Cubadebate

Sisters and Brothers,

It is fitting that we meet today for this important protest here in Harlem, one day after the birthday of the outstanding North American revolutionary, Malcolm X. Malcolm X was an uncompromising opponent of U.S. imperialism-whether it took the form of, as he put it, the Republican wolf or the Democratic fox. Malcolm X was an enthusiastic supporter of the Cuban Revolution, which he studied, admired, and loved and the memory of Malcolm is venerated in Cuba today, where his writings and speeches are translated and published. Malcolm X would have identified today with the working people of Venezuela as they struggle to transform their country and themselves to achieve freedom, justice, and equality. He would have exposed-as no one else did with such skill-the lies and slanders from Washington and the big-business press. And Malcolm would have bristled with rage at the criminal U.S. policy toward Haiti.

       On May 7 the Bush Administration issued a 500-page document which presented its "plan" to overthrow the Cuban government and destroy the Cuban Revolution, the product of a Commission headed by Colin Powell. Tonight Bush is scheduled to give a speech in Florida on the new measures to be implemented. The Bush-Powell document proposes further restrictions on legal travel for U.S. citizens and residents to Cuba, singling out students and academic exchanges. It proposes to restrict visits of Cuban-Americans to their families in Cuba to once every 3 years. The document further reduces the amount of money those few who can still legally travel can spend from 164 to 50 dollars a day. More seriously, Washington will send up C-130 aircraft over what they say will be international waters off the revolutionary island-an obvious provocation directly in violation of international law-to attempt to successfully transmit their cynically named Television Marti and overcome Cuban jamming of the imperialist broadcasts which violate Cuban sovereignty. They have budgeted $18 million for this. Another $5 million will be allocated to what is called "public-diplomacy efforts," that is, propaganda campaigns to spread disinformation, misinformation, lies, and slanders about Cuban "human rights," "espionage," and "harboring of terrorists." Finally up to 36 million additional dollars will be allocated to direct funding of counter-revolutionary individuals (and they can hardly be called anything else but isolated individuals without any mass support inside Cuba who are totally dependent on imperialist funds and publicity) that are points of support for any future direct U.S. aggression and foils for crocodile tears in the U.S. big-business media about Cuban "repression." So, this, in summary is the latest program to come from Washington over the past 44 years to destroy the Cuban Revolution and the example and solidarity it has given and continues to give to the oppressed and exploited peoples of Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean. This cannot be tolerated or accepted by Washington. The imperative to destroy the Cuban example is not solely a Republican or conservative imperative but just as much a Democratic and liberal one. There has been no foreign policy of the United States government for the last half-century that has been as rigid and unchanging than the bipartisan commitment to defeat and destroy the Cuban Revolution.

     Why is this? The answer is simple. Cuba is the living proof that another world-a world of sovereignty, dignity, free health-care and education for all, full-employment, women's rights, Black rights, freedom for peasants, and political and economic power for workers is possible in what Jose Marti called "our America." A world without torture, disappearances, imperialist-backed death squads, International Monetary Fund austerity programs, the degradation of women-in short a world and society without the domination of U.S. imperialism. This existing reality today more than ever cannot be tolerated and must be destroyed. Because today, more than any time since the 1960s and early 1970s-before Washington and the Latin American ruling classes succeeded in fastening a generation of brutal military dictatorships over the Latin American peoples-TODAY the workers and peasants, the indigenous peoples, the youth of Latin America are rising up. They are coming forward in wave after wave of popular struggle-from Argentina to Ecuador from Bolivia to Peru-against what is called "neo-liberalism," which is a fancy word for increased imperialist exploitation, that is, IMF-dictated austerity, debt slavery, unequal trade, privatization, mass unemployment, and vicious cutbacks in the already paltry programs for education and health care. And revolutionary Cuba promotes publicizes, and gives unremitting solidarity to these popular struggles and-this is its greatest crime-points to the source of the problem, which is Washington's financial, economic, and political domination-and unending history threats of military intervention when things get out of hand. It is in Venezuela today that working people and the oppressed large majority are making the greatest advances. Venezuelan workers and peasants have defeated, through mass mobilization, in the last 2 years two counter-revolutionary assaults. First in April 2002 a U.S.-backed military coup was reversed-for the first time in modern Latin American history-by a furious massive counter-attack, and then, last year, a massive effort at economic sabotage, especially in the oil industry, by the capitalist class, under the guise of a "strike,"-a bosses strike, which was also defeated through the heroic efforts of industrial workers and others. Today the 3rd , highly weakened and defensive, attempt to overthrow the government of Hugo Chavez, through a fraudulent referendum, is also being defeated, even as new U.S.-sponsored military provocations on the Colombian-Venezuelan border and infiltrations by Colombian troops inside Venezuela escalate. The successive defeats dealt to the pro-imperialist opposition has given the working people and the Chavez government the confidence and impetus to move forward on social measures that are transforming Venezuelan society in the interests of the overwhelming majority, workers and peasants and small business owners: Land redistribution, starting with the idle lands of giant landlords, the granting of thousands of land titles to landless peasants is rapidly moving forward; Legislation strengthening state control over oil, gas, and mineral resources and their use in the interest of the majority; legislation extending new rights to independent fishermen exploited by the big fishing chains. Other measures accelerated in the past period include raising the minimum wage, public works programs to fight high unemployment, and the construction of new housing. Perhaps the most striking advances have been in the fields of education and health care, and here the solidarity and internationalism of revolutionary Cuba has been decisive and nothing short of amazing. Some 15,000 Cuban education and health workers-doctors, nurses, teachers-are playing a leading role in eradicating illiteracy in Venezuela today. This is happening right now! Cuban doctors-doing what the bulk of Venezuelan doctors, who serve the rich and upper middle classes have never done-have set up clinics in impoverished barrios and in the countryside that have, for the first time, give access to free and quality health care to over 20 million Venezuelans. This reality-this miracle, no, not a miracle but what is more than possible when the power of human solidarity is unleashed!-is barely mentioned in the big-business media here but is widely known and followed in Latin America. It is another glorious page in the history of the revolutionary internationalism of the Cuban revolution, carried out by the children of Ernesto Che Guevara, a new generation who say Si Se Puede! Revolutionary Cuba's response to the stepped-up threats, provocations, and obvious plans and hopes in Washington to be able to fabricate a pretext for direct military attack is what it has always been-the mobilization of the people, the military training and arming of the working class, peasantry, youth, women-all the Cuban people-the total reliance for the defense and sovereignty of the country and Revolution on the armed and mobilized masses. Today all supporters of freedom and justice in Latin America must step up our solidarity with Venezuela and with revolutionary Cuba. Defense of Venezuela and Cuba is the key to further advances and unity against neoliberal policies, U.S. intervention, and social progress in "our  America." It is also key to forging ties of solidarity and mutual support to working-class struggles here in the United States with our brothers and sisters in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. It is not only a question of George W. Bush. Democratic Party candidate John Kerry has publicly stated that Bush has not been tough enough on the Venezuelan government. This month Kerry reiterated his position stating that "democracy is at risk" in Venezuela, and restated his support for economic sanctions against Cuba. Kerry attacked the solidarity between Venezuela and Cuba as a threat to the "national security" of the United States. We are in a highly contradictory and explosive period in world politics, which we must learn how to navigate with skill and daring. U.S. imperialism has unparalleled and fearsome military might but its political and moral ability and authority to use that might has never been weaker. Today the entire world-and the American people as well-are horrified by the images of torture, brutalization, human degradation, and humiliation that are now pouring out of Iraq. And we know they are just the tip of the iceberg.  The apologists for the U.S. Empire and their media servants want us to think such practices are an "aberration," a "mistake" limited to a few misguided grunts and lowlifes at the bottom of the chain. All of us here know this is a Big Lie! The history of U.S. policy in Latin America-up to the present day! -exposes this lie. Torture of the most bestial kind has always been central to U.S. policy in Latin America; it is taught to U.S. lackeys at the School of the America in Georgia, it is in U.S. training manuals, U.S. firms manufacture torture instruments that have been exported to Latin American regimes. We know the truth about the U.S.-backed and sustained regimes of torture and murder in  Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Pinochet's Chile, the 100,000 murdered in Guatemala, the 70,000 murdered in El Salvador, the 30,000 tortured and murdered to death in Batista's U.S.-backed whorehouse for imperialism which was wiped out by the Cuban Revolution. We know, millions know, and now millions, tens and hundreds of millions will again learn the real face of imperialism. This strengthens our fight! Again, Malcolm X put it best: "American democracy is nothing but disguised hypocrisy." Bush and Powell bleat, "this is not America." But it is precisely their America-not what Jose Marti called "our America,"-the America of the working people, including inside the United States. What happened in Abu Ghraib prison happens every day in the prisons, the racist dungeons, of their America. Their America has institutionalized torture and "sexual" humiliation in U.S. prisons where forced rape is openly tolerated and promoted-and the subject of "jokes" by so-called comedians. This is the face of imperialism and not only the U.S. dominant brand. In Algeria, the French imperialists murdered one million Algerians under a regime of generalized torture. The "civilized" British imperialists used the most sadistic torture in Kenya against Mau-Mau freedom fighters and in other colonial "possessions", no to speak of Northern Ireland. Torture-humiliation-degradation-this is the face of imperialism. It is futile and ridiculous to imagine that imperialism can act in any other way than it does, that it can be reformed or utilized for "humanitarian" purposes. As Malcolm X said, "A chicken can not produce a duck egg." I was struck by the posters that were prominent at the May 14 mobilization of over 1 million Cubans in Havana, led by Fidel and Raul. They were blown-up photos of the sexual humiliation and torture carried out by the U.S. occupation army at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. The posters read: "This would never happen in Cuba." Even groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch which unjustly attack Cuba for defending itself against open U.S. subversion and economic warfare have never documented and can never document a single case of torture in Cuban prisons, a single case of "disappearances," a single case of government "death squads" in Cuba. Not one! Cuba Solidarity New York is committed to building the broadest unity in the fight against Washington attempts to carry out military aggression against Venezuela and Cuba, and to intervene against the people's and growing resistance in Latin America. Unity in action in defense of self-determination and sovereignty. This is the key to building the kind of mass movement we will need to face the permanent crisis, permanent struggle, permanent instability that is today's world political reality. Let us unite for the battles ahead!

Forward until victory for the workers and peasants of Venezuela!

Long Live the internationalist spirit and example of the Cuban Revolution!