BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
NEW YORK - More than 250 people heard a firsthand report here February 25 from the recent Seventh International Havana Book Fair and celebrated the publication of the new Pathfinder book Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War: 1956- 58, by Ernesto Che Guevara. The event took place just one day after pilots from Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces shot down two planes flown by a group of counterrevolutionaries from the United States who had ignored all previous warnings and once again sent belligerent planes into Cuba's airspace.
"It has just gotten a little more difficult to recruit pilots in the United States to fly hostile missions over Cuba," said keynote speaker Mary-Alice Waters, editor of Episodes and of the Marxist magazine New International, at the opening of the meeting. She pointed out that this action by the Cuban government in defense of its sovereignty was a blow to Washington's 37-year-long efforts to weaken, divide, and ultimately overthrow the government and communist leadership in Cuba. "Washington just got a sharp reminder: the Cuban revolution is alive and well. And fighters everywhere feel stronger," she said.
"Nothing else could underscore more dramatically the importance of the theme we're discussing today," said Waters. This theme, she explained, is that Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War "is not just an account of historic events - however important those chapters of history are - but first and foremost a political weapon for today's fighters."
The meeting, held at Columbia University, was sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum in New York, Brooklyn, and Newark, New Jersey. Those attending came from around the Northeast and mid-Atlantic region. Also present were many participants attending a national leadership conference of the Socialist Workers Party, as well as leaders of the Young Socialists from across the country who held a meeting that evening. Greg McCartan, editorial director of Pathfinder, chaired the event.
Pathfinder published Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, Waters told the audience, "because it is needed, especially by the generations that did not live through these events and who are seeking to understand the world we live in today. Most importantly, however, it is needed by fighters who want to learn how to fight - and win." Guevara's account of the battles and mass struggles that led to the victory of the Cuban revolution shows "how ordinary men and women are capable of transforming themselves as they fight to change the world."
`Not a question of courage alone'
What allowed the Cuban workers and farmers in the Rebel
Army to lead a successful revolutionary struggle, said
Waters, "was not a question of courage alone," although
Episodes recounts many instances of great courage. "These
were not men and women who thought they were being courageous
in what they did. It wasn't a question of guts, but of
political understanding and capacity to fight and to lead
others to fight."
Before and after the meeting, many members of the audience looked at an attractive display of photos depicting the years before and after Cuba's revolutionary victory in January 1959. Among them were dramatic photos of Rebel Army combatants, workers demanding weapons to defend the revolution, and mounted peasant militias riding into action.
The most commonly asked question by those who were drawn to the books in the Pathfinder exhibit at the fair, Waters reported, was: Isn't it hard to be a communist in the United States and other imperialist countries? "Our reply was: It's no harder than in Cuba; we're in the same trench and the same struggle," she added. What helped the volunteers staffing the Pathfinder booth answer this question was a photo display illustrating where and how Pathfinder literature is sold in cities around the world.
The class struggle in the capitalist world," Waters pointed out, "is the hardest thing for revolutionary fighters in Cuba to see, and that's why the presence there of revolutionary fighters from elsewhere in the world was so important."
Hundreds of people streamed into the Pathfinder booth to talk with communists from other countries about the experiences they are living through and the political struggles they are involved in - from the pro-independence upsurge in Quebec, to the workers' struggles in France, to the protests demanding freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal, unjustly convicted and sentenced to death in the United States.
Seated next to Waters at the Columbia meeting were several other members of the international team that staffed the Pathfinder stand and reported for the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial at the Havana Book Fair. They were Carlos Cornejo, a student in Montreal, Quebec; Perspectiva Mundial staff writer Róger Calero; Linda Harris, a worker at an air conditioner factory and Pathfinder volunteer from Sydney, Australia; Brian Taylor, an airline worker in Washington, D.C., who is also a Militant correspondent in the capital; Seth Galinsky, a rail worker in Miami and regular Militant correspondent in south Florida; and Perspectiva Mundial editor Martín Koppel.
Commonality of experiences
Waters noted, however, that compared to the other four
times Pathfinder has been present at the Havana Book Fair
since 1988, "this time our experiences in struggle came much
closer to the experiences Cubans are living through. As a
consequence, our political discussions had greater depth."
This was also due to the fact that more of those who visited
the Pathfinder stand had previously read books published and
distributed by Pathfinder, from "The Opening Guns of World
War III" in the magazine Nueva Internacional, to speeches by
Malcolm X, to books by communist leaders like Leon Trotsky
and James P. Cannon.
"It was really impressive how many people came to the stand to ask about Mark Curtis and get the latest information on the fight to get him out of jail," Waters noted. Curtis, a framed-up political and union fighter, has been in prison in Iowa for seven years. He was granted parole in November, but is still behind bars.
"This greater commonality of experiences is born of the fact that, since the beginning of the `special period', the people of Cuba have found themselves, overnight, brutally thrust into the world capitalist market to a greater degree than anytime in the last three decades," said Waters. The special period is what Cubans call the economic crisis precipitated by the disruption of trade at preferential prices and aid from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. "This has been a savage, wrenching transition, made worse by the economic chokehold applied by Washington.
"Many in Cuba thought at first that their problems stemmed not from capitalism but from the failure of socialism - as they saw it - in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. But their experiences of the past five years have allowed them to bypass many of these first impressions."
Waters noted, "It's easier now to explain to fighters in Cuba the reality that workers in the imperialist countries face today, the depression conditions of world capitalism - the declining wages, the deterioration of working conditions, the brutality of the pace of work. Cubans are getting more than a taste of the dehumanizing character of social relations under capitalism through their exposure to the growing foreign investment in their country and other effects of the capitalist market, all things they are obliged to accept to get production going again." As a result, they can understand better the impact of cuts in health and education spending in the United States and elsewhere, the scapegoating of immigrants, the rise of fascist currents, and the growing threats of war in a capitalist world dominated by sharpening interimperialist conflicts.
Two or three years ago, Waters said, virtually everyone in Cuba spoke about what they called the "unipolar world," reflecting the view that, since the crumbling of the Soviet regime, U.S. imperialism had become stronger and more dominant. Now, however, it's increasingly common to hear, as one revolutionary fighter who visited the Pathfinder booth put it, that "it seems like no one is in control anymore in the world."
At the same time, many working people and other supporters of the revolution in Cuba are conscious that they are stronger as a result of successfully resisting the effects of the economic crisis over the past six years.
Waters explained that this working-class confidence was evident at several factory meetings in the Havana region that members of the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial reporting team attended and two farm cooperatives they visited. In the factory assemblies, workers were discussing a written document in preparation for the April congress of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC).
"There was real debate and discussion," she said, on a range of questions, from world politics today, to wage levels, to the sugar harvest, to the armed defense of the revolution.
Waters noted that the most acute phase of the economic crisis of the last five years is over. "There is more life in the streets now than anytime since 1991," she reported, pointing to the increased traffic, open shops, and sidewalk food stands. "Food is more available now in the capital, including lettuce and other fresh produce for the first time in several years, although it is still expensive."
The experiences and strength that working people have gained were reflected in the greater breadth of books and political discussions that people sought out at the book fair this year, Waters reported. This time the two most popular titles were Habla Malcolm X (Malcolm X Speaks) and the History of the Russian Revolution by Leon Trotsky. "Day after day, we would see the Cuban version of Pathfinder's `Readers Club' - the young people and others who just sat and read for hours at the booth," she said.
Impact of `Episodes'
The Pathfinder book that had the biggest impact at the
Havana Book Fair this year, Waters said, was Episodes of the
Cuban Revolutionary War. The book was presented during the
fair at a joint launching with Pombo: un hombre de la
guerrilla del Che (Pombo: A Man of Che's Guerrilla), written
by Brig. Gen. Harry Villegas and published by Editora
Política in Havana. This title is based on the diary kept by
Villegas, also known as Pombo, in 1966-68, during the
Bolivian guerrilla campaign he fought in under Guevara's
command. Copies of that book, which will be published in
English by Pathfinder later this year, were also sold at the
Columbia University meeting.
Waters noted that Pathfinder's publication of Episodes drew attention at the fair because of the high quality of the book - from the translation and printing to the fact that it is the most complete edition in English. But what sparked the most interest - and controversy - was where the book was being sold.
At the meeting to launch the book, Waters reported, "We explained that this book was going to be sold to workers in factories and on the picket lines, to students on campuses, to farmers, immigrant workers, and others. Afterward, a number of participants came to the Pathfinder booth and asked us, `Do you really mean workers on picket lines will buy this book?' When we said, `Yes, that's what we mean and that's what's already happening,' you could see the impact it had on them. Their view of the world today, and the place of the Cuban revolution in it, suddenly shifted."
Waters underlined that the political conditions in capitalist countries are leading working-class fighters to become more open to learning about the Cuban revolution. "When they see that Cuba is hated by the same people they themselves are learning to despise," she noted, "these fighters become open to consider the evidence that they've been lied to. But they need evidence, not empty rhetoric. And that's what we provide." They become interested in finding out how revolutionary Cuba has been able to stand up steadfastly to imperialism for all these decades, and books like Guevara's Episodes help explain this.
At the meeting where Waters spoke, a number of workers and young people had already purchased Episodes or got it at the event. Kim Hilaire, a 25-year-old auto worker at General Motors' Tarrytown plant, for example, had recently bought the book from a co-worker and begun reading it. Hilaire became interested in Cuba after reading Malcolm X, who "pointed out how the Cubans were the only ones who helped in our struggle, the Black struggle," she said.
Waters ended by explaining that the books exhibited at the Havana Book Fair had been donated to the University of Santa Clara and pointed to several stacks of Pathfinder books next to the podium. "All these will be sent to Cuba in the next days in response to special requests for books," she said. Ranging from materials about Patrick Buchanan to copies of Nueva Internacional, the books were requested during the Havana Book Fair by a variety of institutions and individuals -- from the Federation of University Students, to several embassies, to a number of libraries, including the library of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba.
Maggie Trowe, business manager of the printshop that produces Pathfinder's books, concluded the meeting with an appeal for contributions to the Books for Cuba Fund. It is through this fund that working people and students in the United States and elsewhere make such donations of books to Cuba possible.
Participants at the meeting contributed or made pledges to the Books for Cuba Fund totaling $3,615.