The gathering was initiated by the Miami Coalition to End the U.S. Embargo of Cuba and the Greater Miami Free Speech Coalition. Co-sponsors included some 20 organizations opposed to Washington's economic war on Cuba.

The conference was the first public meeting of this kind here in decades that took place without any protests outside the hotel where it was held or attempts to disrupt it from the audience.

The conference coincided with the 40th anniversary of Cuba's victory over an invasion by mercenaries armed and trained by Washington. The counterrevolutionaries were defeated near the Bay of Pigs in less than 72 hours by Cuba's militias, armed forces, and police, in a stunning blow to the U.S. government and the Cuban landlords and capitalists who had hoped to return to power in that country.

Sharing the platform were two youth leaders from Cuba currently speaking at several U.S. universities, Yanelis Martínez and Javier Dueñas; Andrés Gómez, national coordinator of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, a group of Cuban-Americans who support the revolution in Cuba; and Luis Tornés, who fought in the U.S.-organized Brigade 2506 that invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

John Due, a lawyer who is on the executive board of the Miami-Dade NAACP; Rafael Cancel Miranda, a Puerto Rican independence fighter who served more than a quarter century in U.S. jails for his political activities; and Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and editor of its latest book, Playa Girón/Bay of Pigs: Washing-ton's First Military Defeat in the Americas, were also on the panel.

Sponsors from Miami included Florida International University professors Ronald Cox and Jean Rahier; the Antonio Maceo Brigade; Association of Workers in the Community (ATC); Alianza Martiana, a recently formed loose organization of Cuban-Americans who oppose all or aspects of current U.S. policy toward Cuba; Veye Yo, a Haitian rights organization; Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice; Jewish Cultural Center of Miami Beach; Lumer-Robeson Club of the Communist Party USA; Rescate Cultural Afro-Cubano; and the Socialist Workers Party.  
 
Some rethinking views on Cuba
Present in the audience were many longtime supporters of the Cuban Revolution. Also participating, however, were a substantial number of Cuban-Americans rethinking their earlier attitude toward revolutionary Cuba and U.S. policy against it. These included two dozen Cubans associated with the Alianza Martiana. This group was founded here in January at a meeting of 200. Its manifesto states that the organization "opposes Washington's policy towards Cuba" and its ranks are open "to all Cubans residing outside the island, regardless of their political or ideological positions, be they backing the revolution or having differences with the Cuban government."

Opening the program were Martínez and Dueñas from Cuba. Martínez, 23, is a law student in Havana and a leader of the Federation of University Students (FEU) of Cuba. Dueñas, 28, teaches journalism at the University of Havana and is a leader of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba.

Speaking about the generation of Cubans she and Dueñas are part of, Martínez said, "We were born blockaded," in reference to the four-decade-long U.S. trade ban against Cuba. "Neither I nor Javier had the privilege of being a combatant at Playa Girón," she pointed out, using the name with which the Bay of Pigs battle is known in Cuba.

In response to several questions about Blacks in Cuba, Dueñas explained that in Cuba "rights don't have to do with the color of your skin." The 1959 revolution eliminated legal segregation and uprooted institutionalized racism.

But there is a legacy of racism from the days before the revolution, he continued. However, unlike in the United States, the Cuban government promotes programs aimed at eliminating these inequalities, such as an ongoing campaign to organize brigades of youth to go to the poorest neighborhoods to learn about the social problems there and collaborate with residents to confront and begin to resolve them, Dueñas explained.  
 
News of Bay of Pigs in U.S. prison
Another panel of speakers concentrated on the "Impact of Playa Girón in the Americas." Puerto Rican independence fighter Rafael Cancel Miranda said he was in a U.S. prison when news arrived that the Cuban people had defeated the mercenaries at Playa Girón. "It gave us confidence that we could fight and win, too," he explained.

"It had seemed like the United States was invincible, but Playa Girón and Vietnam showed that was not true."

The Bay of Pigs was not only a triumph for the Cuban people, he added, "but for all humanity, including the people in the United States."

Pathfinder Press president Mary-Alice Waters noted that Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine-born leader of the Cuban Revolution, had said the imperialists at the Bay of Pigs "failed to measure the relationship of moral forces."

"The U.S. ruling class was not blundering or vacillating," Waters insisted. "The invasion was not something that Kennedy inherited from Eisenhower and just decided to go along with." It was a calculated move to defend the interests of the U.S. rulers by trying to militarily overthrow the young Cuban Revolution and erase the example it set for millions of toilers around the world.

Understanding the social forces that clashed on the beach of the Bay of Pigs is not an historical exercise, Waters noted, but is about the present and the future. Similar social forces are in motion today, "in the streets of Cincinnati, in the protests in China, in the resistance in Yugoslavia, in Palestine, on the beaches of Vieques, and the mountains of Ecuador."

Noting that Washington's response to the deepening of working-class struggles in the United States is more prisons and more cops, Waters said, "The policy of the U.S. rulers toward Cuba is an extension of their policy toward the working class at home. It's not a Miami exception."

Just as in Cuba, she concluded, "the revolutionary capacities of working people in this country will be thoroughly discounted by the U.S. ruling class, and they will be just as thoroughly wrong."  
 
Changes in last decade
John Due stated that "regardless of the political differences we may have, we have one agenda: Shut down the blockade of Cuba!" He proposed efforts to get organizations like the NAACP to oppose U.S. sanctions on Cuba. Due said he thought it would be effective to campaign against the embargo by arguing that "it's not good business to keep the blockade." He noted, "Ten years ago I would not have accepted an invitation to speak here. It was dangerous to speak out against the opponents of Cuba, especially if you were Cuban."

Due and others at the conference made the point that the political atmosphere in Miami has changed substantially from those days. There is a greater willingness, including in the labor movement, to be associated with opposition to U.S. policy on Cuba. Rightist Cuban-American forces have continued to fracture and weaken.

The final panel of the conference was titled "Impact of Playa Girón on Three Generations." Joining Andrés Gómez and Javier Dueñas at it was Luis Tornés, a former member of Brigade 2506, the U.S.-organized invading force at the Bay of Pigs.

Gómez noted that the conference had brought together former leaders of the counterrevolution and supporters of the revolution. "Many of the 'exiles' have been transformed into the 'immigrants,' he said. Many former supporters of Washington's policy "are confronting the reality in this country and are at least against the U.S. aggression."

For several decades, he pointed out, Miami was the scene of violent terrorism by opponents of the Cuban Revolution. What brought that chapter to a close was "our perseverance in exercising our rights and the high cost they were paying in public opinion."

Some 15 years ago, Luis Tornés broke with the ultrarightists and began opposing U.S. policy toward Cuba, said Gómez. Today, he edits the Miami Post, a small newspaper.

Tornés told the audience, "I don't come here to celebrate the defeat at the Bay of Pigs. We were not mercenaries. We were defending honor, dignity, and patriotism."

Tornés said at a certain point he felt he had to choose between Cuba and Jorge Mas Canosa, the now-deceased head of the Cuban American National Foundation, which virulently opposes Cuba's socialist revolution. "I am not a socialist or a communist," Tornés declared. "I am a Fidelista."

Meanwhile, El Nuevo Herald, the main Spanish-language daily here published by the Miami Herald, featured Cuban youth Martínez and Dueñas in its article on the April 14 conference. The paper, which rarely gives any space to supporters of the Cuban Revolution, quoted Martínez as saying, "The lesson of Girón that the imperialists have not learned is that we are a people united on the side of the revolution."

Cindy Jaquith is a garment worker in Miami. Argiris Malapanis is a meat packer in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
 
 
Related articles:
'Cuba is an example,' say youth leaders on U.S. tour
'First we'll sink their ships, then we'll down their planes'
'Cuban youth have been main actors in struggle'
How the April 17-19, 1961, battle unfolded
Unions in Cuba fight social inequalities
 
 
 
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