Vol. 78/No. 47      December 29, 2014

To our Comrades: Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando, and René
To the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba

Dear Comrades,
Today, as we see the five of you standing together again on Cuban soil, we join the joy and celebration of the people of Cuba. “Volverán — They shall return” is now not a course of struggle but a fact.

To the Five Heroes of the Cuban people we say: You are also heroes of the international working class.

Above all, it is you — Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando, and René — to whom we credit the victory that has been won. Your unwavering strength, dignity, honesty, creativity — and humor — have shown the world what it means to be a revolutionary. What it means to be a communist. What it means to put your lives on the line to defend and advance a living revolution.

From Cuba to Angola to the United States, whether inside or outside prison walls, you have been the same human beings, acting along the same revolutionary course.

For the last 16 years, standing on the front lines of working-class forces in the United States, you fought day and night to advance the goals and values of the Cuban Revolution you represent. We came to know and deeply value each of you as comrades-in-arms.

A great battle has been won by the people of Cuba and the “jury of millions” around the world. As we are all aware, however, the hard-won victory of your return to Cuba does not mean the war has yet been won. A new stage has opened in the decades-long struggle to defend Cuba’s sovereignty and independence. President Raúl Castro said it clearly: “This in no way means that the heart of the matter has been solved. The economic, commercial, and financial blockade, which causes enormous human and economic damages to our country, must cease.”

For our part, we assure you that as that struggle unfolds — the struggle to continue advancing and defending the revolution’s socialist, proletarian internationalist course — we will be there with you. We will be fighting from the same trench, from inside the ranks of working people in the United States, whose political capacities and revolutionary potential are today as utterly discounted by the propertied rulers as were once those of the Cuban toilers. And just as wrongly.

Jack Barnes
National Secretary
for the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party
 
 
Related articles:
The Cuban Five are free!
Emulate, defend Cuban Revolution
Absolved by Solidarity: 16 watercolors for 16 years of unjust imprisonment
 
 
 
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