The U.S. imperialist rulers, with their Democratic and Republican parties in tow, are working nonstop to try to poison the minds of working people about Cuba as they intensify their drive to starve the Cuban people into submission and crush their socialist revolution.
Washington slanders Cuba’s leadership, from Fidel and Raúl Castro to those serving today, and the missions they’ve led to aid other peoples fighting for independence, in Africa, the Americas and elsewhere. It falsely claims that in doing so, Cuba “exports revolution” and supports “left-wing terrorism.”
There is no better way of countering Washington’s lies than reading and distributing Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde: The Fall of the Last Colonial Empire in Africa by Víctor Dreke, who led Cuban combatants fighting alongside the liberation forces there. The book, available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, describes an exciting but little known piece of class-struggle history that illustrates the boundless capacities of working people.
It brings alive the determination and pride of the people of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde as they fought to free their country from five centuries of colonial domination. Their victorious struggle triggered the collapse of the Portuguese empire across Africa and brought down the fascist dictatorship in Portugal itself.
Under the Portuguese rulers’ boot, 99% of the population of Guinea-Bissau was disenfranchised, life expectancy was 37, malnutrition widespread and the peasants subjected to forced labor.
Cuba “sent its children to fight by our side, to shed their blood in our land together with the best children of our country,” Luis Cabral, then president of Guinea-Bissau, explained in 1977.
The book describes the outstanding qualities of Amílcar Cabral, the central leader of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. The PAIGC fought to counter tribal antagonisms, and championed women’s equality and their participation in the leadership of the struggle. It organized the country’s toilers to come together and fight to win their national liberation, to forge their own future.
“Our enemy isn’t the people of Portugal. Our enemy is Portuguese colonialism,” Cabral said. Captured Portuguese soldiers were treated with respect, and many returned home to join the fight to overthrow the fascist dictatorship there.
Cabral taught combatants to see themselves as part of the world. “Our struggle is worth nothing if it’s not deeply tied to those of other peoples in the Portuguese colonies,” he said.
Cuba’s unprecedented aid was only possible because of the transformation Cuban workers and farmers had lived through in making a socialist revolution. Under the leadership of Fidel Castro, they nationalized the country’s factories and banks, and the land, taking them into their own hands. They opened the door to the eradication of all forms of oppression and exploitation.
“The Cuban people, led by Fidel, had brought about profound changes in our society,” Alfonso Pérez Morales, one of the Cuban volunteers in Guinea-Bissau, explains in the book.
What they helped accomplish must become more widely known by workers everywhere. It can inspire us to step up the fight to end Washington’s assaults against Cuba today. Join Socialist Workers Party members in distributing the book, organizing meetings to discuss it and what it helps show we are capable of.