The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 72/No. 31      August 4, 2008

 
N.Y. meeting celebrates 55 years of
Cuba’s revolutionary struggle
 
BY TOM BAUMANN  
NEW YORK—Nearly 150 people attended a July 26 event here to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the July 26, 1953, attack on the Moncada garrison in Santiago de Cuba led by Fidel Castro. That action marked the opening of the revolutionary struggle by workers and peasants in Cuba that led to the overthrow of the U.S.-backed dictatorship less than six years later, opening the door to the first socialist revolution in the Americas.

The program here was chaired by Ben Ramos of the Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban Five and Marianna Lamberti of Casa de las Américas. She is the granddaughter of Luis Miranda, longtime defender of the Cuban Revolution and president of Casa until his death last year. Ulises Antón opened the program with a statement on behalf of Casa.

One theme of the meeting was the fight to free Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, René González, Fernando González, and Antonio Guerrero, five Cuban revolutionaries in U.S. prisons. The Cuban Five, as they are known, were arrested in 1998 on frame-up conspiracy charges. They had been keeping tabs on rightist groups in Florida planning violent attacks on the people of Cuba.

Sally O’Brien, coproducer of the new documentary Against Silence in Our Own Voices: Families of the Five Speak Out, introduced her film, which interviews the wives and mothers of the five prisoners.

Puerto Rican activist Miguel Meléndez read greetings from former U.S. political prisoner Dylcia Pagán, who led a delegation of Puerto Rican independence fighters to Cuba earlier this year. In Cuba they met with families of the Cuban Five and pledged their support in the fight to free them.

“Our revolution is proof that a better world is possible,” said keynote speaker Ileana Núñez, Cuba’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations. Núñez said that despite the hardships the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba imposes, the infant mortality rate on the island is the lowest it has ever been and literacy stands at an all-time high of 99.6 percent. More than 41,000 Cuban volunteers are currently working in 96 countries as teachers, doctors, and other aid workers.

“We are taking steps to defend the socialist revolution,” Núñez emphasized during the discussion period, explaining that the media falsely counterposes the policies of President Raúl Castro to those of Fidel Castro, who retired from office earlier this year.

Other speakers at the event included Larry Hamm, chairperson of the People’s Organization for Progress; Lucius Walker of Pastors for Peace; Monolo de los Santos of Iglesia San Romero de las Américas; and Althea Stevens, who participated in the 2007 Venceremos Brigade trip to Cuba.

Ike Nahem, of the July 26 Coalition, which sponsored the event, closed the program by inviting all participants to join the national march on Washington, D.C., September 13 to free the Cuban Five and to participate in a November national working conference on their defense.
 
 
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