BY PAUL KOURI
VANCOUVER, British Columbia - "I liked what he said that Cuba
shows there is another way, that capitalism isn't the only
way," commented Sarah Petrescu after hearing two Cuban youth
leaders address a public meeting of 140 at the Roundhouse
Community Center here November 20. Like many of the 400
people - in their majority young - people who came to hear the
Cubans throughout the five days they spent in Vancouver,
Petrescu is repelled by the poverty, wars, and other social
evils fostered by capitalism.
Juan Carlos Frómeta de la Rosa is the coordinator of the Americas section of the international relations department of the Union of Young Communists (UJC). Raíza Rodríguez González is a member of the National Secretariat of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and a masters student in sociology at the University of Havana. They spoke to hundreds of youth during their three-week tour in Canada that began in Montreal November 1.
Sponsors of the Vancouver leg of the visit included the student unions from Langara College, University of British Columbia (UBC), and Simon Fraser University (SFU). The three campus meetings drew more than 200 students. Other youth/student groups such as Colour Connected, Third World Alliance, Global Development, Latin American Students Union at SFU, and Young Socialists helped organize campus meetings. The Cubans spoke to 40 delegates at the regular monthly meeting of the Vancouver and District Labour Council.
They also met with 13 workers, members of the International Association of Machinists, who work at Avcorp, an aerospace plant. Boe Ducayen, 21, commented after the exchange: "It was great meeting the Cubans. They should go to high schools. When I was going to high school in Alberta they brainwashed us with videos portraying Cuban nuclear missiles pointed at the United States. But it's the other way around. They [Washington] spend billions to send troops to Iraq when they should be helping countries in need like Nicaragua."
"Cuba has contributed a lot to Africa," Albert Tjitunga, who was born in Namibia, said during the exchange between the Cuban youth and the IAM members. More than 300,000 Cubans volunteered in Angola between 1975 and 1990 to help the people there defend their hard-won independence from Portugal and push back repeated invasions by the South African army. The defeat of Pretoria's forces at the closing of the 1980s played a key role in winning the independence of neighboring Namibia and in boosting the struggle to bring down South Africa's apartheid regime itself.
Speaking to students at Langara, Frómeta described how his two years in Ethiopia as a volunteer soldier was one of the most important experiences in his life and key to his political development.
Another IAM member present at the exchange, Marco Herrarte, is involved in the campaign to raise humanitarian aid for the victims of Hurricane Mitch in Central America. He attended the public meeting and appealed there for more long-term aid. He pointed out that "the Cubans have sent doctors and nurses - they don't hesitate to help people."
In his opening remarks to the main public meeting, Frómeta pointed to difficulties Cubans have faced since 1990 when favorable terms of trade with the Soviet union and Eastern Europe were abruptly ended and Cuba became more vulnerable to the gyrations of the capitalist market. "Inspite of our difficulties we continue to provide solidarity as we are presently doing in Central America and the Caribbean where Cuban medical brigades are helping treat victims of two hurricanes: Georges and Mitch. We follow José Martí - leader of Cuba's war of independence against Spain - who said our `nation is humanity.' "
One questioner at UBC asked about freedom of religion in Cuba. "Many religions exist in Cuba, including the Catholic church, but they are totally separate from the state," Rodríguez replied. "Everyone is free to worship as they please. But the schools and all state institutions are secular. No religions are taught in the schools."
In answer to a question on the situation facing university students in Cuba, Rodríguez explained how universities, and the Federation of University Students (FEU) in particular, have been centers of debate for finding solutions to the difficulties facing Cuban society, and youth in particular. In Cuba education is free and students had received a living allowance from the government to pay their living expenses. Courses are opened up to students in line with the needs of the economy and society as a whole. "When the crisis hit, we agreed that the government should no longer pay us a stipend," Rodríguez said. "A system of loans was arranged instead. However, FEU is presently discussing a proposal to ask the government to reestablish the living allowance."
In discussing the biggest challenge facing the UJC and FEU, Rodríguez and Frómeta discussed the need to effectively counter the effects of capitalist "consumerism and individualism that exist everywhere and which discourage solidarity. We have to show youth how to be more human, more spiritual, to prepare youth ideologically to be rounded revolutionaries, to forge youth who will know how to build socialism."
Paul Kouri is a member of the United Steelworkers of America Local 2952. Aiden Ball and Hamish McDonald, members of the Young Socialists, contributed to this article.
TORONTO - "There are four children in my family and we're all at a university. Only my father's paycheck comes in every month - 198 pesos. But we're fine. I may not have the latest fashionable clothes, but I eat, take the bus to school every day, and go out with my friends," said Raíza Rodríguez González, 22, a representative of the Federation of University Students in Cuba. She was talking with a dozen members of the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) November 12.
Together with Juan Carlos Frómeta de la Rosa, representative of the Union of Young Communists, she toured Canada in November speaking with students and unionists. They were in Toronto for five days.
This discussion over coffee and donuts in a hotel meeting room near the workplace had been set up by USWA Local 5338 and announced with leaflets posted on union bulletin boards in English, Spanish, Punjabi, and Vietnamese.
"But what's the point in having a free education, if you can't get a well-paying job afterwards?" said steelworker Dwight Duncan. "We might have to look for a job for one or two years here, but then you could walk into IBM at $95,000 a year." Rodríguez stated that all education was provided free of charge to every Cuban and those graduating are guaranteed a job after their studies.
"Well, we have different starting points," Frómeta replied. "In Cuba, we don't have shacks where children infected with parasites live - like you saw during the storm in Central America - while at the same time some earn $95,000 a year. We want to create a collective approach, to raise everyone up. We share what little we have equally."
"So what would you change in your country?" asked Joe Fusione.
"The U.S. blockade," Frómeta said, describing Washington's economic war on Cuba. "I don't want a government like you have here, or in the U.S. or in any one of your countries," added Rodríguez. Workers sitting around the table were born in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guatemala, Canada, and El Salvador.
"Why do thousands come out of Cuba on rafts, then?" asked Fusione.
"Immigration is a very politicized question," Frómeta said. "It's normal that people from underdeveloped countries want to come here, you're examples of this. How many Mexicans, Dominicans immigrate?" "Yes, but Cubans say on TV, `Don't send me back, I'll be tortured.' You don't see Dominicans saying that," Fusione objected.
"Cubans are the only people offered citizenship and a job when they arrive in the U.S.," Frómeta said. "It's easier to get that if you denounce the Cuban government. That's not offered to Dominicans or Mexicans."
Edgar Méndez had recently spent a week in Cuba volunteering on construction of a church. He asked, "The monthly ration of rice per person [at subsidized low prices] is 6 lbs. But often people don't get it all at once. They get 3 lbs and have to wait several weeks for the rest. With 75 percent of agricultural production taken up by sugar cane cultivation, which is state controlled and takes lots of machinery, don't Cubans really need more help growing food to eat?" "I'm from the countryside, I'll answer that," said Rodríguez. "Sugar production doesn't take up 75 percent of agriculture -we grow coffee, cocoa, rice...but not all of Cuba is fertile. We have to buy food from elsewhere. People have to wait for the rice because we can't get it from the United States. So the boat from China is delayed sometimes. But they do get their full ration eventually."
Three workers dropped into the discussion after attending a meeting elsewhere in the hotel to ratify a new contract with their employer. USWA 5338 is an amalgamated local where members work for many different companies. Rodolfo Molina spoke for them, "We had to accept yearly raises of 30 or 35 cents in a three-year contract because the government in this province has made a law that prevents us from shutting down the factory if we go on strike. Other people can come in and take our jobs. We have to fight hard here. We wanted to come to salute your fight for dignity in Cuba."
Katy LeRougetel is a member of USWA Local 5338.
MONTREAL - Eight members of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) working at the Merit plant here met after work with two young Cubans touring Quebec in early November. One worker had also brought a friend. The whole meeting was translated in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish.
Juan Carlos Frómeta and Raíza Rodríguez González opened the discussion with brief remarks on the current situation in Cuba.
The first questions were on the economic crisis in Cuba and the measures taken by the government to confront it. The Cuban government had to retreat from previous policies of the revolution and take steps such as reorganizing the country's trade within the world capitalist market to increase imports of oil and other indispensable commodities, which used to be imported almost in their entirety from the Soviet bloc countries, and find buyers for its exports. It has had to grant concessions large enough to attract foreign capitalists as partners in joint ventures to acquire technology, tap mineral resources, develop markets, and bring in capital for economic development. And it decriminalized the use of foreign currency as part of combating speculation and the black market.
Other measures have included reorganizing many of the country's state farms into cooperatives and legalizing self- employment in dozens of occupations.
"These measures were necessary to defend working people," concluded Frómeta. "They have nothing to do with neo- liberalism. No schools, no hospitals were closed. Nobody was left without social protection."
One participant opened his remarks by pointing to the Soviet Union where, he said, communists gave up their soul in exchange for bread, but in the end found themselves with no bread, no freedom, or even a country. This unionist said that the solutions implemented by the Cuban government will not work if there is no democracy. "If workers in Cuba are not free, they will not be inspired to work," he said. "It is not enough to talk of economic problems. You also have to discuss human beings."
In response to this and similar questions, Frómeta and Rodríguez said that the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed is that errors were made that led to the destruction of socialism. The most serious were policies alienating working people from government, from running the country.
"In Cuba we have our own conception of democracy," said Frómeta. "Democracy is power by the people."
"It is by basing itself on the mobilization of the people that the revolution survived despite the collapse of the USSR, the ending of Cuba's foreign trade on fair terms -85 percent of which was with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - and the strengthening of Washington's blockade," he added.
"Workers in Cuba, as well as students, are the main defenders of the revolution, because they are also its main beneficiaries. Workers are currently at the center of a massive effort to increase economic productivity. Nothing can be done to overcome economic deficiencies without workers participation. Workers are discussing how to organize production, to take maximum advantage of each day of work, how to produce missing parts, etc. Without these efforts by workers it would have been impossible for the revolution to survive in the last eight years."
Frómeta pointed to the tens of thousands of workers assemblies that took place throughout the island in 1994 and 1995 to discuss the measures the National Assembly had discussed to confront the economic crisis. More than three million workers in a population of 10 million debated these measures before they were adopted by the government. The opinions of workers were taken into account in making final decisions. A large majority, for example, supported a heavily progressive tax on those with large incomes but opposed taxing wages. As a result, provisions of the tax law to tax wages have never been implemented.