Vol. 77/No. 25      July 1, 2013

BY RÓGER CALERO

Participants from more than two dozen countries across the Americas, as well as from Africa and Europe, will come together in Caracas, Venezuela, July 24-27 for the Seventh Continental Conference in Solidarity with Cuba. The gathering is called by the Venezuelan-Cuban Mutual Friendship and Solidarity Association, together with the Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).

The conference is being organized as the main international celebration of the 60th anniversary of the July 26, 1953, assault on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba led by Fidel Castro. That attack — during which Castro and 27 other revolutionaries were captured and imprisoned, and more than 50 massacred — became the clarion call to mass revolutionary struggle against the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Conference organizers expect more than 600 participants in Caracas. The sixth solidarity conference was held in Mexico City in October 2011.

In plenary sessions and workshops, participants will discuss organizing solidarity around the world with Cuba’s socialist revolution. Several will focus on getting out the truth about Washington’s unremitting campaign to undermine and overturn the political power established by Cuba’s workers and farmers through the 1956-58 revolutionary war that overthrew the Batista tyranny in January 1959. This includes the economic and trade embargo imposed on Cuba for more than half a century. Other conference events will focus on the international campaign against the U.S. government’s frame-up and imprisonment of the Cuban Five. (See “Who Are the Cuban Five?” on this page.)

Other topics will include the history and example of Cuba’s socialist revolution and proletarian internationalist course, as well as imperialist subjugation of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The gathering in Caracas builds on the close relations between the governments of Venezuela and Cuba developed through extensive trade ties and by collaboration of tens of thousands of Cuban volunteers working on medical, education, agricultural and other social projects in Venezuela.

On the last day conference participants will join a solidarity march with other Venezuelans that will end with a vigil on the eve of what would had been the 59th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, who died earlier this year.

Information and registration forms in Spanish can be found at: http://solidaridadvenezuelacuba.org. Anyone interested in attending can contact a Militant distributor near you listed on page 8.  
 
 
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