The People's Iron Fist vs Imperialist Jackboots: Revolutionaries and Anti-Communists Clash in Cuba

[Jeff Robinson]

'We are today defending what we did 60 years ago, and this is ours and cost many lives. Capitalism will never come back here again and these mercenaries paid by the US Empire will never again take to our streets, first they will have to kill us all'.

Video here

The biggest mass demonstrations for three decades have rippled through Cuba, as thousands took to the streets in cities throughout the island, demonstrating against food shortages, high prices and communist rule.

At 3pm local time all television channels were interrupted with a broadcast from President Miguel Díaz-Canel who said that “destabilisation in our country” would be met with a “revolutionary response”.

“We call upon all the revolutionaries of the country, all the communists, to take to the streets.”

A game of cat and mouse ensued, where young anti-government protesters tried to occupy iconic parts of the capital, only to be blocked off by older government supporters, state security and the army.

Cubans are living through the gravest economic crisis the country has known for 30 years. The Trump administration hammered the island with more than 200 new sanctions aimed at sabotaging the island’s’ economy and stirring discontent, measures that have so far been left untouched by the Biden administration.

Government supporters accused anti-government protesters of being mercenaries paid by the United States, which spend approximately 20 million dollars a year on “democracy promotion” on the island.

Thousands march in Cuba in rare mass protests amid economic crisis

US sanctions and coronavirus crisis lead to food shortages and high prices, sparking one of the biggest such demonstrations in memory

www.theguardian.com

 

[Brainaddict]

I'm afraid regardless of the embargo the government does and has run the economy badly. Some discussion of it here, even if you don't like the proposed solution - which I don't either, but it's a childish game to pretend that the Cuban government hasn't fucked up too: Concrete Ways to Alleviate Shortages in Cuba - Havana Times

Something I agree with in the article, having been there a few years ago, is the Cuban government simply doesn't value people's time, not just in the very low wages they pay but in constantly creating the conditions for hours of queueing, often when it could be avoided with just a few more staff.

 

[Brainaddict]

For those genuinely interested in Cuba, Havana Times does try to publish from both sides, and unlike the ra-ra-ra Cuba-loving socialists of the UK, actually publishes people who understand a bit about the situation there.

 

[hitmouse]

CORREO DEL CARIBE Nro 4 Cuba: Socialismo SI, Represion NO.

El pasado 30 de abril, Leonardo Negrín Romero, fue detenido violentamente por la policía, en una manifestación en Obispo y Aguacate –Hab...

f-anarquista-cc.blogspot.com

On April 30, Leonardo Negrín Romero was violently detained by the police in a demonstration in Obispo and Aguacate –Habana Vieja– carrying a sign that read “Socialism yes, Repression no”.

Leo, as those of us know him call him, is a volunteer of the groups of care for the elderly and vulnerable people in Cuba, called SAF (System of Attention to the Family); an active member of his community - the municipality of Centro Habana - where he carries out educational activities with mostly marginalized children; participatory and integrated into the cultural and political life of its study center, the Faculty of Physics of the University of Havana, from its perspective of defending tolerance and political coexistence. Likewise, Leo helps take care of - together with a group of peers - a disabled friend. He participated in the November 27 demonstration in front of the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Cuba calling for an end to the repression and respect for the Constitution. He also participated in the Tángana in Trillo Park, an event that was intended to be a response from the left to the above.

We are not talking about a CIA agent or a mercenary. As the son of a street sweeper and a teacher, people from humble sectors of the Cuban reality, Leo knows first-hand the poverty and marginalization that exists in one of the areas with the highest population density in Cuba with a high index of precariousness. Leo is precisely a good example of the model of citizen that every "revolutionary" and "socialist" state seeks to form. We believe that the reason why, after having released him with a minimal fine, the Department of State Security insists on harassing him - he is being prosecuted for an unacceptable charge of Public Disorder that carries penalties of up to five years in prison - is that Leo's mere public existence is a focus on the truth of what the "Revolution" has become: Saturn devouring his children - what Fidel Castro said would not be.

We demand an end to the harassment and police persecution of Leonardo Romero Negrín and we call for solidarity and attention from all comrades on this case that can define the future path of the Cuban Society Project. It is not a precedent that we are willing to accept. Is it that exercising socialist activism in Cuba will also be illegal? We recognize the citizen rights of the rest of those indicted in the protests of April 30 in Old Havana, but for us the harassment, repression and possible criminal prosecution of Leo will directly define the future of what is understood by socialism in Cuba, it will set a precedent that will cement more clearly the Cuban government's disengagement with the socialist ideas that it claims to hold, and it is something that we cannot passively accept. For this we request the broadest solidarity, and by all possible means, with the defense of Leo and for preventing his criminal prosecution by the Cuban State.

We subscribe this letter to the Alfredo López Libertarian Workshop and the Network of Communists for Own Story of Cuba, and we invite individuals and groups to leave their signature as a sign of support.

 

[Brainaddict]

There's a decent number of socialists in Cuba who want to escape the deathly grip of the Communist Party without going capitalist - people like this: The Change Most Cubans Want and How - Havana Times

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Ridiculous thread title.

Cuba is ruled by a state capitalist dictatorship. Socialists should not support dictatorships. Fidel and his cronies repressed and murdered Cuban anarchists and made anarchism illegal in Cuba. It is not a free society. The poor people of Cuba are not siding with the CIA (as is being suggested in some quarters). They've had enough of suffering under the weight of dictatorship and have suffered enough hardship and having their freedoms repressed. The poor of Cuba are going hungry and without medicine and other basics. Show some empathy and compassion.

Neither Washington nor Havana!

 

[hitmouse]

Ridiculous thread title.

Unless it's a subtle reference to this?

 

[Jeff Robinson]

If only Cuba was libertarian communist and overthrown by the CIA in approximately 9.5 seconds. That would be good.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

If only Cuba was libertarian communist and overthrown by the CIA in approximately 9.5 seconds. That would be good.

You like your red tyrants don't you. Fidel and the Cuban leaders are no better than capitalist leaders and other tyrants. Fidel lived in luxury while the people went without.

Fidel and his cronies betrayed the revolution. And they betrayed the people who fought alongside them against the Batista regime, for freedom, the anarchists.

 

[RainbowTown]

You like your red tyrants don't you. Fidel and the Cuban leaders are no better than capitalist leaders and other tyrants. Fidel lived in luxury while the people went without.

And let's not forget the persecution of gay people under Castro's regime. They were either imprisoned or sent to 're-education camps' in the wake of that 'glorious' revolution of 1959. They were treated like vermin.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

And let's not forget the persecution of gay people under Castro's regime. They were either imprisoned or sent to 're-education camps' in the wake of that 'glorious' revolution of 1959. They were treated like vermin.

They were, and I wouldn't want to defend or downplay that for a second, but Castro did later apologise for it.

Here in the UK, gay men were sent to forced labour camps (prison with hard labour) or forcibly given drugs around that same time.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

They were, and I wouldn't want to defend or downplay that for a second, but Castro did later apologise for it.

Here in the UK, gay men were sent to forced labour camps (prison with hard labour) or forcibly given drugs around that same time.

Some opportunistic 'apology' from Fidel Castro is meaningless.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Some opportunistic 'apology' from Fidel Castro is meaningless.

Player haters gonna hate.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Some opportunistic 'apology' from Fidel Castro is meaningless.

I don't think it is meaningless. In the same way that I don't think that the retrospective pardoning of men convicted for gay 'crimes' here in the UK is meaningless. It doesn't undo what was done, but it helps to make for a better present and future.

Cuba is an extremely macho society with some deeply grained homophobic attitudes. Those are only going to change slowly. But the willingness of the Castro regime to reexamine its attitudes was signalled by the film Fresa y Chocolate in 1993, and laws have since changed considerably. Castro publicly declaring that he had been wrong was an important part of that.

There are much stronger things to criticise Castro for imo.

 

[hitmouse]

In 2019, the official Pride march was cancelled, and Isbel Diaz Torres and Jimmy Roque Martinez were detained by the cops when they tried to organise an unofficial, non-state-sanctioned one. Much as I fucking detest our government, I don't think the UK government arrested anyone in 2019 for organising unauthorised Pride marches. Although post-policing-bill, who knows?

 

[RainbowTown]

They were, and I wouldn't want to defend or downplay that for a second, but Castro did later apologise for it.

Here in the UK, gay men were sent to forced labour camps (prison with hard labour) or forcibly given drugs around that same time.

Yes, but two wrongs don't make a right. This is a thread about Cuba specifically and that's why I'm commenting about it. I'd have no problem doing likewise if the thread was about the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. As for Castro's apology....too little, too late.

This is how Fidel Castro persecuted gay people

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro's death prompted strong debate about his time in power that included the persecution of LGBT people.

www.pinknews.co.uk

 

[Brainaddict]

If only Cuba was libertarian communist and overthrown by the CIA in approximately 9.5 seconds. That would be good.

The Cuban revolution was not made by the Cuban Communist Party, I don't think Castro was even a member at the time. It was made by a broad alliance of leftists, including anarchists, and Communists wormed their way to power afterwards with the help of money from the Kremlin when the US was blockading.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The Cuban revolution was not made by the Cuban Communist Party, I don't think Castro was even a member at the time. It was made by a broad alliance of leftists, including anarchists, and Communists wormed their way to power afterwards with the help of money from the Kremlin when the US was blockading.

I'm not sure 'wormed their way to power' is quite right. They were there at the centre in the form of Guevara and Raul Castro from the start. That's effectively 50% of the top military command of the revolution, along with Fidel and Cienfuegos. Fidel didn't take much persuasion. Cienfuegos was soon to be dead.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Player haters gonna hate.

tankies gonna tank

 

[littlebabyjesus]

This article from Time gives an interesting snapshot of the period from a US, anti-communist perspective, written three weeks after Batista fled and predicting that free elections will return a pro-US government. In fact, unable even to imagine how free elections could do otherwise.

The Vengeful Visionary

Communists, strong in the new labor organization but weak elsewhere, will try to stir anti-U.S. hatreds. Che Guevara, a frank proCommunist, will give Communism all the help he can in the new army. A Communist-lining journalist, Carlos Franqui, is in a powerful spot as editor of the official rebel newspaper, Revolución. But Cubans know the U.S. too well to swallow the usual Communist whoppers. Any party that wins free elections in Cuba will doubtless be in the Western camp.

The article comes across as incredibly naive. Castro promising elections 'within 18 months' while in the middle of an execution spree. Among other things, it underestimates anti-US sentiment in Latin America. Talk of 'communist whoppers'. And what about the US whoppers, then? Whether communist or not, all the Cuban revolutionaries were steeped in antipathy towards the US, from recent events such as the overthrow of Arbenz to the mythologies of the Wars of Independence, Marti, etc.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

tankies gonna tank

 

[littlebabyjesus]

The overthrow of Batista, a thoroughly good thing.

What has happened since is mixed at best, and Castro himself was personally to blame for much that went wrong. Of course, there is the old canard about how much of the hardship is the fault of the US blockade, but ultimately the Revolutionaries, with Castro at the centre, made it all about them. Either you are with us or you are against us, which is the mantra of the tyrant.

 

[Brainaddict]

I'm not sure 'wormed their way to power' is quite right. They were there at the centre in the form of Guevara and Raul Castro from the start. That's effectively 50% of the top military command of the revolution, along with Fidel and Cienfuegos. Fidel didn't take much persuasion. Cienfuegos was soon to be dead.

Yes but the people they led were broadly not in the Communist Party and were not fighting for a Communist Party dominated state. I think it could have gone in various directions but unfortunately cold war politics pushed Cuba towards authoritarian communism. Cuba: Castroism and Communism, 1959-1966 | Hispanic American Historical Review | Duke University Press

I guess Jeff Robinson is a fan of those Red London 'comedy' Stalinists or something. He certainly seems to have picked up their disingenuous style.

 

[platinumsage]

I love how a thread about problems right now in Cuba has quickly become totally focused on the 1950s.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I love how a thread about problems right now in Cuba has quickly become totally focused on the 1950s.

It's a sign of the current desperation. Speaking recently to someone who is in touch with people in Havana right now, they say that things are as bad right now as they were in the early 90s. That means that things are really fucking bad. People going hungry.

One of the many problems is that Cuba is in many ways stuck at 1959 still even now. And while not seeking to excuse anything, the continuation and reestablishment of the blockade by the US is a big factor in why things are so stuck.

At a practical level, the suspension of tourism due to covid has royally fucked Cuba. It doesn't have the resources to survive temporary crises like that.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

The overthrow of Batista, a thoroughly good thing.

What has happened since is mixed at best, and Castro himself was personally to blame for much that went wrong. Of course, there is the old canard about how much of the hardship is the fault of the US blockade, but ultimately the Revolutionaries, with Castro at the centre, made it all about them. Either you are with us or you are against us, which is the mantra of the tyrant.

Sadly also how shit works. Trying to establish a pluralist democracy in Cuba would almost certainly be immediately subverted by the US and the country would go back to being a Yank colony again.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Sadly also how shit works. Trying to establish a pluralist democracy in Cuba would almost certainly be immediately subverted by the US and the country would go back to being a Yank colony again.

Tankie, red fascist, it's all the same really.

 

[NoXion]

This thread makes me kind of nostalgic. I remember there was a time when I was spending far too much time on forums where people would call each other "tankies" and "anarkiddies".

 

[Riklet]

This thread is ridiculous Tankie nonsense btw.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Tankie, red fascist, it's all the same really.

Until imperialism is totally destroyed third world counties have two options: iron fist socialism or capitalism. Pick your poison cos your unicorn communism ain’t happening chief.