BY MIKE ITALIE
ATLANTA - Cuban youth leaders Luis Ernesto Morejón and
Itamys García Villar spoke to some 325 students, farmers,
and workers during their March 25-27 visit to Georgia. They
spoke to students at the historically Black colleges of
Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, and Spelman, which are part of
Atlanta University (AU); to a city-wide meeting at Emory
University; and to farmers in southern Georgia who have been
fighting years of U.S. government racist discrimination (see
article below).
This was the youths' first stop on a seven-city tour organized by the Los Angeles-based Committee on Cuban Youth and Education. García, 27, is a doctor of veterinary medicine. Morejón, 23, is a professor and general secretary of the Foreign Language School of the Enrique José Varona Teacher Training Institute. Both are members of the Union of Young Communists.
Bernard Gómez of the Atlanta Network on Cuba introduced the Cuban youth leaders to the 75 people gathered at Emory University. Welcoming remarks were presented by Joel Alvarado for Rep. Cynthia McKinney and by Markel Hutchins of the National Youth Connection. Greetings were sent by Rep. John Lewis.
Lee Dobbins, secretary of the Georgia Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA) and an activist in the fight of farmers against racist discrimination by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, also welcomed Morejón and García. The U.S. government "cannot continue the discrimination, because we are the people of the land," he stated. "We produce the food that feeds the people of the U.S." He declared the Cuban visitors to be honorary members of the BFAA.
Luis Morejón began his remarks by explaining, "Our independence was stolen from us 100 years ago," when U.S. forces invaded Cuba as the Cuban people were about to break free from Spanish colonialism in 1898. Morejón added that "under the neocolonial domination of the U.S., there was hunger, illiteracy, disease, torture, and assassination. They gave us Santa Claus, in Cuba filled with sun, and Superman and a racist Tarzan. Under U.S. occupation, at that time you could ask, `What here is not Yankee?'"
Morejón emphasized, "By no means do we feel bitterness to Americans, whose veins are filled with African, Latin, and Asian blood, producers of the riches that the wealthy benefit from today."
García pointed to the enormous social gains won by Cuban workers and farmers through the revolution. Contrasting Cuban life today compared to before 1959, García noted that "from 5,000 doctors we now have 60,000. In place of the 40 percent illiteracy, now education is free and there is a minimum of a 9th grade education for all. Forty years ago there were three universities and today there are 47. We have destroyed the institutional basis of racism, and women have the equal right to work and study like never before.
"We accomplished this all in the face of the cruel U.S. blockade and the financing of counterrevolutionary bands," García noted with pride. "Then in the period after the fall of the Soviet Union, we lost 85 percent of our foreign trade and there was a tremendous drop in the Gross National Product. We call this the `Special Period.' It is a matter of survival in which we will continue the socialist revolution, but we have to incorporate some capitalist methods."
At a meeting of 120 people at Morehouse, one student asked, "Will the people remain socialist? Will the capitalist methods benefit the entire people, as socialism does?" García responded that "We use our resources. Tourism brings us fresh foreign currency and allows us to invest in other sectors of society. Just because there are capitalist companies doesn't mean we've given up on our socialist principles. Even during the worst of the special period we increased the percentage of our national budget going to health care. Using capitalist methods is not for all eternity; they are conjunctural measures so we can get out of the special period."
At the Emory University event, a professor who had visited Cuba stated that Cubans had grown tired of the revolution and the shortages. García answered that people are tired of the shortages, and that recently the eggs ration had dropped by one, to seven per person every two weeks. She explained that most Cubans understand this is the result of the U.S. economic embargo. "Cuba is unable to import the necessary feed for chickens to produce sufficient eggs. We also export lobster so we can import powdered milk. The government guarantees to all children up to age seven one liter of milk per day. We can't eat lobster, but I can give milk to my little girl."
Dobbins then joined the discussion, highlighting the damaging consequences of the U.S. embargo for all workers and farmers when he said that he and others being driven off the land would "love to develop relations to provide Cuba with eggs, milk and beef, and to expand our markets as farmers."
In the discussion at the event at Emory University, one participant asked the Cuban youth to respond to the U.S.-led bombing of Yugoslavia. Morejón looked straight ahead and said, "I've never felt so bad as to be in the country that it the author of such events. No country has the right to militarily intervene in another as the United States is doing in Yugoslavia today."
At the Atlanta University campuses there was special interest in the conditions of Afro-Cubans and the rooting out of racism in Cuba. Mack Jones, professor of political science, welcomed Morejón and García to a gathering of 50 students at Clark. Noting that before the revolution the Cuban people "suffered from racism similar to the United States," Jones urged students to learn about Cuba as "a new model for race and politics and living in America," and asked the Cuban youth to discuss Afro-Cuban life today.
García stated that "I can answer that because I am a Black woman. Everyone has the same opportunity regardless of race, sex or religious belief." The students appreciated her recollection of how "my grandfather tells me stories of the racism before 1959. I can't imagine living in a society like that."
Morejón then added that "not all people support the revolution." Some don't accept the goals and values of the society the vast majority of Cuban people are trying to build. He explained that among these layers of society "there remains racism, as well as among some people from generations before the revolution" who held onto the racist beliefs of capitalist society.
During one discussion at Morehouse, applause followed greetings from a leader of the African student organization to the young Cuban revolutionaries. Recalling the hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers who fought the apartheid army in the 1970s and 1980s, and helped drive the racist invaders out of Angola, she said "The international community at Atlanta University welcomes you, and the peoples of sub- Saharan Africa appreciate the aid and solidarity of Cuba in the fight against white supremacy."
At a Morehouse reception with 20 student activists from several Atlanta colleges, Morejón and García invited the young leaders to the August 15-19, 1999, International Youth and Student Seminar about Neoliberalism in Havana. Morejón stated, "We are convinced that on both sides we've had important experiences that we can benefit from sharing." Many of the students took information about the conference, and Joel Canton, a Haitian student at Morehouse, added, "When I heard you were coming I was ecstatic. My great-grandfather was from Cuba and I hope to go there one day to study."
Julius Coles, Director of Morehouse's Andrew Young Center for International Affairs, welcomed Morejón and García.
The sponsors of the events at AU included the Morehouse Department of Political Science, the Andrew Young Center for International Affairs, Clark Political Science professor Mack Jones, and Spelman professor Harry Lefever, who is active in Pastors for Peace. Morejón and García were invited to Emory University by the Atlanta Network on Cuba and a number of campus groups, among them the International Student and Scholars Programs, Latin America and Caribbean Studies, Latino Student Organization, Office of Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Life, and the Office of Student Programming.
Morejón invited youth to come to Cuba to study "the system we have in place, with which we are better prepared to confront the capitalist world system, which is more violent today than it was in 1959."
In his closing remarks at Emory University, he repeated the Cuban youth leaders' invitation to come to the International Youth and Student Seminar in August.
Mike Italie is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.