Freedom Socialist • Vol. 18, No. 4 • January-March 1998

BRIGADA FEMINISTA INTERNACIONAL A CUBA

Eyewitness to a vibrant revolution under siege

by Linda Averill

"We believe in socialism." Splashed colorfully across a hangar at Havana's José Marti airport, this declaration greeted the International Feminist Brigade on Sept. 20. During our electrifying 12-day stay, Cubans everywhere echoed this sentiment even as they acknowledged the weighty problems created by the island's economic crisis.

Venturing out the first morning, a few of us began talking with an Afro-Cuban pensioner enjoying the view from the city's sea wall. Like all Cubans, he has full, free healthcare, and like many, he owns his own home.

"We're fighting for the right to choose our own system," he told us. "This works for us. We've lived under capitalism and we're never going back."

Inspiring proof that life can be better. Made up of more than 50 women and men from Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the U.S., our multi-racial Brigade was a joint project of Radical Women and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), who hosted us all with unflagging graciousness and warmth. With a leadership team made up largely of women of color, we traveled to Cuba to see for ourselves the achievements of the 1959 revolution and the impact of the decades-long U.S. blockade against it.

Breaking into smaller groups, we visited three provinces -- Pinar del Río, La Habana, and Matanzas -- and toured facilities including a vaccine research center, psychiatric hospital, and AIDS sanatorium. (Future FS articles will report in detail on many of the things we learned.) Our experiences made us keenly aware of the freedoms and equality Cubans enjoy because of their nationalized economy, which eliminates the profit motive and prioritizes human needs and growth.

At an FMC community center in Havana, Afro-Cubans told us about the institutional backbone supporting the country's advanced race relations: Education through the university level costs nothing, they told us, and strong laws discourage discrimination.

In Matanzas, at the Tamara Bunke health clinic, we learned that exercise programs for grandmothers and house calls by doctors and dentists are part of the comprehensive medical system. Rita Rodríguez Sajardo, our FMC guide, explained how the entire province works to achieve goals such as keeping the infant mortality rate low.

Embargo produces daily hardship. However, Rodríguez Sajardo added, "We have fewer medicines and more difficulties during the Special Period." The Special Period is the economic havoc created by the crackup of the Soviet bloc -- whose trade with Cuba used to make up 80 percent of the country's total -- and the cumulative effects of the recently intensified U.S. blockade.

The Cuban government is exerting tremendous energy to solve the crisis of scarce goods and inflated prices, but the blockade's injuries still are felt everywhere -- particularly by women and children.

Drawing closer to defend Cuba. Our understanding of Cuba deepened at a solidarity conference sponsored by the FMC and RW in Havana on September 26 and 27. In frank, often passionate discussions, more than 100 participants talked about gay liberation, the nuclear family, the rise in prostitution in Cuba, sectarianism in the solidarity movement, and the interconnections of race, sex and class.

The highlight was passage of an action-oriented resolution that condemns U.S. imperialism and explains why Cuba's fate is crucial to the world working class.

Brigadistas are already setting in motion the campaigns outlined in the reso lution. (See stories below.) In October, U.S. brigadista Stephen Durham went back to Havana for an international conference called "Socialism Towards the Twenty-First Century," where he advocated a Cuban-led global regroupment of Left forces as a way both to defend Cuba and build world socialism. And in November, Australian brigadistas presented the FMC/RW resolution at the 6th Women and Labour Conference.

Grave peril and great opportunity. Cubans have maintained their advance toward socialism through ingenuity and the sheer depth of their commitment. However, as Melbourne brigadista Debbie Brennan said, "The social fabric is unraveling under pressure from 'free market' measures and the ills they breed -- prostitution, disparity, crime."

History has shown that no workers state, isolated and besieged by hostile capitalist nations, can survive indefinitely, no matter how brave and resolute are its people. Revolutionary Cuba is in jeopardy, and only international solidarity, and ultimately international revolution, can dynamite the obstacles threatening to overwhelm it.

The future of Cuba is of utmost importance to feminists, workers, and socialists. For all the oppressed, this island of 11 million people stands as a role model of cooperation and humane values triumphing over killer competition and rampaging corporate greed. The fight to save Cuba is part and parcel of the fight to save the whole planet from a return to barbarism, and to usher in an era of peace and shared prosperity instead.

As South African brigadista Gertrude Fester, with fist raised, declared at our many gatherings: "¡Viva Cuba, viva el socialismo!"

Havana conference unites feminists against U.S. blockade

This blockade is the first in history to include food and medicine and is an act of war." This compelling point is made in a resolution adopted by participants at the International Feminist Brigade Solidarity Conference, held Sept. 26-27 in Havana. The bold document elaborates why all disenfranchised people have a stake in the survival of the Cuban revolution and commits conference-goers to specific work in collaboration with the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) and Radical Women. Some action items:

For a copy of the resolution, and to endorse it or to join in these projects, contact the International Feminist Brigade. (See article below.)

Labor Action Alert!

Three resolutions concerning Cuba will be considered at a meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council in January or March. Up for debate and a vote are two pro-Cuba resolutions from labor bodies in Washington state and California and one anti-Cuba resolution from Florida.

Letters and resolutions from other unions and councils calling for the AFL-CIO to reverse its support for the deadly U.S. blockade are urgently needed. For an information packet, contact the International Feminist Brigade. Or write directly to the AFL-CIO Executive Council: 815 16th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006.

Cubanas

on the island's present and future

Ada R. Benítez Colao ~ Confederation of Cuban Workers

"We must build solidarity with U.S. and world unions to end the blockade. And in the future we will sit and talk together about how to work for a better world."

Rebeca Cutié Cancino ~ Federation of Cuban Women

"Prostitution's reappearance is linked to the emergence of tourism. Economic needs forced us to open up, and then the capitalists came looking for things they have in their own countries. It was painful to see."

Magalys Arocha Domínguez ~ FMC

"In the Special Period, scarcities became very difficult. Transportation almost collapsed. Then we had blackouts. And now children have only one uniform that must be washed every day. All of this has challenged women's creativity."

Gladys Egües Cantero ~ Journalist

"We've been working for quite a while on the problem of women's images in magazines and on radio. Now, because of the economic crisis in the country, the space and time allotted for this have been reduced."

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