Cuban women’s leaders speak on gains of revolution

BY NAOMI CRAINE

NEW YORK — “Obama says he’s coming to tell us how democracy should be. But the Cuban people decided what kind of democracy we wanted in 1959, and carried out profound changes that were needed,” said Teresa Amarelle Boué, general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), at a meeting here March 19.

Amarelle headed a delegation from the FMC and other Cuban organizations to the 60th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, March 14-24. While here they spoke at the public meeting, held at the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 hall, as well as with students at the City College of New York and at other events. More than 150 people attended.

Gail Walker, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, and Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, co-chaired. In welcoming the Cuban leaders, Walker noted that the meeting was taking place on the eve of President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba. She urged participants to read the March 9 editorial from the Cuban daily Granma, which “explains in clear language how the Cuban people will respond to the president’s upcoming visit to Cuba ‘without renouncing a single one of our principles.’” (See last week’s issue.)

The editorial reiterates the Cuban people’s demand to lift the U.S. economic sanctions, return Guantánamo and to end other attacks on Cuba, Walker said, adding, “Your friends here in the United States are not afraid of confronting that challenge along with you.” She also pointed to an FMC statement available at the meeting (and printed below) on the “tremendous accomplishments of Cuban women” Obama will see in Cuba.

“Women have taken a lead in all of the educational efforts in Cuba,” Amarelle said in her opening remarks, including the 1961 literacy campaign in which a majority of the volunteers who taught and those who learned to read were women. Today, she said, women make up some 62 percent of the technical workforce, 68 percent of doctors, 48 percent of scientists, and 48.6 percent of the deputies in the National Assembly. Amarelle is a member of that body and of Cuba’s Council of State.

These figures are not a result of quotas, Amarelle said. They are “a reflection of the leadership taken by women as a result of winning the right to a job, to education and their involvement in the revolution.”

She was joined on the platform and answered questions with Maritzel González and Yanira Kúper of the FMC’s international relations department, Alicia Campos of the Women’s International Democratic Federation, and Yamila González and Myrna Méndez of the National Union of Jurists of Cuba.

Relations must be based on respect
In the discussion Yamila González pointed to the hypocrisy of press reports that Michelle Obama plans to bring her “Let Girls Learn” campaign to Cuba. “In Cuba 100 percent of girls attend school,” González noted. “We should have real interchange, based on mutual respect.

“We’re ready and willing to have better relations” with Washington, she added, “but our principles, our sovereignty and the independence we’ve fought for are not on the negotiating table.”

Amarelle answered a question about the Cuban response to the threat of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has become an epidemic in many places in Latin America. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention predicts a quarter of the people in Puerto Rico will be infected this year.

“When the World Health Organization announced the danger of Zika, the government mobilized civic organizations,” she said. “The neighborhood Committees for Defense of the Revolution and the Federation of Cuban Women held meetings in every area to discuss the measures needed,” focused on mosquito control and prevention. A national leadership center was established to evaluate the situation daily, and hospitals are instructed to immediately admit anyone showing symptoms, she said.

“The heart of our approach is person-to-person, with explanation and persuasion,” Amarelle said. The FMC has more than 400,000 activists, she added, “including members of health brigades that do educational work in the neighborhoods.”

“That’s the way it should be,” commented Iris Baez, after the meeting. “You have to do it the way they said, house by house,” she said, noting that doesn’t happen in the U.S., “even with all the resources here.”

Baez, whose son Anthony was killed in a police chokehold in 1994, will be visiting Cuba in May along with other participants in fights against police brutality across the United States. Their delegation was announced at the meeting, and a copy of the video Every Mother’s Son was raffled to raise money for the trip.

The evening’s program included cultural performances by African drummers and the Peace Poets, as well as a short video on the history of the FMC. At the end, artist Zulu King Sloane presented the Cuban delegation with a painting he made during the program.

Earlier in the day Amarelle joined speakers from Angola, Brazil, El Salvador and the United States at a seminar on “Women Transforming the World” organized by the Women’s International Democratic Federation. That event, moderated by Campos from the Cuban delegation, drew 30 participants from a number of countries.

Related articles:
US out of Guantánamo! End Cuba embargo now!
Socialist Workers Party campaign statement
As Obama visits, Cuban people defend revolution
‘For us socialism means freedom, sovereignty, dignity’
End embargo, says Cuban official in Bay Area tour
Letter: Cuba mobilizes against Zika virus

Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home