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Vol. 79/No. 28 August 10, 2015
N.Y. meeting celebrates Cuban Revolution
BY MAGGIE TROWE
NEW YORK — “It’s a very special moment to be at the site that honors the
revolutionary Malcolm X,” said Rodolfo Reyes, Cuba’s ambassador to the
United Nations, at a meeting to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the
opening of the Cuban Revolution. The July 24 event took place in the
Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center here —
the historic Audubon Ballroom where Malcolm X often spoke and where he
was assassinated in 1965.
The meeting was chaired by César Sánchez of the July 26 Coalition and
Joan Gibbs, general counsel for the Center for Law and Social Justice at
Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.
A video of Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez raising the Cuban flag
at the opening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C., July 20 was
greeted with a standing ovation.
“We’ve been clear that normalizing relations between Cuba and the U.S.
will be a long process,” Reyes said. “We are not naive. The embargo is
still in place. Our sovereign territory in Guantánamo needs to be
returned.”
Reyes called the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the
two countries “a victory for all Latin American people and all
revolutionary and progressive people around the world.” After 10
administrations, he said, the U.S. government has to recognize that “the
Cuban people will never compromise any principle.”
“We will always be fighting for the liberation of Oscar López Rivera,”
the Puerto Rican independence fighter imprisoned in the U.S. for 34
years, “and for African-Americans in their fight for the full enjoyment
of their rights,” Reyes said.
“We will always be building our socialist project and defending our
sovereignty and dignity,” he continued. “Sixty-two years after Moncada
we have a revolution that’s totally alive.”
Speakers included Ben Ramos, a leader of ProLibertad, an organization
that fights for the release of Puerto Rican political prisoners; Aminifu
Williams, a representative of the People’s Organization for Progress in
Newark, New Jersey, who invited participants to the Million People’s
March in Newark the next day; and others.
Negash Abdurahman, an Ethiopian-born filmmaker, showed excerpts from a
documentary he is preparing on Cuba’s internationalist missions in
Angola in the 1970s and ’80s.
Related articles:
Castro speech conveys strength, confidence of Cuban Revolution
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