Vol. 80/No. 2      January 18, 2016

 
(front page)

Cuban workers and farmers
mark 57 years of revolution

 
On Jan. 1, 1959, U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba as the Rebel Army of workers and peasants, led by Fidel Castro, was advancing across the island. Seven days later the victorious revolutionaries entered Havana to the cheers of hundreds of thousands who filled the streets.

On Dec. 17, 2014, in another victory, the last of the Cuban Five revolutionaries imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998 — framed up by the FBI for working to prevent violent attacks by paramilitary groups based in Florida — returned home, a precondition for an agreement with Washington to re-establish diplomatic relations. Since their return the Five have traveled around the island — and the world — sharing their experiences on the front lines of the U.S. class struggle as part of the sizable section of U.S. workers who are in prison.

“Even in the worst of times [in prison], we felt that freedom, that joy, that feeling of usefulness of being there denouncing every day the double standard of the empire’s policy in its much vaunted fight against terrorism,” Antonio Guerrero, one of the Five, recently told the Cuban paper Granma.

For the last 57 years the U.S. government has done everything within its power to overturn the revolution. It has armed counterrevolutionaries, organized assassination attempts against revolutionary leaders, launched the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and imposed a draconian economic embargo that continues to cause severe hardships for the Cuban people.

But the Cuban Revolution and its leadership remains a bone in the throat of U.S. imperialism and a beacon for class-conscious workers across the globe, living proof that it is possible to stand up against seemingly impossible odds and win.

On the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the U.S., Cuban President Raúl Castro said, “Despite Cuba’s repeated claim for the return of the territory illegally occupied by the Guantánamo Naval Base, the government of the United States has stated that it has no intention of changing the status of that enclave.”

Washington continues to enforce its brutal embargo and finances the so-called dissidents and illegal radio and television broadcasts to Cuba in violation of Cuban sovereignty.

U.S. capitalists fear example of Cuba

U.S. capitalists hated the revolution from the start, not just because they feared losing their superprofits — dominating everything from sugar and cattle lands to oil refineries, mineral rights and casinos — but because working people in Cuba were gaining confidence in their ability to stand up to U.S. imperialism and to be the masters of their own destiny, setting an example for Latin America and the world.

To Washington and Batista, the revolution’s advance was incomprehensible. On Jan. 1, 1959, the rebels had at the most 3,000 armed men and women, yet they defeated more than 80,000 of Batista’s soldiers and cops.

Washington provided planes so Batista and his closest henchmen could flee the island, leaving power in the hands of a military junta. The Rebel Army called a general strike, which swept the island. The junta was swept aside and a revolutionary government put in place.

A survey before the revolution found some 60 percent of rural families lived in huts with dirt floors and no running water; 70 percent of them used kerosene lamps for lighting and the rest had no source of lighting at all. Hundreds of thousands were unemployed.

Workers control

The revolutionary leadership organized working people in Cuba to take control of the factories, mines, mills and farms to improve their lives and reverse these miserable conditions.

In March 1959, the revolutionary government took over the Cuban Telephone Company and reduced the rates. It ordered the lowering of rents by 30 to 50 percent. In May it enacted an agrarian reform law that encouraged the formation of cooperatives, and distributed land to landless peasants. Popular militias were organized to defend and advance these gains arms in hands.

In late October 1959 President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the State Department and the CIA to create armed Cuban counterrevolutionary groups in preparation for moves to overthrow the revolution.

In June 1960, when U.S.-based Esso and Texaco and British-Dutch Shell refused to refine oil Cuba bought from the Soviet Union, the revolutionary government organized working people to take the refineries over. In August, Fidel Castro announced the expropriation of 26 U.S.-owned companies. In October, Eisenhower imposed a sweeping trade embargo prohibiting the vast majority of U.S. trade with Cuba.

Stepped up U.S.-sponsored attacks

In late December bombs and arson attacks by counterrevolutionaries destroyed businesses in Havana. On Dec. 31 the revolutionary government warned that Washington was preparing to invade. Three days later Eisenhower broke all diplomatic relations.

Cuban working people organized a massive literacy campaign, mobilizing more than 100,000 student volunteers and over 150,000 others to go into the countryside, teaching 707,212 people to read and write in less than a year.

And in April 1961 Cuban toilers decisively defeated the U.S.-organized Bay of Pigs invasion.

From the outset the revolution has extended the hand of solidarity to toilers worldwide — from medical and military assistance to Algeria where a workers and farmers government came to power in 1962, to sending 425,000 volunteer combatants to Angola to help defeat invasions by apartheid South Africa, to leading the fight against Ebola in Africa last year. Today there are thousands of Cuban medical workers volunteering to provide health care all over the world.

Defending socialist revolution today

Washington hopes to accomplish its long-standing goal — destroying the socialist revolution and destruction of workers and farmers power there — by the workings of capitalist economic pressures.

At the same time, Cuba faces the effects of the worldwide capitalist economic crisis — exacerbated by the continuing U.S. economic embargo. The Cuban government has taken necessary measures and retreats to attract more foreign investment, streamline bloated workforces at state-owned companies, and increase productivity, including steps to make it easier to set up small businesses and be “self-employed.”

The Cuban press is giving broad coverage to government-led discussions on how to face these challenges, and reviewing how the revolution mobilized workers and farmers to meet challenges they confronted at key turning points in the past.

“The history of our revolution is full of glorious pages in the face of difficulties, risks and threats,” Raúl Castro told the National Assembly of People’s Power Dec. 29.

The return of the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Guerrero, Fernando González and René González — has reinforced the fight to maintain the values and course of the revolution. Since their return they have spent a large part of their time visiting factories, farms and campuses, speaking with working people and students.

The Dec. 17 issue of Granma published interviews with each of the Five to mark one year since they all were back in Cuba.

“We have received feedback and learned more about the Cuban reality every day,” Guerrero said. “I believe this is also important for any other tasks that will no doubt come our way.”

“The situation Cuba is experiencing today with regard to the re-establishment of relations with the U.S. and the process of social-economic transformations underway demands better preparation, consistency, study, updating, something to which we feel extremely committed,” Ramón Labañino said, “because we are part of this project and Cuban society, and this is what we have been immersed in this year.”
 
 
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