Faced with devastation from Hurricane Melissa, Cuba’s government and its people acted to ensure not a single person was killed or left to fend for themselves. In contrast, in Jamaica at least 32 are dead with many hard-hit areas still unreachable, and in Haiti at least 43 died. This shows graphically that there is something qualitatively different in Cuba than in the U.S. or other nations under capitalist rule.
Despite the severe hardships Cubans face from the over 60-year-long economic war waged on them by Washington, the government organized in advance of the hurricane to move resources to evacuate hundreds of thousands to safety and mobilized volunteer workers to restore electrical power rapidly afterward.
The Cuban government is different because workers and farmers there were led by Fidel Castro and the July 26 Movement to fight for and win state power, to take control of their own destiny.
On the heels of the revolution’s triumph, Castro recognized it was necessary to reach beyond the fighters of the July 26 Movement and mobilize the millions attracted to the revolution. He saw this in the face of the thousands who turned out as he led the Freedom Caravan across Cuba to Havana. And as they began acting to change their conditions, they transformed themselves in the process.
Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista’s hated cops were disarmed and disbanded. The toiling population was led to end capitalist ownership of the land, industry and banks, and to take steps to organize society to meet the needs of the vast majority. Land was given to the farmers who worked it. Millions mobilized across the island to show support for these measures. The revolutionary government outlawed racial discrimination and organized women into the workforce and all aspects of political life.
The first socialist revolution in the Americas was consolidated.
Workers and farmers were armed to defend their revolution. They mobilized to take on and defeat a U.S.-backed mercenary invasion in just two days at Playa Girón in 1961.
From the very first, Cuba’s revolutionary leadership offered solidarity to toilers fighting imperialism, from Algeria to Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Grenada, Burkina Faso, Vietnam and beyond.
“The duty of every revolutionist is to make the revolution,” Castro said in 1962, not “sit in the doorways of their houses waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by.” His call to struggle resonates in today’s crisis-wracked capitalist world, as the propertied rulers prepare for more and more deadly wars.
Pathfinder Press has published 45 books in which Cuban revolutionaries and Socialist Workers Party leaders describe the revolution and its efforts to extend it worldwide.
The Socialist Workers Party exists to do in the U.S. what Castro and the leadership he built in Cuba showed is possible. In the course of deepening class battles, the SWP aims to forge a working-class leadership to lead tens of millions to take political power in the U.S., dealing a death blow to imperialist exploitation and oppression.
To be part of that struggle, join the Socialist Workers Party!