Vol. 72/No. 1      January 7, 2008

About 80 people heard Sehwerert speak at the opening of the Cuba/Venezuela/Mexico/North America Labor Conference, which took place here December 7-9.

Trade unionists, academics, students, and political activists from several countries took part in the conference. It was sponsored by the U.S.-Cuba Labor Exchange and a number of union and political organizations.

The Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, René González, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, and Fernando González—were arrested by FBI cops in 1998 and convicted for “conspiracy to commit espionage” and other frame-up charges. Hernández was also convicted on false charges of “conspiracy to commit murder.”

The five Cuban revolutionaries had been tracking the activity of counterrevolutionary groups in Florida that have carried out murderous assaults in Cuba with Washington’s complicity. Convicted in a 2001 federal trial in Miami, they were given sentences ranging from 15 years to a double life term.

“In Cuba we have dignity,” Sehwerert said, “and I can assure you they [the U.S. government] will never break our dignity.”

In an interview with the Militant, Sehwerert said that as a youth she had lived in the United States for nine years. Her family emigrated from Cuba in 1952, when she was 14, and lived in Chicago and Indiana.

“I saw the racist treatment of Blacks and Latinos,” she said. “When I was in high school there was a racist gang. One of the Black students broke his pencil, and when I gave him a pencil there were threats against me from the gang. My mother pulled me out of school and sent me to a Catholic school.”

Sehwerert married Cuban-born Cándido René González. She got a job in a factory working alongside many Puerto Ricans. When she tried to help a pregnant co-worker get time off to visit her husband, who was hospitalized, the boss said, “She cries too much, give her a pacifier.” Sehwerert began discussions with fellow workers on the need for a union. Her husband worked in an Indiana steel mill and took part in a long strike in 1959.

Both of them became partisans of the revolutionary movement in Cuba to overthrow the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship. They joined the July 26 Movement in Chicago and later the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. “I remember the demonstration we had in the streets of Chicago during the U.S. invasion of Cuba [at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961], chanting ‘Hands Off Cuba!” In 1961 she returned to Cuba to work in support of the revolution.

“Keep getting out the truth about Cuba in the United States,” she said. “I know that many working people there can have a deep sense of solidarity when they know the truth.”  
 
Other struggles
Unionists came to the conference from both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, along with trade union representatives from Cuba and Venezuela. In addition to discussing how to mobilize support for the five Cubans framed up in the United States, conference participants discussed the sharpening class struggle in Venezuela, the exploitative trade practices imposed by U.S. imperialism on Latin American countries, and the fight to defend undocumented workers in the United States from raids and deportations.

“We need your solidarity,” said Osvaldo Vera, national coordinator of the Socialist Bolivarian Workers Force (FSBT) in Venezuela. “At this moment the most important solidarity is to learn about the reality of what is going on in our country, because it is different from what is presented by TV internationally. It’s a struggle by peasants to own their own land, by workers for health care and to lower the infant mortality rate, and by all Venezuelans to be able to study.”

Raymundo Navarro Fernández, international relations director of the Central Organization of Cuban Workers (CTC), addressed the need for solidarity with Venezuela and other nations facing imperialist threats and assaults. Referring to Cuba’s internationalist aid around the world, he said, “We don’t give away things we don’t need—we share what we have.”

Hugo Camacho, an organizer for the UNITE HERE union, told the Militant about a strike over wages that started in September against Prudential Overall Supply in Southern California. He appealed for solidarity with the striking workers.

One of the conference participants was Elvira Arellano, a Mexican-born worker who became a well-known spokesperson in the fight against deportations. “I learned about the Cuban Five in Chicago. It’s very unjust because they are trying to make them look like terrorists, when they are human beings defending the freedom of their people.” Arellano, a former airplane cleaner, had lived in the United States since 1997. FBI agents arrested her at her home in December 2002 as part of a raid against workers at Chicago’s O’Hare airport for allegedly using false Social Security numbers. She took sanctuary in a church with her son Saúl, a U.S. citizen, and refused to report for deportation. She was eventually deported on August 19.

Arellano now lives in Michoacán, Mexico, and continues to fight for the legalization of the undocumented. “If the Mexican government won’t act, families in Mexico are committed to fight for dignity and respect. We are collecting signatures and hope to have thousands for May 1, 2008.”

Arlene Rubinstein and Gerardo Sánchez contributed to this article.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuba and the African struggle against imperialism
Luis Miranda, five decades of organizing support for Cuban Revolution in U.S.
Cuban wins custody of daughter in Miami  
 
 
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