U.S. Hands Off Cuba!

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SOCIALIST ACTION JUNE 1991 6 no matter how sophisticated, can conquer them. If that principle is inculcated in the heart of each and every person, every man and woman, every compatriot, every soldier, every militia member, every worker, every young person, every student, the Revolution is invincible. The Revolution is invincible!

For this reason, these concepts are necessary as part of our people's political and ideological preparation. We have already said "Patria o Muerte!" and we have to be consistent with this idea, which wasn't conceived by us. It was conceived by our first freedom fighters and has been the essence of our patriotic spirit, the spirit of struggle that our nation has had throughout its history. The United States has good reason to fear such a people.

"We won't return to the past!"

It's clear that there are battles that may be even tougher than military battles and the United States is hoping that perhaps it won't even have to invade the country, that the difficulties arising or that may arise, which are more serious, as a result of the collapse of the socialist camp or a result of the problems existing in the USSR-a country now trying to preserve its integrity as a great multinational state, a country now trying to stabilize itself and a country which certainly has very big problems-the United States is hoping the the consequences of this situation will cause insurmountable economic difficulties for the Revolution.

The United States is dreaming that these problems will bring back capitalism to Cuba; it is dreaming that all our land will again become private property, that our factories will become private property, that our means of production will become private property.

It is dreaming that perhaps our capital and our cities will once again be teeming with brothels, gambling dens, casinos, barefoot children, beggars. It dreams that perhaps the nation can grow used to having thousands or millions of jobless people. It can see the Joseph Ryan/Socialist Action country filled again with illiterates, without schools, without technological institutes, without the health system which is now considered one of the best in the world.

It has the absurd and crazy idea that our country will return to the past-to a past of injustice, inequality, racial and sexual discrimination. It dreams that women can again become a sort of property in the heart of a society of classes. It is dreaming about these absurd things which perhaps the overwhelming majority of you never knew but nevertheless understand, sense, see.

In the rest of the capitalist world, it tries to seduce the peoples with its absurd consumer societies, in places where the riches stolen for centuries from the Third World accumulated. Capitalism hasn't created anything but sterile luxury and an incredible waste of the earth's natural resources, in order to create super-rich societies where, incidentally, not everybody is rich and there are many homeless people, beggars, and a lot of other evils.

What capitalism has In a May 20 radio address marking the 89th anniversary of Cuban independence, President Bush restated some of imperialism's conditions for "improved relations with Cuba."

Bush declared: "Ninety-nine percent of the people of this hemisphere live either in a democracy or a country that is on the road to democracy, [but] one percent live under the hemisphere's last dictator, Fidel Castro." He went on to demand, among other things, that Cuba hold "free and fair elections under international supervision."

The hypocrisy of this spurious portrayal of democracy in this hemisphere is contradicted by a mountain of facts. Among them is the practical inability of the American people to see and hear the point of view of socialists and other opponents of capitalist race, sex, and class injustice right here in the United States.

It is an open secret that even so much as getting a place on the ballot for socialists to challenge Mr. Bush and his Democratic counterpart in a "free and fair election" is practically impossible.

Perhaps Bush might appear more sincere if he called for the abolition of these profoundly undemocratic requirements for gaining a place on the ballot and tore down the impenetrable wall blocking access by socialists to American radio, television, and printed media.

Coming in the aftermath of the arrogant demonstration of American military power in the Persian Gulf, Bush's cynical demand for Castro to reinstitute the system of capitalist "democracy" that guaranteed rule by the capitalist minority in prerevolutionary Cuba, has ominous implications.

The Cuban Revolution has from the beginning been directed in the first place against American imperialist domination and in the second place against Cuban capitalism.

On Jan. 1, 1959, the Cuban economy was intimately linked with that of the United States. Trade relations between the two countries was unilaterally severed by the U.S. government when the revolutionary Castroist leadership refused to continue to kowtow to American dictates.

The Stalinist Soviet government, for its own reasons, stepped in to fill the breach. The Soviet bloc and Cuba thereafter developed equitable trade relations. Without this aid, the obstacles to Cuba's efforts to overcome its imperialist-imposed economic backwardness might have been insurmountable.

Now, with the decision of the Stalinist rulers of the Eastern bloc to attempt to restore capitalism and integrate their economies into the world capitalist market, cooperative trade relations with Cuba is being pushed into last place.

But the determination of the Cuban people to maintain their course toward socialism—in the face of these new imperialist-inspired hardships-constitutes a disturbing "fly in the ointment" for U.S. and world capitalism.

Castro's speech on this page is a remarkable declaration of confidence in the future of world socialism. It presents, by the same token, a potentially grave threat to the future of President Bush's New World Order. This threat will assume mammoth proportions when the impending economic crisis of world capitalism breaks out of control.

Bush's speech should not be seen as a ritualistic observation of an historic event, but as a signal of unremitting and increasing hostility to the Cuban working people and their revolution. True democrats must be on guard against new violations of this island nation's democratic rights. Hands off Cuba!-the editors

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