Vol. 72/No. 1      January 7, 2008

Born in Havana in 1928, Miranda came to the United States at the age of 20. He was one of the thousands of Cubans who emigrated to this country to escape the harsh economic realities imposed by U.S. imperialist domination of the island.

In 1949 Miranda met Walfrido Moreno, who was active in the New York chapter of Cuba’s Orthodox Party (Ortodoxos), which campaigned on a platform of opposition to Yankee domination and rampant corruption. Moreno’s barbershop became an organizing center for opponents of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who came to power in a 1952 coup.

In 1955 Fidel Castro visited New York and other U.S. cities to found chapters of the newly organized July 26 Movement. Luis Miranda attended that meeting and became a founding member. He and his comrades raised funds for the Cuban revolutionary war led by the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement. They organized efforts to collect and transport material aid to the combatants in the Sierra Maestra mountains, sometimes having to elude the U.S. authorities.

Miranda and other July 26 militants founded Casa Cuba in 1957 to win support for the revolutionary struggle in Cuba. They often worked jointly with pro-independence Puerto Ricans of the Nationalist Party. After the 1959 revolutionary victory, many Cubans living the United States returned to their homeland. Casa Cuba organized support for the revolution among the Cubans who remained in this country.  
 
Bay of Pigs, ‘missile crisis’
The members of Casa Cuba were in their majority factory and restaurant workers, Miranda told Militant reporters Martín Koppel and Olga Rodríguez in an unpublished 2002 interview. They were disciplined and unswervingly loyal to their revolution and its leadership. They held weekly meetings to discuss and educate about the gains of the revolution and defend it against attack. They stood up fearlessly to harassment and assaults by local and federal cops and by right-wing Cuban thugs.

On April 17, 1961, a U.S.-organized mercenary force landed on Cuban shores at the Bay of Pigs. In less than 72 hours, Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, Revolutionary National Police, and popular militias of workers and peasants defeated and captured the invaders—U.S. imperialism’s first military defeat in Latin America.

As the invasion unfolded, Casa Cuba held a three-day, 24-hour picket outside the United Nations together with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and other groups, Miranda told the Militant. On April 20 they organized a rally of 5,000 at Union Square demanding “U.S. hands off Cuba!” The Fair Play for Cuba Committee held simultaneous protests in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, and other cities.

At the United Nations, Cuban foreign minister Raúl Roa “took the floor to demand protection for the Cubans demonstrating in support of Cuba who were under attack by the gusanos [Cuban American rightists] and the police. A number of us were injured or jailed,” Miranda said.

In October 1962 the Kennedy administration brought the world to the brink of nuclear war during the so-called Cuban missile crisis. As Washington prepared for an invasion of the island, millions of Cubans mobilized to defend their socialist revolution.

“We were in a constant, non-stop, open meeting during those days,” discussing how to respond to the U.S. threats, Miranda told the Militant. “We received lots of calls from people who, in a state of panic, asked us why Cuba wanted to drop atomic bombs on the United States! At first we thought this was some joke, but after the Cuban Mission at the UN told us they had received hundreds of calls, it became clear that panic and lies were being whipped up by the U.S. government and press.”

In face of the mobilizations and readiness of Cuban workers and farmers to defend the revolution, Washington had to back away from its invasion plans. “I believe it was the clear and sovereign attitude of the Cuban people that saved the world from disaster,” Miranda said.  
 
‘We won the streets’
At that time, “the streets were dominated by the right-wing exiles, and if you decided to demonstrate on the streets, you knew you would have to fight them.” Casa did organize public demonstrations and meetings against the U.S. war threats, joining with other forces. They held their own and defended themselves, despite advice from liberal “friends” to keep a lower profile.

“It was inspiring to see the women on those picket lines, in the battles with the gusanos and the police. They came with their sticks. They put themselves at the front of the marches. If the cops grabbed someone, they were the first to scream and fight with the cops to prevent them from taking one of us away,” Miranda recalled.

“That is when we won the streets,” he said. Casa Cuba won the right to publicly demonstrate and organize in New York in defense of revolutionary Cuba, and continued to defend the space they had won.

Casa campaigned against frame-ups of its members. During Castro’s September 1960 visit to New York to speak at the UN General Assembly, Cuban counterrevolutionaries assaulted pro-revolution patrons of El Prado Restaurant in Manhattan, whose owners were sending food to the Cuban delegation at the Hotel Theresa. In the ensuing fight, a Venezuelan girl was accidentally killed. The cops framed up a 28-year-old Cuban worker, Francisco Molina, a supporter of the revolution. Molina was convicted and jailed, though later he returned to Cuba, freed through a U.S.-Cuban prisoner exchange.

When Fidel Castro stayed at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, Luis Miranda was part of the security team for the Cuban delegation. He was among those who accompanied Malcolm X to the hotel’s 10th floor to meet with Castro, he later recounted.

Casa and its members had to defend themselves constantly from harassment by the FBI, immigration, and local cops because of their actions in support of revolutionary Cuba. In 1963, Miranda said, the U.S. government demanded that the entire Casa leadership register as “agents of a foreign power.” “We had to fight the case for three months” and finally defeated the charges, he said.

In the 1970s and early 1980s Casa was the target of rightist bomb attacks, including fire bombings of their headquarters. In those years, supporters of the Cuban Revolution in New York and other cities were assaulted and murdered as paramilitary groups like the White Rose and Alpha 66 acted with impunity. Cops and local authorities turned a blind eye, or arrested pro-Cuba demonstrators instead. City agencies repeatedly harassed Casa with citations for alleged fire, liquor, and other violations.  
 
Broad platform for solidarity
Casa Cuba also served as a center for organizing solidarity with anti-imperialist battles worldwide, especially in Latin America, and social struggles in the United States. In 1962 it changed its name to Casa de las Américas to reflect the breadth of its solidarity.

Casa de las Américas opened its doors to supporters of the Puerto Rican independence struggle, the movement against the U.S. war on Vietnam, the battle against South African apartheid, campaigns to free political prisoners in Chile and other Latin American countries, and the Nicaraguan and Grenadian revolutions. They sponsored meetings on Black rights struggles at home. They hosted delegations of the United Farm Workers union, on one occasion setting up 82 cots in their hall for a touring UFW delegation.

In 1987 Luis Miranda became president of Casa de las Américas. He continued Casa’s proud tradition of solidarity and nonexclusion, opening its doors to supporters of all political tendencies that defended Cuba’s right to self-determination. He was a regular at the annual UN decolonization hearings, joining the Puerto Rican pro-independence delegation.

Luis delighted in making Casa available as an organizing center to young people who wanted to travel to Cuba to see it for themselves. He would come alive with enthusiasm when introduced to youth interested in finding out more about the revolution.

He was keenly interested in the struggles of working people in the United States. Miranda gave his support to the 2003-2006 battle by coal miners at the Co-op mine in Utah to organize into a union, and to the defense effort when the bosses sued the miners and those who told their side of the story, including the Militant.

Over the last decade of his life, Miranda devoted much of his time to the fight to free the five Cuban revolutionaries being held in U.S. prisons on frame-up charges. He identified with Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, René González, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino as lifelong fighters who consciously chose to work and fight inside the United States on behalf of their cause: defending socialist Cuba and embracing struggles for dignity and freedom worldwide.
 
 
Related articles:
Cuba and the African struggle against imperialism
Cuban wins custody of daughter in Miami
Int’l labor conference boosts effort for release of Cuban Five  
 
 
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