The launching of the book at Venezuela's Second International Book Fair here in Caracas had a unique character, however. It was marked by the participation of young Chinese-Venezuelans and recent immigrants from China, as well as by the presence on the panel of a number of Venezuelan and Cuban agronomists who have been deeply involved in agricultural programs in Venezuela established here with Cuban collaboration.

Remarks by panelists at the November 18 meeting, attended by an overflow crowd of about 75 people, sparked a lively exchange of views. Counterposed opinions were presented on diverse and important political questions, including whether Venezuelans of Chinese origin face racist discrimination today and, if so, how to combat it, as well as the place of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in efforts to meet the need for food and fiber in various parts of the world.

The panel discussion was one of numerous such meetings organized as part of the November 9-19 book fair.

The panelists were Honey Liu Lin, director of the Wei Jing Chinese language school in the Chacaíto neighborhood of Caracas, who also teaches Mandarin there; Vilma Chirinos, coordinator of the Special Urban Agriculture Program in Venezuela; Elisa Panadés, representative in Venezuela of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations; Egidio Páez, coordinator of South-to-South, an agricultural cooperation agreement between Cuba, Venezuela, and the FAO; and Mary-Alice Waters, the editor of Our History Is Still Being Written and president of Pathfinder Press, the book's publisher.

The composition of the panel reflected an important aspect of Cuba’s internationalist cooperation with Venezuela: the development of small-scale urban agriculture. One of the book’s three authors, Gen. Moisés Sío Wong, has been directly involved in that program and describes those efforts in some detail in the book.

In addition to the panelists, a special contribution to the program was made by Harry Villegas, a brigadier general in Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR). Villegas is widely known as Pombo, the nom de guerre given him by Ernesto Che Guevara, the Argentine-born leader of the Cuban Revolution at whose side he fought for a decade, during Cuba’s revolutionary war itself as well as on internationalist missions in the Congo and Bolivia.  
 
Cuba's socialist revolution
"One of the reasons it’s such an honor to have compañero Pombo with us today is that he is the godfather of this book," said Waters in opening her remarks. "The happy suggestion that we interview the three FAR generals of Chinese descent came from Pombo. The fact that we were able to weave together the stories of all three of them is one of the book's great strengths."

Waters described the reception the book has enjoyed in the United States and other countries, including among those of Asian ancestry.

Our History Is Still Being Written is an introduction to the Cuban Revolution, she said, a socialist revolution whose example and lessons are relevant to all those fighting imperialist domination and capitalist exploitation today—from Venezuela to the United States and elsewhere around the world.

Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong—the authors of the book— "each in his own way was typical of the generation of young people who simply refused to accept the indignities and brutalities of life under the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship," Waters said. "In the mid-1950s they, like thousands of others, threw themselves into the revolutionary struggle that gave us the first free territory of the Americas and soon the victory of the first socialist revolution in our hemisphere."

The lives of the three generals span five decades of revolutionary action and internationalism, from Cuba to Angola, Nicaragua, and Venezuela today, Waters noted. One of the richest parts of the book, she added, is the last section, titled, "The Special Period and Beyond," where each of the three generals describes the responsibilities he shoulders today.

Sío Wong, for example, heads Cuba's National Institute of State Reserves. In addition, one of the chapters in the book describes the efforts Sío Wong helped lead to develop small-scale urban agriculture in Cuba during the Special Period, Waters noted. The Special Period is the term Cubans use to describe the political course they adopted to confront a deep economic crisis in the 1990s, following the collapse of the regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

"At the time, enemies of the Cuban Revolution, and even some friends, were predicting that it too would implode, like the regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe," Waters said. "But they simply didn't recognize that in Cuba, unlike the Soviet Union, working people have always been, and continue to be, the driving force of the revolution, with a party and government that have never betrayed their interests."

Waters pointed to the explanation in the book of how the Chinese community in Cuba is different today from those in the rest of the Americas. Responding to a question on how a son of Chinese immigrants could rise to positions of such responsibility in Cuba's government, Sío Wong says in the book: "What’s the difference in the experience of Chinese in Cuba and other countries in the diaspora? The difference is that here a socialist revolution took place. The revolution eliminated discrimination based on the color of a person's skin. Above all, it eliminated the property relations that create not only economic but also social inequality between rich and poor."

Cuba's revolutionary example is needed by all those on the front lines of the class struggle today, Waters emphasized. "Because Cuba's revolutionary history is not only inspiring," she said. "It is a practical lesson for our class of how to fight, how to win against the economic and military power of the capitalists and imperialists, and most important how to defend what has been won."  
 
Urban agriculture program
Elisa Panadés, who is Cuban, represents the FAO in Venezuela, where she has lived for six years.

"I had the privilege to work with General Sío Wong for two years here," she said, pointing to the clarity of his account in Our History Is Still Being Written of the origins of the urban agriculture program in Venezuela. She described how FAO director Jacques Diouf visited Venezuela in February 2003 and met with the country's president, Hugo Chávez. Out of that meeting agreement was reached to expand FAO's work in urban areas aimed at achieving food self-sufficiency.

Because of General Sío Wong’s experience in this field in Cuba, Panadés said, the Venezuelan government invited him to collaborate with Venezuelans developing the program.

"About 87 percent of Venezuela's population lives in cities," Panadés noted. "This is a higher rate than Latin America's 75 percent and the worldwide average of 50 percent. So there was merit to the idea of developing urban agriculture where people could have access to fresh produce directly from the land to the table."

Vilma Chirinos was among the Venezuelans who collaborated with Sío Wong from the beginning of the urban agricultural program here, aimed at reducing the country's dependency on food imports and improving the quality of produce. Venezuela today imports some 60 percent of its food. Chirinos heads the country's program of intensive urban vegetable gardens, called organopónicos.

"We started in 2003 with three production units" in Caracas, Chirinos said, and have now expanded to 44 across the country. "We are writing history here in Venezuela, too," she added.

Egidio Páez, who directs the South-to-South agricultural cooperation program here, described his work in developing urban agriculture in his native Cuba prior to coming to Venezuela last year. Sío Wong helped propel this program forward during the Special Period, he noted, "a very critical moment in Cuba, when we had lost 80 percent of our foreign trade."

As the book describes in the section "Facing the Food Crisis," the creation of organoponic farms in Cuba was a response to severe food shortages there in the 1990s. "We tried to produce 25 kilograms [55 pounds] of food per square meter per year, a target set by Sío Wong based on production of similar type in China," Páez said. The creation of these gardens has substantially improved the quantity and quality of fresh vegetables available for most Cubans. Today almost as many Cubans are working in small-scale agriculture as on traditional large-scale farms.

Páez also described working with Gen. Armando Choy, another of the authors of the book, in the reforestation of Havana province and the work to restore the environmental health of Havana Bay.  
 
Chinese in Venezuela
Honey Liu, who in addition to running the Chinese language school is also studying law, described the character of the Chinese immigration to Venezuela, which began in the 19th century but continues today. "There are now approximately 150,000 Chinese in Venezuela," she said, most of whom have arrived in the country in the last 30 years, and their numbers are growing.

Sofía Xu and Kelly Jiang, who also teach Mandarin at the Wei Jing school and are recent immigrants from China, accompanied Liu to the book event. Kawa Cheang and Joaquin Fung, two other Venezuelans of Chinese descent, also took part.

The involvement of the Chinese-Venezuelans in the event grew out of a trip here in October by Militant reporters who met individuals in Caracas's Chinese community and introduced them to the book.

Chinese immigrants here are from all different social classes, Liu said. "Many are peasants, or workers," she noted, while others are professionals or business owners.

Liu explained that most Chinese arrive here with enormous debts to pay off, including exorbitant fees to travel contractors and for immigration taxes levied in Venezuela.

"The Chinese here are viewed in a racist way," she said, "both by some of the native-born Venezuelans and the authorities. I feel powerless when public officials are abusive or overstep their authority. This is always the case against the Chinese."

This reality, she said, includes abuse by the police and racist jokes and resentment directed against small businessmen such as her father, who owns a restaurant.

Liu was born in Venezuela and went to China for two years to study the language. She described her own family as typical of those who arrive with no resources, work hard, and want nothing but a better life for their children. "My father wanted his kids to work in the restaurant," she said, "so we could live better. But I decided to become a lawyer to defend the Chinese from the abuse we face. I feel as much Venezuelan as Chinese."

Compared to what the three Chinese-Cuban generals describe in Our History Is Still Being Written, the Chinese community in Venezuela is "more isolated," Liu said. Many speak little Spanish and their lives are almost entirely within the Chinese community, where their culture and traditions are still strong.

"I urge you to read this book," she concluded. "Reading it gave me internal peace because it helped me understand many things, especially how to fight discrimination."  
 
'Our country is humanity'
Just as Liu was finishing, a Venezuelan in the front row of the audience burst out aggressively protesting what she had said. Why was she singling out the Chinese? he demanded to know. There are immigrants from many countries in Venezuela, he said, and Chinese aren't special targets of racism.

Róger Calero, who chaired the event on behalf of Pathfinder, brought the meeting to order and invited Harry Villegas to take the mike, as planned.

Addressing himself to Liu, Villegas talked about the racism Chinese had faced in Cuba prior to the revolution, as described in Our History Is Still Being Written. "This is a great book. It describes accurately the development of three men with humble origins," he said. "Their parents were very hard workers like your dad. They had to work hard to be able to provide them with a minimum of education.” The revolution, he said, gave them the possibility to struggle on behalf of their country, on behalf of Cuba, “because it didn't matter any longer that they were of Chinese descent."

The society that Choy, Chui, and Sío Wong fought for became a republic based on a broader concept of humanity, Villegas said. "For us the country is not ourselves alone, not the Cubans alone, it can't be the Venezuelans alone—our country is humanity."

Villegas described how he had gotten to know each of the three Chinese-Cuban generals. He met Sío Wong in 1958 when they were both members of Column 8 of the Rebel Army led by Che Guevara. That column, formed in the Sierra Maestra mountains of Eastern Cuba, marched across central Cuba to join forces with those fighting in Las Villas province and led the victorious battle to take Cuba's second largest city, Santa Clara.

"We met Choy at the end of that offensive in Las Villas province, where he joined Che's troops," Villegas said.

He got to know Chui in the 1970s during Cuba's internationalist mission in Angola to help that country defend itself from the invasion by South Africa's apartheid regime.

Those who crossed the ocean from China, such as the forebears of the Chinese-Cuban generals, were looking for a better world, Villegas said. "It is possible to build that world," he emphasized. "But we can't go on listening to siren songs."

The history of imperialism has shown that none of the classes in power simply relinquish their interests, he said. "The capitalists, the bourgeoisie, don't agree to share even part of their wealth."

Our History Is Still Being Written, Villegas noted, describes a revolution "that the authors of the book helped make."  
 
Farming, science, working classes
In the discussion, a young participant from Belgium asked the speakers involved in the agricultural program in Venezuela what was being done to prevent the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Campaigning against GMOs has been a focus of many leftists both in the imperialist countries and semicolonial world, as well as at international gatherings such as the World Social Forum.

The FAO has no position for or against GMOs, Panadés explained. While GMOs are not being introduced in Venezuela today, she said, there are countries and circumstances where the greater yields that the use of GMOs makes possible means the difference between food and hunger for many.

After a woman from Peru asked a similar question, Egidio Páez expanded on that reply.

Waters pointed to an article by Steve Clark on "Farming, Science, and the Working Classes" in issue 7 of the Marxist magazine Nueva Internacional, as well as an exchange between Clark and Harvard professor Richard Levins in that same issue that takes up the political debate over GMOs among other questions. She noted that the magazine had been presented during a similar event at the book fair three nights earlier (see December 4 Militant) and urged those interested in delving deeper into the subject to get a copy. Five people did so after the program.

"Our History Is Still Being Written is a very appropriate title for this book," said Wilmer Parra, a history student at the Central University of Caracas, at the end of the discussion. Parra added that he will study the book he had just bought and urged others to do the same. He contrasted it to The End of History by Francis Fukuyama and other similar books that he said proliferated in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet bloc.

Our History Is Still Being Written was among the three best sellers from the Pathfinder booth, with the entire stock of 60 copies sold out before the book fair ended.
 
 
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