The meeting was the end of a weeklong visit by the Cuban revolutionary on the invitation of the Cuba Research Forum at Nottingham University. Martínez, who works at the Cuban Ministry of Culture’s Juan Marinello Center, was a keynote speaker at a September 7-8 conference in Nottingham on “Emigrations and exiles; immigrations and influences: the impact of the human flux on the formation of Cuba,” sponsored by the Research Center.

The Cuban delegation to the conference also included prominent writers and academics Ambrosio Fornet, Joaquín Santana, Jorge Luis Acanda, and Nara Araujo. Conference organizer Tony Kapcia also made it possible for Martínez to address public meetings in Edinburgh and London.

Ninety people attended the Edinburgh meeting. It was chaired by Liz Elkind on behalf of the Scottish Cuba Solidarity Campaign, the event’s chief sponsor. Other sponsors included Edinburgh Labour Party councillors Phil Attridge, Dougie Kerr, and Gordon Munro; Gerry Corbett, convenor of the trade union Unison; and Ron Brown of the Edinburgh Trades Council. Among those in attendance were six workers from a local meat plant.

In introducing the London meeting, Wendy Knight of the North London Cuba Solidarity Campaign, which hosted the event, welcomed the presence of Cuban ambassador René Mujica and first secretary Silvia Blanca. Others present at the meeting included Zuleiva Vivas, cultural attaché at the Venezuelan embassy, and Gloria Carnevali, director of the Bolívar Hall.

Dozens of Latin American-born workers and youth attended the London event. Sponsors included Alberto Durango of the Latin American Workers Association, which over the last couple of years has worked with the Transport and General Workers’ Union in an effort to unionize London cleaners (janitors). Also attending was Gloria Gómez of the Latin Front. The meeting was promoted by Latino radio stations, one of which carried out a telephone interview with Martínez.  
 
Struggle for national liberation
In his presentations in Edinburgh and London, Martínez explained the popular character of the revolutionary struggles in Cuba since the 19th century. “The bourgeoisie was too wedded to imperialist interests, especially British interests, to be a reliable ally in the struggle for independence against Spain,” he said. He explained that the forces involved in the wars against Spain included hundreds of thousands of African slaves and former slaves as well as Chinese indentured laborers.

“Real independence was denied Cuba by the intervention of the United States,” he said. “It took the socialist revolution to open up the possibility and reality of national liberation.”

“This is a revolution of millions,” he said. “You’ll notice that I’ve spoken for half an hour and not mentioned Fidel Castro, as important as he is,” Martínez said at the end of his talk.

Speaking of the Cuban president’s illness and transfer of responsibilities, he said, “The enemies of the revolution are waiting for something to happen, but the country is peacefully going about its business.”

Themes raised by questioners at the meetings included democracy in Cuba, the place of Blacks in that country, the right of Cubans to travel, the use of the U.S. dollar as Cuban currency, the energy crisis and social inequalities on the island, the connections between Cuba and political developments in Latin America today, Cuba’s relations with China, and Cuba’s prospects in light of President Fidel Castro’s illness.  
 
Addressing the current challenges
In response to a question in Edinburgh about the current efforts by Cuba’s revolutionary leadership to address the consequences of corruption, Martínez said that last November Castro “pointed out that Cuba’s enemies had failed to destroy the revolution, but that the revolution could destroy itself.”

“This is not a new idea. It means recollecting historical experience, what happened in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,” he said at the London meeting.

Understanding Fidel Castro’s point about the role of the leadership, Martínez said, “has important political consequences. The socialist transition is not reducible to an economic engine pulling everything else along behind. Nor is it about establishing new institutions that need ‘perfecting.’

“What’s decisive to a socialist transition—you’ll notice I say socialist transition and not socialism—is a moral and political development, a series of cultural revolutions through which people change the institutions that get set up and change themselves in the process.”

Martínez said Cuba’s internationalist missions are key to this process. Today thousands of Cuban doctors and other medical personnel are working as volunteers in 68 countries.

“The missions bring much needed medical care to millions who have been denied it,” he said. “But the experience also deeply affects those on the missions themselves. They experience what life is like under capitalism, and they experience what they themselves are capable of. This is what happened when Cuban volunteers went to Angola,” he said, referring to the hundreds of thousands of Cuban combatants who helped defeat the South African apartheid regime’s invasions of that country.

“It’s the same with voluntary work in Cuba,” Martínez added. “Today thousands of young people are engaged in what we call social work—going to areas that have real problems in an attempt to address them. But in the process of solving problems they’re also educating themselves.”

“What the Cubans did in Angola broke the myth of the invincibility of apartheid,” Jorge Atunes told the Militant after the meeting. Atunes was a member of the youth movement of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), now the governing party of that African country, at the time of the 1975 South African invasion. He studied four years in Cuba in the late 1970s and is now a cleaner in London involved in the unionization efforts.

“I liked what he had to say about the revolution not simply being an economic motor,” Sabir Mohammed, a clothing and textile worker, told the Militant. “A revolution has to result in changing human beings.”
 
 
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