That might seem strange, she said, because Cuba is a relatively small country, in no conceivable way an economic or military "threat" to the Yankee colossus. But the reason is simple. "It’s because of Cuba’s socialist revolution and its example," Waters said.
"Washington will never--can never--forgive the Cuban people, who today are celebrating and continuing to defend their socialist course. That course began more than 40 years ago by taking billions of dollars worth of land and factories away from the wealthy ruling families of the United States and their Cuban counterparts, establishing a new ruling class--the working class--and a new social order. Productive property is no longer privately owned and economic and social priorities are decided on the basis of meeting the needs of the majority, of working people, including aid to those who are fighting for national liberation and socialism in other parts of the world. Social solidarity, not the dog-eat-dog reality of capitalism, increasingly became the hallmark of social relations in this new Cuba."
That is why, she emphasized, the U.S. rulers have carried out a relentless drive for the past 44 years to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. The current threats and provocations against Cuba are but one more piece of that history.
Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and editor of the Marxist magazine New International, had been invited to speak at a seminar that was part of a course on the Cuban Revolution, taught by history professor Matilde Zimmermann. She was introduced by María Elena García, a professor of Latin American anthropology. Some 20 students from the two classes attended the presentation and joined in the hour-long discussion that followed.
Students taking the course had read a number of books, ranging from Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, by Piero Gleijeses, to Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba, by Lois Smith and Alfred Padula. Among them were Pathfinder titles, including several edited by Waters such as Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War by Ernesto Che Guevara; Che Guevara Speaks; Making History: Interviews with Four Generals of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces; and October 1962: The ‘Missile’ Crisis as Seen from Cuba, by Tomás Diez Acosta, as well as the section titled "Renewal or Death: Cuba’s Rectification Process," contained in issue no. 6 of New International.
The topic Waters was asked to speak on was "Cuba in the world in the 1980s and ‘90s: From the ‘Three Giants’ to the Special Period."
"It’s important to always begin with the fact that Cuba is part of the world," Waters pointed out. "The fate of the Cuban Revolution has not and will not be decided solely or even primarily in Cuba. Victories and defeats of revolutions and struggles elsewhere weigh heavily in the balance."
She described the impact that the victories of the popular revolutions in Grenada and Nicaragua in 1979 had in the world, and particularly in Cuba. "We’re no longer alone" was the cry of celebration. Cuban president Fidel Castro described the revolutions in Nicaragua, Grenada, and Cuba as "three giants rising up to defend their independence, sovereignty, and justice, on the very threshold of imperialism."
Rectification process, Special Period
The revolutionary advances in Nicaragua and Grenada were a powerful boost to Cuban workers and farmers, Waters noted. "There was suddenly more oxygen in the air," she said. Those victories, together with the revolutionary struggles advancing in southern Africa, were decisive in allowing the leadership of the Communist Party of Cuba in the mid-1980s to begin the political battle that became known as the rectification process.
"It was in fact a revolutionary renewal," Waters stated, "a revitalization of the working-class methods of struggle, mass mobilization and voluntary labor, that are the heart and soul of any genuine popular revolution in the modern epoch." Rectification was a political reorientation away from the economic and social planning policies modeled on those used in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the time, policies that benefited a privileged social layer of administrative personnel. Such policies, which had become predominant in Cuba from the early 1970s on, had led to increasing political demoralization and demobilization among working people, manifested in everything from declining morale and productivity to increased cases of flagrant mismanagement and corruption.
Waters quoted Cuban president Fidel Castro’s observation that prior to launching the rectification process, Cuba had for a number of years been heading, not toward socialism or communism, but toward "a system worse than capitalism." The construction of socialism is not "a question of mechanisms," he said. "It is a political task, a revolutionary task.
She pointed to the voluntary labor "minibrigades" that became a social movement at the heart of the rectification process. Through such collective, voluntary efforts, for example, working people were able to begin to confront the shortage of child-care centers needed by working women. They built more than 110 such facilities in Havana within two years, in contrast to the two built in 1980-85. Thousands of apartments, medical facilities, schools, and other social priorities were built the same way.
The rectification process was gaining momentum when the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe crumbled at the beginning of the 1990s. In a matter of months, Cuba lost the lion’s share of its trade--trade at preferential terms--and economic aid, and rectification ground to a halt in face of crushing shortages of basic products. The Cuban government was forced to organize a retreat, allowing the circulation and use of the dollar, promoting tourism and foreign investment on the island as ways to obtain the hard currency needed to meet the country’s priorities. A tightened U.S. trade embargo increased the difficulties.
Why did the Cuban Revolution not crumble, as many at the time predicted, Waters asked? Among the factors she pointed to was the prior strengthening of the revolution, the revolutionary confidence gained by Cuba’s working people, through the rectification process. In confronting the widening social inequalities, the undermining of social solidarity, and other challenges of the Special Period, the Cuban leadership has drawn on this strength.
Today in Cuba, the several-year-old campaign called the Battle of Ideas is based on the same revolutionary methods, mobilizing thousands of youth to transform the education system, "opening the universities to thousands of working-class youth who would otherwise be on the margins of society without real prospects for study and work," she said.
Waters also talked about the latest U.S. government attacks and provocations against Cuba, and the imperialist propaganda campaign to brand Cuba as a repressive dictatorship because of the arrests, trials, and convictions of 75 opponents of the revolution a month ago. Also in early April, three men convicted as ringleaders of an armed hijacking of a ferry off the coast of Havana--one of a string of recent violent hijackings--were given the death penalty and summarily executed.
After the presentation, students asked questions ranging from topics such as the economic impact of the decline in tourism in Cuba over the past two years to the relation between the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and Washington’s increased aggressiveness toward Cuba, changing attitudes in Cuba toward social questions such as women’s rights and affirmative action for Blacks and mestizos, and the case of the five Cuban revolutionaries framed up and imprisoned in the United States.
Many of the questions were on the events of the last month that Waters had referred to.
Discussion on recent trials in Cuba
During the discussion, Waters pointed out that in the recent trials 75 individuals were convicted not for expressing ideas, but for acts in collaboration with a hostile state power, Washington, in its campaign to overthrow the Cuban government. The so-called Helms-Burton law in 1996, she noted, makes the removal of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro from the government a precondition for lifting the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba.
The trials and convictions, she said, can only be understood in the context of the unremitting efforts by Washington to overturn the revolution and reestablish capitalism in Cuba. The stepped-up provocations, openly organized through the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, include the funneling of millions of dollars, authorized under the Helms-Burton and similar laws, to finance the activities of these "dissidents."
Likewise, she explained, the accelerating number of armed hijackings of Cuban planes and boats in recent months has been fostered by Washington’s policy of limiting visas to Cubans applying to immigrate to the United States while at the same time granting residency to any Cuban who arrives on U.S. shores, regardless of any crimes they may have committed to get there, and refusing to prosecute hijackers.
In response to a comment questioning the sentences, including the use of the death penalty against three of the ferry hijackers, Waters said that, under the circumstances, she supported the Cuban Council of State’s decision to go forward with the execution of the convicted hijackers.
Hijacking a plane or a boat endangers the lives of every single man, woman, and child on board, she noted. Taking decisive action to stop the acceleration of such actions was both necessary and widely supported in Cuba, Waters added. She called attention to Cuban president Fidel Castro’s recent TV address in which he noted that Cuba had effectively had a moratorium on executions in death penalty cases since the year 2000. (See Castro’s remarks on the death penalty to the Havana May Day rally in the article on page 11).
In response to another question, Waters said that the imperialist rulers are always probing ways to attack revolutionary Cuba, and Washington’s current propaganda campaign and threats of imposing new restrictions on travel and money sent to family members in Cuba is intended to prepare the ground for further measures to punish the Cuban people. Launching a military assault against the island is a totally different matter, however, because of the strength of the revolution, its military preparedness, and its mass popular character, Waters stated. "Every Cuban is trained and ready to take up arms," she noted, and the U.S. rulers are aware that, unlike their invasion of Iraq, any assault on Cuba would lead to enormous U.S. casualties--casualties they cannot assume will be accepted by the American people. "That has stayed their hand for more than four decades."
Following the May 1 class at Sarah Lawrence, students stayed around to continue the discussion and browse through Pathfinder literature. One remarked that she appreciated the quality of the Pathfinder books and pamphlets she had studied for the class. "Pathfinder is great--I like their glossaries and the indexes and photos," said one student, "they helped me get more out of the readings."
Among those attending the seminar were three young people from New York who are organizing to participate in the upcoming Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange, a visit to the island during the last week of July sponsored by Cuban youth organizations. They passed out literature on the Exchange and made a brief presentation to those attending the seminar. Several interested students met with them after the class to find out more about the trip, and decided to organize a meeting a week later to involve more students and student groups at Sarah Lawrence.--M.K.
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Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange July 24-31 Young people from across the United States will be traveling to Cuba in July to participate in the Third Cuba-U.S. Youth Exchange. They will meet with youth in that country, exchange ideas with them, and see firsthand the truth about the socialist revolution. They will take part in the 50th anniversary celebration of the assault on Moncada, which launched the revolutionary war that brought down a U.S.-backed dictatorship. The project is hosted by the Union of Young Communists, Federation of University Students, and other youth organizations in Cuba.To find out more, contact: youthexchange2003@yahoo.com |