I'm always put off when American Politicians strut about, posturing
and spouting platitudes regarding our "former greatness". Of course
the biggest flapper is the current Emperor of The Corporate American
Empire, His Gloriousness...and self proclaimed handsome...Donald
Trump. Return to those Glory Days when America took possession of
Guantánamo Bay, or the times they kicked the crap out of Mexico when
they defended what they claimed as their borders...although they had
claimed the land from those people already living there. Perhaps
Donald Trump and his fellow quackers want to return to the Glory of
our treatment of Japanese Americans during WW II. But wait a moment,
Donald Trump and Company don't need to fuss with pesky immigrants when
they have all those working class folks to kick around. And with
enough of those foolish White Rights folks bleating the Party Line,
Donald Trump may well ride his Ass into that Glory Land.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/2/17, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
http://themilitant.com/2017/8122/812205.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 81/No. 22 June 5, 2017
(front page)
Conference in Cuba demands US get out of Guantánamo
BY MAGGIE TROWE
AND PAUL MAILHOT
CAIMANERA, Cuba — Across the bay from the Guantánamo military base that
Washington has occupied for more than a century, participants in the
Fifth Seminar for Peace and the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases
joined leaders of the Cuban Revolution and workers and youth in this
city’s town square May 6 to demand U.S. out!
“We demand the United States return to Cuba and its people illegally
occupied territory of the Guantánamo Naval Base, and the lifting of the
economic, commercial and financial blockade,” said a statement adopted
at the conference that was read at the protest. The statement also
condemned U.S. imperialism’s aggressions around the world.
The more than 200 participants in the May 4-6 conference came from 32
countries. It was organized by the Cuban Movement for Peace and
Sovereignty of the Peoples (MovPaz), the World Peace Council and the
Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP) and took place in
Guantánamo, the capital of this eastern Cuban province.
In addition to substantial Cuban participation, there were large
delegations from the U.S. and Canada.
Among U.S. participants, many of whom had joined hundreds of thousands
of Cubans marching in Havana on May Day, were members of anti-war
organizations and political groups, including Veterans for Peace; the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom; individuals from
Cuba solidarity coalitions in Chicago, Minneapolis, New York City and
Albany, New York; Code Pink; and the Socialist Workers Party.
Other international delegates included Samuel Wanitsch, chairman of the
Swiss-Cuba Association; Daniel Ortega Reyes, president of the Party of
Christian Unity in Nicaragua and Nicaraguan deputy to the Central
American parliament; Aleida Centeno Rodríguez, member of the Puerto
Rican Nationalist Party; and two delegates from Okinawa, Japan, where
residents have long protested the U.S. military base there.
Movpaz President Silvio Platero Yrola chaired the sessions, which opened
with talks by José Ramón Balaguer, member of the secretariat of the
Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party and head of the party’s
Department of International Relations; Nancy Acosta Hernández, president
of the Assembly of People’s Power in Guantánamo province; Maria do
Socorro Gomes, president of the World Peace Council, who hails from
Brazil; and others.
The U.S. occupation of Cuban territory here “is a blow to the legitimate
national interests of Cubans and is a moral affront and aggression
against the country and its sovereignty,” said Manuel Carbonell Vidal,
vice rector of the Raúl Roa García Institute of International Relations
in Havana, at the opening session.
“There can be no ‘normal’ relations between the two countries so long as
Washington occupies sovereign territory of the Republic of Cuba,” said a
statement submitted to the seminar by Osborne Hart, Socialist Workers
Party candidate for mayor of New York, and Maggie Trowe, SWP mayoral
candidate in Albany. Both attended the conference. From the SWP’s
widespread campaigning door to door in workers’ districts, they said,
“We can attest to the possibility of winning the political battle to
convince the majority of U.S. working people that the U.S. government
should get out of Guantánamo now and end its economic, financial, and
commercial war against Cuba forthwith.”
The Committee for the Defense of the Revolution and residents of the
Villa Toa neighborhood of Guantánamo invited delegates for a lively
evening of salsa dancing May 4, a spread of tropical fruit and an
opportunity to ask residents about life in Cuba.
We told retired cook Adis Martínez the U.S. rulers say most Cubans
didn’t support socialism or historic Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel
Castro, who died last November. “No, we like it here,” she replied.
“We’re very sad that Fidel died. But other generations are ready to
defend the revolution.”
The visit to Caimanera was a moving experience. As our buses entered the
bustling town, people lined the streets to welcome us. From a hill
nearby delegates could see the U.S. base’s administration buildings,
telecommunications domes, and two giant American flags, a daily reminder
of Washington’s unending campaign against the Cuban people and their
socialist revolution.
“I had thought the U.S. base was out in some remote uninhabited place,”
said Veterans for Peace leader Patrick McCann, who lives in Miami. “It’s
right in the middle of a populated area!”
While Cubans are now allowed to move some supply ships through the
portion of Guantánamo Bay occupied by the U.S. Navy to the ocean, they
are denied all other access, including to excellent fishing grounds.
On a cross-island bus ride delegates got to visit a number of sites
memorializing the revolutionary struggle in Cuba. In Santiago de Cuba
they went to the cemetery where José Martí, leader of the 19th century
struggle against Spanish colonial domination, and Fidel Castro are
buried. They visited the Moncada Barracks, where on July 26, 1953,
Castro led a group of revolutionaries in the assault that opened the
struggle against U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, an effort that
grew into a mass revolutionary movement that triumphed in 1959.
During the journey Veterans for Peace member Monisha Rios and Yania
Marrero, an ICAP representative and veteran of Cuba’s Revolutionary
Armed Forces, exchanged experiences that highlighted the differences
between an army structured to defend the revolutionary rule of workers
and farmers and one organized to defend Washington’s imperialist
interests against the people of the world.
“Basic training was physically demanding, crawling though fields and
woods, learning how to handle weapons, but it made me stronger,” Marrero
said. “Here in Cuba we prepare for what we call the War of the Entire
People, so that everyone in the country is ready in case of an invasion.”
Rios explained why she had joined the U.S. Army. “I was poor and I
wanted to get some skills I could use to get a job,” she said. “I guess
I believed what the government says, that the U.S. Army defends
democracy. But I learned that’s a lie.”
Related articles:
Canada brigade members experience Cuban Revolution
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