Vol. 71/No. 12      March 26, 2007

Dutton also encouraged the capacity audience—more than one-third Asian Canadians and Asian immigrants especially of Chinese descent—to visit the library’s special display of books and photos on the Cuban Revolution, including Our History Is Still Being Written and other Pathfinder titles. The display will continue throughout this month.

In addition to the Vancouver Public Library, sponsors of the meeting included the Association of Chinese Canadians for Equality and Solidarity Society (ACCESS), Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba, Vancouver and District Labour Council, Canadian-Cuban Friendship Association, and Pathfinder Books.

The public library event was the first of seven meetings across Canada in the next two weeks—from here to Toronto, Peterborough, and Montreal—at which broad panels of speakers, including Mary-Alice Waters, the book’s editor, will be discussing the book.

During the Vancouver leg of the tour Waters, who is president of Pathfinder Press, also joined more than 100 others at a banquet celebrating the third anniversary of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society, was given a guided tour of Vancouver’s historic Chinatown, and participated in a second panel discussion of the book attended by some 80 people at the Asian Centre at the University of British Columbia.

Grace Schenkeveld, cochair of the Head Tax Families Society of Canada, chaired the library meeting. Schenkeveld remarked that one of the things that had initially attracted her to the book was that it explained how many Chinese, such as the three authors, “hold prominent positions in the Cuban army and government and play an important role in Cuban society.”

In contrast, she pointed out, Chinese Canadians continue to face racist discrimination to this day after having been denied basic rights including the right to vote, citizenship, and entry into certain jobs and professions until after World War II.

Trev Sue-A-Quan, author of Cane Reapers: Chinese Indentured Immigrants in Guyana, explained that the Chinese who were brought to Cuba, about the same time as the first Chinese came to Canada, faced even worse conditions.

Sue-A-Quan told the audience the story of how, in 1979, while in China doing research, he came across a document from 1873. It was a “contract of indenture” for his grandfather who labored in the cane fields of Guyana at $5 a month for five years, working a six-and-a-half day week.

“Chinese were kidnapped, deceived, recruited with false promises, and taken to countries like Cuba and Guyana,” he said. “They were treated like pigs and dogs and sold like horses and oxen. Ninety percent worked on the sugar plantations.”

Many in the audience voiced opinions like those of Howie Chan who told the Militant, “I came to the meeting today because I’m a descendant of two generations of head tax payers whose family origins are from Hoisun, China. That is where about 40 percent of Chinese immigrants to Cuba came from, and I’m very interested in how the role of Chinese in Cuba is different than in Canada.”

Sid Tan, chair of the Chinese Canadian National Council, addressed that question in his presentation. Tan quoted Moisés Sío Wong’s comments in the book explaining the reason the Chinese experience in Cuba is different is “here a socialist revolution took place.”

It “eliminated racism based on the color of a person’s skin,” Sío Wong said. “Above all, it eliminated the property relations that created not only the economic but social inequality between rich and poor.”

In contrast, Tan pointed out, Ottawa continues its racist policies by denying compensation to “all but 0.6 percent of families that paid the head tax” imposed on all Chinese who entered the country from 1885 to 1923.

Mary-Alice Waters, who interviewed Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong, and edited the book, brought the personal greetings of all three Cuban authors to the meeting.

“Armando Choy, especially, who would have been here today himself were it not for his leadership responsibilities as the head of the port of Havana, asked me to bring you his warmest regards,” she said. “He was looking forward to this exchange greatly.”

Our History Is Still Being Written, Waters said, begins with the story of how in the 1950s a generation of Cuban youth refused to bow down to the indignities and brutalities of the Batista dictatorship. They took up arms and after six and a half years of struggle they overthrew the dictatorship.

“They didn’t set out to make a socialist revolution when they triumphed,” she remarked. “They just wanted to narrow the gap between the obscenely rich and the desperately poor. They wanted greater social equality, land reform, an end to the scourge of unemployment, access to education, opportunities for women, and an end to discrimination and racism.

“When the initial steps along that course clashed with the economic interests of the U.S. ruling families who owned millions of acres of land and much of the industry in Cuba, they refused to back down. That’s how the first socialist revolution in this hemisphere came about.”

Waters described the broad interest Our History Is Still Being Written has generated among Chinese and other Asians in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere in the hemisphere who are searching for a road to eliminate the decades, if not centuries, of discrimination and abuse against Asians in the Americas. They want to understand why the socialist revolution made by Cuban working people made such a difference.

Afterwards, around 100 people attended a reception at Rosie’s on Robson, a popular nearby restaurant and bar. Nearly $700 was raised toward covering the costs of organizing the Vancouver meetings.

Those attending these meetings and related events here bought 56 copies of Our History Is Still Being Written and 18 other books, especially Pathfinder’s newest title, The First and Second Declarations of Havana. Four participants also bought subscriptions to the Militant.
 
 
Related articles:
N.Y. event discusses book by Chinese-Cuban generals
Federation of Cuban Women leaders speak in N.Y.
How Cuban toilers established workers state
They met each blow by Washington, Cuban bosses with a revolutionary counterblow  
 
 
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