Chinese Cubans: Indispensable strand of Cuba’s revolution
https://themilitant.com/2021/04/03/chinese-cubans-indispensable-strand-of-cubas-revolution/
April 12, 2021
“Resident Chinese support the Cuban Revolution and its leader, Fidel
Castro!” is banner of Chinese New Democracy Alliance as they join a
million people in Havana, Sept. 2, 1960. Rally approved Declaration of
Havana, affirming duty of oppressed peoples to fight for liberation.
BOHEMIA
“Resident Chinese support the Cuban Revolution and its leader, Fidel
Castro!” is banner of Chinese New Democracy Alliance as they join a
million people in Havana, Sept. 2, 1960. Rally approved Declaration of
Havana, affirming duty of oppressed peoples to fight for liberation.
Our History Is Still Being Written: The Story of Three Chinese Cuban
Generals in the Cuban Revolution by Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui and
Moisés Sío Wong, is one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for April. It
covers how these three rebels of Chinese Cuban ancestry rose to be
generals in Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. And it shows how the
brutal exploitation faced by Chinese Cubans under capitalist rule in
Cuba led to their “unblemished record of combat” in a century of
revolutionary struggles that culminated in the overthrow of the
U.S.-backed Batista regime in 1959. It ranges from the history of
Chinese immigration to the experiences of the three in internationalist
revolutionary action over decades. These interviews from 2002 to 2005
were by Mary-Alice Waters, who edited the book, and other Socialist
Workers Party members. The excerpt is from Waters’ introduction.
Copyright © 2005 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
BY MARY-ALICE WATERS
Armando Choy, Gustavo Chui, and Moisés Sío Wong, three young rebels of
Chinese Cuban ancestry, became combatants in the clandestine struggle
and 1956-58 revolutionary war that brought down the US-backed
dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and opened the door to socialist
revolution in the Americas. Each, in the course of a lifetime of
revolutionary action, became a general in the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Cuba. Through their stories the economic, social, and political
forces that gave birth to the Cuban nation and still shape our epoch unfold.
We see how millions of ordinary human beings like them — the “men and
women from nowhere” who the rulers cannot even see — simply refused to
accept a future without dignity or hope, refused to settle for less than
they dreamed of. They marched onto the stage of history and changed its
course, becoming different human beings themselves in the process. …
The three young Chinese Cubans, of similar age, grew up in different
parts of Cuba, under different class and social conditions. With each
following his own path, all three came to the same revolutionary course
of action. They threw themselves into the great proletarian battle that
defined their generation — the struggle to overthrow the Batista tyranny
and defend Cuba’s sovereignty and independence against the onslaught of
the imperialist empire to the north.
The significance and historical weight of Chinese immigration to Cuba
starting in the mid-nineteenth century emerges from their accounts. In
proportion to population, this immigration to Cuba was greater than
anywhere else in the Americas, the United States included. In fact,
thousands of Chinese laborers brought to build railroads in the US West
later emigrated to Cuba in hopes of finding better conditions of life
and work.
The lucrative trafficking in tens upon tens of thousands of Chinese
peasants — their impressment, their death-ship transport to Cuba, their
indentured labor on sugar plantations supplementing the dwindling supply
of African slaves, and above all their resistance, struggles, and
unblemished record of combat in Cuba’s 1868–98 independence wars against
Spain — all that is sketched here in broad outlines. It is a story
largely unknown outside Cuba.
What is presented here, however, is not history alone. This is one of
the indispensable strands of revolutionary Cuba today. From the pre-1959
racist oppression and superexploitation of Chinese as well as black
labor, to the measures taken by the popular revolutionary government
headed by Fidel Castro to end this discrimination and combat its legacy,
to the integration of Cubans of Chinese origin into every level of
social and political life today, the story unfolds. As Sío Wong puts it
so forcefully, the greatest measure taken against discrimination “was
the revolution itself.”
“The Chinese community here in Cuba is different from Peru, Brazil,
Argentina, or Canada,” he emphasizes. “And that difference is the
triumph of a socialist revolution.”
The revolutionary overthrow of the Batista dictatorship on January 1,
1959, was not the end of a story. It was the beginning. After taking
power, the working people of Cuba began building a new society that
posed an intolerable “affront” to the prerogatives of capital. For more
than half a century they have defended that society built on new
foundations, holding at bay the strongest imperialist power that will
ever stalk the globe. In doing so the Cuban toilers and their government
have become a beacon, and an ally, to those the world over seeking to
learn how to fight to transform their lives — and how to fight to win.
Among the many responsibilities Choy, Chui, and Sío Wong have each
shouldered over the years — within the Revolutionary Armed Forces as
well as in government assignments and in the leadership of the Communist
Party of Cuba — participation in Cuba’s internationalist missions abroad
stands out.
“Because our system is socialist in character and commitment,” Choy
explains, revolutionaries in Cuba have always sought to act “in the
interests of the majority of humanity inhabiting planet earth — not on
behalf of narrow individual interests, or even simply Cuba’s national
interests.”
Each served in Angola at various times between 1975 and 1988, as Cuba
responded to the request of the Angolan government, just gaining
independence from Portugal, for aid to defeat an imperialist-backed
invasion by the armed forces of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Chui helped establish Cuba’s internationalist military aid missions in
Nicaragua, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Choy served as ambassador to Cape
Verde from 1986 to 1992. Sío Wong in 2003 helped Venezuela’s toilers in
their efforts to establish and extend small-scale urban agriculture.
From 1992 to 2010 he served as president of the Cuba-China Friendship
Association. …
As each of the three generals makes clear, the future will be written
not for the working people of Cuba, but by them.
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countries around the world March 28. In Cuba, hundreds of cyclists and
carloads of people took to…
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On April 17-19, 1961, U.S. imperialism suffered what Fidel Castro called
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peasants of Cuba. Millions were mobilized arms in hand to defend their
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Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
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and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski
