These public meetings will be an opportunity to win more support for the Cuban revolution and against the ongoing U.S. policy of aggression toward Cuba today, said Luis Miranda, director of Casa de las Américas in New York.

"With each passing year, as more and more facts on what happened at Playa Girón come out, the significance of Cuba's victory grows," said Miranda. Casa de las Américas, founded soon after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, is the longest-standing organization of Cuban Americans involved in activities to explain and defend the revolution in the United States.

In the 1950s Miranda and a number of other Cubans living in the United States supported the July 26 Movement, which successfully led workers and peasants to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in January 1959. After the triumph of the revolution they organized to counter Washington's lies and to win solidarity for the new revolutionary government. As the U.S.-trained invasion force hit the beaches at Cuba's Bay of Pigs on April 17, 1961, Miranda, other Casa activists, and other opponents of U.S. aggression against Cuba took to the streets to protest Washington's involvement and to demand an end to the assault.

Miranda said the Cuban rout of the invaders within 72 hours "was not just an honor and victory for all Latin Americans who defend the right to national sovereignty, but an honor and victory for socialism on the continent."

In Miami, Cuba solidarity activists are planning a conference entitled "The Bay of Pigs: 40 Years Later."

Among those participating in the panel will be Rafael Cáncel Miranda, a Puerto Rican independence fighter who was imprisoned for 25 years for his pro-independence activities; Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and coeditor of the recently released Pathfinder book Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas; Andrés Gómez, national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade; and Luis Tornés, editor of the Miami Post.

In a phone interview, Gómez pointed to the Cuban victory at Playa Girón in April 1961 as the event that "politically consolidated the Cuban Revolution, and made it possible for the Cuban people to unite in a common effort to build a new society and to fight US aggression.

"Perhaps as significant," Gómez said, "is the fact that 40 years later, the U.S. government has the same policy to subvert and destroy the Cuban Revolution by any means available. At the same time, you will find the same determination of the Cuban people--through new generations--to build a new society and to fight against U.S. aggression."
 
 
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home