NEW YORK — “The assault on the Moncada Barracks by revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro electrified the Cuban people,” Martín Koppel told an Aug. 2 Militant Labor Forum marking the anniversary of the July 26, 1953, attack. The bold action launched a popular revolutionary struggle that on Jan. 1, 1959, overthrew the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship and opened the door to a socialist revolution.
The Moncada combatants were overwhelmingly working people, Koppel said. At his trial, Castro gave a defense speech, “History Will Absolve Me,” addressing the interests of workers and farmers above all. It became the program of the Rebel Army and July 26 Movement, which, independent of all the capitalist parties, led a mass struggle for state power.
“The Cuban Revolution was not about a change of presidents or reforming a government,” he said. “The rule of the capitalist families was replaced by the rule of the working class. Millions became different people as they began to change social relations and uproot all forms of exploitation and oppression.” Many joined battles worldwide against imperialist domination, from Guinea-Bissau to Bolivia.
Castro helped forge a genuinely communist leadership, Koppel said, the first since the 1917 Russian Revolution led by V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks.
“That’s why for 66 years the U.S. government — under Democrats and Republicans alike — has waged an implacable economic war to try to crush Cuba’s working people and their government,” he said. “The most effective way we can defend the Cuban Revolution is explaining these facts. And building a revolutionary workers party to follow their example here in the U.S.”