The men and women of the Rebel Army never forgot their fundamental mission in the Sierra Maestra or in other areas, which was to improve the conditions of the peasants and to incorporate them into the struggle for the land. Schools were set up, in which improvised teachers went to the most inaccessible parts of this region of Oriente.
There in the Sierra we made the first effort at dividing up the land, with an agrarian law drafted principally by Dr. Humberto Sori' Mari'n(8) and by Fidel Castro, and in which I had the honor of collaborating. The land was given to the peasants in a revolutionary manner. The large farms belonging to servants of the dictatorship were seized and divided up, and all state lands began to be put in the hands of the region's peasants. The moment had arrived in which we identified ourselves fully as a peasant movement closely linked to the land, and with agrarian reform as our banner.
Later on we reaped the consequences of the failed strike of April 9. Batista's barbaric repression made itself felt at the end of May, provoking a very serious decline in all of our areas of struggle that could have had catastrophic consequences for our cause.
The dictatorship prepared its fiercest offensive. Around May 25 of last year, ten thousand well-equipped soldiers attacked our positions, focusing their offensive on Column no. 1, which our commander in chief Fidel Castro led personally. The Rebel Army occupied a very small area, and it's hard to believe that this body of ten thousand soldiers was opposed by only three hundred rifles of freedom, since this was all we had in the Sierra Maestra at that time. As a result of correct tactical leadership in that campaign, Batista's offensive came to an end on July 30, and the rebels passed from the defensive onto the offensive. We captured over six hundred new weapons, more than double the number of rifles we had when the action began, and we inflicted over a thousand casualties on the enemy, including killed, wounded, deserters, and prisoners.
The Rebel Army emerged from that campaign ready to initiate an offensive on the plains. The character of this offensive was to be tactical and psychological in nature, since our arms were unable to compete in quality-and even less so in quantity-with those of the dictatorship. This was a war in which we always relied on the people, that priceless ally of such extraordinary valor. Our columns were able to continually evade the enemy and situate themselves in the best positions, thanks not only to tactical advantages and the morale of our militiamen, but to a very large extent because of the great assistance of the peasants.
The peasant was the invisible collaborator who did everything that the rebel combatant could not. He supplied us with information, kept watch on the enemy, discovered its weak points, rapidly brought urgent messages, spied on the very ranks of Batista's army. This was not the result of any miracle; it was because we had energetically begun to implement our policy of responding to the peasants' demands. In the face of the bitter attack and circle of hunger that enveloped the Sierra Maestra, ten thousand head of cattle were taken from the landlords of the surrounding region and brought up to the mountains. This move was not intended to supply the Rebel Army alone; the cattle were also distributed among the peasants. For the first time, the guajiros [peasants] of the Sierra, in this miserably poor region, had their well-being addressed. For the first time, peasant children drank milk and ate beef. And for the first time too, they received the benefits of education, because the revolution brought schools along with it. In this way the peasants in their entirety came over to our side.
We had just reached Las Villas, and our first act of government-before establishing the first school-was to issue a revolutionary proclamation establishing the agrarian reform.(11) Among other things, it was decreed that the owners of small parcels of land would cease paying rent until the revolution could make a decision in each case. Agrarian reform was indeed the spearhead of the Rebel Army.
This was not a demagogic maneuver. It simply reflected the fact that over the course of one year and eight months of revolution, the leaders and the peasant masses had influenced each other to such an extent that at times the revolution carried out actions it had previously never envisioned. This did not come out of thin air, it had to do with the way peasants were threatened. For our part, we convinced them that with a weapon in one's hand, with organization, and with loss of fear of the enemy, victory was certain. On the other side, the peasant, who within his blood and bones had powerful reasons for doing so, imposed the agrarian reform on the revolution, imposed the confiscation of cattle and all the social measures that were taken in the Sierra Maestra.
In the Sierra Maestra, during the days of the electoral farce of November 3,(12) Law no. 3 was decreed, establishing a genuine agrarian reform. Although it was not complete, this law had very positive elements in it: state land was divided up, along with that of servants of the dictatorship and those who had acquired property fraudulently, such as land-grabbers who had gobbled up thousands of caballeri'as in borderlands. It granted title to all farmers who worked no more than two caballeri'as and who paid rent. All absolutely free. The principle was very revolutionary. The agrarian reform will benefit more than 200,000 families.(13)
But the agrarian revolution has not been completed with Law no. 3. To do so it is necessary that the constitution incorporate rules against the large landed estates. It is necessary to define precisely the concept of large landed estates, which characterizes the structure of our agriculture and is an indisputable source of the country's backwardness and of all the evils facing the great majority of peasants. These have still not been touched.
It will be the efforts of the organized peasant masses that will impose the law proscribing the system of large landed estates, in the same way as they compelled the Rebel Army to issue the beginnings of an agrarian reform contained in Law no. 3.
There is another aspect that should be taken into account. The constitution specifies that every expropriation of land must be paid for ahead of time in cash.(14) If the agrarian reform is undertaken in accord with this precept, it will likely be rather slow and onerous. What is also necessary is collective action by the peasants who, since the revolution's triumph, have earned the right to freedom. They can use that freedom to democratically demand the abrogation of this provision in order to move forward, backed by law, to a true and broad agrarian reform.
We have begun to put the Rebel Army's social aims into effect; we have an armed democracy. When we plan out the agrarian reform and observe the new revolutionary laws to complement it and make it viable and immediate, we are aiming at social justice. This means the redistribution of land and also the creation of a vast internal market and crop diversification, two cardinal objectives of the revolutionary government that are inseparable and that cannot be postponed since they involve the people's interest.
All economic activities are connected. We must increase the country's industrialization, without overlooking the many problems accompanying such a process. But a policy of encouraging industry demands certain tariff measures to protect nascent industry, as well as an internal market capable of absorbing the new commodities. We cannot increase this market except by giving the great peasant masses broader access to it. Although the guajiros have no purchasing power, they do have necessities to meet, things they cannot purchase today.
We are well aware that the ends we are committed to demand an enormous responsibility on our part, and we know that these are not the only goals. We must expect a reaction against us by those who control over 75 percent of our commercial trade and our market. In the face of this danger we must prepare ourselves to apply countermeasures, among them tariffs and an increase in the number of our foreign markets. We need to create a Cuban merchant fleet to transport sugar, tobacco, and other commodities, because owning our own fleet will have a very favorable influence on the type of shipments, a factor upon which the progress of underdeveloped countries such as Cuba depends to a large degree.
If we are to undertake a program of industrialization, what is most important to achieving it? Raw materials, which the constitution wisely defended and which were given to foreign conglomerates by the Batista dictatorship. We must work to recover our subsoil, our minerals. Another element of industrialization is electricity. This must be taken into account. We are going to make certain that electrical energy is in Cuban hands. We also have to nationalize the Telephone Company, owing to the poor service it gives and the high prices it charges.(15)
What tools do we have to carry out a program such as I have presented? We have the Rebel Army, and this must be our first instrument of struggle, the most positive and most vigorous one. All remnants of the Batista army will be destroyed. Let it be clearly understood that we are not doing so out of vengeance, or solely out of a spirit of justice. Rather, we do so out of necessity, to assure that all these conquests by the people can be achieved in the shortest period of time.
We defeated an army vastly superior in numbers through popular support, through correct tactics, and through revolutionary morale. But now we must confront the reality that our army is not prepared for the new responsibilities it has acquired, such as defending Cuba's territory as a whole. We have to rapidly restructure the Rebel Army, because along the way we built an armed body of peasants and workers, many of them illiterate, uneducated, and without technical training. We must train this army for the great tasks its members have to face, and train them both technically and culturally.
The Rebel Army is the vanguard of the Cuban people, and in referring to its technical and cultural progress we have to know the meaning of these things in a modern sense. We have already symbolically begun its education with a poetry reading conducted almost exclusively in the spirit, and using the teachings, of Jose' Marti'.
Taking back the nation involves the destruction of many privileges. We therefore must be prepared to defend the nation from its avowed or disguised enemies.
In this sense the new army has to adapt itself to the new mode of life that has arisen out of this liberation war, since we know that if we are attacked by a small island,(16) it will be with the support of a power that is almost a continent. We would have to withstand on our soil an aggression of immense scale. For this reason, we must get ourselves ready and prepare our advance with a guerrilla spirit and a guerrilla strategy, so that our defenses do not disintegrate at the first onslaught, and maintain their central unity. The entire Cuban people will have to become a guerrilla army, since the Rebel Army is a growing body whose maximum size is limited only by Cuba's population of six million. Every Cuban must learn how to handle a weapon and when to use it in their own defense.
I have described, in broad strokes, the social ideas of the Rebel Army after the victory and its role in driving the government forward to clearly express revolutionary aspirations.
To conclude this talk, I would like to speak about one other question of interest: the example of our revolution for Latin America, and the lessons it has taught by destroying all armchair theories. We have demonstrated that a small group of determined persons, supported by the people and not afraid to die if necessary, can wind up defeating a regular, disciplined army, and do so once and for all. That is the fundamental lesson. There is another one that must be learned by our brothers and sisters of Latin America, economically facing the same agrarian condition as we do-and that is the need to make agrarian revolutions, fighting in the fields and mountains, and from there bringing the revolution to the cities; not trying to do so in the cities without an integral social program.
Now, in the face of the experiences we have had, the question is raised of what our future will be, a future intimately linked to all the underdeveloped countries of Latin America. The revolution is not limited to the Cuban nation, since it has touched the conscience of the Americas and has given a serious wake-up call to the enemies of our peoples. We have therefore issued a clear warning that any attempt at aggression will be repulsed arms in hand.
The example of Cuba has created more ferment throughout Latin America and the oppressed countries. The revolution has put tyrants in Latin America on notice, because they are the enemies of popular regimes the same as the foreign monopolies are. As a small country, we need the support of all the democratic peoples, especially those of Latin America.
We must inform the entire world as to the noble ends of the Cuban revolution, and we must call upon the friendly peoples of this continent, upon the North Americans and upon the Latin Americans. We must create a spiritual union of all our countries, a union that goes beyond mere verbiage and bureaucratic coexistence, and is translated into effective aid to our brothers and sisters, offering them our experience.
Finally, we must open new roads that will help identify the common interests of our underdeveloped countries. We must be prepared to resist all attempts to divide us. To fight against those who try to sow the seed of discord among us, those backed by well-known designs who aspire to take advantage of our political disagreements and stir up prejudices that cannot be allowed to exist in this country.
Today all the people of Cuba are on a struggle footing. We must continue in this manner, united, so that the victory over the dictatorship is not transitory. And so that it becomes the first step in the victory of Latin America.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/103.html
In 1959, we drove down the Florida coast to Key West, bought plane tickets to Havana, Cuba for $16 each. On landing, as the plane taxied to the terminal, an American businessman type, observing young men and women going through military training on a nearby field, sneered at their "lack of discipline." Three years later, at the Bay of Pigs, the U.S. invaders learned otherwise the hard way.
In Cuba, we found a happy people. It was a mere three months after the victory of the revolution. We've never seen anything like it, before or since. Riding on a bus, the passengers laughed, joked, and called out to us when our stop was reached. Little children on the street went up to the bearded, long-haired militia and patted them. They had won their revolution, which they had fought for long and hard. They were liberated from the Batista dictatorship; they looked toward a socialist future.
The swimming pools of the rich tourists' hotels were open to the people, Black and white, without charge. The restaurants were also open to all.
We stayed at a modern seafront hotel. But as the torrent of hostile, anti-Cuban, anti-Communist propaganda in the U.S. media was already having an effect, the mobs of tourists that in previous years had crowded Havana were missing. We were the only guests at the hotel, although Cubans filled the restaurant at meal times.
After a few days another American checked in, a youngish man escaping, he said, from a nagging wife. He was hoping to find the gambling and other facilities he had previously enjoyed. He didn't, of course.
I stopped in at the offices of El Hoy, the organ of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), the name used by the Cuban Communist party. It was closely allied with Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and, in fact, a few years later the two merged into the Communist Party of Cuba, and El Hoy merged into Granma.
The editor of El Hoy, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, welcomed me. Carlos Rafael was confident that Cuba would survive and flourish because of the overwhelming support of the Cuban people. He emphasized that the revolutionary forces would hold on to power even if the imperialists succeeded in assassinating Fidel. He stated that he was aware that he, himself, was a target: the premises of El Hoy had been destroyed more than once.
For me, his confidence in the permanence of the revolution was important. It came at a time when most liberals and left-of-center U.S. groups (although not the CPUSA) were writing off the Cuban revolution as bound to fail. And the confidence of Carlos Rafael Rodriguez has been borne out. Throughout subsequent decades, Carlos Rafael became a leading force in the Cuban government and Party.
For 37 years U.S. imperialism has conducted a vicious, unrelenting campaign, with no holds barred, against this small country. But all attempts to undermine it have failed. Slanderous propaganda, assassination plots, legal maneuver that violates international standards of commerce between nations.
European governments have verbally attacked Helms-Burton, but in practice government and corporations have yielded to it. Only Canada - its people, government and corporations - has steadfastly maintained normal relations with Cuba, defying Helms-Burton and its penalties.
Why is the United States so hostile toward this small island country 90 miles from our east coast?
The State Department "justification" for labeling a number of countries "rogue states" and for treating them accordingly is the charge that they sponsor terrorism. In the case of Cuba, there is no such charge, nor can there be as Cuba clearly eschews terrorism.
But the United States is guilty of violent terrorism against Cuba: the recent bombing of a number of Cuban tourist hotels and dropping their plant- destroying chemicals from planes, not to mention the many attempts to assassinate Castro, for which Washington does not consider it necessary to apologize!
The anti-Cuban blockade is a means of stroking the emigre Cuban capitalists who absconded with whatever they could get their hands on of Cuban property. That's not the only motive for hostility, but important.
Claims of debts to U.S. corporations for nationalized properties is another pretext. Of course, any foreign investment is undertaken at the risk of the investor, and claims have to be settled in accordance with the laws of the host country. Such claims are no business of the U.S. government.
In the case of Cuba, sabotage by the investing companies forced the nationalization, for the most part. The Exxon refinery at Santiago de Cuba is one example. Cuba was required by Exxon to supply the crude oil to be refined. Because of the U.S. blockade, Cuba had to buy its crude oil from the USSR, which offered favorable terms. But Exxon refused to process the Soviet oil, which Cuba had to have refined. Ergo, Cuba was forced to nationalize the Exxon facility.
And I have seen no claim on Cuba in Exxon's annual reports. Any such losses have long since written off and now emerge in order to get what they can from Helms-Burton. The damage done to Cuba by the U.S. economic warfare exceeds many times the total of all conceivable economic claims against Cuba.
U.S. corporations do not seriously expect to collect, but Washington wants to use Helms-Burton to hamper European competitors. There is no attempt to negotiate on the claims, nor is there any offer of relaxation of the blockade if the claims are met.
But the real, overriding reason for U.S. cold war aggression against Cuba is the hatred and fear of Communism on the part of the U.S. capitalist class, especially the leading, most powerful elements - including elected officials they control. They know that in any "fair" competition, socialism would come out way ahead. y Cuba freed from the hardships imposed by the U.S. blockade would be a powerful revolutionary influence on all of Latin America and the Caribbean - the neo-colonial backyard of U.S. imperialism. So the American power elite uses every device to tilt the playing field radically in their favor. y For many years the USSR gave favorable trade terms to Cuba. The Gorbachev-Yeltsin betrayal, which destroyed the USSR, was a serious blow to Cuba. And the Cuban people deserve great credit for surviving the intensified pressures that treasonous sellout exacted.
The support of the scores of Americans who break the blockade to take urgently needed commodities to Cuba expresses the solidarity of thousands of U.S. citizens. But such aid can only be a minor factor in relation to needs.
We look forward to the time when American labor will take the lead in cracking the corrosive U.S. blockade, in smashing Helms-Burton and ending the constant military provocations against valiant Cuba.