Participants came from throughout the Midwest. Among them were three meat packers who came up from Austin, Minnesota, a dairy farmer from Wisconsin, and young socialists from Detroit, Chicago, and the Twin Cities. They included several workers and youth who hail from Sudan, Zimbabwe, Congo, Cameroon, or Liberia.

Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press, who headed a five-person team at the book fair, explained, “When we returned I was asked, ‘Why did you go to Equatorial Guinea?’ We went there for the same reason we go to New Orleans, to Brooks, Alberta. For the same reason we walk the picket lines at Northwest Airlines.” In contrast with the imperialist-promoted image of Africans as downtrodden people, she said, “we saw not helpless victims but toiling, fighting humanity facing imperialism—with all the contradictions—and fighting to transform their future.”

Waters described the rapid changes unfolding under the impact of imperialist investment in the extraction of oil in Equatorial Guinea, a country that because of centuries of imperialist-imposed underdevelopment still lacks commercial agriculture and, until recently, even small-scale industry. These changes include the emergence of a Guinean working class, the breakdown of the legacy of isolation enforced by Spanish colonialism, and a new generation hungry for an understanding of politics in their country and the world.

During the discussion period, Rodemar Hernández, who identified himself as an Afro-Cuban, asked about how to address the lack of knowledge many Africans have of their own genuine leaders. Arrin Hawkins, one of the panelists, replied that many students and teachers at the book fair were searching for more books by Guinean authors about their own history and culture. They were also attracted to Pathfinder’s books of speeches by revolutionary leaders such as Thomas Sankara and Nelson Mandela, about whom many youth knew little.

Yeamah Brewer, a Liberian-born college student, asked how a nation like Liberia, having just emerged from years of civil war, could advance. She said the newly elected president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was discussing various proposals for foreign investment. Waters explained that foreign investment will always be used by the imperialist powers, not for genuine development, but to reinforce their oppression of semicolonial countries.

Martín Koppel, a third panelist, added that bourgeois commentators blame the peoples of Africa for the wars, disease, and other social catastrophes they face. They argue that the U.S. government is their only hope. But it is imperialism that perpetuates these problems, such as the current civil conflict in Ivory Coast.

Waters described the important role of women in the book fair. She pointed to the contradictions between the second-class status of women—who in much of Africa carry out most of the work, including agricultural labor—to the growing confidence of young women such as those who sought out pamphlets by Sankara including Women’s Liberation and the African Freedom Struggle.

Speaking to other meeting participants after the program, Abraham Gnreec, a Sudanese-born meat packer from the Des Moines, Iowa, area explained that Waters’s description of the continuing practice of the bride price in Equatorial Guinea is a common condition of women in Sudan as well.

He added, “I’ve attended two forums recently. This one, on Equatorial Guineans who are taking the future into their hands. And one in Des Moines on the fight in Brooks, Alberta, by meat packers, who are doing the same thing.” He said he knew some of the Sudanese-born unionists who were involved in the recent union-organizing victory in Canada.

On Sunday morning, 55 people, including some who had missed the previous night’s meeting, returned for several more hours of discussion over brunch at a local Mexican restaurant.

Participants in the events contributed $960 to help defray the costs of sending the team to the book fair and of the public meetings.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home