Building international solidarity with Cuba

In early August, six FRFI members active in Rock around the Blockade travelled to the mountains of Assisi, Italy, to participate in the Anti-Imperialist Camp alongside 250 representatives of communist and revolutionary organisations from around the world. During the seven days of discussions and workshops, we highlighted the pivotal role of Cuba in the international struggle against imperialism and the neo-liberal policies wreaking misery on the majority of the world. This call was echoed by comrades confronted by the most brutal face of imperialist aggression in Palestine and across Latin America.

Participants from many countries including Indonesia, Palestine and Colombia articulated the inspiration their struggles draw from the Cuban Revolution and many delegates described work in their own country building socialist solidarity with Cuba. Our comrades also used the opportunity to raise the question of the Miami 5, unjustly imprisoned in the USA, and ensured that the final declaration of the Anti-Imperialist Camp, a condemnation of the warmongering and brutality of imperialism and the degenerative role of social democracy, included a call 'for the release of all political prisoners rotting in the cells of the imperialists...like the Cuban Five in the US.'

Back in Britain, Rock around the Blockade continues to campaign in support of the Miami Five and in defence of socialist Cuba, with regular street events and meetings around the country.

In London, Rock around the Blockade held a screening of a film about the Miami 5 at the end of August. The video contains interviews with the families, friends and neighbours of Ramon, Antonio, Gerardo, Fernando and Rene, in a beautiful testament to the strength of solidarity the Cuban people feel for these five revolutionaries. We also managed to get a letter published in the national press, highlighting their case. On 24 August, we held another brilliant club night at the Islington Bar, raising more funds for the maintenance and renovation of the four sound systems we have already provided for young people in Cuba. Another night of Rebel Music's unique brand of conscious revolutionary clubbing is planned for the near future. E-mail rebelmusiccuba@hotmail.com.

In Scotland, comrades held a demonstration outside the US Consulate in Edinburgh at the end of July to commemorate the anniversary of the attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba on 26 July 1953. The demo called for an end to the illegal US Blockade and the release of the Miami 5 prisoners. RATB in Scotland are planning another picket of the US Consulate and activities to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Che Guevara in October. For further details contact Scotland RATB on 07779 785 529 or e-mail: scotlandfrfi@yahoo.co.uk

With the start of the academic year, Rock around the Blockade has been active at freshers fayres across Britain. So far we have helped set up Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Student Societies at Kings College London, The London School of Economics, Strathclyde University and Glasgow University. If you want to join any of these or set up your own society at your school, college or university, contact Rock around the Blockade.

'We will be like Che!'
9 October marks the 35th anniversary of Che Guevara's murder in Bolivia in 1967. Rock around the Blockade is organising a week of activities to celebrate Che's revolutionary example which lives on among the Cuban People, on the streets of Palestine and everywhere where people are fighting imperialism.

On Wednesday 9 October, we are holding a torchlit demonstration from 6.30-9pm on the steps of St Martins-in-the-Field Church in Trafalgar Square. Bring banners, candles, friends.

On Sunday 13 October, in keeping with Che's call for a single, united struggle against imperialism, Rock around the Blockade will be joining with the Victory to the Intifada campaign to organise an anti-imperialist forum and highlight Cuba's continuing solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada and opposition to imperialist war. We will also be discussing Cuba's struggle to defend and extend the gains of its successful struggle for national liberation and socialism. The forum is being held in room S421 at the London School of Economics, St Clement's Building, Holborn, WC2 from 1.30 to 5pm.

On Wednesday 16 October Rock around the Blockade in London are screening a film about Che Guevara, followed by a discussion about his life and ideas at 8pm at the City Pride Pub, 28 Farringdon Lane, EC1. Nearest tube Farringdon. As a finale to the week of activities join us to celebrate Che's life with an International Music Night on Saturday 19 October. Get down to The Hawley Arms, 2 Castlehaven Road, Camden, NW1. Nearest tube: Camden Town.

For details of regular street events in London in support of Cuba, tel: 020 7837 1688.

Rock around the Blockade exists to promote active solidarity with Cuba - and what could be more active than a fun day of sponsored cycling in the countryside on 26 October? Call us on 020 837 1688 for more details - or write to us for a sponsorship form at the address below - then get on your bike and come along.

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 169 October/November 2002

Miami 5 prisoners cannot be silenced

Over the last two months, across Europe, North America and Latin America there have been regular activities and demonstrations in support of the five Cubans imprisoned in the US on trumped-up spying charges. In July, a convention of delegates from 62 communist parties, organised by the Greek Communist Party, issued a final declaration opposing the US blockade of Cuba and initiating an international campaign for the release of the Miami 5. At the Anti-Imperialist Camp held in Assisi, Italy, in August, delegates pledged support for the five men. Increasingly their cause is being recognised worldwide, making their names synonymous with the struggle for Cuban socialism.

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were in the USA to gather information about terrorist plots against Cuba organised by counter-revolutionary exile groups in Miami. They were arrested in 1998 and held in solitary confinement in maximum security cells for up to two years, with no access to phone calls or post or contact with their families.

They are now serving sentences ranging from 15 years to life in gaols across the USA. Their sole 'crime' was combating terrorism against Cuba - terrorism organised from within the USA and sanctioned by the FBI, the CIA and the Bush administration. Their families face constant harassment from the US administration when attempting to visit them. On 25 July, Adriana Perez, wife of Gerardo Hernandez, was illegally detained at Houston Airport for 11 hours, interrogated, fingerprinted and photographed before being forced to return to Cuba without seeing her husband, despite having a visa to enter the USA.

Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, has pointed out the US administration's fear that, as knowledge about the case of Miami 5 widens, so will the government's hypocrisy and connivance with terrorist groups be exposed.

Rene Gonzalez's brother Roberto, a lawyer, has condemned the 'dirty tricks played by the prosecution, who handled the case by creating negative publicity against the Five'. He also highlighted how the prosecution hampered the work of the defence team by placing the case under the Classified Information Protection Act. This meant that defence attorneys were prevented from taking documents home or to their offices. All evidence was kept well away from the public domain - even the Miami press complained that the substantial evidence the government claimed it had against the 'spies' was missing. Since the sentencing, the US press has remained silent.

However, the revolutionaries cannot be silenced and currently the five men are receiving so many letters from around the world and from within the USA itself they can barely keep up with their correspondence! Rene's father has said that in the 'years of struggle in defence of our sons, I've learned more than in all my 70 years. I feel much more revolutionary now.'

Hannah Caller

Rock around the Blockade campaigns for the release of the Miami 5 and in defence of socialist Cuba. We have received many inspiring letters from the five men (see Letters, page 15). To get involved in the campaign, e-mail: office@ratb.org.uk write to: RATB c/o FRFI BCM Box 5909, London WC1N 3XX or tel: 020 7837 1688

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 169 October/November 2002

'The world is more unequal than ten years ago'
Cuba at the Earth Summit

A decade ago, at the Earth Summit in Rio, Fidel Castro warned that 'an important biological species is in danger of disappearing due to the fast and progressive destruction of its natural living conditions: humankind.' With the 'alleged threat of the Cold War over', Cuba proposed that the resources spent on the arms race and war should be diverted to the development of the third world and to fight ecological destruction. 'Let us pay the ecological debt and not the foreign debt; let hunger disappear and not humankind.' Famously, he warned: 'Tomorrow will be too late to do what we should have done a long time ago.'

This year, the World Summit on Sustainable Development was held in South Africa. After what Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called 'Ten years of new follies and more squandering for some - the minority - and more impoverishment, disease and death for others - the majority - those words echo in this hall on the conscience of quite a few.' Almost nothing has been achieved since the Rio Summit.

The environment is more threatened than ever. For example, as Roque pointed out:

• emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by 9% - in the USA, by 18%
• seas and rivers are today more poisoned than in 1992, the air is more polluted
• 15 million hectares of forest are decimated every year

'The world is more unfair and more unequal than ten years ago. The gap has widened instead of decreasing. The difference in income between the richest and the poorest countries was 37 times in 1960, around 60 when we met in Rio - and now it stands at 74 times.' The results are that, in the world today:

• 815 million people go hungry every day
• 1.2 billion live in abject poverty
• 854 million adults are illiterate
• 2.4 billion people lack basic sanitation
• 40 million people have contracted the AIDS virus
• 2 million people die of tuberculosis and 1 million of malaria every year
• 11 million children under five will die this year of preventable causes

Who is responsible for this growing inequality? Roque points the finger firmly at the economic and political order imposed by imperialism, its international financial institutions and the IMF in particular. 'These serve the interests of the governments of a few developed countries, predominantly those of the most powerful among them, those of several hundreds of transnational companies and those of a group of politicians whose electoral campaigns have been financed by such companies. In order to defend those illegitimate and minority interests, most of the world population is subjected to poverty and hopelessness'.

Once again, Cuba offers concrete proposals to enable the developing countries to survive, including:

• a development tax of barely 0.1% on international financial transactions, amounting to nearly $400bn per year
• immediate cancellation of the foreign debt of underdeveloped countries, saving those countries $300bn per year in debt service repayments (a quarter of their earnings through the export of goods and services)
• agreeing, as an immediate step, that 50% of what is currently earmarked for military spending be channeled to a UN fund for sustainable development - an instant $400bn 'half of which would be contributed by a single country ...the one ultimately responsible for the decimation of the environment'

And, to oversee and carry out the change, a whole new 'financial architecture', replacing the IMF by an 'international public institution serving everyone's interests - the development of a fair and equitable trading system that guarantees special and differentiated treatment for underdeveloped countries', the strengthening of multilateralism and the role of the UN.' But, as the Cubans well know, such measures are impossible under the brutal imperialist system that exists. What Roque's speech did was expose the hypocrisy of a Summit that has achieved nothing for the poor of the world and done nothing to slow, in his words, the sinking of a Titanic in which we must all perish.

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 169 October/November 2002

Che Guevara: A battle cry against imperialism

'Let the flag under which we fight be the sacred cause of the liberation of humanity'

35 years ago this October, Ernesto Che Guevara was arrested, tortured and murdered by CIA-trained Bolivian soldiers. After playing a leading role in the Cuban Revolution, both the war of liberation and in building socialism after 1959, he travelled as a revolutionary first to Africa and then Bolivia, with the aim of carrying out in practice his call to build 'two, three and many Vietnams'.

Che Guevara was a revolutionary fighter, an internationalist and, first and last, a communist. His political and economic writings remain vital weapons in the hands of all socialists and continue to inspire those fighting against imperialism around the world today. His example, far from being that of some long-forgotten student icon of the 1960s, remains as vibrant today us as the triumph of Cuba's socialist revolution that it embodies, and lives on in the pledge of successive generations of Cuban school children each morning: 'We will be like Che!' As imperialism prepares itself once again for war against the poor of the world, we do well to remember Che's call: 'Let every action be a battle cry against imperialism and a call for the unity of the peoples, against the great enemy of the human race, the United States of North America.'

Che's economic and political legacy

As well as being a revolutionary soldier, Che was a socialist thinker and writer. Steeped in the writings of Marx, Engels and Lenin, he applied their theories to the building of socialism in Cuba. Against those who argued for a role for the market in building socialism, he saw the essential role of the planned economy:

'Centralised planning is the way of life in socialist society. It is what defines it and is the point at which man's consciousness succeeds in finally synthesising and directing the economy towards its goal, which is the complete liberation of the human being within the framework of communist society.'

Alongside building a new economy, socialism must construct a new human being. Capitalism, through its enshrinement of greed, of the relentless search for profits, of the exploitation of man by man, produces a definite individualistic, selfish and greedy consciousness. Socialism requires a different kind of consciousness - one based on co-operation and a sense of collective responsibility.. Such a consciousness can only be created as part of the process of building socialism, through education, voluntary labour, moral rather than material incentives and example. As both President of the National Bank and Minister for Industry in Cuba in the early 1960s, Che oversaw agrarian and industrial reform, stressing throughout the central role of the Cuban working class.

In the decades after Che's death, as the Cuban Revolution became increasingly threatened by a return to capitalist market mechanisms and a consequent lowering of revolutionary consciousness amongst the masses, it was to Che Guevara's writings that Castro turned, in what became known as the Rectification Period.

'We're rectifying all those things, and there are many - that strayed from the revolutionary spirit, from revolutionary work, revolutionary virtue, revolutionary effort, revolutionary responsibility; all those things that strayed from the spirit of solidarity amongst people. We're rectifying all the shoddiness and mediocrity that is precisely the negation of Che's ideas, his revolutionary thought, his style, his spirit and his example.' (Fidel Castro, 1987)

An internationalist fighter

A revolutionary internationalist, Che called for a struggle without borders, where every battle for liberation was part of a single, united struggle against imperialism and where sympathy from the sidelines was simply not enough - one must literally 'join that victim [of the struggle] in death or victory'. Living by his convictions, in 1966 Che led a guerrilla detachment against the military dictatorship of Bolivia. Betrayed, wounded and captured on 8 October 1967, within 24 hours he was dead.

In 1965, at the Conference of Asian-African Solidarity in Algiers, Che had said: 'Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcomed if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear, if another hand reaches out to take up our arms, and others come forward to join our funeral dirge with rattling of machine guns and with new cries of battle and victory'. Today, wherever the working class and oppressed peoples of the world are in struggle against imperialism, Che lives on. From the occupied territories and refugee camps of Palestine and the streets of Turkey to the mountains of Colombia, his words still resonate.

On 9 October, Rock around the Blockade will be holding a torchlit demonstration to commemorate the life and political thinking of Ernesto Che Guevara and his enduring legacy to the struggle of humanity for liberation.

Cat Wiener

Che Guevara commemoration, Wednesday 9 October, 6.30-9pm, steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London WC1.

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 169 October/November 2002

Cuban Revolution: the urban underground

Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the urban underground
Julia E Sweig, Harvard University Press 2002, £20.50

Julia Sweig's book, the result of eight years of research with access to newly declassified documents, exposes the myth that the Cuban revolution was imposed by a dozen middle-class, bearded rebels in the mountains, and challenges three pieces of conventional wisdom: 1) that there was a rivalry between the rural Sierra wing of the revolutionary Movement of 26 July (M267) and the urban Llano wing, 2) that 1959 was the most important year of the Cuban revolution and 3) that the initiative for the disastrous general strike in April 1958 came from Fidel Castro, in order to destroy the Llano and take control of the M267.

Frank Pais was a militant who joined forces with Fidel Castro, Abel and Haydee Santamaria and others before the attack on Moncada barracks in July 1953. While Castro was incarcerated and throughout his period of exile and training in Mexico with the group who went on to constitute the core of the Rebel Army, Pais worked to build up the urban underground, with civilian and military cells throughout the island. As the Rebel Army mobilised in the Sierra mountains, Pais founded M267 cells to work as front-groups among workers and students and set up a civil resistance movement. Sweig's new evidence shows that 'the reorganization of the movement reflected both Pais' autonomy from the Sierra and Fidel, and Fidel's confidence in and dependence upon Pais' (p43). Pais and the urban underground were vital for establishing a flow of weapons and recruits from the cities to the Rebel Army.

Like Castro, Pais believed that workers must be in the vanguard of the movement against the US-puppet dictator Batista, and he drove forward plans for a revolutionary general strike. 'The general strike strategy that Pais outlined complemented Fidel's guerrilla war in the Sierra. Indeed, his plan to restructure the National Directorate suggests a vision of the two strategies, urban insurrection and guerrilla warfare, as mutually reinforcing but tactically separate in terms of day-to-day operations.' (p46)

Since the murder of communist workers 1947-1952, the trade union movement had been in the hands of the reactionary Eusebio Mujal, who collaborated with Batista. Before Pais' workers' fronts had built sufficient strength to challenge the gangster-run unions, he was murdered by the regime, on 30 July 1957, aged just 23. 'Some sixty thousand Santigueros, from local Communist Party members to the 1eadership of the Santiago Civic Institutions, attended Pais' funeral. Even the M267 underground emerged to grieve publicly, openly donning their black and red arm bands.' (p48) Businesses closed and workers went on spontaneous strike for several days until government repression forced them to return.

'Just one day before he was murdered, Pais had successfully orchestrated a province-wide fifteen-minute workplace shutdown organized by Civic Resistance labor cells, as a finale to several similar actions that had occurred throughout July.' (p48) Sweig demonstrates the connection between the M267 and the working-class and civil society and shows that the initiative for the failed general strike of April 1958, came from the urban underground as the culmination of months of work within the labour movement.

'Sweig explains the failure of the general strike, how it crippled the M267, which had 200 of its workers' militants gunned down in Havana alone, and that it resulted in a change of revolutionary tactics. As the movement against Batista grew throughout 1957 and 1958, repression and brutality by the regime in the cities, where its repressive apparatus was concentrated, made revolutionary work far more dangerous and difficult for the urban M267 than life with the Rebel Army.

Sweig's book also tracks the M267's relationship with the student revolutionaries, communists and the bourgeoisie and how they dealt with the political machinations of the exile community. From summer 1958, the urban M267's student front orchestrated a total school shutdown, and their united workers' front, with communists and other groups, prepared for the revolutionary general strike. This came on the 2 January 1959, called by Fidel Castro, and enabled the Rebel Army to take control of Santiago without firing a shot, while Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos' guerrilla columns were welcomed into Havana by millions out celebrating on the streets.

This book is vital for anyone interested in understanding the Cuban revolution, and it destroys the arguments of those British Trotskyists who deny its working class character.

Helen Yaffe

From Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 169 October/November 2002