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Vol. 80/No. 13 April 4, 2016
(feature article)
Cuban women’s leaders speak on gains of revolution
BY NAOMI CRAINE
NEW YORK — “Obama says he’s coming to tell us how democracy should be.
But the Cuban people decided what kind of democracy we wanted in 1959,
and carried out profound changes that were needed,” said Teresa Amarelle
Boué, general secretary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), at a
meeting here March 19.
Amarelle headed a delegation from the FMC and other Cuban organizations
to the 60th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of
Women, March 14-24. While here they spoke at the public meeting, held at
the Service Employees International Union Local 1199 hall, as well as
with students at the City College of New York and at other events. More
than 150 people attended.
Gail Walker, executive director of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, and Soffiyah
Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York,
co-chaired. In welcoming the Cuban leaders, Walker noted that the
meeting was taking place on the eve of President Barack Obama’s trip to
Cuba. She urged participants to read the March 9 editorial from the
Cuban daily Granma, which “explains in clear language how the Cuban
people will respond to the president’s upcoming visit to Cuba ‘without
renouncing a single one of our principles.’” (See last week’s issue.)
The editorial reiterates the Cuban people’s demand to lift the U.S.
economic sanctions, return Guantánamo and to end other attacks on Cuba,
Walker said, adding, “Your friends here in the United States are not
afraid of confronting that challenge along with you.” She also pointed
to an FMC statement available at the meeting (and printed below) on the
“tremendous accomplishments of Cuban women” Obama will see in Cuba.
“Women have taken a lead in all of the educational efforts in Cuba,”
Amarelle said in her opening remarks, including the 1961 literacy
campaign in which a majority of the volunteers who taught and those who
learned to read were women. Today, she said, women make up some 62
percent of the technical workforce, 68 percent of doctors, 48 percent of
scientists, and 48.6 percent of the deputies in the National Assembly.
Amarelle is a member of that body and of Cuba’s Council of State.
These figures are not a result of quotas, Amarelle said. They are “a
reflection of the leadership taken by women as a result of winning the
right to a job, to education and their involvement in the revolution.”
She was joined on the platform and answered questions with Maritzel
González and Yanira Kúper of the FMC’s international relations
department, Alicia Campos of the Women’s International Democratic
Federation, and Yamila González and Myrna Méndez of the National Union
of Jurists of Cuba.
Relations must be based on respect
In the discussion Yamila González pointed to the hypocrisy of press
reports that Michelle Obama plans to bring her “Let Girls Learn”
campaign to Cuba. “In Cuba 100 percent of girls attend school,” González
noted. “We should have real interchange, based on mutual respect.
“We’re ready and willing to have better relations” with Washington, she
added, “but our principles, our sovereignty and the independence we’ve
fought for are not on the negotiating table.”
Amarelle answered a question about the Cuban response to the threat of
the mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has become an epidemic in many
places in Latin America. The U.S. Center for Disease Control and
Prevention predicts a quarter of the people in Puerto Rico will be
infected this year.
“When the World Health Organization announced the danger of Zika, the
government mobilized civic organizations,” she said. “The neighborhood
Committees for Defense of the Revolution and the Federation of Cuban
Women held meetings in every area to discuss the measures needed,”
focused on mosquito control and prevention. A national leadership center
was established to evaluate the situation daily, and hospitals are
instructed to immediately admit anyone showing symptoms, she said.
“The heart of our approach is person-to-person, with explanation and
persuasion,” Amarelle said. The FMC has more than 400,000 activists, she
added, “including members of health brigades that do educational work in
the neighborhoods.”
“That’s the way it should be,” commented Iris Baez, after the meeting.
“You have to do it the way they said, house by house,” she said, noting
that doesn’t happen in the U.S., “even with all the resources here.”
Baez, whose son Anthony was killed in a police chokehold in 1994, will
be visiting Cuba in May along with other participants in fights against
police brutality across the United States. Their delegation was
announced at the meeting, and a copy of the video Every Mother’s Son was
raffled to raise money for the trip.
The evening’s program included cultural performances by African drummers
and the Peace Poets, as well as a short video on the history of the FMC.
At the end, artist Zulu King Sloane presented the Cuban delegation with
a painting he made during the program.
Earlier in the day Amarelle joined speakers from Angola, Brazil, El
Salvador and the United States at a seminar on “Women Transforming the
World” organized by the Women’s International Democratic Federation.
That event, moderated by Campos from the Cuban delegation, drew 30
participants from a number of countries.
Related articles:
US out of Guantánamo! End Cuba embargo now!
Socialist Workers Party campaign statement
As Obama visits, Cuban people defend revolution
‘For us socialism means freedom, sovereignty, dignity’
End embargo, says Cuban official in Bay Area tour
Letter: Cuba mobilizes against Zika virus
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