Vol. 71/No. 30      August 20, 2007

About 200 people attended the event. It celebrated the 54th anniversary of the opening battle of what became a revolutionary struggle by workers and peasants in Cuba for political power.

On July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led a group of revolutionaries in an attack on the Moncada army barracks in Santiago de Cuba. That action launched the war, led by the July 26 Movement and the Rebel Army, that overthrew of the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959 and established a workers and farmers government.

This year’s celebration honored the life of Vilma Espín, who died June 18 in Havana. Espín was a leader of the underground work of the July 26 Movement in eastern Cuba. She fought in the Rebel Army, and was later president of the Federation of Cuban Women from its founding in 1960. She was also a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

The event also marked the 40th anniversary of the CIA-organized assassination of Cuban-Argentine revolutionary leader Ernesto Che Guevara.

Benítez outlined the history of the attack on the Moncada barracks, as well as the gains of the Cuban Revolution over nearly half a century. “They have not been able to make us surrender through hunger and disease,” he said. Cuba has successfully stood up to 45 years of U.S.-led aggression, he noted. What makes this possible is that “we made a socialist revolution.”

Leonard Weinglass gave an update on the legal defense of the Cuban Five, for whom he is one of the main attorneys. These five Cubans—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, Fernando González, and Antonio Guerrero—were convicted on trumped-up charges of “conspiracy to commit espionage” for Cuba, “conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent,” and, in the case of Hernández, “conspiracy to commit murder.” They were sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to a double life sentence.

Ben Ramos of the Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban Five read messages sent by Fernando González and René González. He urged those in the audience to join in a month of coordinated actions in defense of the Cuban Five from September 12 to October 8.

“In Cuba I was treated with dignity,” said William Maher, a volunteer firefighter in New York whose journey to Cuba for free medical treatment was depicted in the film Sicko! He contrasted this with the callousness he encountered in the profit-based U.S. medical system. Also speaking was John Feal, who helped arrange Maher’s visit.

Other speakers included Sandra Levinson, executive director of the Center for Cuban Studies in New York; Elombe Brath of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition; Víctor Toro, a political activist who is fighting U.S. government efforts to deport him to Chile; long-time Puerto Rican independence fighter and former political prisoner Antonio Camacho Negrón; and Larry Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark, New Jersey.

Eddie Beck contributed to this article.
 
 
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