Vol. 79/No. 47 December 28, 2015
(feature article)
‘How little they know Cuban revolutionaries!’
Event celebrating return of Elián González, Cuban 5 looks
to ‘battles ahead’
AND RÓGER CALERO
The Dec. 6 event here was a celebration of that victory. The downtown theater was packed.
The day was an affirmation of the Cuban people’s strength and confidence in facing “all the battles we have ahead of us,” as Gerardo Hernández, one of the Five, put it.
Almost one year earlier, on Dec. 17, 2014, the last three of the jailed revolutionaries returned home. The same day, the U.S. and Cuban governments announced that diplomatic ties between the two countries, which Washington severed in January 1961, would be re-established. That was an acknowledgment that after more than five decades, the U.S. rulers’ efforts to crush the socialist revolution through military assaults, economic war and political isolation have failed.
The activities here also marked another victorious battle that has special meaning in this city. It was the 16th anniversary of the start of the fight by the Cuban people for the return of a young boy, Elián González, to his family in Cárdenas. Elián — now 22 years old — and his father Juan Miguel González took part in the event along with other family members.
In November 1999, 5-year-old Elián was picked up off the coast of Florida after his mother and 10 other Cubans drowned during a perilous attempt, organized by smugglers, to reach the United States by boat. U.S. authorities turned the child over to distant relatives in Miami and for seven months refused to return him to his father’s custody, in violation of international conventions and Cuba’s sovereignty.
On Dec. 6, 1999, the day Elián turned six, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) led a march in Cárdenas and hundreds of thousands demonstrated in other cities and towns across the island demanding Washington return him to his father. It was only through the insistent demands of the revolutionary government, backed by sustained mass actions throughout Cuba, that the boy, accompanied by his father, came home in June 2000.
Odalys García, FMC general secretary in Matanzas province, reminded the audience that since the initial march for Elián’s return, the women’s organization has led a march in Cárdenas every Dec. 6 to fight for release of the Cuban Five, who in June 2001 were convicted in a U.S. court on trumped-up charges that included “conspiracy to commit espionage.”
This year’s event, originally planned as a march, was moved to the Cárdenas Theater-Cinema due to rain. Several hundred high school students attended, along with construction workers, teachers and other working people. Many FMC members were present, proudly waving their organization’s signs. Participants included officials of Cuba’s Council of State, the legislature and Cuban Communist Party in Matanzas province and Cárdenas, the general secretary of the FMC, and family members of the Cuban Five.
The festive program included music, dance, poetry and theater performances by local artists. Each of the Five Cuban Heroes, as they are known — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero and René González — was awarded the distinction of Adoptive Son of Cárdenas. And the Federation of High School Students (FEEM) was honored on the 45th anniversary of its founding, which also happens to be Dec. 6.
Elián’s return bolstered Cuban Five
Speaking on behalf of his four comrades and himself, Hernández thanked the people of Cárdenas for their support along with that of millions of Cubans in the successful battle for their release.The victory in the fight to win Elián’s return, Hernández said, had given the Five a tremendous boost while they were in a Miami federal prison awaiting trial. They and other inmates followed the nonstop news barrage about Elián at the time. This included the offer of $2 million by the director of a right-wing Cuban American radio station to Juan Miguel González — a worker at a restaurant in nearby Varadero — if he stayed in the U.S. instead of returning to Cuba with his son.
“How little they know Cuban patriots,” Hernández said. “How little they know Cuban revolutionaries, who have no price. They neither surrender nor sell themselves. How little they knew Juan Miguel!”
Hernández later elaborated informally on the impact of González’s dignified conduct. “There was a lot of discussion among inmates about whether Juan Miguel would go back,” he said. “If he had stayed in the U.S., we would have been so ashamed to face other prisoners that we wouldn’t have been able to leave our cells for at least six months. But when he returned, it was a proud day for us. We told other inmates, ‘There are millions of men in Cuba like Juan Miguel.’”
The victory in the battle to free the Cuban Five was due to the mobilizations of the Cuban people, the unwavering support of Cuba’s revolutionary leadership and the international defense campaign, Hernández said. He saluted participation in the Cárdenas event of a delegation from the U.S. Socialist Workers Party. They are “representing the many brothers and sisters around the world, including in the United States, who supported us and spared no effort until the victory was won,” he said.
“Keep counting on us, on Juan Miguel, on Elián, on the revolutionary people of Cárdenas, for all the battles we have ahead,” Hernández concluded.
‘New U.S. tactics won’t confuse us’
“Today, we are continuing the battle to defend socialism,” said FMC leader García, drawing on recent victories of the Cuban Revolution.“We are not going to let the diplomatic exchange with the United States confuse us,” she said. “We know they are changing their methods but their goals remain the same” — to undermine the revolution.
Washington maintains its economic embargo against Cuba, she said. It refuses to return Guantánamo to Cuban sovereignty. It continues to use “its immigration policy as a weapon against the revolution.”
As an example, García cited the U.S. government’s Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, aimed at luring Cuban doctors serving abroad into deserting their internationalist missions. She also pointed to the Cuban Adjustment Act, which offers expedited U.S. legal residence to undocumented immigrants from Cuba, while those from elsewhere are arrested and deported.
Elián González also spoke. Now an industrial engineering student at the University of Matanzas, he noted that when he was sequestered in Miami, President Fidel Castro had pledged he would return. “And I did return to my family and my people.”
When the Cuban leader in June 2001 first spoke to the Cuban people about the imprisonment, frame-up trial and conviction of the Five, González said, “Fidel declared, ‘I will simply tell you this: They shall return!’
“And here they are, the Five,” González said, “in Cuba, with their people, with their families, in their revolution.” Calling them his five “uncles,” he said they had set an example “for your commitment, your dedication, your selflessness and your patriotism.”
González, too, condemned Washington for encouraging Cubans to emigrate to the U.S. outside legal channels and under dangerous conditions. Not only was the Cuban Adjustment Act a big factor in what happened to him 16 years ago, he said, but today it is “causing nearly 4,000 Cubans in Costa Rica to risk their lives trying to reach the United States.”
Until the U.S. government ends its embargo and other hostile policies against the Cuban Revolution, González said, “The people in Cárdenas and all Cubans will continue marching each Dec. 6.”
The popular mobilizations demanding his return to Cuba gave birth to what is known here as the Battle of Ideas, González explained — a political campaign to deepen participation by working people and youth in the revolution by broadening access to culture and education.
A visit to the local Museum for the Battle of Ideas by the Cuban Five and other guests closed the day’s main activities. One section is devoted to the Five, highlighting the experience of Hernández, René González and Fernando González as internationalist combatants in Angola. They were among hundreds of thousands of Cuban volunteers who from 1975 to 1991 helped defeat invasions of newly independent Angola by the South African government, accelerating the downfall of that white-supremacist regime a few years later.
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Related articles:
‘The battle of ideas will not be lost’
‘Thank you Cárdenas, thank you Cuba’
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