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Y. Plotz posted a link to an article from 2010 about Cuba today. I went to the linked website to obtain some additional information on this tendency's roots and perspectives. I have not, so far, been able to determine which wing of the world Trotskyist movement this current is from, and perhaps Y. Plotz can provide further details. Readers would would be grateful here. Y. Plotz stated that this article is relevant today, and so after a bit of site research: On the very front page of this interesting site I found a commentary on Cuba posted below which does provide some insight into the approach this tendency has toward Cuba. I believe it speaks for itself quite eloquently, so, for the time being, I shall make no additional comment. In the body of this statement, one paragraph: A Stalinist dictatorship rules in Cuba, with its known zand traditional single- party regime. CCP bureaucrats tried to hide this fact with their periodic and supposedly ‘democratic’ elections. If I can find the time, I'll try to make a few comments on the article ADJUSTMENT CUBAN STYLE at a later time. Walter Lippmann La Habana, Cuba http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/ http://www.uit-ci.org/ ======================================== The Cuban youth and people need freedom! March, 2010 A certain concern for the situation on Cuba is growing between antimperialist and democratic fighters. Hundreds of thousands in Latin America and worldwide have defended the Cuban revolution for more than fifty years, facing the imperialist blockade and its attacks, and the right-wing ‘gusaneria’ nesting in Miami. We address the vast avant-garde sympathizing with Cuba that has advocated for more than half a century to raise an issue: to the blockade repudiation, the claim to the Cuban Government to grant its people freedom of expression, organization and mobilization must be added. The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the 42 years old construction worker who on February 23 died after a 83-day hunger strike demanding improvements in the imprisonment situation, turned on a red light. And today there is another strike: journalist Guillermo Fariñas, free but demanding the release of near twenty dissident prisoners. The Government keeps on rejecting all dialogue searching for a solution to this situation. This flag can not be left to the imperialist hands and its speakerpersons using these actual facts for their counterrevolutionary aims. Imperialism and its servile governments have no political or moral authority to talk about human rights when they invade countries -Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti-, loot, and repress the peoples of the world on behalf of their bourgeois democracy to save capitalists of the economic crisis. For the Cubans -and for the rest of the world-, the only official information that appeared on the death of Zapata Tamayo was on February 27, with a four-day delay, in a note in Granma, the official paper of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC). The note says Zapata Tamayo was an ordinary prisoner, a criminal, who had been ‘made-up’ as a political prisoner to be used by the ‘internal and external enemies of the revolution’. Either an ordinary prisoner or a political opponent, the governmental action, the ‘judiciary’, and the regime leaded by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro which let Zapata die in inhumane conditions, is condemnable. Unfortunately, we recall the case of the Irish wrestler Bobby Sands, left to die in 1981 by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, after 66 days on hunger strike. It is then unusual that Fidel Castro repudiated this fact saying: ‘It is time to stop this disgusting atrocity through complaint and international pressure’. In 2008 the legendary singer Silvio Rodríguez (not suspected as ‘opposition’), who toured the country prisons together with other performers, declared that prisons are one of the most 'painful and uncomfortable' parts of the Cuban reality. It is also condemnable that the Cuban people cannot have access to complete and verifiable information on all the political circumstances and implications that led to this death, and that they can not discuss them freely. This taints the socialist cause which has been trodden in the island for decades by a Government and an authoritarian political regime which are the antithesis of workers democracy. So far, the Government response to the hunger strike of the journalist and dissident Guillermo Fariñas has been blunt: he is a ‘counterrevolutionary mercenary’. The fact that the latter is still alive makes the debate on the most serious problems more pressing and necessary: in Cuba there is no freedom for anyone, starting with its youth and its workers who want to defend their revolutionary conquests. Musician Pablo Milanés, another not suspected as ‘opposition’, said that if Fariñas dies, ‘Fidel Castro must be condemned from the human point of view..’, ‘ideas are discussed and fought, not imprisoned’ (statements to El Mundo, Spain, March/13/10). By now in Havana the Women in White movement has organized protests asking for their imprisoned family members.They were repressed. The argument that their imprisoned relatives are non-socialist ‘political opponents’ and with whose program we do not concurr, does not justify that they were prevented from expressing their claim. A Stalinist dictatorship rules in Cuba, with its known and traditional single-party regime. CCP bureaucrats tried to hide this fact with their periodic and supposedly ‘democratic’ elections. Nothing further from the truth. There is only a monolithic machine with full control of the media, that prohibits any right to organize, express, or strike. Meanwhile, on the other hand, the regime has been hiding an advanced process of capitalist restoration for years.The foreign investment grows in tourism and in all other sectors of the Cuban economy while CP officials enjoy privileges and people suffer dire hardships. Workers and students have no right to protest, propose, criticize, nor decide. They can not have access freely to Internet information and the networks used by the worldwide youth. They are not free to discuss and self-organize for the defense of their revolutionary conquests and thus combat pro-Yankee right-wing in better conditions. This lack of freedom is causing a growing unrest in the population. The dictatorship is acting as a straitjacket for Cuban students and youth that starts showing signs of rebellion from the increasing social deficiencies and the bureaucratic management of the Government and the CCP. It was known more than a year ago that University leaders questioned before a high-ranking government officer that they could not travel abroad freely. Also last year, on October 22, the High Institute of Arts students organized assemblies and a strong protest claiming against bad food and the complete lack of hygiene. As seen in videos broadcasted in Internet, the response of the authorities was to accuse students of ‘acting politically’ and ‘not seeing reality’. The student assembly agreed on a text that was read to the authorities, very illustrative of the true reality: ‘Our leaders... we are the voice of the students...We don't want to be contrary to our Socialist system... What irritates us, annoys us, is the total lack of respect... Today basic hygiene conditions are absent, food is of a very bad quality... It would not be correct for a young revolutionary to accept a reality as this one... We are not going to wait for bureaucrats to do bureaucracy... we ask to be listened. Thanks for the past, the future is ours’. These claims deserve the solidarity of those who fight against Imperialism, the Socialists and Democrats of the world. We demand the right to strike, the freedom to form trade unions, student centres, and socialist political parties in Cuba. We also demand full democratic freedoms: free use of the Internet, no censorship, free exit of and entry to the country for Cubans.The right of the youth to express themselves freely, no censorship in music and arts.The right to organize student centres, the right to freely present demands for basic needs such as a decent salary or the end of the markets for the rich and those for the poor. We urgently demand the Cuban Government not to repeat the atrocity committed against Orlando Zapata. We appeal to political parties, leaders of trade unions, peasants, people, students and intellectuals who claim to be democrats, antimperialists and leftists to unite with us in an international campaign for these ends. These basic democratic rights are indispensable and urgent to combat the political campaigns of pro-Yankee sectors and to strengthen the Cubans in the defence of their revolutionary conquests.* Unidad Socialista de Izquierda (USI), de Venezuela Izquierda Socialista, de Argentina Uníos en la Lucha, de Perú Corriente Socialista de los Trabajadores (CST), del PSOL de Brasil Uníos, de Colombia Alternativa Socialista, sección simpatizante de Colombia Propuesta Socialista, de Panamá (Miembros de la Unidad Internacional de Trabajadores-Cuarta Internacional (UIT-CI)) Partido Obrero Socialista (POS), de México Liga Socialista de los Trabajadores (LST), de República Dominicana Opinión Socialista, de Argentina Movimiento de Trabajadores y Campesinos-as (MTC), de Costa Rica. (Miembros de la Corriente Internacional Revolucionaria (CIR)) Comité de Enlace Unión Internacional de Trabajadores –UIT y Corriente Internacional Revolucionaria-CIR. March, 2010 ========================================= WALTER LIPPMANN Havana, Cuba Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/ "Cuba - Un Paraíso bajo el bloqueo" ========================================= ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
