Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

Jere Takahashi, Director of Multicultural Student Development, and Lupe Gallegos-Díaz, Director of Chicano/Latino Development, welcomed people to the meeting and thanked the sponsors for organizing the event. Sponsors included Multicultural Student Development, Chicano/Latino Studies, Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Center for Chinese Studies, Ethnic Studies, Pathfinder Books, and Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

Harvey Dong, professor of Asian American Studies and owner of Eastwind Books, chaired the meeting and introduced the panelists.

Loni Ding, award-winning filmmaker and lecturer in Asian American Studies, presented an excerpt of her film Ancestors in the Americas: Coolies, Settlers and Sailors. The documentary tells the story of Chinese immigration to Cuba beginning in 1847, when large numbers of Chinese were taken by the Spanish colonialists to work as contract labor on sugar plantations and other jobs in Cuba, supplementing the declining supply of African slaves.

The film describes the resistance of Chinese Cubans to the inhuman conditions they faced in Cuba, including their participation in the Cuban wars for independence from Spain.

Alex Saragoza, associate professor in Ethnic Studies and Chicano/Latino Studies, highlighted the chapter of Our History Is Still Being Written on the participation of Cuban volunteers in struggles for national liberation in Africa, particularly Angola, where Cuban troops joined the struggle between 1975 and 1988 to fight repeated invasions of the country by the South African apartheid army aimed at thwarting Angola's recently won independence from Portuguese colonial rule.

“The South African forces and their allies were defeated in the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, forcing them to retreat along with their Angolan and CIA supported units,” Saragoza said. “It was one of Cuba’s finest hours in their long history of support of Africa’s struggle for national liberation.”

Miriam Solis, a UC Berkeley student in the departments of Geography and Ethnic Studies, said she appreciated Gen. Moisés Sío Wong’s role in helping to initiate Cuba’s system of urban food gardens, known as organopónicos. These were launched during the food crisis of the early 1990s, following the abrupt end of aid and trade in preferential terms with the former Soviet Union and Eastern European countries. Sío Wong is one of the three Chinese Cuban generals interviewed in the book.

Wesley Ueunten, a lecturer in Asian American Studies, spoke about the human solidarity he witnessed in Cuba when he visited the country last winter with Tsukimi Kai, a Japanese American organization. Ueunten, a Hawaiian of Okinawan descent, pointed to the importance of the book in dispelling the image of Asians as passive victims of exploitation, and showing that making a revolution is possible.

The event was held the day after the May Day mobilizations for immigrant rights across the country. In her remarks, Mary-Alice Waters, president of Pathfinder Press and editor of the book, took note of the fact that many of those in attendance had participated in these actions the day before.

Of all the books Pathfinder has published on the Cuban Revolution, Waters said, the book of interviews with the three Chinese Cuban generals has attracted the broadest interest. This partly stems from the desire to learn about the history of the Chinese in Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America, something that is not well known. “But it also has to do with the new winds that are blowing and the new struggles that are developing,” she noted.

“This is related to the growing pride, confidence, and resistance of Asians and other immigrants in the United States in the kind of struggles we are seeing more and more around us every day," she said, "that we saw another demonstration of yesterday.”

After the program, a delicious spread of refreshments, provided by the sponsors, was served, and many stayed to continue discussion informally. People studied displays on the book and browsed the literature tables of Eastwind Books of Berkeley and Pathfinder Books.

The program was taped by a reporter for APEX Express: Asian Pacific Islander Expressions, a program on the Pacifica radio station KPFA 94.1 FM in Berkeley. Excerpts of it are to be aired on May 10 at 7:00 p.m. Pacific time, and they can be heard online at www.kpfa.org.

The Berkeley Daily Planet ran a review of the book in its April 17-19 issue, headlined, “Chinese Cuban Revolutionaries Still Lead Cuba.”
 
 
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