BY MARTÍN KOPPEL
CUBATAO, Brazil-Three members of the Union of Young Communists (UJC) of Cuba were enthusiastically welcomed here May 31 when they visited oil workers occupying a Petrobra's refinery.
The three are part of a delegation of 30 UJC members who are in Brazil to get out the truth about the Cuban revolution and build the "Cuba Lives" International Youth Festival called for August 1-7 in Havana and other parts of the island. Félix López, 29, is a reporter for Juventud Rebelde, the UJC's weekly newspaper. Jany Mayor, 22, is a worker at a cooperative farm in Havana province. Alfredo Díaz, 27, is a UJC leader in a rural town in Holguín province.
At a strike rally at the refinery's main gate, the three Cuban youth leaders were pleasantly surprised to find that a group of 10 high school students were also there to show their support for the oil strikers. "We heard about the youth festival in Cuba and we're planning to go," said Mauro Max. He is the president of the Municipal Union of High School Students in the nearby city of Santos.
López, Mayor, and Díaz had already visited a number of colleges, high schools, and other places to publicize the festival. "We were invited to speak before a class at one high school. Students asked us a lot of questions about Cuba, which they didn't know much about. Even the teacher was surprised to learn that Cuba had wiped out illiteracy in the early years of our revolution," said one.
At most of these campus meetings, several students expressed interest in traveling to Cuba for the festival. In addition, the National Student Union and other youth groups are planning to charter a plane to Cuba to take part in the event.
The 30 UJC activists have fanned out to several states in Brazil. López said that seeing the conditions working people face here made a big impression on him. Among other places, he visited a favela, as the huge slums in Brazilian cities are known.
"There is such a contrast between wealth and poverty," López remarked. "We saw both modern skyscrapers and lots of people living on the streets of Sao Paulo. You have to see capitalism to really understand what it is."
The Cuban youth leaders are planning to meet with members of the Movement of Rural Landless Workers who have expressed interest in going to the festival.
Meanwhile, UJC leaders are traveling throughout the world to build the Cuba Lives event. Victoria Velásquez, the organization's first secretary, just completed a successful tour in Chile. The UJC's first secretary in Holguín province, Francisco Pérez Batista, is now traveling through several Central American countries. Another UJC activist is on a similar tour in Australia and New Zealand.
At the May 25-28 conference of the Sao Paulo Forum, held in Montevideo, Uruguay, brochures on the festival were widely distributed by members of the Cuban delegation and other participants. A number of youth from Uruguay and Argentina said they planned to start raising money to send delegations to Cuba.