Presentation made by Abel Prieto, president of the Casa de las Americas, from Cuba, on Cuban Socialism during a Seminar on Socialism in Latin America, organized by the Perseo Abramo Foundation of the PT of Brazil last Saturday, April 10, in a virtual conference.
NOTES ON CUBAN SOCIALISM
(TABLE DEBATES THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA)
I want to thank the invitation of the Brazilian Workers Party and the Perseu Abramo Foundation to intervene in this debate. I send a special greeting to comrade Iole Iliada, comrade Valter Pomar and panelists Tomás Moulian and Paul Oquist.
I also apologize for presenting my recorded intervention, since we cannot use the Zoom platform in Cuba because of the Yankee blockade.
I am not going to try to make a presentation with theoretical pretensions, much less comprehensive, of what the Cuban model of socialism has meant, which was not elaborated in a laboratory or copied from other experiences. It was brewing over many years of struggle, resistance, frontal clashes against the world’s leading power, its allies and lackeys.
I am going to comment on some topics that I consider useful for the debate.
(1)
We should start by saying that the triumph of socialism in Cuba was something that was not foreseen in any manual. An underdeveloped island in the Caribbean, subjected to the neo-colonial rule of the United States, with a limited industry, reduced to sugar production, nickel, and not much else, with a small proletariat and a large illiterate peasant population, who worked a part of the year, when there was a harvest, because the rest of the time it suffered what was called “dead time.” A courageous Communist Party, always under siege, with influence in the union sectors, but not beyond. A Party, moreover, a disciplined follower of Moscow’s guidelines, which did not understand the Moncada assault until long after it occurred.
According to schematic Marxism, there were no objective conditions for a radical revolution to take place in Cuba. On the contrary, for Fidel, Raúl and the other young people who attacked the Moncada, the subjective conditions had created a propitious revolutionary situation in 1953.
There is a shocking entry that Che makes in his campaign diary in Bolivia, exactly on July 26, 1967. There he tells that that night he gave the guerrilla combatants “a little talk about the meaning of July 26; rebellion against the oligarchies and against revolutionary dogmas ”. An incredible synthesis of the double rupture that Moncada represented: the beginning of a frontal battle against the reactionary forces and an act that shattered all the dogmas on how to make a revolution.
It was like this: the Moncada broke all dogmas, and the Revolution that came to power in January 1959 also broke all dogmas. That expression by Mariátegui that socialism had to be a “heroic creation” in our lands, was fulfilled in Cuba to the letter.
Fidel declared the socialist character of the Cuban Revolution 60 years ago, on April 16, 1961, at the burial of the victims of the bombings that were the prelude to the invasion of Playa Girón.
There Fidel said that the imperialists could not forgive us for having carried out a socialist revolution right under their noses. And he summoned people to join the militia battalions. We are ready, he said, to give our lives for this “socialist and democratic revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble.”
That was a moment of impressive symbolic charge: the people mobilized before the imminent imperialist attack to defend the homeland and to defend socialism at the same time.
In two years and little more than three months, that is, between January 1, 1959 and April 16, 1961, the revolutionary process had dismantled the cultural effects of many decades of a neocolonial republic, of anti-communism, of McCarthyism, of exaltation of the Yankee model of life through all media.
The people knew what socialism really was, not through manuals or schools of revolutionary instruction, but through Fidel’s speeches, through the impact of the measures that were being adopted and through the committed and conscious participation in the process.
The thousands of workers who had been expelled from the factories during the tyranny were reinstated in their posts. A sharp reduction in housing rents was applied and the Urban Reform Law was signed. The Agrarian Reform laws benefited the most exploited and deprived sector of Cuba: the peasants. The country was filled with schools and books. In a single year, in 61 itself, illiteracy was eradicated.
(two)
The aggressiveness of the United States began in 1959. Imperial pride was particularly hurt by the bankruptcy of the dependency that had tied us to the Northern power since the end of the 19th century and by the nationalizations of refineries that refused process Soviet oil, electricity and telephone companies, large estates, sugar mills and other North American properties on the island.
On July 6, 1960, Eisenhower signed the law suspending the purchase of Cuban sugar by the United States.
On September 9, 1960, eight plots to assassinate Fidel are discovered.
On January 3, 1961, the United States broke its relations with Cuba and closed its embassy in Havana.
The total blockade against Cuba was imposed by Kennedy on February 7, 1962. During the 60 years of the blockade, Cuba has lost more than 930 billion US dollars. This siege of the Yankees affects all sectors of the Cuban economy with millionaire losses and prevents access to materials, products and services in the international market, essential for the Island. During the Trump period, 240 additional measures of suffocation were applied, plus perverse considering the pandemic. The Biden administration has made no changes.
Immediately after the triumph of 1959, sabotage began, the infiltration of terrorists, the bombardment of cane fields with incendiary materials, the hijacking of civilian airplanes, the pirate attacks on our coasts, on merchant ships, on fishing boats, the murder of Cuban diplomats. , the financing of armed groups in the mountains (people who killed peasants, teachers, entire families). In 1960 they blew up the French steamer La Coubre in the port of Havana, causing more than 100 deaths and a large number of wounded. There were sabotages in refineries, cinemas and stores to create an atmosphere of panic. The most monstrous thing was the attack on a Cuban civilian plane in mid-flight, in 1976, which cost 73 innocent lives.
To these actions must be added the bombs that they planted in 1997 in hotels and tourist facilities to scare away tourism and strip us of one of the few sources of foreign exchange that we had.
Successive US governments also attacked us through biological warfare: the African swine fever virus; pests to damage tobacco, sugarcane, banana, and bean plantations, and to ruin beekeeping, rabbit farming, and programs to develop cattle.
Dengue hemorrhagic fever, created in a laboratory, was introduced in Cuba in 1984 (something recognized by a leader of the terrorist organization Omega 7). More than 350 thousand people were contaminated with this virus. 158 died, including 101 children. Something very cruel.
And when the USSR and the countries of the socialist camp collapsed, our main trading partners, the Yankees opportunistically and brutally passed new laws to starve us down: the Torricelli and the Helms-Burton.
(3)
Building unity among revolutionaries has been a key factor in our socialism and in our resistance.
Three forces faced the Batista dictatorship: the July 26 Movement, the Popular Socialist Party (communist) and the University Student Directory. After the triumph of ’59, a work of great importance is carried out to achieve unity between them. First, in 1961, the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations were constituted; then, in 1962, the United Party of the Socialist Revolution of Cuba, which finally became, in 1965, the Communist Party of Cuba.
This construction of the unit is the work of Fidel. Perhaps one of his greatest works. For this, as for so many other things, he was inspired by Martí, who united independent Cubans of different generations to create the Cuban Revolutionary Party in 1892, which would lead the war against Spain and against the sinister plans of the young Northern Empire.
The overwhelming support of the people for our Party was expressed in the constitutional referendum on February 28, 2019, where 86.85% of the voters approved the new Magna Carta.
The Constitution defines our Party as the “organized vanguard of the Cuban nation” and “the superior leading political force of society and the State”. It is not, obviously, an electoral Party. It does not nominate candidates for the Municipal Assemblies or the National Assembly. It has a great prestige at the popular level; because its militants do not enjoy any kind of privilege and are morally obliged to face the most complex tasks.
The Party has rectified any exclusive, sectarian manifestation of dogmatism. At one time, for example, religious people could not join the Party. This was changed, and it was a step of enormous significance.
Something similar happened with the issue of homosexuality, where there were prejudices. For many years, the Party excluded this limitation from its selection and admission mechanisms and known homosexuals entered our Central Committee.
In the draft of the new constitution that we submitted to popular debate, we included equal marriage. There were religious sectors and macho people who were very adamant about approving this option. The solution found by the National Assembly Commission for this problem was correct: it was agreed to include equal marriage in the Family Code that will be put to a vote in the near future.
(4)
At the beginning of the Revolution we believed that the new man that Che was talking about was just around the corner. Over time we learned that, in people, along with admirable traits, along with true anticipations of that new man dreamed of, selfish, petty positions and unacceptable attitudes coexisted in the same way. In the so-called “special period” of the 90s of the last century, when the socialist camp collapsed and the USSR fell apart, vices that we believed had been eradicated flourished here with the crisis. Prostitution, pimping, forms of corruption much more serious than in other times were reborn. There were, without a doubt, ethical setbacks.
This led to a comprehensive, very in-depth analysis of all the educational instruments that we were using. There was a differentiated attention by social workers from dysfunctional families. The re-education work among adolescents and young people multiplied.
Fidel had previously called for the rectification of errors and negative trends that were noticed in the management of companies and in the economy in general. It was a tough battle against bureaucracy, corruption and economism.
Later, as you surely know, we have undertaken very bold transformations in the economic field, which include in our system a complementary role to non-state forms of production and services and foreign investment. Of course, the fundamental means of production remain and will remain in the hands of the state. And it is the socialist state enterprise, now with new attributions that give it ample freedom of action, the fundamental piece for the country to move forward.
Of course, the blockade of the United States, reinforced to unimaginable limits by Trump, continues to be a colossal obstacle for our country to achieve development.
Among our fundamental priorities are the increase of food production, the use of science in all fields, import substitution, the construction of houses with new methods, the recovery of tourism (to the extent that the pandemic makes it allow) and the successful application of the profound economic reform known as Task Order, with particular and differentiated attention to vulnerable people. The founding principles of the Cuban Revolution, “of the humble, with the humble and for the humble,” remain in full force.
(5)
The central nucleus of the Cuban political system rests in the Municipal Assembly. Its members are nominated in neighborhood meetings, directly by the neighbors, and elected by direct and secret vote by all the inhabitants of the municipality. Candidates for deputies of the National Assembly must be approved by each Municipal Assembly and by the citizens of the municipality. All of them can be revoked for breach of their duties as servants of the people.
A contribution to our participatory democracy comes from revolutionary civil society. These non-state organizations have had a very important weight in the popular debate of the most pressing issues and in facilitating the communication of the rank and file with the leaders of the Revolution.
(6)
The issue of human rights has been manipulated ad nauseam to judge Cuba. The main violators of these rights in the world, those who practice genocide and wage looting wars under the pretext of exporting “democracy”, those who have supported bloody dictatorships in all regions of the planet, those who legalized and practiced torture In the name of sacrosanct “national security”, they become judges of Cuba.
A basic human right, the right to life, has been a priority of our socialism, and the results are palpable. Infant mortality in Cuba, in a year marked by Covid-19, was 4.9 per thousand live births, which places us among the 35 countries with the best indicators in this area. As for the pandemic, although we are going through a re-outbreak, we have one of the lowest fatality rates in the world.
Not even in the so-called “special period”, in the 1990s, did the infant and maternal mortality rates deteriorate.
Universal and free health for all citizens without exception, universal and free education for all without exception, are pillars of Cuban socialism.
The right to a decent job, to a home, to access to culture, to actively participate in the destiny of your country and not through formal voting and increasingly sophisticated manipulations, all these rights have been guaranteed and guaranteed by the Cuban Revolution.
(7)
One of the central features of our socialism is internationalism.
When the Cuban Revolution triumphed, Algerians were still fighting French colonialism. And Cuba sends a ship with weapons for the Algerian fighters and that ship returns loaded with a hundred orphaned children who were cared for and educated on the island. After Algeria’s victory in 1962, that was the first country to receive medical aid solidarity of Cuba. In 1963, Cuban internationalist fighters participated in the rejection of Morocco’s aggression against Algeria.
The Cuban Revolution played a decisive role in Africa, in which Angola could maintain itself as a sovereign state, in the independence of Namibia and in the collapse of apartheid. During his visit to our country in 1991, Mandela spoke of how in Africa “we are used to being victims of other countries that want to break away our territory or subvert our sovereignty.” And he added: “Cuban internationalists made a contribution to independence, freedom and justice in Africa that is unparalleled for the principles and disinterest that characterize it.”
Mandela said something else, far-reaching: internationalism is not the exclusive patrimony of the Cuban leadership; but of the whole people. In the conscience of the Cuban population the idea took root that supporting other peoples, with doctors, teachers, and soldiers, is part of an elementary revolutionary duty. I remember that, in Nicaragua, at the time when the Yankees were waging a dirty war on the Sandinistas through the “contra”, they assassinated a Cuban teacher in an intricate region; and the following day 100 thousand teachers spontaneously offered themselves to fill the position, in the same region, of the murdered teacher.
When Cyclone Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, the Henry Reeve contingent was formed in Cuba and the US government was offered 1600 doctors to travel to the US to help. But they did not accept. They preferred that this humanitarian disaster continue rather than humble themselves by receiving help from such a loathed enemy.
Guatemala, devastated by Hurricane “Stan”; Pakistan, after the terrible earthquake that hit the Kashmir region; Haiti, victim of earthquakes, hurricanes and epidemics such as cholera; Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea Conakry, with the deadly outbreak of Ebola; all of these countries received the backing of the Henry Reeve contingent.
Cuban doctors have helped fight Covid-19 in many parts of the world. Although the reactionary media machine has tried to discredit them, our doctors have left everywhere lessons of nobility and solidarity.
Cuba’s internationalism has also manifested itself in the training of doctors in our country. From 1960 until today, Cuba has trained more than 37,200 health professionals from 147 countries.
The help that Cuba provided to children affected by the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Ukraine, is a page of solidarity that makes us proud.
One of the spheres where the superiority of socialism over capitalism is most clearly revealed is health. If the pharmaceutical industry is a business, if health services are a business, if the patient is seen as a customer, it all ends up being a macabre joke.
The pandemic has brought out the tragedy of neoliberalism in a very dramatic way. Inequalities have deepened like never before. The weakest, the discriminated against, the indigenous, the immigrants, those who live on the streets or in unhealthy huts or under bridges or in tunnels, have been cornered by disease and destined to wait for their hopeless death.
Right now, before our eyes, the neoliberal “for himself who can” takes center stage in the fight for vaccines.
Some worthy intellectuals have predicted a fairer post-pandemic world, in which ideas of equality and justice will find their way through the ruins of catastrophe. They are perhaps too optimistic. That higher post-pandemic world is going to depend largely on what those of us who fight for socialism can do. Rarely has that phrase by Rosa Luxemburg made so much sense: “socialism or barbarism”.
On the other hand, neo-fascism gains strength, organizes itself, re-recruits angry and desperate people, promotes racism, xenophobia, fanaticism.
When in January 2003, at an international event on Martí, in the midst of Bush’s global crusade against terrorism, foreign visitors asked Fidel what could be done, Fidel said: “sow ideas, sow awareness. He repeated it three times.
I think that, with this debate table, we are sowing ideas and awareness. And we must continue to do so.
Thank you.
Abel Prieto, Havana, April 10, 2021.
