BY JOHN STEELE AND JOHN RIDDELL
TORONTO - "We in Cuba are building a socialist society, and that proves to the world a socialist society is possible," declared Joel Queipo Ruiz of the National Secretariat of the Cuban Federation of University Students to a meeting of 145 persons at the University of Toronto November 10.
Queipo is speaking to meetings across Canada with Maria del Carmen Barroso González, a leader of the Union of Young Communists, on a three-week tour organized by the Cuban Youth Tour Organizing Committee. One goal of the tour is to establish formal relationships with student organizations. To that end they will be attending the Ottawa convention of the Canadian Federation of Students, March 17-19.
Tanya Zakrison a representative of the University of Toronto Friends of Cuba committee, welcomed the Cuban youth leaders. Zakrison, who recently returned from a year of study at the University of Havana, contrasted the cuts in education and social services by governments in this country with the refusal of the Cuban government to carry out cuts despite the economic crisis there.
In Cuba since the 1959 revolution, Queipo confirmed, all who desire to study have the right to do so. They have had the right to dismiss, if need be, the university's rector and professors, to participate in national political life, and to receive a job in their field after graduation.
A few years ago, he recalled, "we of the students' federation, looking back at the heroic role of students in overthrowing dictatorships in the 1930s and the 1950s, we wondered when it would be our turn to struggle. Then came 1989 and the `special period' " - the severe economic crisis precipitated by the collapse of trade with the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries and intensified by Washington's economic embargo.
"Now, physical conditions of study have become more and more difficult," Queipo explained. "As the economy has shrunk, the guaranteed job has shrunk too. Pressures of all kinds increased in our country. But the government said, `No cutbacks in education,' and we had to support them in that. So every year we work in agriculture; when there is a call for a special project, we go. We may not have cars or tape recorders. But we have dignity and morality, and no one can take that away from us, not in any crisis."
Throughout the week-long southern Ontario leg of their tour, Barroso and Queipo spoke to more than 600 people at six meetings. A variety of questions were posed by university and high school students, unionists, Cuba solidarity activists, and others at the different meetings.
In answer to a questioner who expressed concern over increased foreign investment in Cuba, Barroso explained, "It seems there is a lot of misinformation spread by the media in North America. Workers remain the masters in our own country. The workers and farmers dictate wha happens in Cuba. These investments simply help us get foreign currency so we can buy medicines and other essentials to maintain social programs and the project of building socialism."
During the course of the week several questions were asked relating to the reappearance of prostitution after its elimination by the revolution. "It would not be true to deny the reappearance of prostitution," said Barroso. "But it is not like prostitution in other countries where women do it to survive. It is a product of the impact of tourism and the economic difficulties. It is an ideological problem," she said, adding, "Prostitution involves a microscopic percentage of the population."
Queipo and Barroso spoke on campuses in Guelph, Hamilton and Toronto in Ontario. In London, Ontario, their meeting was organized by the local Cuba solidarity group and Canadian Auto Workers Local 27. Across the country more than 40 organizations and indviduals sent invitations to the Cuban youth leaders.
Robert Simms contributed to this article. John Steele is a member of International Association of Machinists Local 2113.