[Shef2venez] Report from Cuba, including visit by Hugo Chavez

[John Smith]

Extremely interesting report from Cuba, by Steve Ludlam of Sheffield Cuba
Solidarity Campaign and the U of Sheffield's Politics Dept. It includes an
account of May 1st celebrations and of Hugo Chavez and Fidel at a gathering
of opponents of ALCA/NAFTA.

 

cheers

 

JS

 

 

 

 

A week as Foresto Gumpero

 

Seems like an age since I wrote anything to you, not least because so much
has happened in the last week. It’s hard to summarise but I need to make the
attempt if only for my own sake. To be honest I’d been getting a bit
frustrated with the pace of progress of my work with the CTC, until I
realised that the people in the International Relations Department who help
me were up to their ears organising incoming delegations to the 4th
Hemispheric Meeting Against ALCA, ALCA being the Free Trade Agreement for
the Americas or thereabouts. It is the USA’s masterplan for imposing
neo-liberal free trade on the whole of the western hemisphere and they make
no bones about it. The papers here quoted Colin Powell’s remark that it’s
purpose was to open every market to US corporations or else. The massive
struggles that you’ll know about against water and gas privatisation in
Bolivia and Equador and elsewhere have been storm warnings in this respect.
I’d been invited to attend the conference but had initially declined
thinking I had more pressing work to do. 

 

But fate intervened. I rang Eddy my main contact in the CTC on Monday night
last week to try to speed up a meeting with the ministry of labour I’m
anxious to try to sort and he said he was taking a party of Americans from
the US-Cuba Labour Exchange program, here for the anti-ALCA conference, to
meet National Assembly members so did I want to tag along, which of course I
did. So drove into Centro to their CTC hotel, having dropped Teresa at the
her Faculty – a regular drive for me esp as the Faculty is five mins from
the CTC and a rush hour experience best avoided by the faint-hearted! I was
a bit rushed and redesignated a couple of one-way back streets on route but
made it and leapt on their battered bus. But, as ever, there was a change of
plan. The Assembly members had all been called away for another Fidel
special so they were proposing to visit the Museum of the Revolution or the
Hemingway Marina. I didn’t fancy either  as I’ve done the museum before and
the Marina is a foreign millionaire’s playground and miles away. AS luck
would have it the American’s leader, a Mexican immigrant with 27 years
service at GM in Michigan, was fretting about getting their credentials from
the Palacio de Conferencias so I said come on I’ll drive you up and we can
meet the others after their sightseeing with Eddy. As we were about to set
off he apologised and rushed back into the hotel for his paperwork. And,
three-quarters of the way to the Palacio he realised he hadn’t got the
registration money with him and hadn’t got enough but I declined to turn
back and lent him what he needed. 

 

While we were queuing we got chatting about the conference and he mentioned
that Fidel AND Hugo Chavez were going to speak. That did it, 20 dollares and
a bit of sweet talking got me registered as a US delegate, a small price to
pay, and three lunches and a dinner thrown in. Best 20 dollares I ever
spent. 1000 or so delegates from all over the Americas, from social
movements, parties and unions and activist groups, in the hall Fidel uses
for his big speeches and he was there for the opening ceremonies the next
afternoon but did not address, probably on doctor’s orders as he had done a
dozen 3-4 hour specials in a fortnight and was to do 4 and half later that
evening – and standing up by the way. But the place erupted when he came on
stage anyway. It’s hard to grasp just how important Fidel and the Cuban
Revolution is to radicals in latin America. That just one country has defied
the ‘imperio’, achieved so much, and refuses to compromise, is a colossal
inspiration that crashes through the ramparts of lying propaganda and
commercial exclusion that the US and its puppet regimes have erected, and at
least helps overcome the misery of defeat and mass murder of activists that
has been the experience elsewhere. Just the day before the papers had
reported that Cuban literacy teams in Equador had accomplished the first
illiteracy-free town in the country, having freed 1.4 million (!!)
Venezuelans from this curse in little over a year, in very tense conditions
given the incipient civil war there and their depiction (and this also
applies to the medical brigades) by the anti-Chavez media as agents of a
Cuban military build up.

 

So, what were the highlights of the conference for me? Well, as, apparently,
the only English gringo there, meeting English-speaking activists from the
Caribbean, Canada and the US (including several pals of John W) and talking
about their solidarity campaigns was a bonus. The official free the five
stall was delighted to see our pamphlet and gave me some books and posters
to bring back for the cause. On the first day CTC Eddy was talking to
someone and grabbed me and asked what I thought of  the US ALCA plan. Since
Eddy is a joker with normally perfect English I said I thought it should be
extended to conquer the whole world, obviously. He then translated this
unhelpful thought into Spanish for his mate, who, it transpired, was from
Radio Reloj and scribbling down my pearls of stupidity to broadcast. I
protested that he couldn’t possibly quote what I said and insisted he write
down that Latin America was now at the centre of the struggle for social
justice and that it was crucial for the whole world that ALCA was scuppered.
I thought no more about it until the next morning I heard my words on the
radio. Fortunately the original joke had turned into ALCA is a problem for
the whole world, etc. Thank heavens for interpretive news journalism! 

 

Just being among the Latin Americans and managing to converse with them was
inspiring, and they are generally upbeat anyway at the moment because
three-quarters of south Americans now live in states with leftists
presidents, however reformist and IMF-ed they may be. ALCA has run into the
sand and the US attempts to impose their candidate for president of the
Organisation of American States (a Mexican) were deadlocked (and since
defeated for the first time in history with the election after a series of
tied votes of a Chilean social democrat). So for many the prospect of sewing
up some of the ‘open veins of Latin America’ is a real one. The presence of
some of the heroes of the liberation movements and anti-imperialism, like
Daniel Ortega from Nicaragua, Schafik from El Salvador, and many others well
known here but not to me, made the event special. 

 

But what made the conference explode was the presence of Chavez. He was in
Havana for two days, one with a massive trade delegation and one with the
conference. On the Friday morning we all had to get to the Teatro Karl Marx,
where Juan’s little Citroen AX looked hilarious parked among dozens of buses
from the delegation hotels. It’s a very grand modern theatre of the
traditional kind. Three tiers of audience and a massive stage behind a great
curtain. The night before Fidel had done his 4.5 hour report on the
Cuba-Venezuela trade talks, which were to be the first formal agreements
under the banner of ALBA – the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas and
the Cuba-Venezuela response to ALCA. He had announced 49 trade deals which,
among other things, would bring boatloads of new supplies of foodstuffs and
domestic kit to Cuba’s long-suffering households, not least, chocolate which
had old Tio clapping the telly again. Chavez was on the platform but didn’t
get a word in edgeways. But the expectation that this alliance was entering
a new phase of economic and political offensive was really raising the
temperature.

 

 By 9.30am the place was heaving and with twenty minutes to go to the 10
o’clock kick-off  the Venezuelan delegations, by now boosted by the trade
delegations and all in ‘First Cuba-Venezuela Trade Fair’ red t-shirts, were
getting restless. So they started a phenomenal series of chants, different
groups around the theatre responding to each other until the whole place was
rocking and singing and jumping and cheering and laughing. When the curtain
went up to reveal Fidel and Chavez, with Eva Morales from Bolivia also in
the platform party, beneath a giant double portrait of Marti and Bolivar,
there was a roar that almost matched the one that greeted the Wednesday team
when they ran onto the pitch at Wembley in the great Sheffield semi-final in
1993. After the anthems and the traditional musical and dance prelude, which
actually was stunningly brilliant, it was clear that Chavez was going to do
the talking this day, and Fidel the listening. He talked for an hour and a
half about the history of the struggle in Venezuela, and across the
continent for sovereignty and social justice, the role of Bolivar, the
inspiration of Cuba, the role of the US in the attempted coup and the role
of the people in defeating it. Almost at once he had paid a moving tribute
to Cuba’s medical brigades, at which point the top tier erupted and it
became apparent from my seat for the first time (Foresto Gumpero note, I’d
got plumb centre and nine rows back in the front seats, which by the way got
me briefly on the telly to the amazement and delight of my friends here)
that the whole top tier were medics and nurses and medical students. As soon
as they were on their feet the whole conference was up and cheering them
with their backs to the VIP party on the stage, who also now had to get up
again and join in. Suddenly he said, to gales of laughter, oh, I haven’t
talked about ALBA. 

 

And now we began to see some of the flesh on the bones. Venezuela would open
credit banks in Cuba elsewhere to fund purchases of Venezuelan oil and other
produce by governments and even municipalities (in Nicaragua and El
Salvador, not to mention Mexico City for those who have followed the
attempts to stop the leftist mayor running for President, the left is
winning mayoralties by the shed-load). And there would be credit for
development projects too, irrespective of whether they involved Venezeulan
goods. Venezuela would barter trade too, oil and goods for, for example,
livestock (and of course in Cuba’s case already, medical and educational and
scientific expertise for what by now is half of Cuba’s oil requirements
etc). Instead of gangster capitalism and privatisation of public services,
ALBA would help programmes aimed at regaining economic sovereignty and
securing social justice. Fidel couldn’t resist a couple of interruptions and
they had a very unforced and humorous double act going about Fidel’s
complaints that Chavez is imprudent and rash, and Chavez joshing him about
his age (‘I was only 11 when that happened, Fidel of course was 12’). But
after Chavez finished, and got his standing ovation, Fidel declined to sit
down and delivered an impromptu 2 hours worth, with officials holding up the
desk mike and trying to avoid him knocking it out of their hands with his
expansive gestures. In the course of his remarks he announced that, as part
of the ALBA programme, Cuba would expand its 20,000 cataract operations a
year programme for Venezuelans (which, by the way has produced some personal
stories of sight recovery that have even hardened Cuban Angola veterans
weeping openly, as one confessed to me happily the other day; and I think I
mentioned before that the U3A graduates here are organising hospital
visiting and classes for them) to 100,000 a year, free to the poor of the
Americas. Venezuela would provide free transport to Caracas, and Cuba would
fly them on, feed them and treat them, all free. Surely, Fidel said, even
the most craven US puppets can’t stop us restoring people’s sight? And, even
more dramatically, he announced a programme to eradicate illiteracy from the
Americas – and that means at least 40 million people in Latin America alone.
And I think I caught a plan to open another Medical School of the Latin
Americas in Caracas, like the one here that trains poor students for
nothing, on the promise that they will go back to their own communities for
at least two years. 

 

So this seems to be the strategy, Venezuelan oil and financial capital
combined with Cuban human capital to fulfil the ambitions of Marti and
Bolivar to liberate the Americas from US domination and free its people from
social injustice. If Venezuela can survive US plots and hostility, then the
slogan that another world is possible might come to pass here. I had to
catch the last hour or so of all this on telly later, as I’d promised to
take Tete to the polyclinico for physio. So another mad dash across Havana
and back in a car with no fan, let alone air con, on a stinking hot day,
only to find the physios had all been taken on an excursion. And it occurs
to me as I write that they were probably on the top tier in the Teatro Karl
Marx getting sore throats.

 

So even more optimism in the air here. A palpable sense of improvement as
the prospect of a qualitative shift in breaking Cuba’s isolation looks
realistic adds to the material gains announced in the tripling of the lowest
pensions, more than doubling the minimum wage also from May Day and with
consequential salary increases for everyone else expected this year, the
mass importation of Chinese domestic goods, etc etc. It must seem a lifetime
even from last autumn when the catastrophic balls-up at the big power
station brought the misery of extensive power cuts, and that doesn’t just
mean light and telly here, it means food rotting in fridges and freezers and
no fans or air con. A nightmare. And now the big launch of ALBA programmes.
May Day is always big here, but now it was going to be very special. And all
this in the context of a continuing series of ‘special interventions’ by
Fidel on the arrival in April in the US of Luis Posada Carilles. This
monster, hated here more than I can describe, masterminded the bombing of
the Cubana airliner in 1976 that killed all 73 people on board, and has
defended the action on US TV. He has also admitted on TV that he
masterminded the bombings in Havana hotels in 1997 that killed an Italian
tourist. He has been an adviser to Pinochet, active in operation Condor that
murdered leftists all over Latin America, and was at the heart of the
Irangate Contra operations in Nicaragua and the programme of death squads in
El Salvador. He was trained and run by the CIA. He jumped bail in Venezuela
while awaiting retrial on the airline bombing, and went back to work for the
CIA and the death squads, and then got arrested in Panama for trying to
plant a massive bomb in the University assembly hall in which Fidel was due
to address 1500 people in 2002 I think. An outgoing President released him,
allowed him to fly out on a false passport, and he disappeared. Last month
the Miami mafia smuggled him back into the USA where he applied for asylum,
on the grounds, his lawyer said, that he had always been a direct and
indirect agent of the CIA. So you can imagine the fury here that a
self-confessed mass-murdering terrorist was being protected in the land of
the war on terrorism where the 5 Cuban anti-terrorist agents remain in jail
on trumped up espionage charges. As Ricardo Alarcon, the National Assembly
President pointed out, the Bush administration pressed the UN resolution
after 9/11 that declared harbouring or helping terrorists to be tantamount
to carrying out terrorist acts, and was now defying its own resolution on a
daily basis, refusing to arrest Carilles, let alone charge him or extradite
him to Venezuela. So this is the all-consuming political issue of the day
and quickly became the theme for the May Day rallies.

 

Time is against me as ever but I have to say something about May Day, though
I have a heap of good photos that will do a better job eventually. I’d got
CTC credentials either to go on the platform (THE Foresto Gumpero moment
beckoned) with the VIPs, and a conference credential to join the
international delegations in the crowd. I took the latter option. The rally
in Revolution Square under the Marti memorial and opposite the great Che
image on the office building, would begin at 8 at the latest and end by 12
before too many people collapsed in the heat. So at 4.30, already warm and
humid, I was on the way to the CTC college where I worked for a couple of
weeks, to join the delegation buses from the attached hostal where some of
the Trinidadians and a lot of Mexicans were staying. By five-thirty we were
off, two buses and a police outrider. In the pre-dawn darkness we went
through La Lisa, a vast suburb of mostly block housing and some massive
hospitals – John W knows it well.

Everywhere I looked there were lines of buses and truck lined up. Some
people go in work groups, others in neighbourhood groups. We had about
fifteen miles to go in all and it was like this all the way and as we
approached the centre we were snaking past vast columns of people marching
from their assembly points a couple of miles out, along the great avenues of
Vedado and Centro.

Nurses, students, soldiers, all in uniform and just great columns of
families, as far as the eye could see and many in the red t-shirts bearing
one of Fidel’s slogans ‘The people of the Americas are yearning for
justice’. Tio went from here at 4am of course and was out there somewhere,
85 and no doubt still complaining he that prefers the big marches to
standing around in rallies! At this point I need to make a confession. I was
issued with a red t-shirt but they only had the small size left. Tete
insisted I had to go in red so I had a choice of two shirts of Juans that
Cristian brought him out: both red England football items sporting the cross
of St George and the three lions. I chose the polo shirt rather than the
t-shirt – thicker but with a collar to protect my neck and, crucially, a
much smaller flag and that on the sleeve not the chest.

So a first for me, and a first for May Day in Havana I imagine. The point of
the wear red injunction became obvious as we finally walked into the square.
We were in the front section, and they like a sea of red there. Plumb centre
again and this time only four people back with a grandstand view of the
platform! And behind us the vast square, every great building decked out in
a vast slogan or montage, and the surrounding avenues were filling until 1.3
million Habaneros had assembled and the TV helicopter started circling.
Chants and cheers began to erupt from all corners and everyone was waving
their little paper Cuban flags and me with my own cloth one and
home-whittled stick. Here they tend to express approval by waving a flag
rather than clapping. And of course immediately around me flew the flags of
Latin America and beyond among the international conference delegations for
whom this is part of the programme (the conference declaration was read from
the platform by an exiled Chilean woman who chairs the anti-ALCA conf
committee). 

 

So eventually, to a roar that was, I have to admit, bigger than Wembley 93,
1.3 million Cubans (dupes and slaves of the communist dictator!!) erupted as
Fidel appeared on the raised ground beneath the great Marti statue and
monument where the VIP parties had assembled, in his olive uniform which I
am told is believed to be air conditioned! Most of the speeches were quite
brief and disciplined, the form established by the CTC gen sec Pedro Ross,
in blue jeans and black polo shirt, who spoke first as the leader of the
Cuban labour movement and of the organising group. No histrionics, just a
reminder of the 5000-odd  victims of terrorism against Cuba and demanding
the arrest of Posada in Miami, and recalling the meaning of may day as
international workers day. Then other main platform speakers, remorselessly
building up the theme of anti-terrorism in general and US state terrorism in
particular. First Giustino de Celmo, whose son died in the hotel bombings in
1997, and who moved here from Italy to be by his son – he says a parent
never abandons their children – whose grave he visits every day, and to join
the anti-terrorism campaign. He is much loved and admired here for his
dignity and unaffected commitment. He seems frail physically, and at one
point at the rostrum he seemed to falter and Pedro Ross and Fidel (a mere
78) leapt to his aid. Robert Marsh, whose fiancé died in the Twin Towers,
spoke equally movingly of his loss at the hands of terrorists, and like
Giustino lambasted the hypocrisy of the US government’s duplicitous
‘anti-terrorism’. Schafik of the El Salvadorean FMLN, so many of whom became
victims of Posada’s death squads, and Ortega from the Sandinistas who
suffered so much at the hands of the Contras. And a few others. And all
interspersed with musical and dance performances of exceptional quality, on
the stage in front of the platform, but for me the best was the band whose
name I can never remember. They made a best-selling rap anti-war protest
record ‘Di que no’

which is roughly if not grammatically, ‘we say no’. It’s the chorus. All the
Latin Americans knew it too. Actually, 1.3m people knew it by heart, even
the bleeped-out bit which everyone knows is cojones – bollocks, or as my
dictionary would have it ‘testicles (vulgar)’. So although the kids usually
sing the bleep, and band did the bleep, at least a million roared ‘bollocks’
when the moment came. The video of this song is an antiwar masterpiece by
the way and I’m trying to get a copy. While they played, columns of school
kids and young soldiers marched along the path behind the band and turned
and marched on the spot facing the crowd. So finally to Fidel, who was quite
sombre and delivered a carefully argued and detailed assault on the US
refusal to arrest Posada.

After an hour he concluded with a reminder of the anti-imperialist victory
in

1975 in Vietnam, and with a Patria o Muerte. Venceremos! And everyone
shouted Venceremos back at him and the crowd started chanting Fidel, Fidel,
Fidel.

 

And then a choir of 1.3 million sang the Internationale as loud as they
could and waved 1.3 million flags. Few of them red by the way. Bit of a
culture shock carry the symbol of a state on may day. I don’t imagine anyone
reading this would consider carrying a union jack on may day, or anywhere
else much for that matter. Cuba’s nationalism runs very deep. Marti is
everywhere but you don’t see a lot of Lenin. But then I don’t suppose the
Red Square May Day parade was ever entertained by a rap band or anything
remotely similar. Then the square cleared very quickly and a legion of
cleaners arrived to clear up the droppings of 1.3 million inveterate litter
bugs. I gather a couple of spare flags for the boys. On the journey back the
streets were still awash with cheering crowds and open lorries returning
delegations to who knows where. Back at the house where the Cuban and
Chilean flags were flying, and straight out of the England shirt and into
the shower. Tio (85) swore his legs didn’t ache but mine certainly did.
Deprived of my cycling my legs muscles have reverted to a gentle high
temperature strolling condition. The media were triumphant at the turn out,
up

.3 million on last year (unusually for Cuba the figures issued were
approximations, as a rule all statistics are reported to the last decimal
point available). I watched the telly reports until I saw my own flag
waving. The rest I’d seen! The size of the turnout was a reflection, I’m
sure, of the wave of optimism I’ve mentioned before. I seem to have managed
to be here during some of the most dramatic weeks of political and economic
progress for a long time, and Foresto Gumpero’d my way to the front row of
some of the more historic events of this period of growing self-confidence
and pride. AND I have the tiny t-shirt to prove it even if I look like a
poor (very poor!) imitation of that Marlon Brando poster when I force it on.
Mind I’ve a got a better tan.

 

And on Monday 2nd  there was a final session of the conference to celebrate
the 50th anniversary victory over fascism. I went prepared to do battle over
the abuse of the term in Cuban political discourse but the debate was a
series of speeches thanking the Cubans for their hospitality, which of
course was splendid. But in a final contribution  Culture Minister Abel
Prieto referred to the different European perceptions of the definition of
fascism and criticism of Cuba’s use of the term to describe the US. He
listed various concepts (racism, expansionism) and methods (systematic
lying, illegal prison camps etc). So I collared him afterwards and pointed
out that these characterised imperialism as well as fascism, and that if the
US was fascist there wouldn’t be any American socialists at the conference,
they’d be dead, and so would the lawyers and judges who secured or ordered
the release of Elian, etc. He said he was aware that there were local
perceptions in Europe and I pointed out that these local perceptions were
based on terrible historical experience, mass murder and 10’s of millions
dead, and a history of communists and socialists making horrendous errors in
characterising fascism and how to fight it above all in Germany (third
period social fascism etc) and then again in Spain. We agreed to differ but
I told him I thought a blanket abuse of the term would open Cuba to ridicule
among its supporters in Europe and elsewhere, whatever the temptation to use
any stick to beat a dog. Turns out he’s an old friend of Juan and Tete and
so one day I may get the chance to have another go.

 

Since May Day the weather has returned to stinking hot, as it was when I
arrived. There have been some very heavy showers, and one cracking thunder
storm, with the result that the mozzies are back on form and finishing off
some of the join-the-dots pictures they started on me some weeks back. I’ve
got fed up with bothering about them and blocking my pores with repellent,
and settled for the occasional blood donation. 

 

Anyway, running out of time and steam. Just seen the news of the closing of
the polling stations and a 70-seat majority. Wish I’d put a bet on this
outcome back in 1997 when I predicted it. It might even be bigger next time
with Blair out of the way. I honestly have not missed it. When I explain the
effects of the majoritarian electoral system over here they are astonished,
but not as astonished as when I tell them we don’t have a written
constitution. 

 

Will be glad to get back but I’ve booked my flight back for June!

 

So hasta pronto. Steve

 


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