigrant measures.
A member of the Brazilian delegation spoke about the recent round of strikes in Brazil, where workers face growing unemployment, speed-up, and deteriorating living and working conditions.
"Your presence here gives us strength to continue our fight for socialism," said José Ramírez, a machine operator. "We have to know if other workers are standing up to the oppression of capitalism."
At the Cardio Arguilles factory, which once produced buses, José Rodríguez explained that production has shifted to bicycles. This conversion was necessary as part of the measures Cubans have taken since 1989, when preferential trade terms that Cuba had with the Soviet Union and other Eastern European governments were disrupted. Severe shortages of oil and basic necessities became the norm as Cuba was thrust abruptly into the world capitalist market, forced to buy at high prices while getting little for the products it sells.
The severe fuel shortages wiped out much of the public transportation and bicycles became an alternative for tens of thousands of people. While Cuba at first imported most bicycles from China, it eventually began producing them here. Youth festival participants saw some of the new bikes Cubans have designed for transporting several people, carrying packages, and hauling military supplies.
Some delegates went to the port of Havana and spoke with members of the maritime union as they were taken around by boat. Last summer the port was the scene of several attempted hijackings by people wanting to leave the island for the United States.
Many to join work brigades
Sara Debulpaep, 21, from Flanders, Belgium, is one of
several Belgians planning to join a work brigade for
several weeks after the festival. She came to Cuba to
"learn about the health-care system," she said. "I am
against the embargo because it restricts trade and
exchange of medical technology."
Marie Arasa is a member of the Young Communists in France, which has a delegation of more than 70 at the festival. "We are opposed to the blockade. We oppose capitalism. We brought with us material aid for study - notebooks, pencils, and other items," she explained.
Frederic Charles said about 20 others came to the festival from France, organized by a group that promotes solidarity with Cuba. "Cuba is the most important struggle," he said. All the French youth will also participate in work brigades after the festival.
Gwennyth Van Laven, 14, of Washington, D.C., visited a flour mill that had been closed for two years at a time when Cuba was forced to import all its bread. She remarked, "I came to learn about Cuba and see for myself the effects of the blockade, and spread the word when I get home." The Washington Post published an article on Van Laven's trip just before she left.
After two days in Havana, all the delegates have chosen one of eight workshops and they will spread out to different provinces to live with a Cuban family and participate in discussions on young women, participation and democracy, education, health, childhood, employment, development and the environment, and culture and national identity. Van Laven is going to Sancti Spiritus province to discuss the topic of childhood. "I want to see what kids here are like," she said.
Gabriel Siert, 14, is a Native American from Sioux City, Iowa, who came to the festival with his mother, Rachel Gould, a Native American rights activist. He visited a sports training facility, and said he was impressed by "the dedication of the trainers working under conditions that are not that good. They are working-class trainers, though. There is no air conditioning. Maybe some of them could go to the United States but they are dedicated to what they were doing."
200 delegates represent Cuba
Cuba is represented by 200 delegates, but the whole
country is getting daily reports on the festival's
activities by television, radio, and newspapers. Some
2,500 families volunteered to host delegates at their
homes in several provinces.
Rusbert Drake Fernández, 23, volunteered to be a translator for the week. He was one of about 150 chosen from teachers and students at language schools.
Tens of thousands of Cubans are expected to join the festival's activities on August 5 at one of the highlights of the week. That day, a mass demonstration against the embargo led by festival participants will march along the Malecón, Havana's seaside boulevard.
The marchers will rally at the same spot that disturbances broke out on August 5 last year when groups of people who had gathered in hopes of a boat hijacking began marauding through the area throwing stones and breaking windows. Thousands of workers and youth in the city responded that day by massing at the Malecón in defense of the revolution. The Union of Young Communists sponsored a massive pro-revolution march a few days later.
For many of the young Cubans, last year's mobilizations were the first time they felt they had lived up to the responsibility of defending the revolution at a moment when it counted most. They have chosen to end the march at that site to remind themselves and others - including enemies of the Cuban revolution - that working people and youth in Cuba stood up, and will continue to stand up, in defense of their dignity, sovereignty, and socialist revolution.