http://themilitant.com/2015/7923/792355.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 23 June 22, 2015
Cuban 5’s example and art
speak to today’s fighters
BY ERIC SIMPSON
RICHMOND, Calif. — “I look at the art work, and see those handcuffs,”
Rick Perez told those attending an exhibit of paintings by Antonio
Guerrero, one of the Cuban Five, at the public library here. “They stand
out in my mind because a police officer tackled my son from behind and
knocked him to the ground trying to get handcuffs on him.” Perez’s son,
Richard “Pedie” Perez, 24, was shot multiple times and killed by a
Richmond cop Sept. 14, 2014.
Perez was one of a number of speakers at the one-day exhibit who
highlighted the relevance of Guerrero’s paintings to working-class
struggles today.
The May 30 event was sponsored by the Friends of the Richmond Public
Library. It featured recent paintings by Guerrero contained in the book
Absolved by Solidarity that depict the 2001 frame-up trial of the Cuban
Five, as well as earlier ones that portray the 17 months they spent in
punishment cells in the Miami Federal Detention Center awaiting trial.
After 16 years in U.S. prisons, the final three of these Cuban
revolutionaries returned to Cuba in December in a victory for the Cuban
Revolution and the international campaign to free them. Since then
Guerrero and his four comrades — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino,
Fernando González and René González — have continued defending Cuba’s
socialist revolution and supporting other working-class struggles
internationally. Guerrero’s prison paintings are a contribution to those
efforts.
Librarian Catherine Ortiz, who helped organize the exhibit, welcomed the
more than 80 people who attended.
Anita Wills, executive director of the Inter Council for Mothers of
Murdered Children, announced plans to build the Movement for Black Lives
national conference in Cleveland, July 24-26. She invited people to
preregister. “It’s about what’s going on not just in Cleveland, but with
Eric Garner, Walter Scott, and all these young and old people being
killed by the police,” she said.
“What do we do next?” asked Vylma Ortiz. “We are all going to work to
free Oscar López Rivera!” Ortiz and Willye Rivera, who also spoke, have
been active in the campaign to free López, a Puerto Rican independence
fighter who has been jailed in the U.S. for 34 years, 12 of them in
solitary confinement. They urged everyone to join the campaign and to
sign a petition requesting a presidential pardon. The Cuban Five have
been speaking out in support of López and other political prisoners.
Tarnel Abbott, one of several members of the Richmond/Regla (Cuba)
Friendship Committee at the exhibit, spoke about the work of the group.
Patti Iiyama, who recently visited Cuba with Tsukimi Kai, a
predominantly Japanese American group that organizes cultural
interchange with Japanese Cubans, reported on visiting the museum in
Cuba where the originals of Guerrero’s paintings are exhibited.
Iiyama noted that “120,000 Japanese Americans were put in concentration
camps; the Cuban Five were also framed up. Both groups were imprisoned
unjustly, and both had similar responses — to use art to assert their
humanity.”
“The five Cuban revolutionaries are examples of how it is possible to
stand up and prevail against brutalities and injustice and emerge from
16 years in prison stronger than ever,” said Betsey Stone, a member of
the Socialist Workers Party and editor of Women and the Cuban
Revolution, who helped organize the exhibit. She described the decades
of attacks by the U.S. government on the Cuban Revolution, including
supporting violence by counterrevolutionary groups that the Cuban Five
were sent to the United States to prevent. “The economic embargo is
still in full force,” she said. “We should join in demanding that it be
ended.”
Participants took time to study the prints and read the explanatory
captions.
“I admire the Cuban Five,” said Inga Frolova, originally from
Vladivostok, Russia. “They went through hell and kept their dignity in a
situation where there is no dignity left.”
Areceli Guizar, a participant in the fight against solitary confinement
whose fiancé is in prison, looked carefully at each painting. “My
favorite is the one with the bird,” she said, “because it shows how you
can be in solitary confinement and still rise above it.”
Related articles:
‘We have history of winning,’ one of Cuban 5 tells meeting
Cuba debated at Latin American studies conference
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home
