Among the marchers was a group of 180 young people from the United States, visiting this country to learn firsthand about the Cuban Revolution. They were taking part in the Second Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, a 10-day visit sponsored by the Federation of University Students (FEU), Union of Young Communists (UJC), and other youth groups on the island.

Contingents of workers, farmers, high school and university students, members of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces, and others took part in the march, many carrying colorful banners and Cuban flags. The red-and-black flag of the July 26 Movement, which led working people in Cuba to revolutionary victory in 1959, hung from the apartment buildings, factories, and offices throughout the capital.

The rally, which coincided with demonstrations throughout the island, celebrated the 48th anniversary of the July 26, 1953, assault on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago and the garrison in nearby Bayamo by a group of revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro. The bold attack marked the beginning of the revolutionary struggle that culminated with the overthrow of a U.S.-backed dictatorship in Cuba and the opening of the socialist revolution in the Americas.

The youth from the United States, mostly college students, with several high school youth and a few workers, marched along with other international contingents, including from Puerto Rico, Quebec, and Europe.  
 
Learning about revolutionary Cuba
The July 26 rally was one of many events the U.S. delegation attended. They met with delegates to a municipal assembly of People's Power, the country's legislature; went to the Latin American School of Medicine; and visited Havana's psychiatric hospital, among other sites in Havana.

They also visited the Bay of Pigs, where 40 years ago Cuba's working people inflicted a crushing defeat on a U.S.-organized invasion by 1,500 Cuban mercenaries. Afterward they traveled to Santa Clara, visiting the memorial and museum dedicated to Ernesto Che Guevara, a central leader of the Cuban Revolution. Guevara led a Rebel Army column to take Santa Clara in December 1958, the battle that sealed the fate of the Batista regime.

One highlight of the Youth Exchange was a meeting with students at the School of Social Work, established last year in Cojímar, east of Havana. Javier Labrada, a member of the National Bureau of the UJC, explained that the school is part of a campaign launched by the revolutionary leadership last year to organize brigades of youth to go to the worst-off working-class neighborhoods to learn firsthand about their conditions and work together with neighborhood residents to solve some of the pressing social problems they face--above all, the problem of teenagers who are neither going to school nor working.

This revolutionary political initiative, Labrada said, comes at a time when Cuba has been gradually recovering from the severe economic crisis of the 1990s, sparked by the collapse of favorable trade with and aid from the Soviet Union. Having weathered this crisis and emerging stronger, Cuba has been able to take some political steps forward to advance a socialist course.  
 
Youth brigades to poor neighborhoods
The school had already graduated its first class of 513 and was about to graduate 565 in the second class, explained Raidery González, 17, who was going to graduate the following week. She told the Militant that the students are mostly youth like herself who were unable to enter college for a variety of reasons, particularly the curtailed admissions dictated by the shortage of material resources resulting from the economic crisis. The students undergo an intensive six-month course, and then are admitted to a six-year university program of practicing social work in the community five days a week and going to the university on Saturdays.

González explained that a layer of youth today between the ages of 16 and 20 have become alienated and have not completed their education beyond the mandatory ninth grade. The goal of the social work campaigners is to work with these youth, as well as their families, to convince them to enroll in technical, skilled trades, or pre-university schools.

Alexander Valentín, one of the panelists, said, "We've been successful in part because of our age. These youth see we've gone through the same hard times and problems as they have. We visit the families one by one, block by block, and get to know them. As Fidel insisted, we are not interested in issuing statistics on unemployment--we're interested in meeting the human beings themselves and taking action."

In some cases the students have obtained solutions to material problems, such as food supplements for families with low-weight babies, or economic benefits for women raising children by themselves.

"This has been a real learning experience for us," González said.

Meeting with members of the University Brigades of Social Workers after the July 26 rally, Cuban president Fidel Castro said that to build a new society based on solidarity, "we need that new man and woman Che talked about." He stated, "You are helping to create that new man and woman, to build the society we are dreaming of."

The exchange with the youth from the United States covered a range of topics. They asked several questions about problems they were familiar with in the United States, from prostitution--which has reemerged in Cuba over the past decade, largely around the tourist hotels--to child abuse, which several Cuban participants said was not a social phenomenon as it is in the capitalist world.  
 
Socialism vs. prisons
Jack Willey from New York remarked on the contrast between revolutionary Cuba, where working-class power reinforces social solidarity, and capitalist rule in the United States. Under the Clinton administration the U.S. government eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children and chipped away at other aspects of workers' social wage. The bipartisan government assault has also escalated attacks on democratic rights, such as the recent frame-up case against five Cuban citizens convicted on spy charges because of their efforts to infiltrate and expose U.S.-backed anti-Cuba terrorists operating out of Florida. A major political campaign in defense of the five is under way in Cuba.

In reply to a question by Willey, Labrada referred to a current discussion about how to address the problem of crime without relying primarily on police and prisons. Many of those in jail today are there for committing theft, he said, a problem that grew with the economic and social crisis of the 1990s. "We cannot and should not solve these problems through the police, but by finding social solutions," Labrada said.

Agreeing with a young man from Philadelphia who had described how the degrading system of welfare and social workers in the United States treats people like numbers, not human beings, the UJC leader commented, "In Cuba we have confidence in human beings. That is why we are convinced we can work with most youth who today are in jail" and release them.

In an interview in Villa Clara, Miguel Díaz Canel, first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in the central province of Las Villas, explained that with the initial success of the school in Cojímar, four more schools of social work will be opened around the country, including in Santa Clara.

Commenting on the debate on police and prisons, Díaz Canel said, "We think that socialism must be a socialism without prisons." He described how the social work volunteers are working with alienated youth who are prone to get in trouble with the law; with the families of these youth, which often face problems themselves; and with youth already in prison, including the possibility of early release or moving them to farms as an alternative to prison walls.

For youth in prison, Díaz Canel said, "we try to offer them opportunities to educate themselves, such as the University for All, through which they can even obtain a university degree while they are serving their sentences."

The University for All is a nationally televised program of courses made available to people of all ages. Broadcast daily, classes are offered in English, French, history, geography, art appreciation, and literary criticism, among other subjects.

On the final two days of the Youth Exchange, the Cuban hosts organized panel discussions taking up a variety of subjects. Panelists included Otto Rivero, first secretary of the UJC; Hassán Pérez, president of FEU; and Javier Dueñas, a leader of the social work campaign and new editor of the University of Havana cultural magazine Alma Mater. Also speaking were Randy Alonso, moderator of daily televised roundtable discussions on a variety of subjects on world politics; Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National Assembly; and, in a special highlight, Cuban president Castro.  
 
'Battle of ideas'
Kenia Serrano, a member of the UJC's National Bureau, explained that over the past year and a half the revolutionary leadership has been spearheading a "battle of ideas" for a socialist course as an alternative to the dog-eat-dog values that go with capitalism.

This effort, Serrano said, was launched in December 1999 as part of the mass mobilizations of the Cuban people to demand that Washington return the Cuban child Elián González to his country. That campaign led to the daily roundtables and weekly Anti-Imperialist Tribunes, which today continue to be used to educate about Washington's implacable hostility to revolutionary Cuba and other aspects of imperialism.

This battle for ideas, intertwined with a fight for a "rounded, general culture" to broaden the knowledge and cultural level of the Cuban people, includes the social work campaign, the University for All, an effort to generalize computer literacy and place computers in every school in the island, and a campaign to train elementary school teachers and art instructors.

The U.S. delegates commented on and asked about a range of questions spurred by their visit to Cuba. These included the fight for women's equality; how to combat the negative social consequences of tourism, such as prostitution and capitalist influences on culture; Cuba's internationalist solidarity; and how Washington uses its immigration policy against Cuba.

Fidel Castro took part in the windup session of the youth exchange, answering questions from U.S. delegates on topics ranging from combating illegal drug use to the fight to raise the level of culture as part of the working-class fight for socialism. (Coverage of his remarks will appear in a coming issue.)

Castro noted that 10 of the U.S. delegates at this youth exchange had participated in the first exchange in 1996. He urged everyone present, on their return to the United States, to speak to others about their experiences in Cuba in order to build for and participate in a third exchange in July 2003.

Seth Dellinger, from New York, said the eight members of his local group upon returning were enthusiastically welcomed at the airport by a number of supporters. They are now planning several events at colleges, churches, and elsewhere to report on the truth about the Cuban Revolution.

Asked about what he learned in Cuba, Dellinger replied, "The Second Declaration of Havana says, 'What does the Cuban Revolution teach? That revolution is possible.' Well, I experienced that reality firsthand."
 
 
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