Seventy Cuban writers, artists and other intellectuals came to San Francisco to participate in the annual Latin American Studies Association conference, May 23-26. They joined more than 3,000 scholars from around the world who specialize in Latin American academic studies. While many Cubans were granted visas, 11 were denied, including prominent individuals who have traveled before to the United States. The denials drew a sharp protest from LASA.
Several exciting community events featuring Cuban delegates were held before and during the conference.
Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro and head of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), presented at a LASA panel on sexual diversity. Castro has been a prominent advocate for the LGBT movement in Cuba and has been instrumental for several years now in the organizing of Cuba’s participation in the International Day Against Homophobia in May.
On May 23, Castro addressed medical professionals at San Francisco General Hospital about health care rights for the Cuban transgender community. She lamented that the medical communities of Cuba and the United States were barred from learning from each other due to the U.S.-imposed travel ban. “A group of Cuban Mafia in the U.S., why are they taking away rights of American people to travel to Cuba?” she asked. “You are millions of people against a tiny Mafia of people who have no scruples. … The Cuban people have been the victims of state terrorism, of the economic blockade against Cuba, campaigns to … misinform the world’s population about the power of a revolution.”
That evening, she addressed a crowd of more than 200 people at the Gay, Lesbian, Bi- and Transgender Community Center. After receiving a standing ovation, she told the crowd that Cuba is working to overcome a legacy of patriarchy and homophobia, without which “we cannot advance as a new society, and that’s what we want, the power of emancipation through socialism. … We will establish relationships on the basis of social justice and social equality.”
Prior to the commencement of LASA, some 40 of the visiting Cubans attended the “Cuba in Focus 2012” forum hosted by the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, FMLN of Northern California, Bay Area Latin America Solidarity Coalition, and the Marin Task Force on the Americas. A number of prominent Cuban scholars and supporters spoke. More than 130 people packed the ANSWER meeting hall for the event, which was chaired by Gloria La Riva, coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. Unfortunately, one of the invited guests, Esteban Morales, had been denied a visa.
The first speaker was Isaac Saney, Canadian professor of Caribbean political economy and author of “Cuba: A Revolution in Motion.” Saney said that the Cuban revolution was to the 20th and 21st centuries what the Haitian revolution had been to the 19th. Just as the Haitian revolution was the first to bestow democratic rights to all members of its society, regardless of gender, race, or property-owning status, “the Cuban revolution remains a shining example of a society in which real economic rights are enjoyed by all members of its society.”
Saney went on to celebrate Cuba’s role in ending the racist apartheid regime of South Africa, which killed one and a half million Black Africans in Angola and other neighboring countries. The Cuban army played a key role in driving the South African army out of Angola, leading to the downfall of the apartheid system.
Saney said that Cuba continued to spread liberty throughout the world through the economic alternative to neo-liberalism offered by the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas as well as through the deployment of Cuba’s doctors to all parts of the world where they were needed, including wealthy Western nations such as Canada.
Next was Keith Bolender, author of “Voices from the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba.” Bolender traveled to Cuba and interviewed dozens of ordinary Cubans who had been injured or lost loved ones to CIA-backed terrorism against the island. Bolender discovered over 700 such attacks, which left at least 3,400 people dead. Having to defend itself from such an onslaught of imperialist aggression had, said Bolender, held back what the revolution had been able to fully achieve.
Famed literary figure Miguel Barnet, president of the Cuban Union of Artists and Writers, next addressed the crowd. Barnet said, “It is obvious why the U.S. government denied visas to [11] of our most prominent colleagues … it was those who focus on Cuban-American policy, and those who are experts on the differendum between Cuba and the United States. The rest of us were given visas because we are poets, anthropology, writers, you know, like the clouds and birds. The sun also rises in our lives. Yes, we are poets and anthropologists but we are above all, revolutionaries.”
Barnet personally thanked Gloria La Riva, for the work she has done to support the five Cuban heroes imprisoned in the United States for infiltrating right-wing terrorist organizations in Florida to stop attacks on their homeland. When he watches La Riva on Cuban television with all her energy, said Barnet, “I always think, ‘we are going to win!’”
Sociologist Juan Luis Martín spoke of the profound changes Cuban society is currently undergoing. To face the challenges of the financial crisis, the Cuban government has been forced to cut some state jobs and fuse some ministries. While small private business and agriculture are being promoted, so too is greater involvement by the people in both regional and federal government affairs. Other changes included raising the retirement age, deeding homes to those who had lived in their house for over 20 years, legalizing pluralism in employment, the expansion of television programming, higher salaries for academics, and the indefinite suspension of the death penalty.
Economics professor Camila Piñeiro, of the University of Havana, shed more light on recent changes to the Cuban economy. She said the devastating hurricanes that hit Cuba in 2008 and cost the island $10 billion in damages made it clear that Cuba would have to make profound changes if it were to sustain the accomplishments of the revolution. She explained that turning idle land over to Cubans who farm and sell their produce on the market has allowed the island to become less dependent on imports.
Piñeiro put Cuba’s move towards private enterprise in context. While Cuba did plan to increase private employment from 15 to 35 percent by 2015, Pineiro asserted that the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European socialist states had always averaged around 35 percent private-sector employment. She added that before the recent changes allowing private enterprise in 181 sectors, Cubans who had no formal employment were already engaging in private enterprise surreptitiously. Now, the Cuban state can benefit from this activity by taxing private business.
The final speaker, María Isabel Domínguez, director of Cuba’s Center for Psychological and Sociological Studies at the Academy of Sciences, spoke about the youth of Cuba. She discussed the ways in which Cuba’s population is aging due to the country’s low birth-rate and long life expectancy.
Youth constitute only 20 percent of the population. The country’s youth have grown up after the overthrow of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, which had been Cuba’s main trading partners. This has caused challenges for inter-generational communication. But Dominguez expressed hope that partaking in the new economic spaces being created in Cuba can give the youth a renewed sense of commitment to the revolution.
Domínguez said that the high involvement of young Cubans volunteering in Haiti and many other countries around the world shows that the spirit of the Cuban revolution will be carried forward by the next generation. After the panel, a Cuban in the audience noted how Cuba’s young literacy volunteers were in the process of eliminating illiteracy in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia.
On May 25, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five helped organize a dynamic celebration for the visiting LASA scholars at Intersection for the Arts, a politically engaged gallery space in downtown San Francisco. It was attended by the Cuban delegation and many Bay Area activists who helped host the Cubans in the area.
The noted personalities who spoke included Mariela Castro, author Alice Walker, actor Danny Glover, and writer and filmmaker Saul Landau.
Two of the Cuban Five speak to the audience
Special highlights were phone calls with Cuban Five members René González and Gerardo Hernández. González is unjustly being forced to serve a three-year probation in southern Florida, away from his family and home in Cuba. He inspired the crowd with his enthusiastic optimism saying, “To all the friends in LASA, thank you for all you are doing to sow seeds of friendship among the people, for working to break the blockade, and for all you do for the Cuban Five.”
Mariela Castro spoke of walking earlier in the day through San Francisco’s Castro District, long synonymous with the LGBT struggle for equality. She described her tour with longtime gay activist Cleve Jones, who took her to a museum documenting the history of the neighborhood. Seeing pictures of various LGBT struggles, she expressed awe and solidarity with the community. She reflected on the ways in which capitalism seeks to keep one oppressed group divided from other oppressed communities. All injustice, she said, has an economic basis. To truly win liberation for all requires different communities struggling together for the socialist transformation of society. It was a message that reverberated with the crowd.
Near the conclusion of the event, Gerardo Hernández, sentenced to an outrageous double-life term, succeeded in calling into the event from Victorville (Calif.) prison. He spoke with Mariela Castro, Danny Glover, Alice Walker and Miguel Barnet. Gerardo told Mariela: “Mariela, I send you an embrace and for the people of CENESEX, too. I have a special message that I want you to take there to your father, on behalf of the Cuban Five. Tell him that we are here with the same determination of the first day and we will keep that same determination, no matter how long.” There were few dry eyes among the people hearing his voice.
Mariela choked up, and said, “I’m left without words, I feel so much emotion to be able to speak with you, and to speak with René. You know that we will not rest, in our fight for you.”
