Vol. 76/No. 46 December 17, 2012
Below are excerpts from Women in Cuba: The Making of a Revolution Within the Revolution by Vilma Espín, Asela de los Santos and Yolanda Ferrer. The book is one of four offered on special with a Militant subscription.
In the first excerpt, from a 1985 interview with New York Times correspondent Tad Szulc, Espín, a leader of the Cuban Revolution, describes how she became a Marxist in the course of the revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.
The second excerpt is from a 1966 speech by Fidel Castro, the revolution’s central leader, at the fifth national meeting of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). The third is from the main report Espín, then FMC president, gave to the Second Congress of the mass women’s organization. Copyright © 2012 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
VILMA ESPÍN: In terms of social questions, by 1957 Frank’s1 views had begun to change. He spoke of the need for major social changes, that without this there would be no revolution. Although he still didn’t have a clear idea of what these changes would be, he raised ideas that, I would say, converged with Marxism.
Something similar happened to the rest of us. I hadn’t read the Communist Manifesto, but I expressed ideas about social justice that one can find in the Manifesto. Frank spoke in a similar vein. He had a very strong class consciousness. He came from a modest background and was outraged at the differences between classes. It angered him that there was a class of rich people and a class of poor people.
SZULC: You’re saying, it seems, that many young people arrived independently at conclusions that later would be Marxist …
ESPÍN Exactly, and in my case as well. I knew very little of the fundamentals of Marxism. But over time I began to realize that I agreed with Marxist ideas—especially as we found ourselves, through struggle, more in contact with the peasants of the Second Front.2
I’d say that for the big majority of us—those who came from the university as I did, and even those who were illiterate, as were many of the peasants—we gradually moved in that direction out of pure necessity.
SZULC: Due to a lack of alternatives?
ESPÍN No, because it was the utter truth that things had to be changed. And even more so when I was in the Second Front, the last six months of the war, when we experienced even more harshly how people there lived. They had no medical care, no education. They lived in terrible conditions. The region was rich in coffee, but the peasants were tremendously poor. In addition, their land was taken. Their huts were burned. They were killed. And all this went unpunished.
As we learned more of this history, we increasingly came to realize that the changes would have to be very big. We found ourselves, little by little, on the road to Marxism without even discussing it.
Vilma Espín
May 15, 1985
Arriving here this evening, I commented to a compañero that the phenomenon of women’s participation in the revolution is a revolution within another revolution. If I were asked what is the most revolutionary thing the revolution is doing, I would answer that it is precisely this—the revolution that is occurring among the women of our country. …
If women in our country were doubly exploited, doubly humiliated in the past, then this simply means that women in a socialist revolution should be doubly revolutionary.
And perhaps this is the explanation, or at least the social basis, for the resolute, enthusiastic, firm, and loyal support given by Cuban women to this revolution.
Fidel Castro
December 9, 1966
We had to change women’s mentality—accustomed as they were to playing a secondary role in our society. Our women had endured years of discrimination. We had to show women their own possibilities, their ability to do all kinds of work. We had to make women feel the urgent needs of our revolution in the construction of a new life. We had to change both women’s image of themselves and society’s image of women.
We started our work by simple tasks that allowed us to reach out to women, to raise them beyond the narrow, limited horizons of their existence. To explain the revolution’s purpose and the part they would have to play in the process.
From the very beginning, we pursued a double goal:
To raise consciousness through political education, so that new tasks could be performed.
To raise the political level through the tasks themselves.
Vilma Espín
November 1974
2. The Frank País Second Eastern Front, initiated March 1958, became liberated zone in northeastern Oriente province under command of Raúl Castro.