A century to be remembered: a synopsis of Cuban History
THE 19th century ended badly for Cubans. In 1898, the United States’ opportunistic intervention in the war against Spanish colonial rule, which Cuban patriots were on the verge of winning, frustrated hopes for sovereignty and independence.
In terms of time, more than 100 years have passed since then; but in terms of history, much more took place in this Caribbean island than in the 19 previous centuries.
FROM SPANISH COLONY TO U.S. NEOCOLONY
Tomás Estrada Palma's assumption of power on May 20, 1902, with the consent of the U.S. military governor, Leonard Wood, who ran the electoral process, signaled the start of the neocolonial republic in Cuba.
With the dissolution of the Cuban Revolutionary Party on December 30, 1898, two days before the official start of the U.S. military occupation, the delegate Tomás Estrada Palma, successor to José Martí in the post, delivered a mortal blow to the yet to be born republic. Cuba was already in crisis at this point, mainly due to Spanish colonialism, but also because of the U.S. military occupation and its consequences of hunger, poverty and unemployment.
The fragmentation of the national revolutionary political organization and ideological confusion, with evident distortions in the revolutionary and anti-imperialist thinking of José Martí, exacerbated the situation.
"At this point in which the republic has emerged into the active life of nations with a treasury drained of resources, in these distressing times when we have no market for our products and when the U.S. government is denying us trade reciprocity, at this moment when the country is suffering the effects of a terrible crisis and the rich countryside of Cuba has been devastated, farms are destitute, agriculture destroyed, commerce ruined and industry brought to a standstill, we need everyone to make an effort to save the country from bankruptcy." This was how a journalist reminded the recently elected president of the aspirations and hopes placed in him and the reality faced by the nation.
Nevertheless, the political "errors" and the economic policies of the first president of the republic placed Cuba at the mercy of its powerful neighbor.
In the first year of Estrada Palma's administration, the United States and Cuba approved a reciprocal trade agreement in December 1902 and a permanent trade agreement in May 1903 which shaped relations between the two countries. The text of the latter document included the Platt Amendment, appendix to the 1901 Cuban Constitution, which restricted independence and sovereignty by legalizing the imperialist right to intervene in Cuba’s internal affairs.
As if this were not enough, an agreement was signed for the lease of coaling stations or naval stations (July 1903) which allowed the usurpation, still in force today, of national territory for a U.S. military base in the eastern province of Guantánamo.
Estrada Palma, distancing himself from his initial position of being non-partisan, joined the Moderate Party (founded by the conservative-republican Havana faction at the end of 1904) and encouraged by it, formed what was known as the Combat Cabinet, which sidelined all those who did not share his reelection aspirations.
From this point onwards, a series of outrages was unleashed against all government opposition, and conservative republicans from Villa Clara and nationalist Liberals from Havana decided to found the Liberal Party.
Remote from the problems of the Cuban people, the moderates and Liberals became embroiled in a bourgeois political conflict which became a civil war after Estrada Palma assumed the presidency for the second time on May 20, 1906.
The president and the more extreme moderates had rejected an understanding with the Liberals who, little more than a month later, rose up against the breach of norms set out for the organization of elections, won shamelessly by the Moderates.
Estrada Palma, a puppet of the U.S. government and the conservative and reactionary classes in Cuba, requested direct intervention. When that intervention was delayed, he resigned while his potential successors followed his example.
The United States didn’t waste time. On September 29 a provisional government led by U.S. Secretary of War William H. Taft was installed and it lasted until October 13, when he was succeeded by Charles E. Magoon, who had worked in the Insular Affairs Office of the State Department and as governor of the Panama Canal Zone. A new era had begun with the second U.S. intervention in Cuba.
On January 28, 1909, Magoon handed over the neocolonial government to the elected Liberal candidate José Miguel Gómez.
GOOD TIMES TURN BAD
Under the presidency of Mario García Menocal, one of the generals who fought in the 1895 war and who later became a wealthy landowner, Cuba experienced an economic boom which the president and his apologists attempted to portray as an achievement of their government.
Control of rice imports and sugar exports, the price of which had rocketed with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, turned out to be very profitable for García Menocal, whom the workers nicknamed "the Kaiser," and for U.S. monopolies that strengthened their penetration into the Cuban economy with his help.
While the exploiters accumulated millions, the people, who earned salaries well below the high prices, fell victim to scarcity, political corruption and a fraudulent government where the system of botellas (pork-barrel jobs) entailed spending 15 million pesos a year. The government even went as far as to use the war for its own political ends by putting its opponents on trial on the charge of being "German lovers."
Declaring war against Germany just 24 hours after the United States did so, the government allowed the deployment of 2,600 soldiers in Cuba. They were stationed at Camagüey in 1917 and did not withdraw until 1922.
During Menocal's administration (1913-1921), the Bank Liquidation Act was approved, delivering a mortal blow to Cuban banking, already reeling from the sudden drop in prices at the end of the war, by imposing requirements which only foreign banks backed by their head office could fulfill. In this way, the transfer of the financial sector, sugar, land and property into U.S. hands took place.
This government did not even engage in the practice of constructing public buildings, as previous corrupt governments had done. Some U.S. newspapers even claimed that the government was "more American than Cuban," and everything he did accentuated the decline of the battered neocolonial republic.
THE REVOLUTION OF THE THIRTIES BORE FRUIT IN 1959
In his book La Revolución del 30 se fue a la bolina (The Revolution of 1930 Went Out the Window), Raúl Roa, one of the participants in the events of the time, defines the "30s generation as a compendium in three stages: "the one that sprang up in 1923, symbolized by Julio Antonio Mella and Rubén Martínez Villena; the one that emerged between 1927 and 1930, personified by Rafael Trejo, Antonio Guiteras and Pablo de la Torriente-Brau; and the one that grew fast, becoming involved in the 1933 revolutionary struggle, and which continues to be embodied by these three exemplary combatants." He wrote that genuine revolutionaries represent a minority in the struggle, while "the majority is made up of opportunists, charlatans, political hangers-on, nonentities, reactionaries, self-seekers and turncoats."
According to Roa, this minority, which assumed a strong position in the struggle against imperialism and its lackeys, "wanted more than it was capable of achieving: it had a clear view of the problems facing Cuba at that time, but it did not know how to solve them."
In 1930, the Gerardo Machado administration represented the bankruptcy of the pseudo-republic.
As a consequence of the capitalist world crisis, from 1929 onward stocks of sugar had begun to pile up in the warehouses due to lack of demand on the international market. During the summer of 1932 sugar dropped to its lowest price ever, and starting that year, most of the public sector employees and people on retirement pensions and allowances did not receive their payments.
In addition, there was the repression, kidnappings and murders of workers and student leaders, among them Julio Antonio Mella, one of the founders of the first Cuban Communist Party in 1925, who was murdered in Mexico in 1929 by order of dictator Machado, whom Mella had described as a "tropical Mussolini."
Raúl Roa said, "The objective conditions were, if not ripe, then almost ready for the emergence of a mass movement in the anti-imperialist struggle for power which would involve, at the same time, the overthrow of tyranny and the recovery of national wealth from foreign ownership."
Nevertheless, "the vanguard is lacking, the unity of thought and action, the clarity of goals... the revolutionary impetus did not have a course or direction congruent with its subsequent development and for this reason it became lost in a confused struggle that favored the revenge of imperialism and the forces acting at its behest," Roa explained.
With the demonstration of September 30, 1930, called for by the University Student Directorate which, from the Patio de los Laureles of the University of Havana, laid down a challenge for the dictatorship, "the only solution to the Cuban problem is the end of the current regime and the immediate resignation of the president of the Republic." This event signaled the real beginning of student involvement in the ruthless struggle against Machado, which had as its banner Rafael Trejo, killed in action.
The year 1932 stands out as the time when a change took place in relations between the United States and South American countries due to the arrival in power of Democratic U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ambassador Guggenheim, a close associate of Machado in numerous illegal dealings, was replaced by Sumner Welles.
The moment was conducive to the intensification of the struggle against the dictator, and the White House decided to intervene by calling for the establishment of a "constitutional government." In this way, it concealed its intention of bringing to a halt all violent or political activity carried out by the opposition, intent on bringing down the regime and replacing it with another without Washington's consent.
The bourgeoisie and petit bourgeoisie immediately supported the intervention while many well-known figures and organizations, among them the Communist Party, the National Workers’ Confederation of Cuba (CNOC), the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DEU), the Student Left-Wing, fought against it from the outset.
The general strike, under the auspices of Martinez Villena, suddenly emerged out of a bus stoppage, undermined the intervention and eventually ended it. On August 6, 1933, the strike spread to all parts of the country.
The brutal massacre on August 7, when the crowd celebrated the fall of the dictator with street parties, setting fire to the homes of Machado's supporters and executing his followers and henchmen, strengthened and inflamed the strike.
The DEU, the Student Left-Wing, the Communist Party and the CNOC played a key role in bringing about the downfall of the dictator on August 12, 1933.
Nevertheless, the United States attempted to prop up the situation with a government manufactured in the U.S. embassy in Havana, with the consent of the majority of the military leadership and ABC (a small petit bourgeois organization), among others.
The transitional government left intact the structure and even the judicial and repressive instruments of the overthrown regime. There was intense unrest throughout the island and the atmosphere among the workers was one of alarm.
THE 100-DAY GOVERNMENT
After the insurrection by army sergeants and soldiers, the Grau-Guiteras government or "100-Day Government" was installed on September 4. Ephemeral as its name suggests, heterogeneous in composition and of a national and reformist nature, with anti-imperialist leaning on its left wing, it was headed by Antonio Guiteras.
Guiteras' introduction of revolutionary measures such as an eight-hour working day and a minimum wage, a government takeover of the U.S. electricity and telephone companies, a 45% reduction in electricity charges, the dissolution of the old Machado-linked traditional political parties, and a bill for land redistribution, as well as Ramón Grau San Martín's zigzag politics, all combined to disconcert Fulgencio Batista and the September 4 sergeants, who were alarmed at the radical nature being assumed by the revolution. Under pressure from Welles, whose government refused to recognize that of Grau, they began to conspire with the U.S. embassy.
The treason of then Colonel Batista, who represented the best guarantee for U.S. business and property, was not long in occurring. In a tumultuous meeting at the Colombia Military Center on January 15, 1934, he attempted to justify his attitude to the Revolutionary Council, and Grau resigned the presidency.
Growing opposition to the "new regime" (Batista-Caffery-Mendieta) resulted in a general strike in March 1935. Lacking armed backing and undertaken despite a lack of unity among the revolutionary forces, it was violently crushed and followed by a wave of terror against the labor and revolutionary movement.
In May of the same year, the final vestiges of armed resistance were wiped out with Grau's assassination.
In Raúl Roa's view, the bloody defeat of the 1935 general strike was the precise moment of the collapse of the 1933 revolution.
As in 1868 and 1895, the ‘33 revolution set out to re-conquer the sovereignty and self-determination of the island—under U.S. control since 1902—but went further by proposing structural and super structural changes. However, the commitment demanded by Villena—"to kill rogues and complete the work of the revolutions"—was not to arrive until 1959, with the triumph of the armed insurrection organized and led by Fidel Castro.
A HIGHLY PROGRESSIVE CONSTITUTION
Signed on July 1, 1940, in Guáimaro, the Constitution of the Republic was, in legal terms, the delayed result of what the revolutionary and popular movement had attained in the difficult battle against the Machado regime.
In essence progressive, it came into force on October 10, 1940, and was in effect, although unfulfilled and ridiculed, until March 10, 1952, when Batista suppressed it totally, replacing it with the so-called Good Friday constitutional statutes.
In addition to the individual rights postulated in all bourgeois constitutions from the 1789 French Revolution onward, the text also contains influences from the 1936 Soviet Constitution, which prescribes, among other elements, the formation of a new socialist industry and the elimination of the wealthy landowning or "kulak" class; as well as the results of the Social Reform Movement developed on the island, which had three essential directions: the right to work, social security and the equitable distribution of wealth.
After a lengthy battle, social and economic improvement measures were raised to the rank of constitutional principles, an aspect praised by international jurists.
Nevertheless, a large proportion of the measures needed complementary legislation for their practical execution, and the post-‘40 governments blocked such laws from being passed, in order to safeguard the interests of the exploiting classes.
Moreover, many of the legal principles were restricted in their objectives by the neocolonial republican structure, as was the case of the latifundio principle (Article 90).
The 1940 Constitution was the first political constitution in the Americas to directly tackle the problem of large privately-owned estates. However, this problem was not eliminated until after the revolutionary triumph, with the Agrarian Reform Act, issued on May 17, 1959.
Worthy of special attention is the constitutional guarantee conferred on the courts, and the legitimization of resistance to oppression. Taken together, they guaranteed compliance with the constitution in two distinct forms: through law and through armed resistance.
In spite of the social reforms structured through constitutional norms, Cuba's political and socioeconomic realities did not change.
MONCADA: A SEED ON FERTILE GROUND
Although it was a heavy setback in military terms and failed to achieve its immediate objectives, the attack mounted on the Guillermón Moncada and Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Garrisons in eastern Cuba on July 26, 1953, demonstrated that, in those conditions, armed action was the appropriate method of struggle.
Prepared and executed by a youthful group inspired by the pro-liberation ideas of José Martí and led by Fidel, it served as an antecedent and an experience for the days of the cabin cruiser Granma expedition, warfare in the Sierra Maestra and the underground struggle in the cities.
With the failure of the surprise factor they had counted on, after almost two hours and 45 minutes of fighting a garrison of 1000 men, and with their munitions almost exhausted, Fidel ordered a retreat in the direction of Siboney Farm—where they had stayed before launching the attack on the fort in a caravan of 16 cars containing 158 men and two women, Melba Hernández and Haydée Santamaría—and from there, to the Sierra Maestra, to continue the struggle in the mountains.
The army launched itself like an enraged beast on a defenseless population and those taken prisoner in the Moncada action. A veritable slaughter commenced. The survivors were tried, sentenced and carted off to prison. The intrepid action and the famous condemnation of the regime in La historia me absolverá (History Will Absolve Me)—Fidel's self-defense plea at his trial—in which he dealt with the problems of land, industrialization, housing, unemployment, education and public health, "to which our efforts are resolutely directed, together with the conquest of civil liberties and political democracy," fell on fertile ground. The seed was to germinate six years later.
THE FREEDOM MARCH REACHES HAVANA
"Fidel arrives today," announced the daily Hoy on its front page of January 8, 1959. "The Freedom March," was how the newspaper Revolución described the rebel column of 1000 men led by Fidel which reached Havana that day, after 25 months of warfare, bringing to an end the colonial and neocolonial domination endured by the Cuban people throughout five and a half centuries.
"Full citizens’ rights have been established with the overthrow of the dictatorship," Fidel exclaimed in the central province of Santa Clara. With delirious enthusiasm, people had rushed out into the streets and Cuban flags festooned doors and balconies. Batista’s dictatorship, responsible for the death of 20,000 Cubans, had been defeated.
Fort Columbia, the army’s former general staff from which the dictator fled in an airplane to the Dominican Republic in the early hours of January 1, was literally invaded by a people in need of real justice, something that had been snatched from them time and time again.
Fidel stated: "We must not deceive ourselves into thinking that everything will be easier in the future," a pronouncement made 41 years ago which still has incredible validity today.
With the instigation of the Moncada Program, the Revolution began its truly victorious march.
41 YEARS OF CONFRONTATION WITH THE UNITED STATES
From the moment of its triumph, the history of the Cuban Revolution has also been one of 41 years of confrontation with the United States. As of 1995, this confrontation signified additional costs in excess of $60 billion USD, a fact that has directly affected the Cuban people insofar as it has also blocked the acquisition of medicines, foodstuffs and other necessary items, as recognized in a report by the United Nations Development Program.
While in historical terms the Revolution has been a single continuous process (1868, 1895, 1933, 1959) and maintained a unity of action throughout those 100 years, based on independence and social justice, the policy of successive U.S. administrations has likewise remained the same. That nation has acted as if it still lived in the 19th century.
The historical conflict goes back to the very beginning of that nation, when President Jefferson announced the intention of annexing Cuba to those initial 13 colonies which gained their independence. That was a consistent trend throughout the entire 19th century during which, as José Martí explained, the United States even conspired to leave the island in Spanish hands until it was ready to seize it, as it did in 1898, when the United States intervened in the war being waged against the Spanish metropolis by Cuban patriots.
In an attempt to group together the pretexts employed against the Revolution by the superpower, scholars have divided the dispute into three stages after January 1, 1959.
Stage One: From 1959 and throughout the ’60s, the initial steps were taken in a multifaceted war: on the military, diplomatic, terrorist, political and economic fronts.
Stage Two: The island became less vulnerable to economic sanctions, due to the establishment of relations with the former Soviet Union and the socialist bloc, and was incorporated into the East-West confrontation. It was thus accused of being a satellite of the USSR, of exporting revolution to Central America and of constituting a military threat to the United States.
Stage Three: The Soviet Union was dismembered and socialism in the Eastern European nations disintegrated. Taking advantage of the resultant unipolarity, the U.S. authorities intensified the blockade and passed the Torricelli Act (1992) and Helms-Burton Act (1996), intended to extend sanctions to a multilateral level and to give them a global connotation, as well as to curtail foreign investment in Cuba after the island had opened its economy to foreign capital as a strategy for emerging from the crisis.
During the first year of the Revolution, the United States reduced the quota of sugar that Cuba exported to that country and then eliminated it completely; it also prohibited oil refining in its installations. Political and diplomatic pressures by Washington led to Cuba’s expulsion from the Organization of American States (OAS). That government likewise managed to pressure all the Latin American nations, with the sole exception of Mexico, to break off relations with Havana.
However, long before any revolutionary measures were promulgated, the United States had already welcomed the criminals who fled from Cuba to escape justice, ignoring the extradition treaty in force at that time.
AGRARIAN REFORM
When the Agrarian Reform Act was passed on May 1959, U.S. hostility entered into a more overt and complex phase.
Designed to provide food for the vast majority of Cubans, a secure life for millions of people, and direct or indirect employment to a large percentage of persons without work, it earned the opposition of Washington, which was certainly not prepared to accept the nationalization of large U.S. and Cuban-owned estates, even with a compensation receivable in a reasonable time and terms.
Direct aggression aimed at economic targets, carried out by the United States or with its complicity, began in the final months of that year.
Nevertheless, as Comandante Camilo Cienfuegos had declared during his last public speech in Havana, "Even if the sky falls, agrarian reform is going ahead!"
And indeed, that reform went full speed ahead, in spite of seven pirate attacks by "civilian" aircraft, carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency and the counterrevolution, flying out of U.S. territory and dropping subversive propaganda and even weapons and bombs.
Moreover, every hostile gesture or act was met with a revolutionary response from a people defending its freedom and sovereignty.
In the face of the bombardment of military bases in Havana’s Ciudad Libertad, of San Antonio de los Baños to the west of the city, and of the Santiago de Cuba civilian airport, the response was not long in coming: the socialist nature of the Revolution was proclaimed in an impressive popular demonstration of mourning for the fallen, held at the busy Havana intersection of 23rd and 12th Streets, on April 15, 1961.
BAY OF PIGS: FIRST U.S. MILITARY DEFEAT IN AMERICA
On April 16 of that year came the invasion along the beach at the Bays of Pigs which in less than 72 hours would become U.S. imperialism’s first defeat in the Americas and, without any doubt, one of the most relevant events of the Revolution in the 20th century.
Plotted, organized, financed and executed by the U.S. government and the CIA—as evidenced by witnesses and declassified U.S. documents during the 1999 human damages hearing in Havana against the government of that nation—the invasion cost the lives of 176 persons and left a total of more than 300 wounded and 50 maimed for life.
In spite of napalm gas launched during the attack—carried out without any prior announcement of war—and in spite of the 1511 mercenaries forming the brigade, 194 of whom were former soldiers from Batista's army, equipped with U.S. army regulation weapons, the National Revolutionary Militia was once again victorious.
THE MISSILE CRISIS
On October 22, the United States decreed a naval blockade of the Cuban archipelago, after a U.S. spy plane detected the presence on the island of Soviet nuclear missiles, installed to dissuade that empire from preparing a further invasion, the plans for which had already started with war exercises in the vicinity of the island.
It is worth recalling that the United States’ defeat at the Bay of Pigs placed the United States at a political disadvantage, and aggression was stepped up in the form of subversive activities, sabotage, attempts on Fidel’s life and direct military aggression, all part of Operation Mongoose.
During that period, described as "sad and luminous" by Ernesto Che Guevara, the country put itself on a defensive footing.
When talks were held between the Soviet Union and the United States to reach a solution to the Missile Crisis, the Cuban argument was not taken into account. The revolutionary government drew up an independent program summarizing a demand for respect for the island’s sovereignty, an end to the aggression and the return of its territory occupied by the U.S. Guantánamo Naval Base. This demand which has been ignored to this day.
BACTERIOLOGICAL WARFARE
Blights aimed at crops and animals, sugarcane defoliants, bacteria that attacks sugar and viruses affecting human beings were all included in U.S. plans for bacteriological warfare against Cuba drawn up from the early ’60s.
Between 1979 and 1981 Cubans were hit by hemorrhagic conjunctivitis and hemorrhagic dengue epidemics, and crops vital to the economy were affected by sugarcane rust and blue tobacco mold.
A toll of 158 deaths, including those of 101 children, was the cost of the hemorrhagic dengue epidemic, which infected hundreds of people and, according to the Washington publication Covert Action, was introduced into Cuba by the CIA-Pentagon duo. While being tried for murder in 1984, Eduardo Arocena, leader of the Omega 7 terrorist group, admitted his part in the 1980 operation to introduce viruses as part of the warfare against the island.
Such acts of terrorism have never stopped. On September 4, 1997, Salvadoran Raúl Ernesto Cruz León was detained in Havana after placing explosive devices in various hotels in the capital and in the well-known La Bodeguita del Medio restaurant. As a result of these explosions, a young Italian tourist died and seven persons were injured.
Cuban investigations and information from the U.S. press reveal that Cruz León belonged to a mercenary network organized and financed by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). Known terrorist and CIA-FBI Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind of the sabotage of a Cubana Airlines passenger plane that exploded in mid-flight in October 1976 with 73 persons on board, was also involved.
Moreover, it is a known fact that Posada was working for the White House in the trafficking of drugs and arms in Central America, and in 1998, he was in charge of the operation to assassinate Fidel during his visit to the Dominican Republic.
In November 1997, another group of terrorists were arrested during the course of an attempt on the life of the Cuban president during his participation at the 7th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government on the Venezuelan island of Margarita. But in spite of unequivocal evidence of guilt presented in court, they were released in an unbelievable farce of a trial. Reuters news agency noted that after the verdict was announced, some members of the jury embraced the accused while still in court. Commenting on the trial on December 5, 1999, The New York Times stated that the seven individuals involved in the assassination attempt had links with the CANF and, some years back, two of them worked with the CIA.
We cannot overlook the Cuban Adjustment Act, in effect in the United States since 1966, guaranteeing legal residence to Cuban émigrés who set foot on U.S. soil. This law incites illegal exits and endangers people’s lives. Nonetheless, William Brownfield, assistant undersecretary of state for hemispheric affairs, confirmed last year in Havana that the law will continue to be applied.
The most dramatic victim of that practice to date is little Elián González who, after being rescued from the sea off the Florida coast, has had his return to the island blocked. He has been virtually kidnapped by distant relatives even though his father—who has been recognized as his legal guardian—is claiming custody of him in Cuba. The CANF, meanwhile, wants him as a standard bearer for its anti-Cuba industry.
INTERNATIONALISM: A VOCATION
Without any doubt, Cubans are a people with an internationalist vocation. That beautiful tradition is in the nation’s genes. The list of Cuban internationalists is endless, and includes Pablo de la Torriente-Brau, who fell fighting on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War; and Ernesto Che Guevara, an Argentine but also a Cuban and a man of America, murdered in Bolivia while attempting to realize the dream of a united and independent America cherished by Simón Bolívar and José Martí.
Innumerable missions in many nations have been undertaken since the triumph of the Revolution. "More than 500,000 of our compatriots have taken part in tough and difficult missions of that nature," affirmed Fidel in a speech at the Central University of Venezuela’s Aula Magna, on February 3, 1999.
In October 1962, at the inauguration of the Victoria de Girón Basic and Preclinical Science Institute, Fidel affirmed the willingness of the Cuban government to help other countries. The first internationalist contingent of Cuban doctors left for Algeria on May 23, 1963.
To date, without counting the cost, 26,000 doctors have carried out their humanitarian labors under highly difficult conditions, in virtually inaccessible locations, receiving the immense gratitude of many poor people who were treated by a doctor for the first time. One example of the Cuban health brigades’ dedication is that the first heart operation performed in Tanzania was by a Cuban medical team in 1978.
Caribbean islands like Haiti, Central and Southern American communities and more recently, the Venezuelan people —all mercilessly lashed by natural disasters—have been witness to the selfless efforts of Cuban doctors and health personnel.
This colossal effort has been ignored by those who definitely do not represent the 800 million malnourished, the one billion illiterates, four billion poor and 11 million under-five’s who die every year from preventable or curable diseases, along with malnutrition and poverty.
Not only have Cubans lent their services outside the island. Within it, many Third World men and women have studied and trained as professionals. The schools on the Isle of Youth off the southern coast of Cuba have been a second home for many of them.
The most recent example is the Latin American School of Medicine, inaugurated last year in Havana during the 9th Ibero-American Summit of Heads of State and Government, where more than 1000 young people from the region are already studying.
At the inauguration ceremony, Fidel explained that the idea came about after two terrible hurricanes lashed Central America and the Caribbean. He explained that the school will eventually train 8000 students, given that 1500 will be matriculating every year, 500 of them from Central America and 1000 from other nations.
But the island’s internationalism is not limited to medical professionals alone. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have worked as technical staff, educators, sports trainers, construction workers and even as combatants in various Third World countries.
We can never forget those who gave up their lives fighting the soldiers of apartheid on Angolan soil.
In his speech in Venezuela, Fidel recalled when Nicaragua put in a request for 1,000 teachers. "We asked for volunteers and 30,000 Cubans came forward; but when the armed bands of the dirty war against the Sandinistas, organized and equipped by the United States, murdered some of our teachers—who weren’t working in the cities, but rather in the most remote rural areas living in the same conditions as the campesinos—a further 100,000 offered their services."
"For that reason, I talk of ideas, of awareness. That’s why I believe in what I say, that’s why I believe in people... It has been demonstrated that awareness and the idea of solidarity and internationalism can reach mass levels," he affirmed.
SPECIAL PERIOD
The nation has confronted difficult years as a consequence of the collapse of the socialist bloc, the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the intensification of the blockade mounted by the United States, which emerged in the ’90s as the sole superpower in a unipolar world.
The island, 85% of whose trade had been with the Soviet Union, found itself at the mercy of unequal terms of trade and the protectionist policies of other powerful nations; in other words, under the same market laws which have the underdeveloped nations in their grip. In order to reorient its economy it had no option but to insert itself in the world market.
In just two years (1990-1992), Cuba saw its purchasing power abroad reduced by 50%, and was obliged to sell its sugar for the first time at non-preferential prices, and to find new market sources for supplies. In order to maintain its technology, it had to adapt in some cases and manufacture parts in others, and even to make virtually new investments.
An economy that consumed 13 million tons of oil in 1989 was unable to aspire to more than six million tons in 1992. A major organizational effort was necessary to move forward.
Measures were drawn up. The Revolution concentrated its resources on development plans that would give the nation some purchasing power and, as distinct from implementing the neoliberal policies being applied to health and educational programs by many governments in the region, ensured their maintenance, albeit with certain affectations. Moreover, available fuel was utilized to produce and transport food to the population.
The food program was a real challenge, but agriculture was not exempted from a savings plan. Textured soy was used in the manufacture of meat products and cereal processed with milk was used in the place of fresh milk.
Within the internal order, one of the most important measures applied was the restriction on fuel supplies, given their repercussion on all other activities.
Lengthy power cuts, the massive use of bicycles as a means of transportation, and an increase in animal traction in agriculture have characterized what has been known as the special period in peacetime.
Other measures taken to revitalize the economy were the island’s opening to foreign capital investment through joint ventures, principally in the tourism sector; the impulse given to productive and service activities generating a hard currency income; the de-penalization of dollar possession; and an acceleration in the marketing and export of products from the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
The blockade deprives Cuba of essential supplies from abroad, markets for its products to offset import costs, and indispensable commercial credits, in violation of the most basic agreements and international human rights conventions. Moreover, as the American Association for World Health recognized, this unfounded genocidal act is depriving the Cuban people of foodstuffs and medicines in peacetime. As such, it is provoking growing protest, including within the United States itself.
LAWSUIT AGAINST U.S. FOR HUMAN AND ECONOMIC DAMAGES
Hearings regarding the lawsuits demanding compensation from the United States for human and economic damages to the people of Cuba were held in Havana, during which considerable evidence and arguments were presented. The suit for human damages demanded that the U.S. government pay compensation totaling $181.1 billion USD, and the suit for economic damages called for $121 billion.
Rulings No. 110 and 47, corresponding to civil cases 88 of the year 1999 and 1 of the year 2000, filed in the First Civil and Administrative Court of People’s Power in City of Havana, declared the successive U.S. administrations guilty of having carried out an aggressive policy and economic warfare against Cuba for more than 40 years.
Disturbing testimony by 193 witnesses retold the tragedies suffered by numerous Cuban families, due to actions which resulted in the deaths of 3,478 persons and serious injury to 2,099 others.
The evidence for the lawsuit for human damages, for which public hearings were held July 5-20, 1999, included 27 documents declassified by the U.S. government, confirming the commission acts of sabotage and terrorism against the Cuban people, along with the frustrated mercenary attack at the Bay of Pigs and Washington’s hostile policy.
The acts of banditry in Pinar del Río, in the Escambray mountains and from the Guantánamo naval base were given as the most eloquent proof for the lawsuits’ arguments.
The application of war measures in peacetime aimed at subverting the economic, political and social order were brought to light in the lawsuit regarding economic damages, in which the testimony of more than 100 witnesses and 33 experts was presented.
There was no official U.S. government recognition of these lawsuits and authorities arrogantly rejected the validity of these legal proceedings, telling the foreign press that they were of scant importance for international law.
The lawsuits were filed by mass and social organizations representing all of Cuban society, and for the people of Cuba the hearings constituted a reaffirmation of the revolutionary process.