The title was released in new English and Spanish editions by New York-based Pathfinder Press, and in a special edition for distribution in Cuba by Casa Editora Abril, the publishing house of the Union of Young Communists (UJC).

Abril produced the book--the first-ever Cuban edition of speeches by Malcolm X--in response to the widespread interest among young Cubans in the U.S.-born revolutionary leader.

The event, attended by more than 100 people, was part of the Havana International Book Fair, which took place here January 30–February 9. The new title was one of the most popular at Pathfinder’s booth throughout the 11-day fair, an annual cultural event that this year drew a record 440,000 people.

The speakers at the book presentation in addition to Ubieta were Herminio Camacho, director of Editora Abril, and Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press. Iroel Sánchez, president of the Cuban Book Institute and the chair of the fair organizing committee, also joined the platform.

Camacho, who moderated the program, noted the presence in the audience of several leaders of the Union of Young Communists, including Kenia Serrano, a member of its Political Bureau, responsible for the educational work of the youth organization. Randy Alonso, author of the preface to the Cuban edition of Malcolm X Talks to Young People and well known here as host of the nationally broadcast TV "Roundtable" program, also attended.

Many young people were in the audience, including a number of students from the University of Havana and its teacher training school.

Camacho highlighted the editorial collaboration between Editora Abril and Pathfinder, noting it was already "part of a tradition" going back to the publication in 2000 of Che Guevara Talks to Young People, which he reported is one of Abril’s best-selling titles. He said Abril also plans to produce an edition of From the Escambray to the Congo: In the Whirlwind of the Cuban Revolution, by Víctor Dreke, which Pathfinder published last year in both English and Spanish.  
 
Relevance for youth today
Camacho said that in studying Malcolm X he had been surprised at how relevant the revolutionary leader’s ideas were for Cuban youth. "Reading his words, it sometimes seemed I was hearing our own Fidel or Che. I recommend it to youth of all ages."

In addition to the preface by Randy Alonso, the Abril edition of the book also contains an account by Ralph D. Matthews, a reporter for the weekly New York Citizen-Call of the September 1960 meeting in Harlem’s Hotel Theresa between Malcolm X and Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro. Malcolm was part of the committee that welcomed the Cuban leadership delegation to Harlem.

"Without exaggeration," Waters said, "We can say that this is an important moment in history. For the first time ever, a collection of speeches by this great American revolutionary working-class leader is being published here in Cuba. And it is the first time in either the United States or Cuba that we have a Spanish-language edition of this valuable collection of Malcolm’s speeches to young people."

In 1967 the Cuban Book Institute published a book titled NOW: El movimiento negro en los Estados Unidos (NOW: The Black movement in the United States), which includes excerpts of speeches by Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, James Baldwin, and others. In 1974, Cuban publishing house Ciencias Sociales produced an edition of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, translated by Pedro Alvarez Tabío, that also included some 85 pages of excerpts from a number of speeches by Malcolm. Both books are long out of print, but continue to circulate widely in Cuba.

"Malcolm X Talks to Young People has been available in English in various forms and editions since 1965, when the Young Socialist Alliance and Pathfinder first published it within a few short weeks of Malcolm’s brutal assassination," Waters explained.

Many of these speeches were first published in the Militant. It was one of the very few publications that during Malcolm’s lifetime--beginning while he was still the most prominent public spokesperson for the Nation of Islam in the early 1960s-- recognized his revolutionary trajectory and reported on his political activities.  
 
Pathfinder circulates in U.S. prisons
Waters pointed out that it was in prison that Malcolm X began to awaken to politics. Today, more than 2 million people are locked up in jails across the United States, she noted, many of them, like Malcolm, open to revolutionary ideas. That is why Pathfinder books are sought after in U.S. prisons. It’s important to keep these facts in mind, she pointed out, when thinking about the five Cuban revolutionaries who are currently in U.S. prisons on frame-up espionage charges, where they continue to act like the revolutionaries they are. "Our five brothers are working, studying, and talking politics, bringing the world to their fellow inmates, and providing a revolutionary example, alongside not just one, but an untold number of potential Malcolms," she noted.

After the program, some in the audience commented in discussions that they had not thought about the political work being carried out by the five Cuban patriots in the U.S. prisons. Several said they especially appreciated Waters’s point about seeing them not as victims but as revolutionaries who continue their political activities no matter where they find themselves.

Waters outlined several points that underscored Malcolm’s revolutionary course of action, including his internationalism, his refusal to support either of the twin imperialist parties of racism, exploitation, and war, and his intransigent commitment to the struggle for Black liberation "by any means necessary." (The full text of Waters’s remarks is printed in this issue, starting on page 8.)  
 
Rights are not begged for
Ubieta emphasized that Malcolm X refused to limit the struggle for Black liberation to the rules dictated by the oppressors. He cited Malcolm’s statement that "whenever you demand something that is rightfully yours, you have the legal right to claim it. And anyone who tries to deny you what is yours is breaking the law and is a criminal." That stance, Ubieta said, reminded him of the revolutionary course of Antonio Maceo, a central leader of Cuba’s independence struggle, who was Black. "I recall Maceo’s words, ‘Rights are not to be begged for. They are won with the blade of a machete.’ "

Ubieta stressed the evolution of Malcolm’s political perspective, expressing the view that Malcolm really only became a revolutionary the last year of his life, after his break with the Nation of Islam. Malcolm moved from a "narrow Black nationalism" that "only tried to take control of the communities in which Blacks lived" to "a global understanding of the world," Ubieta argued. "That was the great lesson of Malcolm X."

The revolutionary leader came to recognize that "racism is inherent in capitalism and a product of it," Ubieta noted.

"Anyone who defends capitalism must necessarily defend racism," Ubieta added.

"It is not enough to issue a declaration of full equality for the tradition of racism--created by colonialism and imperialism, inherent in capitalism--to disappear. Concrete, specific work must be done to achieve full racial equality in today’s world, a world in which imperialist action seeks legal and moral refuge behind concepts like civilization, culture, and race," Ubieta noted.

Even among those in Cuba who see Malcolm as a revolutionary, there are many who question or even reject the revolutionary dynamic of his uncompromising commitment to organizing Blacks to fight for their liberation. "This book is going to raise uncertainties that will lead serious young people to search for the roots of that very rich movement in the United States in the 1960s," Ubieta noted. "It will make us think about what we have today here in our country."

The speeches contained in the new title, he said, are complemented by a 1965 tribute to Malcolm by Jack Barnes, then a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance, and a 1966 article by Barnes about meeting and interviewing Malcolm. Ubieta called attention to these two tributes to Malcolm X, recommending them to readers for "the value of the analysis by Jack Barnes."

Ubieta ended his remarks with a thank you to Editora Abril "for offering us this new weapon of struggle."

At the event, nearly 100 copies were sold of Malcolm X Talks to Young People in Spanish and more than 40 copies in English. Many, including youth studying English who were eager to read the revolutionary leader’s words in the original, purchased copies in both languages.

The book launch, which had been prominently advertised in the daily book fair tabloid, was reported by television as part of the fair coverage. The 5,000 copies of the Cuban edition that were printed in time for the Havana launching will be sold across Cuba as the book fair visits some 30 cities in the coming weeks. "We’re sure they will all be sold in short order," Camacho noted.
 
 
Related articles:
‘Malcolm’s revolutionary voice is needed in today’s world’  
 
 
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